Matt Korostoff

I saw a great representation of this several years ago. I think it was also for Bezos but might've been for Musk. It was a horizontal scrollbar with random points of various datapoints that would fit within his wealth. it went on for so long that it was spectacularly boring to zoom through. Reminds me of the story of Mansa Musa, and how he took a trip once and it affected the economies of the areas he visited for generations. . . The influence of these guys strains the imagination. [edit: @spencerflem posted it while I was ruminating - https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/?v=3... check it out!]

I love this one: https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

Its not possible to become fantastically rich without the support of a state, or by essentially being a state. For Amazon to work, they need the roads that the govt built, the internet the govt invented, the cable the govt subsidised, the military and the police to protect their shipments and keep the workers in line, the courts to handle disputes and a million other things. Corporations themselves are a legal fiction made up by the state. Its incredibly fair to tax for this and Could Not Possibly work any other way. And on top of that, come on: look at https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/?v=3 and tell me that having hundreds of billions of dollars isn't greedy. 10 million (ie. thirty thousand times less) and you can retire in luxury.

These numbers truely are large. the best visualization I've seen for that is https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

98% of people currently incarcerated in the U.S. have not had a trial. In fact, around 25% of them haven't even been convicted of a crime as they're being held in pre-trial detention (usually a misnomer because, as mentioned, most of them will make a plea bargain before going to trial.) This website has a really great visualisation of the U.S. prison population: https://mkorostoff.github.io/incarceration-in-real-numbers/ And see here for its sources: https://github.com/MKorostoff/incarceration-in-real-numbers/blob/maste…

In the context of our society and with "lots" meaning billions - yes it is immoral. I'm sure we've all seen a number of graphics/chats/whatever trying to show wealth inequality, but this is the best one I've come across. Would recommend giving it a look and then asking yourself if having a lot of money isn't immoral. https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

If there is a company that would buy the US is Amazon, they have a lifelong interest into keep paying no taxes, so far by using taxholes but this move would solidify it by making disappear the legal entity that charges taxes, they are also (along Apple) one of the few companies with enough cash to buy it even if a little part remains pending as debt. If you need a bit of visual help to visualize how much money Jeff Bezos has this website is always the best at such task: https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

It always blows my mind seeing a post like this on HN and the top comments nitpick whether such a tax is needed. These people don't need defending and they don't need that much money (for comparison, this was posted on here the other day and really illustrates the disparity quite well: https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/). The reasons for taxing them (including a flat rate on their net worth which would be a terrible way to tax people in lower income brackets but could be a great way to level things off at the top end where avoidance is rampant) are many: funding climate change reversal, poverty, health, housing, medical research, the list goes on. We don't need more pedants splitting hairs about how to more effectively use the existing tax revenues. That is a distraction. We should do that too, but we should absolutely tax the hell out of the billionaire class who have been taking more than their fair share from our resources for decades and living at the expense of all of our futures.

in the 1930s through the early 1980s, the marginal tax rate for the wealthy was 70-85%. In the late 1980s it went down to 28% and is now at 37%. Historical tax rates on the highest marginal rates: https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-highest-marginal… In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan lowered the tax rate by so much, and that's when the country started going to the dogs. What you say about the wealth not being in piles of cash is completely incorrect. The stock has value, and the super wealthy can use their stock ownership as collateral and get as much cash as they wish. Cash is not an issue for the super wealthy. Additionally, while the owners take a salary of $1, let's say for kicks, in addition to getting unlimited cash, they also get other perks as well - like company jets, and limos with drivers, etc. I don't know if Bezos does, but many business owners do. I think that Bezos should control the company, but there could be a 90% tax on wealth (not income) at the highest marginal rate and that would be fine with me. It's been there before in the USA's best years, where there was money to build roads and bridges, and pay for student's educations at public universities. It's not like Jeff Bezos and those people like him are going to quit if we limit their wealth to $1 billion or $5 billion. But the rich are a bunch of c-nts. San Francisco said that they would raise taxes for the richest by 1%...1 f-ing percent, in order to help the homeless,…

<https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/> People taking in $200k are not in any sense "very, very wealthy", except from a third-world viewpoint. $200k in today's dollars approaches what would have been called "middle class" a few decades ago, when there was one. Now you are only low, below $300k, and high, above $1M, with very few left between. (In countries with regular health care and education, life costs less, so this about the US.) The plutocrats have been very successful at deceiving American voters that they are not almost all now lower-class. The Powell Memorandum, 50 years ago, laid out the plan. It has been followed since then, and Americans now are routinely persuaded to vote against their own interests. Wealth produced in the US has been rising as fast since 1975 as it did between 1945 and 1975, but normal Americans' income since 1975 has been flat. The whole difference has gone straight into the pockets of the extreme rich, and they are who are very, very rich. You and I have no concept of how different their lives are. In 1975, regular parents could pay for putt their kids through college while paying their mortgage.

I think you could generalize the idea of "individuals who extract income but who do not perform useful work" to "individuals whose extracted income exceeds the utility of the work they perform." Maybe to the converse as well, to an excess of "individuals whose extracted income subceeds the utility of the work they perform". It's basically talking about unjustified inequality. I think to some extent this maps onto the idea of rent-seeking monopolies in current society and undercompensation of individuals. It's hard to go to something like this https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/' and not conclude that many people are being undercompensated grossly, and a small number of others are being overcompensated grossly. For what it's worth, I agree with others that I don't think this maps onto "braininess" per se. I just think that's one of the character traits that happens to be valued the most in Western societies at the moment, so it's projected by the elites the most. In the past it might have been valor or nobility or courage or whatever it was -- the thing that is presented as justification for the excessive income, and protection of that income. In general I think individuals are misvalued, not in the sense that persons don't matter, but the economic value placed on single individuals can be (and usually are) grossly overstated or understated. I think this transcends many many fields.

The discussion of billionaires building "CERNs" came out of a discussion I was having with a friend as a way to quantify how rich these people are in terms more understandable. Graphics like pixel wealth[0] just show scale, but doesn't put things in perspective. But a Forbes analysis estimates the cost of finding the Higgs at around $14bn (rounding up)[1]. I also tried using Super Computers, but at around $300m a piece the number was too small (e.g. Elon is 100 Auroras and Bezos is 1000, ball parks). Number of CERNs became a much more approachable metric but also has the fault that these take over a decade to build (meaning the # of CERNs is likely an underestimate). I do agree that this would be a great PR move. Especially as we've seen Bezos grow his wealth by $65bn in the last 4 months[2] or Elon by $44bn (more than doubling) in the same time frame[3]. But the practicability is also a little naive considering that these numbers do not equate to liquid cash that they have available. Though someone like Gates has much higher liquidity than Bezos or Elon. But it is interesting. Maybe if my metric catches on someone will build one (or another mega science project) :D [0] https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/07/05/how-much-does-it-cos… [2] https://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/?list=billionaires#3bb0b8721… [3]…

I like these kinds of visualizations for big things. Reminds me of "1 pixel wealth." https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

I mostly agree, and certainly a list of numbers or maybe a log plot would be better if the goal was communicating the raw data. Certainly the click-about jumpy interface is pretty janky. However there’s one thing I think this does better than a list of numbers would: Most people (me included) have a hard time getting an intuitive feel for things like just how much smaller 1ns is compared to 1ms or truly how much a billion dollars is. SI prefixes or a log scale can give the wrong /feeling/ even when they’re giving the right /information/. Sometimes, the inconvenience of a linear scale is the point. Pages that I think use this technique to really good effect: https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

Top 5% of earners in the US are making $340k USD[0]. Is it unreasonable for people working at OpenAI to get 2-3x that? If you want to be angry at the unbalanced concentration of wealth, take a look at Bezos[1]. [0] https://www.unbiased.com/discover/banking/how-much-income-puts-you-in-… [1] https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

> I don’t understand why anyone, ever, would be in favor of more or higher compulsory taxes. because some wealth from the ultra-rich can do a lot of good and has zero impact on them. https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

That's the effect of thousands of tech workers leaving. In terms of relative wealth, tech workers have more in common with restaurant and service workers than they do with billionaires: https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ The presence or absence of a billionaire in a given jurisdiction won't be the deciding factor for those industries as evidenced by every other city without tech billionaires that has a thriving restaurant and service industry.

There's a big difference between a million and a billion. Here's a handy reference for getting the hang of it. https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

As per my other comment: vastly, vastly, vastly, VASTLY underestimating the size of the wealth gap in America. https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

It is a difference in both kind and degree. In kind: my income is not the direct result of creating the conditions that cause others to rely on GiveWell. In degree: sometimes the degree matters, and Bezos is a prime example of that[0]. If I give up 1% of my accumulated wealth to alleviate $1000 of suffering, that helps a small number of people and affects my lifestyle not terribly much. If Jeff Bezos gives up the same percentage of his accumulated wealth, that helps many, many, many more people and affects his lifestyle even less. The degree absolutely matters. Among the people that could be helped dramatically would be Amazon warehouse employees. 0. https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

> The ultra rich/wealthy are a red herring, there’s only a few 10k of them of them. Only 614 people are billionaires. Have a look at what inconveniencing just 400 of them would do (they would still be billionaire after) https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

This is just money - it gets worse: https://mkorostoff.github.io/incarceration-in-real-numbers/

It'd be good to consider what percentage of the jail/prison population is actually incarcerated for serious crimes. https://mkorostoff.github.io/incarceration-in-real-numbers/

With his wealth he doesn’t need to work anymore since a long time. See e.g. here: https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ In my opinion there is hardly a justification or a _need_ for an individual to own billions. But I think we haven’t found a good way to redistribute money, apart from billionaires self-pledging to give their wealth away.

On this subject, I was blown away by this a week ago: https://mkorostoff.github.io/incarceration-in-real-numbers/

This visualization is pretty eye opening in illustrating the difference between a cushy six-figure job and the ultra-wealthy that we're talking about as the complement of "us plebs" https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

> Every single person in America could be lifted above the poverty line with a one-time cash subsidy of around $10,000 per impoverished family (and about $7,000 for impoverished individuals). The total cost would be $170 billion, a little under 5% of the wealth currently controlled by 400 individuals. From [Wealth, shown to scale](https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/)

To put all this wealth in perspective, consider how little of it would be needed to radically improve society and reduce human suffering. https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

The bizarre scale of super richs (400 people in US) https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

Why does it matter that the super rich are in turn dwarfed by global flows of money? That's apples to oranges. Run through this exercise: https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ Then can you say it's a fiction that individuals have significant wealth? This is what people care about: "Are wealth gains being shared, or am I just working to pay my bills, not getting ahead, while making someone else rich."