@amigadave

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this experiment in Capitalism isn't working out very well at this point in time, and hasn't significantly improved the lives of average people.

I suspect that if you put actual numbers to this, you'd find that most of the world's people are significantly better off in material terms than they were 20, 50, 100 years ago. Number of cell phones; percent of people in homes; percent of people with food security; percent of people with access to mass transportation; percent of people with access to good education and good health care; .... Capitalism has been the economic system in those places where this has increasing by far the most, and in places that have not increased much, or have regressed, the economic system has, as a rule, been a much-proclaimed alternative to capitalism.

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The super rich 1% still own 95% of the worlds wealth and capital assets, while the mediocre rich 4% strive to emulate and become the "new super rich", and the rest of the worlds population (95%) are struggling just to get by, so they don't have to retire in complete poverty.

Relative statistics of this sort are good for measuring the potential of envy, which is based on relative wealth, and really does need to be measured as a sign of societal discontent. But they're not at all good at measuring misery, which is based on absolute living conditions. It's an apples and oranges comparison.

For example, you reference the world's richest 1%. The average household income in the United States means that most people with a job in the United States (median individual income $43000/yr) are among the world's top 1% of earners ($34000/yr). I won't speak on your behalf, but I fall in that number, and most anyone who knows me would be surprised to hear that I'm a 1%er.

Some in the US have it better than others. For instance,most Californian households earn more ($75000) than my household earns (not telling -- not embarrassing, but not boast-worthy), and the average California household arguably has more assets and wealth, so from a relative point of view they're better off than I am.

I doubt they feel like it, though. In San Francisco the average apartment covers 739 sq ft and rents for roughly $2900 a month, four times the mortgage on my ~1700 sq ft house, which also has a yard where we raise a garden. And I'm not even in the boondocks, where property is really cheap; I live in the suburb of a city with museums and arts festivals, two very good hospitals (one of them in walking distance from my house), etc. If you want more, three major metropolitan areas lie within a two hour drive -- and I can drive, which almost no one 100 years ago could do. It looks as if the cost per square foot of a California home costs several times as much as my house. In some cases, 15 times as much. Are those houses 15 times better? Some of them, yes, but certainly not all of them.

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I don't know why the rich and super rich can't understand that sharing wealth more equitably would just make their lives and wealth more secure.

On the one hand, I agree that the rich should share. I don't feel rich, but I certainly try to share.

On the other hand, a lot of that wealth you cite consists of stocks, bonds, retirement accounts, and real estate; it's not cash, and a lot of the value is inflated and awaits a market correction. (A lot of Americans are millionaires only on account of their 401(k) accounts!) Even if it were cash, it would be losing value thanks to inflation. How do you share real estate in, say California, with a poor person in, say, New Mexico, or even in Africa? You can't move the real estate there. You can sell the land to someone else and give the money away, and people do that, and I respect people who do that! but now the person you sold it to owns the real estate, and that's what had the actual value. The people you've given the money now have to figure out a way to convert the money you gave them into more money, by, say, buying a bicycle that helps them find productive work. Unfortunately, 7 times out of 10 you give people a windfall and they squander it; 2 times out of ten they live under a corrupt government that makes it impossible for them to do better.

And what is "equitable", anyway? Is it inherently unfair that the average Californian earns more than twice as much as the average resident of my state? Should we redistribute that, or is it perhaps an artifice of higher cost of living and the particular industries in the respective states? If a decent minimum wage in California is $15/hr, should it be the same in a state whose cost of living is less than half that?

I'll close with this anecdote. Some years back, a friend mentioned to me that he'd read how America's 10 richest people together had roughly $1 trillion of wealth or thereabouts. "Imagine if we divided it among everyone in this country," he said. "We'd be rich!" It pained me to point out that it didn't even require a calculator to estimate the windfall: only about $3500 per person. Not rich at all! Unfortunately, that sort of innumeracy pervades social justice / "equity" rhetoric, and that's before you start to consider the actual complexities of economics and human behavior.

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@amigadave

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I hate to say this, but this experiment in Capitalism isn't working out very well at this point in time, and hasn't significantly improved the lives of average people. The super rich 1% still own 95% of the worlds wealth and capital assets, while the mediocre rich 4% strive to emulate and become the "new super rich", and the rest of the worlds population (95%) are struggling just to get by, so they don't have to retire in complete poverty.

Bad Capitalism, like eliyahu points out needs addressing but this is worth a read
https://blog.bham.ac.uk/cityredi/capitalism-and-its-impact-on-global-living-standards/

Dont get me wrong it bad that the super rich are getting richer and this whole Pandemic has made things even worst, I mean largely here in the UK, the people with Rich, well paid jobs got 18month off paid to say at home at 80% of there wages, where as "key worker" often low paid working in Food, warehouse, delivery drivers etc had to work though out and had no money or support. (im one!)

But I do feel that Capitalism works when its not corrupted and not monopolized but unfortunately the US in particular has let too much corruption and monopolized markets to happen.

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