4 ms·

Reducing economic inequality is merely a lesser form of eliminating it. I think the tough question people should consider here is whether relative inequality or

by asift 11y ago

Reducing economic inequality is merely a lesser form of eliminating it. I think the tough question people should consider here is whether relative inequality or absolute standard of living is the more important metric. If absolute standard of living rises faster as economic inequality increases, why should we try and limit economic inequality?

bko 11y ago
The ironic thing is that the wealthiest now try to live a rather stoic, normal life with a focus on whole, local foods and simple agrarian pleasures. Sure, they don't fly coach, but honestly, they don't exactly live extraordinary lives when compared to that of the middle class in America. Reminds me of a Warhol quote: > What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.
- foldr 11y ago
  >The ironic thing is that the wealthiest now try to live a rather stoic, normal life w Erm, maybe some of them. I don't think extravagant displays of wealth have gone extinct just yet.
- gethoht 11y ago
  This correlation of equality breaks down in regards to the justice system however, where the poor are systematically curb-stomped and viewed as revenue generators for local governments while the rich can literally destroy the world economy through fraudulent mechanisms and walk away scot free.
  - jordanb 11y ago
    Not justice, nor healthcare, housing, education, or political influence. But when it comes to sugar water Virginia yes it's true: we're all equals.
  - mhaymo 11y ago
    No they can't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Madoff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Madoff If you have an example of an individual who committed large-scale fraud and got away "scot free", I'd like to see it.
legutierr 11y ago
I would posit that the extreme levels of economic inequality we see today is actually putting downward pressure on economic growth.
AlisdairO 11y ago
Various reasons, but one of the most compelling in my view is that a society with a (relatively) increasingly wealthy elite eventually becomes unstable - money generally correlates with political power.
awakeasleep 11y ago
A lot of people are jumping into an argument with you, but I think your point of "inequity vs standard of living" is a really smart distillation of concepts and deserves credit for being insightful.
- mike429 11y ago
  I don't think that's insightful. That's a typical neo conservative argument, repeated over and over for decades. Thatcher is famous for using that argument. The problem is the if in the ... "what if everyone was better off, yet with more inequality". We're not sure at all about that if. In fact data seems to say, probably no, people aren't better off when there's more inequality. What if, actually, high inequality countries (with no free health care, no free schools, no financial sector regulations, and more tax on the poor than on the rich) shoot themselves in the foot? This is what the data seems to show, if anything. A lot of people agree that a healthy middle class was important for progress in the west. I think they are right. I think the Thatcher argument is going in the wrong direction. Now that doesn't mean you want to waste taxpayer money on random hopeless bullshit. Not all socialist countries spend their money wisely. But taxing and spending wisely, to help the middle class, with schools and hospitals and smart regulations, is probably good for generating innovation and for the economy in the long term. The middle class can be pretty resilient in some countries, with still a lot of resourceful smart people, you can throw a lot at them and they will still survive. But it's probably better to help them a bit. It's probably better, for example, to significantly increase the number of truly smart kids that go to college in a country (there's more poor or low middle class smart kids than rich smart kids, in raw numbers, even if rich kids are more likely to be smart, on average). The Thatcher argument really is a good example of a purely rhetorical argument, not based on any data, that was spread by neo conservatives, media owners in particular, to their strict advantage. It's an O'Reilly-no-spin-zone worthy argument. It's pretty insidious, a masterpiece of a meme. It basically amounts to accusing poor and middle class people of being jealous jerks for wanting free health care, free schools, wall street regulations and less tax on them than on the rich. Of course it seems to make a lot of sense at first sight. That's why the media uses that over and over again. It's like saying "Be happy with what you have, because if we had free health care and free school and wall street regulations and taxes on the rich ... you'd be worse off". Well, that's just not true, according to the data. Countries with high inequality are generally the ones where nothing happens, in innovation or in anything else, there's no middle class, and it's sad. There's nothing worse than dumb people voting against their own interest. That's the recipe for a dictatorship. If you disagree I'll be happy to hear your opinion. I'm ready to change my mind. Thanks!
fixermark 11y ago
I think absolute standard of living rising faster is a hypothesis that has not been proven. If I "grow the pie" by $999 and give you only $1 of that growth, what you will find is that merchants are now charging $2 for the same goods as before because they will find people willing to pay that price. This didn't work out well for you, the $1-receiver (and the question then becomes whether the $1 receiver looks like most of the population or the minority of the population). In short: in capitalism, sitting still means sliding backwards if the economy is growing. Incidentally, "Reducing economic equality is merely a lesser form of eliminating it" is also an unproven hypothesis if you're speaking about effects. If you're not speaking about effects, then my response would be "A small amount of elimination may bring benefit where a larger amount would bring ruin."

by asift 11y ago

bko 11y ago

The ironic thing is that the wealthiest now try to live a rather stoic, normal life with a focus on whole, local foods and simple agrarian pleasures. Sure, they don't fly coach, but honestly, they don't exactly live extraordinary lives when compared to that of the middle class in America. Reminds me of a Warhol quote: > What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.

foldr 11y ago
>The ironic thing is that the wealthiest now try to live a rather stoic, normal life w Erm, maybe some of them. I don't think extravagant displays of wealth have gone extinct just yet.
gethoht 11y ago
This correlation of equality breaks down in regards to the justice system however, where the poor are systematically curb-stomped and viewed as revenue generators for local governments while the rich can literally destroy the world economy through fraudulent mechanisms and walk away scot free.
- jordanb 11y ago
  Not justice, nor healthcare, housing, education, or political influence. But when it comes to sugar water Virginia yes it's true: we're all equals.
- mhaymo 11y ago
  No they can't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Madoff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Madoff If you have an example of an individual who committed large-scale fraud and got away "scot free", I'd like to see it.

legutierr 11y ago

I would posit that the extreme levels of economic inequality we see today is actually putting downward pressure on economic growth.

AlisdairO 11y ago

Various reasons, but one of the most compelling in my view is that a society with a (relatively) increasingly wealthy elite eventually becomes unstable - money generally correlates with political power.

awakeasleep 11y ago

A lot of people are jumping into an argument with you, but I think your point of "inequity vs standard of living" is a really smart distillation of concepts and deserves credit for being insightful.

mike429 11y ago
I don't think that's insightful. That's a typical neo conservative argument, repeated over and over for decades. Thatcher is famous for using that argument. The problem is the if in the ... "what if everyone was better off, yet with more inequality". We're not sure at all about that if. In fact data seems to say, probably no, people aren't better off when there's more inequality. What if, actually, high inequality countries (with no free health care, no free schools, no financial sector regulations, and more tax on the poor than on the rich) shoot themselves in the foot? This is what the data seems to show, if anything. A lot of people agree that a healthy middle class was important for progress in the west. I think they are right. I think the Thatcher argument is going in the wrong direction. Now that doesn't mean you want to waste taxpayer money on random hopeless bullshit. Not all socialist countries spend their money wisely. But taxing and spending wisely, to help the middle class, with schools and hospitals and smart regulations, is probably good for generating innovation and for the economy in the long term. The middle class can be pretty resilient in some countries, with still a lot of resourceful smart people, you can throw a lot at them and they will still survive. But it's probably better to help them a bit. It's probably better, for example, to significantly increase the number of truly smart kids that go to college in a country (there's more poor or low middle class smart kids than rich smart kids, in raw numbers, even if rich kids are more likely to be smart, on average). The Thatcher argument really is a good example of a purely rhetorical argument, not based on any data, that was spread by neo conservatives, media owners in particular, to their strict advantage. It's an O'Reilly-no-spin-zone worthy argument. It's pretty insidious, a masterpiece of a meme. It basically amounts to accusing poor and middle class people of being jealous jerks for wanting free health care, free schools, wall street regulations and less tax on them than on the rich. Of course it seems to make a lot of sense at first sight. That's why the media uses that over and over again. It's like saying "Be happy with what you have, because if we had free health care and free school and wall street regulations and taxes on the rich ... you'd be worse off". Well, that's just not true, according to the data. Countries with high inequality are generally the ones where nothing happens, in innovation or in anything else, there's no middle class, and it's sad. There's nothing worse than dumb people voting against their own interest. That's the recipe for a dictatorship. If you disagree I'll be happy to hear your opinion. I'm ready to change my mind. Thanks!

fixermark 11y ago

I think absolute standard of living rising faster is a hypothesis that has not been proven. If I "grow the pie" by $999 and give you only $1 of that growth, what you will find is that merchants are now charging $2 for the same goods as before because they will find people willing to pay that price. This didn't work out well for you, the $1-receiver (and the question then becomes whether the $1 receiver looks like most of the population or the minority of the population). In short: in capitalism, sitting still means sliding backwards if the economy is growing. Incidentally, "Reducing economic equality is merely a lesser form of eliminating it" is also an unproven hypothesis if you're speaking about effects. If you're not speaking about effects, then my response would be "A small amount of elimination may bring benefit where a larger amount would bring ruin."