World's 26 richest people own as much as poorest 50%, says Oxfam
The inequality of assets and income is an unfixable problem, but that is not the problem.<p>There are people who are really good at starting and growing businesses, investing, taking risks, and thus accumulating wealth. Then there are people, some of who are really bad at that but mostly some of who aren&#x27;t just that much interested and driven by that. Then there are people who are really good at effectively getting rid of any wealth they manage to obtain. Let&#x27;s call this being good at money.<p>There is nothing wrong with that. Programmers are like that. There are some who are really, really good at it. Then many who are pretty decent, then a lot who are mediocre but still not negative, and then there are programmers whose output is outright negative.<p>Education helps a little: it can help with the constant factor but those who are good they really are good regardless or despite the education. So similarly to as you can&#x27;t expect to train the whole humankind to become decent programmers I&#x27;m pessimistic about being able to educate the whole humankind out of poverty.<p>If we redistributed the world&#x27;s wealth equally to all people on the planet the distribution would revert back to what the shape it has now in a matter of years or decades. Surely, there would be previously poor people with a knack for money who would be wealthy and there would be previously wealthy people who could not recreate the wealth they obtained by luck or by inheritance. But we would eventually recreate the situation where few people hold most of the assets. The peak of the distribution would just amplify over time as having wealth makes it easier to make more wealth, so the rich get richer and the poor get only fractional improvements.<p>There is a problem if the poor people can&#x27;t make a living even if they are willing to put in the effort on their part. The systemic inefficiencies to lock a person&#x27;s position in permanent poverty, the high fixed costs of living that prevent accumulating savings, lack of food, roof or medical support rendering people incapable to restart or begin a financially sustainable life, or money being able to buy justice or privileges that trump other people&#x27;s rights. <i>These are the problems</i> and not the fact that one person has a billion times more assets than some other person.<p>There are solutions we&#x27;ve tried and mostly failed. We can try to transfer wealth back from the rich to subsidise the poor. But poverty is often also about the mindset, and it is well known you can&#x27;t refill a well merely by carrying water into it. The water just flows back to where it came from. We can try to make living not so dependent on one&#x27;s income and assets but that means disrupting the natural markets for both jobs and goods, which not only accumulates inefficiencies due the diminished effect of businesses&#x27; healthy deaths but generates a reflecting black market that has no regulation. We can try to create more jobs as historically work has been a good medium to redistribute wealth but it seems that jobs are becoming less like that. There are very high-paying jobs for a small group of people and very poorly paid work or no work for lots of people.<p>Trying to fix the inequality of wealth distribution in order to combat poverty is, in my opinion, fixing the symptom and not the cause.