# Giving Money Cannot Close the Wealth Gap

Is there a large wealth gap in Chinese society? Yes. Some people say that giving money to the poor will solve it—really? If it were this simple and doable yet not done, does that mean only you are a genius? The money isn't coming from your own pocket anyway; you're using the national treasury to do a good deed and gain a good reputation—why not?

Obviously, it's not that simple. Almost every country issues basic income support, and some developed nations have even piloted UBI (universal basic income), but how much money are we talking about? It has to match that country's minimum consumption standard. Don't be fooled by how much some wealthy countries appear to distribute when converted to RMB; relative to that country's actual cost of living, the money is just barely enough for minimum subsistence. Can this narrow the wealth gap? No. The only goal can be to ensure people have "enough to survive."

Why not distribute more? Because this money comes from tax revenue. To distribute more, you'd have to collect more taxes. These countries are already high-tax nations; raise taxes further and the elite will flee. When the elite leave, tax revenue disappears and industries collapse—that's digging your own grave. Can you expect those crying for you to distribute more money to provide you with tax sources?

Over the past decades, what truly raised the "living baseline" for ordinary Chinese people was technological innovation, enlarging the economic pie, and creating new growth—definitely not wealth redistribution from rich to poor. As for the widening wealth gap? Yes, it's true. But if you're only comparing the richest people to the poorest, the wealth gap will permanently expand under technological advancement. Especially after the internet era, marginal costs have dropped dramatically, and they'll drop even faster in the AI age—meaning capable people suddenly can do business with the whole world, suddenly have countless low-cost tools at their disposal. They've contributed most of the incremental social value; how could the wealth gap not continue widening? Since the poorest people basically create negative value for society, it would be strange if the gap didn't keep expanding.

So don't look at it that way. The wealth gap truly worth measuring is between the "second-richest" group and the "second-poorest" group—the second-richest group is much larger, possibly including Fortune 500 executives or small business owners, above middle class but not extravagantly wealthy; while the second-poorest group aren't welfare-dependent unemployed, but people with jobs earning near minimum wage, commuting to work daily—only narrowing the gap between these two groups makes real sense.

And the way to narrow the gap between these two groups is definitely not by distributing money, but by helping the second-poorest group undergo two upgrades: mental upgrade and value upgrade.

Let me ask you a question: what do all the cities with the strongest purchasing power have in common?

Without exception, they're all cities where the internet is exceptionally developed, finance is exceptionally developed, and new technology always leads. These cities are filled with "super individuals"—the adoption rate of new technology is high. People combine what they're good at or resources they possess with new technology to create unique value belonging to themselves—this unique value becomes the bargaining chip for income distribution. As for lesser cities, no matter how high their total GDP, once they're based mainly on traditional manufacturing, they're definitely lagging. Because traditional manufacturing treats employees as identical tools, which means no matter how much money the boss makes—even if profits reach global records—employees can't get a piece, because bosses don't need employees to have unique value. The work is simple; if you won't do it, there's a line of people waiting.

This isn't about whether any particular industry's bosses are good or bad; it's determined by industry characteristics. That's why I say intelligent robots should come sooner, AI should develop better, eliminate ordinary people with simple tool-like attributes—because the work they do barely participates in value distribution anyway; might as well cut off their illusions.

How to participate in value distribution? You must do work that qualifies you for distribution. That means building your own barriers in what you do—however you use tools, whether resources, information advantages, or skills—do something until others can't do it, or at least until the number of people like you supply-wise is smaller than the market demand for people like you.

In economics, this is called "upgrading the productivity frontier of ordinary people." With this bargaining chip, whether you directly face end consumers or work as an employee, you won't fear that society won't allocate value to you.

You must understand: expecting the state to allocate money to you is a delusion. No country will directly give you a "decent" life, because countries that do end up eliminated by history for "inevitably falling into universal poverty."

At the government level, rather than following certain people's suggestions to hand out token scraps, it's better to think about how to help ordinary people install the latest tools in their minds for free or at low cost, so they can figure out ways themselves to create unique value worthy of income distribution for society—this is environment creation. What government should do is create a better environment and then be a fair referee. That's enough.

As for those who won't upgrade even when given the chance, just let them remain impoverished, let them survive, because even the best government shouldn't pursue bringing a wonderful life to "everyone." #Gate13周年全球庆典