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You didn't address his argument at all. Just an ad hominem. Is that because you can't address it? Because his thesis seems quite reasonable to me. And historic
by Bud 11y ago
You didn't address his argument at all. Just an ad hominem.
Is that because you can't address it? Because his thesis seems quite reasonable to me. And historically, we certainly know that societies with extreme income inequality are less stable than those with more equality.
- nostromo 11y agoI'll address the argument. Lots of countries with high income inequality do not have a terrorism problem. When is the last time Brazilians terrorists attacked New York and/or Paris? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...
- mikeash 11y agoYou are addressing a one-sentence summary of the argument, not the actual argument, which is much more complex than "income inequality results in terrorism."
- vezzy-fnord 11y agoOstensibly Brazil does, but domestically: http://thebrazilbusiness.com/article/terrorism-in-brazil http://thebrazilbusiness.com/article/terrorism-in-brazil
- Mikeb85 11y agoThere's over 50,000 violent deaths per year in Brazil. Not that the Paris attacks weren't bad, but yes, Brazil suffers from violence due to inequality.
- marknutter 11y agoOk, then how about China.
- Mikeb85 11y agoBelieve it or not, China has significantly less inequality than Brazil (as measured by the World Bank)... Not to mention a social net.
- archgoon 11y agoI'd argue that the main problem with the theory is that there are plenty of places where there is high income inequality (such as the United States, as indicated by the diagram) and something like ISIS seems rather unlikely† . Sure, you can say that inequality may have contributed to the issue, but there are a ton of factors that have resulted in Syria being plunged in Civil War. Pointing to any one as a decisive factor seems like an inevitable simplification. Also, it doesn't really answer the question "Why _now_?". Claiming that something eventually happen is not really predictive if no time frame can be given. † Or I might be overly optimistic about my own country's stability.
- Bud 11y agoarchgoon: We have had extremely frequent domestic terror incidents in the US recently which can be readily linked to religious and political extremism, notably the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood shootings.
- archgoon 11y agoTo me, there is a mild quantitative difference between a civil war with a death count in the hundreds of thousands and millions displaced versus a few dozen killed every year. I don't see anywhere in Piketty's theory a place to plug in "Amount of Inequality" and expected number of deaths. I'd like to see a regression plot at least.
- Bud 11y agoThing about measuring civil wars is, they are really hard to measure until, all of a sudden, one starts. Then it's quite easy.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- seivan 11y agoReasonable? The Roma people are probably poorer than the average European muslim. I don't see them taking Yazidi sex slaves and beheading kids. I'm sorry I can't buy this, and I can't genuinely handle this properly so I'll probably stop here before it gets darker.
- Albright 11y agoPiketty thinks ISIS arose because of income inequality. Greenie professors think ISIS arose because of global warming [1]. Isolationists think foreign interventionism gave rise to ISIS (see elsewhere in this subthread). ISIS themselves think they're following the teachings of their religion and would probably find all these other excuses that the West is trying to make for their existence rather silly. 1: https://archive.is/3cwgG https://archive.is/3cwgG