Why do people not like it when other people are much wealthier than them, even if those people created a lot more value for the world?
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Those people generally disagree that the wealthy created that value themselves, believing instead that they primarily captured the outputs of others, denying those people some or most of the fruit of their labour. I expect that how much that is true varies case by case.
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I think I view this belief as downstream; people believe rich people are bad, and then therefore believe rich people *cannot* have created value, they must have captured it.
Because such people do exist. The fact some rich people have gotten wealthy by exploiting the labor of others is taken by some to prove that all rich people achieved their wealth through unfair practices. It's essentially a cognitive short hand people operate on.
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Warren Buffett seems to agree that rich people are the problem though. And he should know?
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The issue is how much wealth they consolidate. Not just that they are wealthy than others. Their contributions to society do not justify their wages. It is sign of a broken system.
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All it takes is a little time in corporations to know that some people enrich themselves significantly more than others. I made a significant amount of money in my tech career, but the compensation curve looks like the OF curve. a few at the top get orders of magnitude more /1
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comes hands in hands
The money the high earners makes seem absurd
Otoh it's common to see power struggle, people being beaten down and exploited
Step by step, the mind makes that connection
Bc it's the only that makes sense if you don't understand how the money is "made"
The problem is not the rich people, it's the system that makes them. The kind of mentality you need to get rich under our current economic and politic system, a mix of greed and lack of empathy, is precisely the kind of mentality that makes somebody harmful when they're in power.
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I think that's a bit cynical, though the explanation was as well. Generally, while an individual may have created a lot of wealth, when it comes to billionaires, none of them created that much. There are many at many levels who are under-compensated for their contributions.
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