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I recommend reading: http://paulgraham.com/ineq.html http://paulgraham.com/ineq.html Inequality is the result of people earning different amounts, such being c

by Pyxl101 10y ago

I recommend reading: http://paulgraham.com/ineq.html http://paulgraham.com/ineq.html Inequality is the result of people earning different amounts, such being compensated in proportion to the value they generate - rather than everyone earning the same irrespective of that. Inequality is the result of reaping the rewards of your own work: someone is more effective, so they earn more. Why is it bad? How can any market economy even function without it? If an author writes a really good book, then it will sell and they'll make a lot of money. They earn a lot more than the author who writes bad, unpopular books. That's an example of income inequality. A great comedian will draw large crowds and his shows will fetch a high price. That's an example of inequality too. What's wrong with that? How will anything work if it were otherwise? Inequality is arguably not the right economic easure to care about for social issues. Imagine every human in year 7000 is rich enough to own entire planets, but the super wealthy own 100 planets. Who cares? Why is that a problem? If your concern is about a particular class, then you should look at their standard of living and progress in it over time, not compare against how much someone else has.

pcrh 10y ago
Most people commenting on economic inequality are referring to inequity, i.e. that there are people who receive benefits disproportionate to the value to the work they contribute or the output they create. Few people object to higher rewards for those more talented or harder working.
pyrale 10y ago
> Inequality is the result of reaping the rewards of your own work: someone is more effective, so they earn more. Why is it bad? How can any market economy even function without it? Let us make an experiment and drop Paul Graham in a rainforest to see how much value he manages to extract. Then, once he has starved to death or died from some random infection, let's think again what makes IT jobs more valuable than garbage collector jobs.
- kamaal 10y ago
  We can't have a debate from the position of exceptions. The point he and Mr Graham are trying to make is simple. People are not same, and by that definition are not equal. The fact is that this inequality manifests itself in far more different ways before it appears as income/wealth inequality. Far before some one is rich and poor, they are good and bad at playing the piano, writing a book, programming or anything for that matter. Wealth inequality comes far later.
  - prolly_a_moron 10y ago
    >Far before some one is rich and poor, they are good and bad at playing the piano, writing a book, programming or anything for that matter. You attribute far too much of a person's wealth accumulation with skill. Is Bill Gates the best programmer of all time? >People are not same, and by that definition are not equal. It's hard to argue with this, but I don't see it coming up much in the gender or race discussions. I wonder why.
    - 15charlimit 10y ago
      >>People are not same, and by that definition are not equal. >It's hard to argue with this, but I don't see it coming up much in the gender or race discussions. I wonder why. Because in "modern" society it's not politically correct to recognize, let alone discuss, any differences whatsoever between age, race, sex, education, skill, etc. If you have the gall to try, you'll immediately be torn apart by the howling "progressive" masses.
    - kamaal 10y ago
      >>You attribute far too much of a person's wealth accumulation with skill. Is Bill Gates the best programmer of all time? Bill Gates is good at a lot of other things including programming. And I'm not talking about skill. Its also work, persistence and variety of other things that add up. >>It's hard to argue with this, but I don't see it coming up much in the gender or race discussions. I wonder why. People are only equal by rights. They are definitely not equal with regards to hard work, persistence and range of other skills. Isaac Newton being better than me in Physics, isn't exactly racism.
tomhoward 10y ago
I used to buy into PG’s “inequality is not a problem” argument. More recently I’ve come around to embracing the notion that peoples’ emotional state regarding their relative place in society and their future prospects is as important as their absolute standard of living. Sure, as it's been argued by PG and many others, in material terms even the poorest in modern western societies are far better off than wealthy people of hundreds of years ago. But everyone still has some degree of need to better themselves, improve their circumstances, and aspire to live more comfortably and prosperously. And crucially, the ability of young people to find a partner and have a family is strongly influenced by their prospects for upward mobility. So if societal inequality is such that a young person trying to make their way in the world sees no opportunity for meaningful improvement of their circumstances, and therefore no real prospects for finding a good partner, raising a healthy family and achieving a good level of status in society, then the motivation to remain part of mainstream, productive society can easily be lost. This is what leads to people "dropping out" and ending up in a life of unemployment, depression, substance abuse, crime, violence, etc. So, sure, some level of inequality is inevitable and healthy, to the extent that it rewards people for effort and ingenuity and gives people something to aspire to. But too much inequality becomes more of a de-motivator and a source of resentment, and can cause societal breakdown, and I think this is what is happening to some degree across the western world.
vidarh 10y ago
This idea is based on the fantasy that people are compensated purely for what they do, and not also for their starting point, who they are, who they know, and so on. The reality is that if you were born somewhere poor, odds are overwhelmingly that you would earn a tiny fraction of what someone born somewhere where they are provided proper education and an environment where better alternatives are available. So maybe you are compensated in proportion to the value you generate, but the problem with this is that this is only superficially connected to the effort you put in and how effective you are. Some people who do well do so in part because they put in exceptional effort, but the biggest predictor of your earnings and success in life is how where you live and how wealthy your parents are. This is the problem we have with inequality: It has very little to do with effort or skills, and a lot to do with pure chance.
- candiodari 10y ago
  > The reality is that if you were born somewhere poor, odds are overwhelmingly that you would earn a tiny fraction of what someone born somewhere where they are provided proper education and an environment where better alternatives are available. This is one of those things that is worse in Europe than in the US. Inequality is perhaps less in absolute value, but it's more sticky. The upper class of the US has plenty of immigrants and people who were born poor. Yes, being born rich still provides advantage, but it's clearly not impossible. In the EU, the upper class has zero immigrants very few people born poor (upper middle class minimum) (out of the top10 riches Frenchmen, one was born to a family with less than 100 million francs at the time they were born. One. And he wasn't poor by a reasonable definition at all)
  - GuiA 10y ago
    I'm French. My grandparents were farmers/carpenters/etc who didn't attend school past 12 years old for the most educated one because they had to work to support themselves. My maternal grandparents had only one child, and my paternal grandparents had children 10 years apart, such that they could give the best to their progeny. My uncle became a surgeon, and my parents become engineers, through the means of a free public university, which propelled them to upper middle class. There is still much to achieve in French social mobility, but these kind of stories are plenty. Having spent some time in the US now, and seeing the stories of people who go on to go to engineering/medical/etc schools, I can't say that I see comparable things happening. Everyone I know who went to med school comes from upper middle class family AND had to take on tons of debt. You shouldn't be looking at the top 0.001%, but the top 10%, perhaps even 20-30%, and how they live/what kind of social protections they benefit from.
mcguire 10y ago
The median personal income for all workers over the age of 15 in the US is about about $30,000.

by Pyxl101 10y ago

pcrh 10y ago

Most people commenting on economic inequality are referring to inequity, i.e. that there are people who receive benefits disproportionate to the value to the work they contribute or the output they create. Few people object to higher rewards for those more talented or harder working.

pyrale 10y ago

> Inequality is the result of reaping the rewards of your own work: someone is more effective, so they earn more. Why is it bad? How can any market economy even function without it? Let us make an experiment and drop Paul Graham in a rainforest to see how much value he manages to extract. Then, once he has starved to death or died from some random infection, let's think again what makes IT jobs more valuable than garbage collector jobs.

kamaal 10y ago
We can't have a debate from the position of exceptions. The point he and Mr Graham are trying to make is simple. People are not same, and by that definition are not equal. The fact is that this inequality manifests itself in far more different ways before it appears as income/wealth inequality. Far before some one is rich and poor, they are good and bad at playing the piano, writing a book, programming or anything for that matter. Wealth inequality comes far later.
- prolly_a_moron 10y ago
  >Far before some one is rich and poor, they are good and bad at playing the piano, writing a book, programming or anything for that matter. You attribute far too much of a person's wealth accumulation with skill. Is Bill Gates the best programmer of all time? >People are not same, and by that definition are not equal. It's hard to argue with this, but I don't see it coming up much in the gender or race discussions. I wonder why.
  - 15charlimit 10y ago
    >>People are not same, and by that definition are not equal. >It's hard to argue with this, but I don't see it coming up much in the gender or race discussions. I wonder why. Because in "modern" society it's not politically correct to recognize, let alone discuss, any differences whatsoever between age, race, sex, education, skill, etc. If you have the gall to try, you'll immediately be torn apart by the howling "progressive" masses.
  - kamaal 10y ago
    >>You attribute far too much of a person's wealth accumulation with skill. Is Bill Gates the best programmer of all time? Bill Gates is good at a lot of other things including programming. And I'm not talking about skill. Its also work, persistence and variety of other things that add up. >>It's hard to argue with this, but I don't see it coming up much in the gender or race discussions. I wonder why. People are only equal by rights. They are definitely not equal with regards to hard work, persistence and range of other skills. Isaac Newton being better than me in Physics, isn't exactly racism.

tomhoward 10y ago

I used to buy into PG’s “inequality is not a problem” argument. More recently I’ve come around to embracing the notion that peoples’ emotional state regarding their relative place in society and their future prospects is as important as their absolute standard of living. Sure, as it's been argued by PG and many others, in material terms even the poorest in modern western societies are far better off than wealthy people of hundreds of years ago. But everyone still has some degree of need to better themselves, improve their circumstances, and aspire to live more comfortably and prosperously. And crucially, the ability of young people to find a partner and have a family is strongly influenced by their prospects for upward mobility. So if societal inequality is such that a young person trying to make their way in the world sees no opportunity for meaningful improvement of their circumstances, and therefore no real prospects for finding a good partner, raising a healthy family and achieving a good level of status in society, then the motivation to remain part of mainstream, productive society can easily be lost. This is what leads to people "dropping out" and ending up in a life of unemployment, depression, substance abuse, crime, violence, etc. So, sure, some level of inequality is inevitable and healthy, to the extent that it rewards people for effort and ingenuity and gives people something to aspire to. But too much inequality becomes more of a de-motivator and a source of resentment, and can cause societal breakdown, and I think this is what is happening to some degree across the western world.

vidarh 10y ago

This idea is based on the fantasy that people are compensated purely for what they do, and not also for their starting point, who they are, who they know, and so on. The reality is that if you were born somewhere poor, odds are overwhelmingly that you would earn a tiny fraction of what someone born somewhere where they are provided proper education and an environment where better alternatives are available. So maybe you are compensated in proportion to the value you generate, but the problem with this is that this is only superficially connected to the effort you put in and how effective you are. Some people who do well do so in part because they put in exceptional effort, but the biggest predictor of your earnings and success in life is how where you live and how wealthy your parents are. This is the problem we have with inequality: It has very little to do with effort or skills, and a lot to do with pure chance.

candiodari 10y ago
> The reality is that if you were born somewhere poor, odds are overwhelmingly that you would earn a tiny fraction of what someone born somewhere where they are provided proper education and an environment where better alternatives are available. This is one of those things that is worse in Europe than in the US. Inequality is perhaps less in absolute value, but it's more sticky. The upper class of the US has plenty of immigrants and people who were born poor. Yes, being born rich still provides advantage, but it's clearly not impossible. In the EU, the upper class has zero immigrants very few people born poor (upper middle class minimum) (out of the top10 riches Frenchmen, one was born to a family with less than 100 million francs at the time they were born. One. And he wasn't poor by a reasonable definition at all)
- GuiA 10y ago
  I'm French. My grandparents were farmers/carpenters/etc who didn't attend school past 12 years old for the most educated one because they had to work to support themselves. My maternal grandparents had only one child, and my paternal grandparents had children 10 years apart, such that they could give the best to their progeny. My uncle became a surgeon, and my parents become engineers, through the means of a free public university, which propelled them to upper middle class. There is still much to achieve in French social mobility, but these kind of stories are plenty. Having spent some time in the US now, and seeing the stories of people who go on to go to engineering/medical/etc schools, I can't say that I see comparable things happening. Everyone I know who went to med school comes from upper middle class family AND had to take on tons of debt. You shouldn't be looking at the top 0.001%, but the top 10%, perhaps even 20-30%, and how they live/what kind of social protections they benefit from.

mcguire 10y ago

The median personal income for all workers over the age of 15 in the US is about about $30,000.