5 ms·

I'm an upper-middle class, over-educated professional expert, and I'm strongly liberal for selfish reasons: mostly, I want to live in a climate of social peace,

by fab13n 10y ago

I'm an upper-middle class, over-educated professional expert, and I'm strongly liberal for selfish reasons: mostly, I want to live in a climate of social peace, and would prefer to be surrounded by people who foster a mood of solidarity and benevolence, rather than a cut-throat and ever-worsening competitive mindset. So sure, one way is to protect myself and those I love behind a gated community. But that's pretty much voluntarily throwing myself to jail, I'd rather make it less necessary for others to be aggressive against my kin. I believe it requires more (and smarter) redistribution. Another reason why it's my selfish interest, as a professional expert, to continuously reshuffle wealth, is that my social value resides in what I know and in my ability to learn, not in my family's accumulated wealth. Stabilising accumulated wealth, especially across generations, would make it harder to use my skills in order to climb higher on the social ladder. Is my education a factor in this view? Probably. * It helps me grasping some sociological insights which ought to be obvious. For instance, while hearing political speeches about wealth (re)distribution, I stay aware that the property laws are a social construct that must be agreed upon and can be altered at will by society, not a natural (let alone a God-given) law. * It exposed me to a lot of competition, in school then at work, and although I've been a winner on average, I aspire to more fulfilling activities than turning others into losers. I have no revenge to take on others people, I don't enjoy crushing them. * Having gone from penniless undergrad to minimum-wage PhD student to well-paid junior then senior specialist, I've experienced a variety of wealth levels. As a result I'm convinced that once basic needs are addressed, monetary incentives don't work the way Adam Smith' sycophants pretend they do. Money's meaningful as a way to keep score, and to compare myself among my social peers; but taxes don't affect that much, as long as they don't reverse relative wealth between potential peers.

Kurtz79 10y ago
"I'm an upper-middle class, over-educated professional expert, and I'm strongly liberal for selfish reasons: mostly, I want to live in a climate of social peace, and would prefer to be surrounded by people who foster a mood of solidarity and benevolence, rather than a cut-throat and ever-worsening competitive mindset." That's mostly my rationale for being in favor of (moderate) wealth redistribution, which on surface would be against my interests, as someone by no means wealthy but with an above-median income. What's the point of having money if you cannot walk safely among people ?
- rubyfan 10y ago
  Is resource redistribution the only way to solve income inequality? I always believed we weren't playing a zero sum game. It's likely that when we are all working for a living and prospering then we all prosper a little more. I don't believe that means someone rich has to lose a little more so someone poor can win.
  - Kurtz79 10y ago
    "It's likely that when we are all working for a living and prospering then we all prosper a little more." Do you seriously think this is an achievable goal ? There will be always people that can't or won't work hard for a living. It might be due to their upbringing, education, DNA, personal choices, health conditions, personality. It doesn't mean that these people should be left to their own devices, for the "selfish" reasons mentioned by the OP, if not for more "noble" ones. Resource redistribution does not aim to "solve" income inequality, but to lessen its side effects. It might be not the only way, it is definitely not perfect and you might say it is not fair, but at least it is a realistic way to tackle a difficult problem.
  - rskar 10y ago
    "It's likely that when we are all working for a living and prospering then we all prosper a little more." Well, of course, we all prosper when we all are prospering. :) While life isn't exactly a zero-sum game, for certain moments it works that way. In any case, for now (nearly) all of us are Earth-bounded, so the limits of what our planet and our Sun can provide to us (over time) is what truly matters. There's only so much of Earth to go around, and only so much radiation to be received from the Sun. (And I am of course overlooking the occasional changes from meteors and comets and other whatnot from the heavens.) This thing about income (and wealth) inequality is about more than mere discontents. There are plenty who fear that our global economic system (leaning heavily on capitalism with sprinkles of socialism) will soon arrive at a point of being unsustainable - a point that arrives prior to actual resource depletion. The heart of it is in the ways that people can be so entitled to things, such as water, food, clothing, shelter, education, offspring, healthcare, etc. The worries are about the consequences of greater portions of the population being at or below subsistence levels. This is especially alarming when the statistics show it growing more significant within "First-World" nations. The three big factors seem to be (to me, anyway): (1) Strong property rights which enables more rentiers and natural monopolies; (2) Rentiers/Monopolizers out-competing most or all others for political and economic influences and favors; (3) human labor becoming less needed over time due to the growing rise of adaptable and reliable automation. The automation of item 3 would make a "Galt's Gulch" more tenable, but it would probably be realized as an artificial island nation. Well, one can dream of one, anyway (see http://theweek.com/articles/482427/libertarian-island-billionaires-utopia http://theweek.com/articles/482427/libertarian-island-billio...). One can easily google on "wealth inequality" and get some sober/reasonable/academic reads on this. A good primer is at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/05/21/the-top-10-of-americans-own-76-of-the-stuff-and-its-dragging-our-economy-down/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/05/21/the-t.... Also, look up NBER Working Paper No. 20625.
eli_gottlieb 10y ago
You actually sound more like a social-democrat than a liberal. Liberals do not refer to property as a mere social construct.
- harrumph 10y ago
  " Liberals do not refer to property as a mere social construct." Excellent point. Liberals are de facto capitalists.
  - eli_gottlieb 10y ago
    Liberals are capitalists with a heart. Social democrats are capitalists with a heart and a brain. And personally, I think social democracy worked pretty ok except for the fact that it required a pretty strict anti-socialism, which meant that when the '70s arrived and the elite decided to "restore growth" by clawing back every concession to the working class and the human heart that they'd ever made under social democracy, nobody could stop them.
    - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
      I cannot imagine a single meaningful thing "the elites" could do to have a concession to the human heart. They best they can do is things like taking the boot of Jim Crow off the neck of people. That's not that far from the arsonist-fireman syndrome. Most of the concessions to the working class are still with us. Everything except jobs. And for a while, "restoring growth" worked. my hobby horse for why it stopped is low interest rates and low inflation.
- abritinthebay 10y ago
  To be fair though, and this is a common mistake, there is a world of difference between "Someone who holds general liberal positions" and "Someone who specifically subscribes to the policies of Classical Liberalism." What you are referring to is Classical Liberalism which is a very specific thing. What most people mean by "Liberal" is ideas of liberty and equality. Which is the generic form of Liberalism. (There are many sub-categories, including Classical, Conservative, Social, and Economic Liberalism) Under those terms property would be a social construct (and contract).
lujim 10y ago
You're also devastatingly modest ;)
- fab13n 10y ago
  Actually, I believe the description I gave of myself to match that of most of the left-leaning, >30yo HN commenters:-)
panglott 10y ago
People who are willing to endure being a grad student in order to become a professor are probably relatively less motivated by monetary incentives.
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  Some people are grad students with an eye towards finance.
ArkyBeagle 10y ago
If they're wrong ( and oh so many are ) , "Adam Smith's sycophants" have a fundamental reading comprehension problem. He's nominally a tepid-right, Virginia school economist, but Russ Roberts frames "Wealth of Nations" as a drill down of "Theory of Moral Sentiments". Smith spends barrels of ink decrying rents. Many, many people who espouse Smith just cherry-pick reinforcement from him. Now: having said that, I am no progressive. I'd actually be for redistribution if it could be shown to work; we can't even get insurance payments fo people from Hurricane Sandy right. There is just always a paucity of philsopher-kings. We're just not that smart. It takes decades for the permanent bureaucratic class to debug these things - look at the history of the relativelty simple ( and possibly brilliant ) ag. subsidy regime. I don't think we have a good empirical handle on aggression. I've known too many wealthy people who I would not turn my back on. I've known too many saintly/salt-of-the-earth/shirt-off-their-back poor people. The proportions do not favor material comfort having much of a seat at the table. The cultural more of "crushing people" kinda looks like a thing now, and it makes me modestly angry. I view Smith as one element of the (very important) Scots Enlightenment, along with Hume, James Watt and all the others. Where those guys are/were right, they're still right. That's my bias, though.
- tim333 10y ago
  In practice altering the distribution of wealth and income doesn't usually involve taking from A and giving to B. It usually is more taking from the rich and spending the money on free education and the like. You can also put taxes on large estates, give subsidised houses / loans to the less well off and so on. There used to be quite a lot of that between WW2 and Thatcher getting in in the UK with tax rates as high as 98%. The period of this song https://youtu.be/pzU2owPegHE?t=23s https://youtu.be/pzU2owPegHE?t=23s
  - jedmeyers 10y ago
    And also the period of this album https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwfpcTYv7Ts&list=PL7sBCGkQNm0BfEyGIbo_hz7V8ZxKeYlMo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwfpcTYv7Ts&list=PL7sBCGkQNm... 'Exile' in the title is not a coincidence.
  - 10y ago
dragonwriter 10y ago
> monetary incentives don't work the way Adam Smith' sycophants pretend they do Well, they certainly work the Adam Smith said they do, to wit: "The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers."
coupdetaco 10y ago
Natural laws are the same as God given laws
- fab13n 10y ago
  Only if God exists, which is highly debatable and highly debated.

by fab13n 10y ago

Kurtz79 10y ago

"I'm an upper-middle class, over-educated professional expert, and I'm strongly liberal for selfish reasons: mostly, I want to live in a climate of social peace, and would prefer to be surrounded by people who foster a mood of solidarity and benevolence, rather than a cut-throat and ever-worsening competitive mindset." That's mostly my rationale for being in favor of (moderate) wealth redistribution, which on surface would be against my interests, as someone by no means wealthy but with an above-median income. What's the point of having money if you cannot walk safely among people ?

rubyfan 10y ago
Is resource redistribution the only way to solve income inequality? I always believed we weren't playing a zero sum game. It's likely that when we are all working for a living and prospering then we all prosper a little more. I don't believe that means someone rich has to lose a little more so someone poor can win.
- Kurtz79 10y ago
  "It's likely that when we are all working for a living and prospering then we all prosper a little more." Do you seriously think this is an achievable goal ? There will be always people that can't or won't work hard for a living. It might be due to their upbringing, education, DNA, personal choices, health conditions, personality. It doesn't mean that these people should be left to their own devices, for the "selfish" reasons mentioned by the OP, if not for more "noble" ones. Resource redistribution does not aim to "solve" income inequality, but to lessen its side effects. It might be not the only way, it is definitely not perfect and you might say it is not fair, but at least it is a realistic way to tackle a difficult problem.
- rskar 10y ago
  "It's likely that when we are all working for a living and prospering then we all prosper a little more." Well, of course, we all prosper when we all are prospering. :) While life isn't exactly a zero-sum game, for certain moments it works that way. In any case, for now (nearly) all of us are Earth-bounded, so the limits of what our planet and our Sun can provide to us (over time) is what truly matters. There's only so much of Earth to go around, and only so much radiation to be received from the Sun. (And I am of course overlooking the occasional changes from meteors and comets and other whatnot from the heavens.) This thing about income (and wealth) inequality is about more than mere discontents. There are plenty who fear that our global economic system (leaning heavily on capitalism with sprinkles of socialism) will soon arrive at a point of being unsustainable - a point that arrives prior to actual resource depletion. The heart of it is in the ways that people can be so entitled to things, such as water, food, clothing, shelter, education, offspring, healthcare, etc. The worries are about the consequences of greater portions of the population being at or below subsistence levels. This is especially alarming when the statistics show it growing more significant within "First-World" nations. The three big factors seem to be (to me, anyway): (1) Strong property rights which enables more rentiers and natural monopolies; (2) Rentiers/Monopolizers out-competing most or all others for political and economic influences and favors; (3) human labor becoming less needed over time due to the growing rise of adaptable and reliable automation. The automation of item 3 would make a "Galt's Gulch" more tenable, but it would probably be realized as an artificial island nation. Well, one can dream of one, anyway (see http://theweek.com/articles/482427/libertarian-island-billionaires-utopia http://theweek.com/articles/482427/libertarian-island-billio...). One can easily google on "wealth inequality" and get some sober/reasonable/academic reads on this. A good primer is at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/05/21/the-top-10-of-americans-own-76-of-the-stuff-and-its-dragging-our-economy-down/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/05/21/the-t.... Also, look up NBER Working Paper No. 20625.

eli_gottlieb 10y ago

You actually sound more like a social-democrat than a liberal. Liberals do not refer to property as a mere social construct.

harrumph 10y ago
" Liberals do not refer to property as a mere social construct." Excellent point. Liberals are de facto capitalists.
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  Liberals are capitalists with a heart. Social democrats are capitalists with a heart and a brain. And personally, I think social democracy worked pretty ok except for the fact that it required a pretty strict anti-socialism, which meant that when the '70s arrived and the elite decided to "restore growth" by clawing back every concession to the working class and the human heart that they'd ever made under social democracy, nobody could stop them.
  - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
    I cannot imagine a single meaningful thing "the elites" could do to have a concession to the human heart. They best they can do is things like taking the boot of Jim Crow off the neck of people. That's not that far from the arsonist-fireman syndrome. Most of the concessions to the working class are still with us. Everything except jobs. And for a while, "restoring growth" worked. my hobby horse for why it stopped is low interest rates and low inflation.
abritinthebay 10y ago
To be fair though, and this is a common mistake, there is a world of difference between "Someone who holds general liberal positions" and "Someone who specifically subscribes to the policies of Classical Liberalism." What you are referring to is Classical Liberalism which is a very specific thing. What most people mean by "Liberal" is ideas of liberty and equality. Which is the generic form of Liberalism. (There are many sub-categories, including Classical, Conservative, Social, and Economic Liberalism) Under those terms property would be a social construct (and contract).

lujim 10y ago

You're also devastatingly modest ;)

fab13n 10y ago
Actually, I believe the description I gave of myself to match that of most of the left-leaning, >30yo HN commenters:-)

panglott 10y ago

People who are willing to endure being a grad student in order to become a professor are probably relatively less motivated by monetary incentives.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago
Some people are grad students with an eye towards finance.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago

If they're wrong ( and oh so many are ) , "Adam Smith's sycophants" have a fundamental reading comprehension problem. He's nominally a tepid-right, Virginia school economist, but Russ Roberts frames "Wealth of Nations" as a drill down of "Theory of Moral Sentiments". Smith spends barrels of ink decrying rents. Many, many people who espouse Smith just cherry-pick reinforcement from him. Now: having said that, I am no progressive. I'd actually be for redistribution if it could be shown to work; we can't even get insurance payments fo people from Hurricane Sandy right. There is just always a paucity of philsopher-kings. We're just not that smart. It takes decades for the permanent bureaucratic class to debug these things - look at the history of the relativelty simple ( and possibly brilliant ) ag. subsidy regime. I don't think we have a good empirical handle on aggression. I've known too many wealthy people who I would not turn my back on. I've known too many saintly/salt-of-the-earth/shirt-off-their-back poor people. The proportions do not favor material comfort having much of a seat at the table. The cultural more of "crushing people" kinda looks like a thing now, and it makes me modestly angry. I view Smith as one element of the (very important) Scots Enlightenment, along with Hume, James Watt and all the others. Where those guys are/were right, they're still right. That's my bias, though.

tim333 10y ago
In practice altering the distribution of wealth and income doesn't usually involve taking from A and giving to B. It usually is more taking from the rich and spending the money on free education and the like. You can also put taxes on large estates, give subsidised houses / loans to the less well off and so on. There used to be quite a lot of that between WW2 and Thatcher getting in in the UK with tax rates as high as 98%. The period of this song https://youtu.be/pzU2owPegHE?t=23s https://youtu.be/pzU2owPegHE?t=23s
- jedmeyers 10y ago
  And also the period of this album https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwfpcTYv7Ts&list=PL7sBCGkQNm0BfEyGIbo_hz7V8ZxKeYlMo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwfpcTYv7Ts&list=PL7sBCGkQNm... 'Exile' in the title is not a coincidence.
- 10y ago

dragonwriter 10y ago

> monetary incentives don't work the way Adam Smith' sycophants pretend they do Well, they certainly work the Adam Smith said they do, to wit: "The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers."

coupdetaco 10y ago

Natural laws are the same as God given laws

fab13n 10y ago
Only if God exists, which is highly debatable and highly debated.