commit: 309629ae1770830b511b39ec90d64182da24ba98
parent d4f6aebf2e94a4de606bac6a2b1360f313fc8e03
Author: Matt Korostoff <MKorostoff@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2020 22:07:11 -0400
Fix typo in paper billionaire document again
Diffstat:
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
diff --git a/THE_PAPER_BILLIONAIRE.md b/THE_PAPER_BILLIONAIRE.md
@@ -12,6 +12,6 @@ There are a wide variety of serious policy proposals floating around aimed at re
Another version of the paper billionaire argument holds that you couldn't sell all these stocks over any period of time, because only other billionaires would be able to buy them. This is simply nonsense. Market participation may not be 100%, but it's a hell of a lot more than 400 people. [Half of all households in the US own stock](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/03/25/more-than-half-of-u-s-households-have-some-investment-in-the-stock-market/), either directly or through their 401k/IRA. On any given day, millions of individuals buy stock, mostly through their retirement accounts, a few hundred dollars at a time.
-But let's set all of this aside and suppose that the paper billionaire argument is actually true (it's not, but for the sake of argument). Let's suppose liquidating this wealth caused 80% of it to vanish into thin air. That would leave behind $700 billion—still enough to [eradicate malaria](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25551454/), provide everyone on earth with [water and waste disposal](https://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/watandmacr3.pdf), [lift every American out of poverty](https://prospect.org/power/much-money-take-eliminate-poverty-america/), and [test every single American for coronavirus](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/21/coronavirus-tests-rockefeller-plan-would-screen-millions-for-covid-19.html). I think this is one of the points that should come through most clearly in this website—the amounts we're dealing with are so mind-flayingly large that it scarcely matters if are calculations are off by 500%.
+But let's set all of this aside and suppose that the paper billionaire argument is actually true (it's not, but for the sake of argument). Let's suppose liquidating this wealth caused 80% of it to vanish into thin air. That would leave behind $700 billion—still enough to [eradicate malaria](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25551454/), provide everyone on earth with [water and waste disposal](https://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/watandmacr3.pdf), [lift every American out of poverty](https://prospect.org/power/much-money-take-eliminate-poverty-america/), and [test every single American for coronavirus](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/21/coronavirus-tests-rockefeller-plan-would-screen-millions-for-covid-19.html). I think this is one of the points that should come through most clearly in this website—the amounts we're dealing with are so mind-flayingly large that it scarcely matters if our calculations are off by 500%.
I find it telling that no one EVER tries to quantify the paper billionaire argument. They never ask "how big is the total market?" or "what portion _could_ we safely liquidate without some major negative consequence?" No. They simply look at the massive scale of global wealth, and the massive scale of global poverty, and then retreat into cynicism. The millions dead from preventable diseases? Unsolvable, they declare. Those who would address global poverty just "don't understand how stocks work." Perhaps it's easier to just declare the problem unsolvable than to confront the massive human cost of your ideology. But confront it we must. The money is there, we just need to take it.
