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You just agreed that a situation which increases inequality (rich person gaining 3x, poor person 2x) helps the poorer person more. How do you reconcile this wi

You just agreed that a situation which increases inequality (rich person gaining 3x, poor person 2x) helps the poorer person more. How do you reconcile this with the claim that inequality is the problem?

SCHiM 11y ago
That's just basic economy. And it was also adequately explained in the post you just responded to. The more you already have of something the less it's worth to you, that goes for almost everything including money in this case.
Nutmog 11y ago
Isn't inequality just a polite word for jealousy? We're all peasants compared to some possible future generations 100 years in the future with all their cancer cures and Mars holidays.
- phaer 11y ago
  No, it is not. "Jealousy" is a subjective feeling, "inequality" says something about the bigger economy.
- phaer 11y ago
  No, it is not. "Jealousy" is a subjective feeling, "inequality" says something about the bigger economy.
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  Most of the problems with inequality come down to envy but because people are taught to be ashamed of envy, they work hard to both overintellectualize the emotions and cast things as a moral issue in a massive societal campaign of self-deception. It's a real shame, because it is literally impossible to solve a problem you deliberately misunderstand. That's humans for you though.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  And you think possible future generations are going to want to lord things over us? Don't play dumb. They're going to break down crying when they're told what our planet went through right now. It will be like when today's children are made to really look at photos of Auschwitz, or the Syrian Civil War, or guinea-worm cases in Africa, or child labor in coal mines. Oh wait, some of those things are still present-day problems.
  - ebfe 11y ago
    Right but his point is that those things are problems because they suck in absolute terms, not relative ones. Turning the whole world into a Syria-esque battlefield should not be considered a success, despite the fact that it would lower inequality. Similar, if the mechanisms that eliminate guinea-worm come so at the cost of improving other people's lives even more than the Guineans, we should not oppose that even though it increases inequality. What matters is our absolute quality of life rather than our relative one, and as such inequality is not the metric we should use to identify problems.
jfoutz 11y ago
According to that liberal bastion, the Wall Street Journal, in it's most favorable light, median worker compensation has only gone up about 40% since 1979 [1]. On the other hand CEO compensation over that period has gone up about 1000%. [2] We can quibble about sources if you like, but according to this [3] it's taken about 50 years to double income. If you take a long look at that same graph [3], productivity has climbed, dramatically. Perhaps the depression of wages was caused by almost doubling the workforce, adding women. Eh, it's probably not that big of a deal. that wsj article pointed out it's really just young men without much education that are taking the hit. I really doubt having millions of young, broke, easily persuaded males will cause much of a problem. Historically, that's always worked out just fine Less snarkily, economists from Greenspan to Krugman have said this is something that needs to be looked at. It's an indicator of something being not right. It's clear you have an economic model in mind. It's the job of the market to push that pay edge as hard as possible, get as much productivity for as little pay as possible. Have you considered that the market might push so hard that your economic model doesn't apply? [1] http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/07/06/just-how-stagnant-are-wages-anyway/ http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/07/06/just-how-stagnant-... [2] http://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-continues-to-rise/ http://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-continues-to-rise/ [3] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Productivity_and_Real_Median_Family_Income_Growth_1947-2009.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Producti...
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  Tl;Dr my hypothetical of everyone getting richer is an accurate description of reality. Also, formerly excluded groups (e.g. women) saw faster income growth than the former privileged class (white men).
  - jfoutz 11y ago
    No. the WSJ graph shows high school level education and lower men of any race being about 10% worse off than 1979. 40% of americans only have high school education so, uh, like 70 million people or so. Everyone getting richer is not an accurate description of reality.

SCHiM 11y ago

That's just basic economy. And it was also adequately explained in the post you just responded to. The more you already have of something the less it's worth to you, that goes for almost everything including money in this case.

Nutmog 11y ago

Isn't inequality just a polite word for jealousy? We're all peasants compared to some possible future generations 100 years in the future with all their cancer cures and Mars holidays.

phaer 11y ago
No, it is not. "Jealousy" is a subjective feeling, "inequality" says something about the bigger economy.
phaer 11y ago
No, it is not. "Jealousy" is a subjective feeling, "inequality" says something about the bigger economy.
oldmanjay 11y ago
Most of the problems with inequality come down to envy but because people are taught to be ashamed of envy, they work hard to both overintellectualize the emotions and cast things as a moral issue in a massive societal campaign of self-deception. It's a real shame, because it is literally impossible to solve a problem you deliberately misunderstand. That's humans for you though.
eli_gottlieb 11y ago
And you think possible future generations are going to want to lord things over us? Don't play dumb. They're going to break down crying when they're told what our planet went through right now. It will be like when today's children are made to really look at photos of Auschwitz, or the Syrian Civil War, or guinea-worm cases in Africa, or child labor in coal mines. Oh wait, some of those things are still present-day problems.
- ebfe 11y ago
  Right but his point is that those things are problems because they suck in absolute terms, not relative ones. Turning the whole world into a Syria-esque battlefield should not be considered a success, despite the fact that it would lower inequality. Similar, if the mechanisms that eliminate guinea-worm come so at the cost of improving other people's lives even more than the Guineans, we should not oppose that even though it increases inequality. What matters is our absolute quality of life rather than our relative one, and as such inequality is not the metric we should use to identify problems.

jfoutz 11y ago

According to that liberal bastion, the Wall Street Journal, in it's most favorable light, median worker compensation has only gone up about 40% since 1979 [1]. On the other hand CEO compensation over that period has gone up about 1000%. [2] We can quibble about sources if you like, but according to this [3] it's taken about 50 years to double income. If you take a long look at that same graph [3], productivity has climbed, dramatically. Perhaps the depression of wages was caused by almost doubling the workforce, adding women. Eh, it's probably not that big of a deal. that wsj article pointed out it's really just young men without much education that are taking the hit. I really doubt having millions of young, broke, easily persuaded males will cause much of a problem. Historically, that's always worked out just fine Less snarkily, economists from Greenspan to Krugman have said this is something that needs to be looked at. It's an indicator of something being not right. It's clear you have an economic model in mind. It's the job of the market to push that pay edge as hard as possible, get as much productivity for as little pay as possible. Have you considered that the market might push so hard that your economic model doesn't apply? [1] http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/07/06/just-how-stagnant-are-wages-anyway/ http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/07/06/just-how-stagnant-... [2] http://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-continues-to-rise/ http://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-continues-to-rise/ [3] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Productivity_and_Real_Median_Family_Income_Growth_1947-2009.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Producti...

yummyfajitas 11y ago
Tl;Dr my hypothetical of everyone getting richer is an accurate description of reality. Also, formerly excluded groups (e.g. women) saw faster income growth than the former privileged class (white men).
- jfoutz 11y ago
  No. the WSJ graph shows high school level education and lower men of any race being about 10% worse off than 1979. 40% of americans only have high school education so, uh, like 70 million people or so. Everyone getting richer is not an accurate description of reality.