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dopidopHN2yesterday at 3:18 PM2 repliesview on HN

The wealthiest people I know are philanthropist that spend their day on zoon meetings to decide who get the grant. A couple of time a week someone arrange a visit for them to check on "things are going" on the trenches.

They also spend a lot of time on the phone strategizing with other folks like them. --

But that's not a contest!I'm sure your rich people are richer than my rich people. --

If we were looking at a formal definition, my naive approach would be to use the median income, add the revenue of assets, and add a 20% to that ?

I'm sure the field of sociology could help be more formal here. --

Here I was talking specifically about French folks, where access to remote work and living in the inner city are strongly correlated with higher income.


Replies

dparkyesterday at 6:29 PM

I wasn’t really looking to argue about who knows the wealthiest people. I’m just curious who you are looking at.

If you’re looking at billionaire philanthropists, I don’t know what they do but at that level of wealth it’s probably whatever they want.

alephnerdyesterday at 3:44 PM

There's a reason gilets jaunes tended to be what are derisively called "plebs".

I honestly find it extremely interesting how both France and the US have similar fault lines due to the intersection of economic, social, and political culture wars, and an extremely similar manner of consolidated media ownership.

What Paris does politically speaking matters less than what Marseille, Nice, and Toulon does - everyone overindexes on the 20% at the expense of the other 80%. This is what brought Trump to office in 2016, and I see similar mistakes being made across Western Europe as well.

> where access to remote work and living in the inner city are strongly correlated with higher income

People also underestimate the number of mega-commuters in France, and how depending on the distance commuting via Intercités+TGV and a car becomes a wash.

Some people will derisively say "let's make owning a car more expensive to make them change", but that's similar to Marie Antoinette's retort "S'ils n'ont pas de pain? Qu'ils mangent de la brioche!", especially given how severe spatial inequality is in France.