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>If overall quality of life increases, I am personally unconcerned with income inequality. Rising inequality generally hasn't improved quality-of-life for ever
by eli_gottlieb 10y ago
>If overall quality of life increases, I am personally unconcerned with income inequality.
Rising inequality generally hasn't improved quality-of-life for everyone.
- sokoloff 10y agoOf course it harms the person at the very bottom of the stack. But, would you rather live as a 10th percentile American today, a 50th percentile serf in feudal England, a 50th percentile American colonist, or even a 50th percentile American in the 1950s? It's only the very last that's even close, IMO.
- eli_gottlieb 10y agoI think that in order to answer that question, you have to know how steeply well-being falls with reduced income. The poorest and least egalitarian counties in the United States today, for instance, tend to have life-expectancies below those of many Third World countries. Overly severe inequality really seems to make it so there's no bottom to the barrel to hit!