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[DKPOWPOW]

Give a million dollars to every person in their country. To keep this somewhat simple, let's say it's the USA. So around 400 million people, are now pretty wealthy.

Anyone under 18 has the money put into a trust until an adult.

Anyone with a severe mental disease gets a trust as well with a guardian.

What happens?

Would it be utter chaos? I doubt many people would go to their usual jobs, which would mean despite having all this money the stuff we'd expect to have around is now difficult to obtain since so few are working.

 

[Doom85]

I''m confused by your math. If 400 million people each got a million dollars, that would require more than a billionaire to do so. It would take 400 trillion dollars to do that which I don't think a single person alone has.

Also, I would keep working for a while. A million is nice, but you'd have to keep your quality of living fairly low in order to retire if you were fairly young in life. Better to keep working for a while while enjoying having financial stability and then getting to retire in 1-2 decades. Sounds good to me.

 

[Hulk_Smash]

Yeah if a billionaire were to give away his money to 400,000,000 everyone would get $2.50.

 

[Nester99]

Your know a billion is only 1000 million right?

 

[Makariel]

Math is hard.

In other news, even if I were given a million dollars, why would I stop working? I like my job, it's more than just doing shit to get paid. Most shit jobs will be taken over by robots at some point anyway, that's a more pressing matter than money for nothin' and chicks for free.

 

[womfalcs3]

Plus, a million dollars (say 30% of which is taxed) wouldn't last 5-10 years. You'd still have to work.

 

[strange headache]

Give a million dollars to every person in their country. To keep this somewhat simple, let's say it's the USA. So around 400 million people, are now pretty wealthy. What happens?

There would be so much inflation, a loaf of bread would cost approximately $1.200 and things would stay pretty much the same.

 

[Pterion]

There would be so much inflation, a loaf of bread would cost approximately $1.200 and things would stay pretty much the same.

I am surprised it took several posts to point that out.

 

[Skyr]

Man.. I don't want to be rude but you might want to read up on the basic principles of economy.

 

[Triangle]

"if only people shared all would be good"
not so easy my man.

 

[llien]

At the moment total wealth of top 400 billionaires in US is around 2 trillionUSD. 200 times less than the required 400 trillion.

 

[Triangle]

I want to point out that money ends up in the place that produced more good in a free market, thus spreading it among common people would decrease the general good as it was unearned money

 

[Makariel]

I am surprised it took several posts to point that out.

I thought that would be so obvious, it would go without saying?

 

[Nintendo Switch]

The richest person in the world, Jeff Bezos could give every person in America $250 if sold off every thing (and all amazon stock) that he owns.

Wouldn’t cause rampant inflation (home prices won’t suddenly skyrocket because every one has a little more money).

I guess I would buy a Kindle and some ebooks with my $250 as a show of appreciation for his $250.

 

[Lionel Richie]

Money is just an arbitrary thing created by man to regulate trading. Having 0 dollars or everyone having 1 million dollars is really not that different, 0 is just the default nowadays and all you're doing is changing the default.

This is kind of an oversimplification though.

 

[Hulk_Smash]

There would be so much inflation, a loaf of bread would cost approximately $1.200 and things would stay pretty much the same.

 

[strange headache]

Guys. Guys listen! Guys, I'm a trillionaire... uh guys? hello?

 

[DarkArterialGore]

Who will work low paid jobs if they suddenly become millionaires overnight, society would fall.

 

[Hulk_Smash]

Who will work low paid jobs if they suddenly become millionaires overnight, society would fall.

“There wouldn’t be any janitors because no one would clean shit up.”

 

[LordPezix]

Oh man I could talk about this for days.

In short, there would both be inflationary and deflationary aspects of a massive short-term wealth distribution.

The major thing here though besides inflation is that if you look at wealth as a product of skill, how stagnant would the country become in regards to innovation/progress.

A million dollars in America wouldn't be as bad as say, a million dollars in Haiti though.

 

[DKPOWPOW]

Sorry for the bad math guys, was late at night before I fell asleep lol.

I figured it would either cause inflation or destroy the economy and low wage jobs but was curious on other people's thoughts.

I had some ideas that in the end perhaps it would boost the economy, because most people would buy a home and have the money to go to school or work/invest in something they enjoy.

There would likely be less seniors is nursing homes, but also less caregivers. I wouldn't be surprised in there was a rise in deaths due foolishness/drug abuse. Or maybe because there are less doctors and nurses.

Probably wouldn't be many teachers left either, might be forced to teach our own kids or volunteer at the schools.

More people would have to grow their own food, because of so few truck drivers delivering.

Etc, on and on,...

 

[kingwingin]

id leave the country. live like a king in laos

 

[Warm Machine]

I'm actually working on a project that has a similar background idea. I came up with the concept when I had heard that the cost of the Iraq war was around 2.5 trillion dollars. With the 37 million people in Iraq, instead of bombing the shit out of the country they could have just given every man woman and child around $35,000 and then Saddam 1.25 trillion and tell him to fuck off to the Caribbean. Then give everyone a couple days off and move forward pumping oil out like it was just another work day.

 

[CaptainABAB]

Who will work low paid jobs if they suddenly become millionaires overnight, society would fall.

If everyone became a millionaire overnight, prices would quickly rise as well and a million dollars would be equivalent to the poverty level.
So now a person who used to be a janitor, would go back to being a janitor at a higher salary, but still could only afford equivalent to what they currently can.

And why would this happen? Scarcity and demand.

For example, if you became a millionaire, you might want to buy a home and splurge on a vacation to Hawaii. Well, there are only so many hotel rooms in Hawaii (or any other popular destination), so they would jack up the prices due to the surge in demand. Same with homes. Even something like tap water would raise in price because everything else is more expensive and now every company has to raise prices in order to turn a profit.

So there will still be janitors, maybe making 150k, but they will still be on the lower end of the pay scale.

 

[Kadayi]

Plus, a million dollars (say 30% of which is taxed) wouldn't last 5-10 years. You'd still have to work.

Indeed. This is the thing most lottery winners tend to get wrong. They burn through their capital on high-end extravagances like Ferrari's and don't realise that with most self made rich folk, the money is always rolling in. You're better off to invest any capital you receive in achieving a steady return you can live off and grow and base your lifestyle on that regular income, rather than ploughing through it.

 

[Ridcully]

This is the nightmare scenario that Tories tend to imagine when people talk about wealth being redistributed, rather than what would actually happen.

Most people would misspend their money (in the short time it has value), as lottery winners often do, and end up back at work following an unpleasant lesson or two.

“There wouldn’t be any janitors because no one would clean shit up.”

Yeah, until automation happens you need an incentive for people to do dangerous or undesirable work. This is also why "get a better job" is a bullshit response to people campaigning for a living wage - someone has to do these things.

 

[quickwhips]

The movie is called mr deeds and everyone gets a corvette.

 

[SDCowboy]

Bad math aside, if everyone suddenly had a million dollars, is there would be immediate, out of control inflation. The dollar would be pretty much worthless, and everyone would essentially be poor, and thus the economy would collapse.

 

[SDCowboy]

Who will work low paid jobs if they suddenly become millionaires overnight, society would fall.

Society would fail, but not for that reason. People would still have to work those jobs. If everyone had $1mil, then that would immediately be worth almost nothing. Society would fall because the dollar would be worthless.

 

[Corrik]

I disagree a lot on the inflation. You are not creating money into the economy. You are redistributing it. It is not going to magically cost more to make bread for example.

The question is what everyone does with their new found wealth. If everyone quits their job cuz they got a million dollars, inflation will happen as they will have to raise wages to entice workers. Thus, raise costs to pay said wages.

 

[Papa]

Hey Senator Sanders, welcome to NeoGAF!

 

[AlphaMale]

Like the saying goes... If everyone has super powers, then no one has super powers.

If everyone's a millionaire, then no one's a millionaire.

 

[Phatosaurus]

I'd be happy to get an extra fiver tbh.

 

[take_it_easy]

I am surprised it took several posts to point that out.

"Musa gave the gold to the poor he met along his route......

However, Musa's generous actions inadvertently devastated the economies of the regions through which he passed. In the cities of Cairo, Medina, and Mecca, the sudden influx of gold devalued the metal for the next decade. Prices on goods and wares greatly inflated....

To rectify the gold market, on his way back from Mecca, Musa borrowed all the gold he could carry from money-lenders in Cairo, at high interest. This is the only time recorded in history that one man directly controlled the price of gold in the Mediterranean."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musa_I_of_Mali

Surprise surprise, it wreaks havoc on an economy.

 

[iamblades]

I disagree a lot on the inflation. You are not creating money into the economy. You are redistributing it. It is not going to magically cost more to make bread for example.

The question is what everyone does with their new found wealth. If everyone quits their job cuz they got a million dollars, inflation will happen as they will have to raise wages to entice workers. Thus, raise costs to pay said wages.

Depends on what thesis we are going with. If you are going with the 'everyone gets a million dollars' hypothesis, there would indeed be massive inflation, as that is several times the amount of total wealth in the economy as a whole. Beyond that, there are other effects(as in, who would want to go to work as a baker if they have a million in the bank?), but the primary inflationary pressure is that there would more way more liquid capital in the economy than there are actual assets to go around, so inflation.

If you are just redistributing the existing wealth, first it wouldn't reach close to $1 million per person, and secondly it would mess up price signals in completely unpredictable ways.

ie certain high dollar assets(Racing yachts, mansions in the hamptons, etc) would experience massive deflation as literally no one would have enough money to purchase them. Everyday consumer goods would experience fairly high inflation at first, but it would fairly rapidly reach an equilibrium as people spend that money.

 

[way more]

Only americans would get this money?

The Federal Reserve would immediately react and declare 6 zeros taken off the value of the dollar. All US money held in foreign countries would become worthless. The USA could beg other nations for a period of grace as things settle out but suddenly a loaf of bread would be 4,000$ but since everyone in the USA has a million it would be fine.

South America would be hurt when migrants in the USA send them cash, or would the exchange rate fix it? Nations that owned currency futures in the dollar like China?? And then consider how many currencies are pegged to ours? I suppose they would be allowed to end that an stand at what value the dollar had before that.

It would basically upend the entire global market and hopefully some eggheads could work it out within the month.