About wealth disparity

[Duer 157099]

What's worse: a society where 1% are rich and 99% are poor, or a society where 40% are rich and 60% are poor?

My inclination is to say the latter is worse because in that scenario, there are more people who are unconcerned with the less fortunate. If only 1% of a population are assholes, well, we sort of should expect that. But 40% is a tragic number, by comparison.

[KansDem]

1. Well, put me in the 40% that is your rich class and we'll see if you hypothesis holds true.

I'm willing to be a guinea pig! ;)

[mjane]

2. Is this a pure hypothetical

or do you have examples of such societies?

[pitohui]

3. it's obviously better for fewer people to be poor than more people

it seems like just common sense that having 60% poor is better than having 99% poor

there is no hope for change whatsoever in a society where a tiny invisible minority hoard EVERYTHING, such as rural madagascar, where you don't even see the rich owners of "everything," all you see are people in stone age huts w.out electricity or running water, they have to bake their own fucking bricks out of mud to build a house, that's society where 99 % are poor

yes, it's ugly to have a majority poor any way you cut it, but having 40 % rich and 60 % poor means that there are actual numbers of "rich" people and some of them will get out in the society, will spend money, will donate, they won't just be greedy "takers" because there are never large numbers of people like that where EVERYONE in the group is happy to just sit back and steal...there is more spending/interacting going on so more people have a chance of being lifted up

not sure where you get being rich = being an asshole, again, if you have a LARGE population of rich, they will be diverse, it's these tiny elite who all get inbred and asshole-like