Saved by Beverley
There's not that much wealth in the world
The confusion of inequality with poverty comes straight out of the lump fallacy—the mindset in which wealth is a finite resource, like an antelope carcass, which has to be divvied up in zero-sum fashion, so that if some people end up with more, others must have less. As we just saw, wealth is not like that: since the Industrial Revolution, it has e
... See moreSteven Pinker • Enlightenment Now
Nobody thinks of using improvements in technology and productivity to allow people to work less and require fewer assets to achieve the same standard of living. Instead, while everybody is richer, at least in terms of stuff, no one is any wealthier. Their wealth is "safely" out of reach. If it weren't, how many would still show up for wor
... See moreJacob Lund Fisker • Early Retirement Extreme: A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence
The bottom 50 percent of the population in the U.S. owns less than 2 percent of total wealth. It used to be 3 or 4 percent 20 years ago; now it’s less than 2 percent. It’s always been very small, in any case, but it’s not going in the right direction. This has all sorts of bad consequences in terms of how you can plan your own life.