re: The Wealthy in Florence Today Are the Same Families as 600 Years Ago

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Ok let's say every dollar in the US was distributed evenly to any person over say...18yrs old. How long do you think it would take for the same families that were rich to become rich again/the poor to become poor again? It wouldn't be 100% the same but I bet it would be incredibly similar

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So if you're dispersing that amongst 15 million people....not 100% the same would be the change of fortune for 1 million people...do you realize how much of a difference that makes long term?

I dont think it would be the same.

Think about this from generation to generation, the difference between a rich inheritance wealthy family vs. the other circumstance.

Rich in the beginning

-Live in good quality colonial homes
-Eat well and don't have to starve as much
-Get education despite its limited availability
-Use education to create/build innovation
-Healthy enough to produce plenty of offspring that also receive the same benefits, and are brought into family enterprise given same wealth and access to education

The health allows them to pro-create, and the education essentially permeates their family/culture because its now so plentiful and they all have it. Haven't you ever been around people who are educated and you just find yourself after awhile feeling smarter based on the conversation, how things are said, etc. ?


As time went along and the US population grew, and they use the freshly accumulated American enterprises they founded

-More resources to devote towards new innovations, and as the population grows, the more they can sell those innovations for returns

-In that process that money from those new is used to buy more land/property/resources,

-Another generation once more gets plentiful supplies of food, and their kids receive top educations, thus flooding the family offspring even more with higher levels of learning. The learning + resources leads to even MORE gains and profit.


This gets multiplied by decades and you're going to eventually have a big difference.


Lets say these two bar graphs are the wealth accumulated by two individuals that first came to colonial America. We will assume everyone came over at most the same level of wealth despite the fact that we know that simply isn't true.




So one is a little above the other. Now if you think about the point at which each person rose, this will be the same point their children start from. Lets then say for the next two generations the offspring of each matches each person's respective gained wealth. So you basically add two blue bars on top of the first blue bar, and add two red bars on top of the first red bar. Now that initial gap has been increased by 3 times in a short timespan of say....40 years? Now carry this pattern on, give or take a few generations that change the gap a bit, and you'll see how the initial gap can snowball. It doesn't balance out, and we are fools to think this balances out.


Another example

Poor kid in HS

-No access to computer at home for educational resources
-No fancy calculator to optimize math/science grades
-Lacks financial means to receive healthy meals (more likely to miss school for sickness, more likely to feel hungry,feels less energy to perform physical activity because of diet, becomes out of shape, less attractive to girls, lower self-confidence)
-Lacks financial means for good health care access(more hesitant to seek medical help, more likely to get more sick as a result, more likely to have worse long-term health outcomes, more likely to become a burden on their children later in life as a result of a lifetime of neglecting medical help/preventative medicine)-[no, this has nothing to do with Obamacare]
-Lacks financial means to purchase a car (less likely to be social, have friends, enjoy other people and form important social connections that are important to psychological health, less likely to learn new information as a result of this lack of social connection, doesnt obtain important social skills to help later on in life)
-Lacks means to travel and learn about other cultures (less likely to understand different perspectives, less likely to be sympathetic towards those other perspectives out of that lack of understanding, less likely to interact positively with different people)

-Maybe since his parents grew up in poor conditions that their health wavers earlier than more well-to-do families with better resources, and because his parents get sick earlier, it becomes a burden to him/her as well later in life when he should be working/making lots of money.


Rich kid

-More likely to learn more through traveling, ability to meet and exchange ideas, learn new trades,
-Has a car to form social bonds, create friendships, and more well-rounded social skills that will benefit them later in life in the form of a job, relationship, etc.
-Has access to that nice calculator and can use it anytime he wants
-Parents are healthy and less likely to be sick later in life, in fact, maybe their parents take care of their kids and form social bonds
-Have the financial means to let their kids play sports and meet other kids who play sports, and form more social bonds (do any of the less talented kids really play in leagues that are free? not in my experience growing up)



Its really pretty easy to see how this problem can just perpetuate itself. If given enough time, the small differences add up a ton. If you add in someone like Bill Gates who in a single generation gained 1000x the wealth of almost everyone in the US, then you can see how this might lead to a long long long gap for generations to come.

Is it inevitable? Yes I think so, the way things are going now I don't see how its not inevitable. We did come from these European folks to form this country, and its not hard to believe that we have carried over the affinity for ending up in the system that existed for hundreds of years before this country. Now, its obviously not going back to kings and queens (monarchy), but we are getting closer to some modern day equivalents.

Our culture currently values the rich/lavish above all else, and the people that are at the bottom more often than not dont have the motivation/means to make a push towards closing the gap in their generation.

It would take the wealthy acting more altruistically, and the poor working harder to try and catch the wealthy. I think we too often ignore the bottom dregs of society, but the truth is that if they pushed themselves more, it would keep the rich/educated on their toes and it wouldn't be so damn easy for them to accumulate wealth in the ways that they do. We are only as good as our weakest link, and while I dont think handing over wealth is the answer, its going to take a lot to close this socioeconomic gap that continues to increase. There are too many people and too many factors at work to be able to control it. I'd say in 100 years, it'll be pretty pronounced unless something else happens.

Thinking about all the talk towards automation, this would be the absolute worst thing to happen to combat such a gap likening to lords and peasants. You'd have a few creating robots to replace jobs, and everyone else would lose their jobs, lose their resources, and it would completely strain the ability of the rest to combat the change.

Thank goodness we're still really far away from all of that.