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No, it has nothing to do with the pie fallacy. Yes, even the poorest in America lead better lives in absolute terms than most people have throughout history.
by danhak 11y ago
No, it has nothing to do with the pie fallacy. Yes, even the poorest in America lead better lives in absolute terms than most people have throughout history. But regardless of the absolute "economic level x" of the poorest, the wealthiest among us will enjoy disproportionate access to the latest technology, education, healthcare, influence etc.
- douche 11y ago> the wealthiest among us will enjoy disproportionate access to the latest technology, education, healthcare, influence etc What exactly do you intend to do to change that? If you start everyone at a baseline level, some of them are going to be smarter, stronger, savvier or whatever, and will be more successful, and thus wealthier, and thus have greater access to whatever benefits that wealth can buy. Even if you zero everyone out each generation, genes matter. Unless you are artificially suppressing people from rising above mediocrity, you will have some that do better than others.
- danhak 11y agoIt seems to me that there is probably some optimized point between total economic equality and extreme inequality. I believe we are drifting further away from that point. In concrete terms, I don't believe those with pre-existing access to capital should receive privileged tax treatment. I'm im favor of lowering taxes on earned income and raising taxes on inheritance and investment income.
- douche 11y agoSo why should inheritances be taxed again? They've already been taxed at least once - when the original wealth was earned. If you want positive social mobility, then you need to encourage generational wealth. The rags-to-riches, pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps in a single generation story is more romantic, but the more realistic path to advancement is to build on the foundations of the family nest egg. Taking a haircut on that family wealth each generation makes it harder to climb the ladder from working class to lower middle class to upper middle class.
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- thanatropism 11y agoBut why does it seem that the solution is to cap off from those who have more instead of improving the lot of those who have less? There's the pie fallacy: it would seem that alleviating poverty = alleviating inequality, when for most of history it has been exactly the opposite.