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[–] 7 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Maybe closer on the chart, but you can't pretend that the actual lived experiences between homelessness and $64 million in the bank aren't almost as different as they can possibly get.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

    The lived experience is definitely very different. But if the wealthiest group was only worth hundreds of millions, we might be able to avoid having any homeless.

    I posted because people tend to have trouble internalizing just how big the wealth gap actually is. The brain can't really conceptualize how big a "million", "billion", or "trillion" actually is. It leads to a lot of misconceptions (another example, national budgets). I hope little nuggets like this will stick in people's brains to help them engage better with large numbers.

    Edit: here's more data on the wealth gap

    According to one source I found, there are 996 US billionaire+ that control $9.5 trillion. The bottom half controls $4.3 trillion.

    If we pretend that 171,469,137 people are able to organize to the same degree as 996 people, and that those 171,469,137 people don't need to cover necessities with their wealth, the billionaire+ still have an outsized financial impact on politics and power structures.

    Sources:

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