Harry, you don’t need to sell it to me

  • REgon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    14 days ago

    Though I don’t believe it would even have to require much suffering and sacrifice for the working class, because most wealth and capital in Western countries is obviously stolen from the workers by the 0.1% and we could simply take it and redistribute it.

    If all the wealth in the world was distributed in equal amounts to every person, then each person would make about $54.000 dollars a year. Every person would own 2.5 acres of land, if it was distributed equally. If we just redistributed the financial assets of the richest 1% in the world, then that would be about $24.000 a year.
    If all the money (which I understand is made up) in the world was distributed in equal amounts to every person, then each person would make about $10.500 a year.
    The first would put me much better off than I am now. The second, assuming rent and so on is still a thing, would make me slightly worse off. Not even incredibly worse off, just a bit worse off, in exchange for basically ending hunger/houselessness. I’d be fine with that.

    I know this is a meaningless exercise, what is “wealth”? How would it function? Inflation? But again, the financial system is itself fictitious, we produce 1.21 times the amount of food needed to feed the global population, about 40% is discarded before reaching a supplier. There’s so many empty houses. The market for speculating on debt is larger than the amount of debt. If we go into the practicalities of it, we have to acknowledge that “redistributing all wealth” - however irrational - would still be more rational than what is going on now.