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Economic Inequality Is Worse Than We Think (2015)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- wolfgke 9y agoTo me the worse problem is: While I can understand that it is an inconvenient situation to be poor (and I have some kind of compassion for them), I really cannot understand how one could even come to the idea to give rise to children if one is not in a high quantile of earning. If people applied this reproduction strategy consequently, poverty would simply die out.
- oblio 9y agoSo your solution is basically: "kill the poor".
- wolfgke 9y agoNo, quarantine the further spread of poverty.
- Quarrelsome 9y agoPoverty is not a disease, its a happening. Like falling over or getting hit by a bus. It prays upon the less agile of us so pray that one day when your agility slows you're not unlucky enough to get hit by the proverbial bus. Heck you might gain a bit of sympathy then so maybe it wouldn't be a completely bad thing...
- robertk 9y agoThat sounds like killing the poor but with extra steps. Or the South Side of Chicago.
- wolfgke 9y ago> That sounds like killing the poor but with extra steps. Doing quarantine does not kill the disease agent. That is not what quarantine is for. Quarantine is for preventing the further spread of the disease agent. For killing the disease (agent) there is the immune system or drugs such as antibiotics or virostatic agents.
- oblio 9y agoYou're either a wonderful troll, and then: kudos! or you have a very misguided idea of poverty. Poverty is not a disease, as Quarrelsome pointed out. Poverty isn't even a constant, it's dynamic. People go in and out of poverty all the time. We also don't know the correlation and the causation between poverty and various indicators such as IQ, achievements, etc. (are you poor because you have a low IQ or do you have a low IQ because you're poor? etc.) On top of that, where do you draw the line for poverty? Is it the lowest 10%? 20%? 40%? What if the statistics change next year, and I go from 40% to 30%, am I allowed to have children this year? Are my children taken away from me? Etc., etc. You haven't thought this through, or as I said, you're a wonderful troll! :)
- wolfgke 9y ago> Poverty isn't even a constant, it's dynamic. People go in and out of poverty all the time. There exist lots of diseases known to medicine that can be cured, but people can still get reinfected even after a treatment.
- ptaipale 9y agoYour comment however leads me to ponder the rhetoric: poverty is indeed not a disease, but like diseases, in modern societies it is contagious. Patterns and behaviours that make poverty deeper and more destructive are spreading from person to person and family to family, in neighbourhoods and communities. Here I mean things like appreciation of education, work, stability of families, etc. What could we do to change these patterns? (Apart from the usual recipes like making schools better. FWIW I'm from a country which has one of the most equal distributions of both income and wealth, but even this does leave a lot of people quite unhappy.)
- wolfgke 9y agoExactly my kind of reasoning. To add a point: Since we don't know the exact kind of pathogen(s) leading to poverty, but we know that poverty of parents is a strong predictor of poverty of children, this delivers a way to at least partly quarantine the poverty disease.
- ygaf 9y agoCan you point to the word "kill" in his post?
- oblio 9y agoPreventing some arbitrary part of the population from having children is basically eradicating that population, long term. I just used "kill", for simplicity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics
- majewsky 9y agoI find that equation of terms troubling. If I take that argument to its logical conclusion, we are all killers because we don't get as much children as previous generations. We're effectively killing our unborn offspring by refusing to procreate.
- oblio 9y agoUmmmm.. false equivalence. You're choosing not to have children. In wolfgke's description, he's choosing for you. Big difference.
- eeZah7Ux 9y ago> We're effectively killing our unborn offspring by refusing to procreate. This is a completely false definition of "killing"
- ygaf 9y agoAs is oblio's.
- ionised 9y ago> We're effectively killing our unborn offspring by refusing to procreate. No we're not. Killing requires something to exist and be alive first.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- golergka 9y agoYou're saying it as if it's something bad.
- sctb 9y agoPlease comment civilly and substantively on HN or not at all, like we've already asked. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Quarrelsome 9y agojesus. Pick from: alcohol, depression, boredom, dynasty building, genetic programming. I apologise for being rude but it sounds like you have limited compassion if you haven't been able to think this one through. What do you want to do, sterilise the poor? I would remind you that despite a poor background children can and do still excel and even if they don't these children are often the backbone of our industry. You might not approve but these people are still the workforce and generation of tomorrow so you should afford their inception a little more respect and empathy.
- golergka 9y ago> What do you want to do, sterilise the poor? Reversible sterilization for everyone by default, temporary reversal for a fee. Make people pay for externalities.
- ngrilly 9y agoAre you serious?
- golergka 9y agoAbsolutely. Why not? Having children is a very expensive thing for the family and the society, but people can easily make this decision foolishly and then offload costs onto everyone else. Having children is a luxury, we only need to start treating it like one. RESPONSES (THANKS FOR THE ANTI-SPAM, HN! IT MAKES IT SO MUCH EASIER TO HAVE MEANINGFUL CONVERSATIONS) > Why are you focusing only on the financial aspect and ignoring the parents education, general behavior and mental health, and living conditions, safety and so on? All these qualities (1) heavily correlate to their wealth and (2) much harder to have any objective measure of.
- eeZah7Ux 9y agoWhy are you focusing only on the financial aspect and ignoring the parents education, general behavior and mental health, and living conditions, safety and so on?
- CrispyUmbrella 9y ago>reproduction strategy I.e. 'stick the winkie in the hoo-hah and wiggle it around'
- delerio 9y agoSo only rich people deserve to have a family? Only the rich deserve to find joy in nurturing and raising others? A lot of people, even though they don't have much, they find fulfillment in their family. If you think they shouldn't have children, that means taking away the only joy in some people's lives. Weird sentiment you have there.
- eeZah7Ux 9y agoNothing in life is due to us. There is no "deserve". Also, you are painting a false dichotomy between "rich" and "poor". A lot of middle and lower class people can raise healthy and happy children unless they have problems with mental health / violence / substance abuse & so on. > taking away the only joy in some people's lives Looking at children as a source of joy instead of a recipient of unconditional care and effort sounds very narcissistic.
- delerio 9y agoI don't understand your point. Many people find joy in raising children, it fulfills a purpose in their life. Not everyone does, but many do. There is a biological desire to procreate and continue the species.
- wolfgke 9y ago> Many people find joy in raising children, it fulfills a purpose in their life. Not everyone does, but many do. Many people find joy in other expensive hobbies, too. The difference is: Doing such a different expensive hobby won't make someone who you produced suffer because you lack the necessary financial backing.
- golergka 9y ago'Deserve' is a weird word; what do you mean by it and think that it's relevant? Raising children is a very resource and labour-heavy endeavour. Rich people have more resources and labour. It's only logical that they can afford the children while poor people don't.
- forinti 9y agoSo we should have only got Kings out of the middle ages?
- wolfgke 9y agoIf there is a sparsity of people doing other jobs, the wages of people doing them will increase (leading to the situation that the condition for "better not reproduce" disappears). That's how economy works.
- eeZah7Ux 9y ago> poverty would simply die out Not at all. An economy based on competition and inequality automatically generates as many poor as needed to balance out the super rich. It's really basic math.
- CalRobert 9y agoOne could say the same for being in a high quintile of leisure time, but that doesn't stop all stressed-out rich people from having kids. Most of humanity was born to parents with no monetary income at all, and volatile access to resources and shelter. Imagine that!
- trentnix 9y agoI've never understood using income inequality as a measure of the health of a society. As Milton Friedman said, the only place where people are equal is in a prison and in the grave. Milton Friedman on greed and income inequality: https://youtu.be/RWsx1X8PV_A https://youtu.be/RWsx1X8PV_A
- blr246 9y agoThere is no such thing as a measure of the health of a society. Inequality is one of many indicators that can help you predict the social stability and quality of life achievable in a particular society. Inequality is important because of the studied link between peace and prosperity. Individual participants of a civilization give their social system power by buying into a social contract that their (mostly) nonviolent participation secures them the necessities of life. When we have natural disasters, we sometimes see the rupture of the social contract. Now, imagine that there's a continuum of levels of nonviolent participation depending on individual cost-benefit analyses occurring all of the time around you. When inequality shifts so dramatically over just a generation or two, there's reason to be concerned that people's buy-in on the social contract might shift, too.
- geoka9 9y agoContext matters. If we're talking about a first world country, income inequality is a meaningful metric.
- Super_Jambo 9y agoLooking at the charts from Capital in the 21st Century [1] it's obvious that previous relative equality of wealth was largely due to the incredibly destruction of the two world wars. Factories blown up, colonial lands lost and war debts inflated away wiped out many fortunes.[2] So the reduced power of post war rich, combined with fear of communism resulted in the Democratic Socialist consensus that gave us high taxes and a big middle class. (And Vietnam but I digress). Since fear of Communism has eased and the rich have again massed giant fortunes there's little to stop them weakening the rules that prevent our Democracies from being bought. To me this is a compelling explanation for how you end up with Trump running against Clinton two historically disliked candidates. Almost everything in the news is just noise to the slow grinding power of wealth accumulation. Occasionally you get a glimpse as WaPo is bought by Bezos, Trump gets elected and Zuck clearly starts to form some presidential ambitions. But largely everything is a distraction to pull your eyeballs, after all that's what our media is paid to do. [1] http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capital21c/en/Piketty2014FiguresTablesLinks.pdf http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capital21c/en/Piketty2014Fig... [2] Capital in Britain 1700-2010: http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capital21c/en/pdf/F3.1.pdf http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capital21c/en/pdf/F3.1.pdf
- bjourne 9y agoI think everyone should read Nickel and Dimed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_and_Dimed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_and_Dimed) by Barbara Ehrenreich. She goes undercover and tries to survive working minimum wage jobs. I don't think I'm spoiling the book by revealing that she wasn't able to. After three months she were so deep in debt that she had to abort the experiment.
- viridian 9y agoI wonder if this is just a lack of knowledge on how to survive while poor. I'm in a good economic position compared to most of the US and certainly most of the world, but I can't see myself having much of an issue with this. Growing up there were times where my family was homeless, and my first job I was a carpenter's apprentice, paid under the table, for less than minimum wage. It's not that being poor is extremely difficult in the US in particular, but rather that those born wealthy who have never been poor, have no idea how to operate in that environment.
- grosbisou 9y agoAbsolutely. It's not easy being on minimum wage. But most people don't know what they are talking about. A good example: https://twitter.com/gwynethpaltrow/status/586168041576116224?lang=en https://twitter.com/gwynethpaltrow/status/586168041576116224...
- wolfgke 9y agoThere exist tables in the internet how to optimize your grocery shopping while still getting all the necessary nutrients if you are short on money. Use them. I know that it will not be comfortable, but to me there is hardly any excuse for not using them.
- bjourne 9y agoIt's probably more about lack of liquidity than the lack of knowledge. Housing costs are higher if you are living in a daily motel and can't afford to pay 2-3 months of rent in advance. Food is also more expensive if you don't have access to proper cooking utensils and your own oven and so on. It was a long time since I read the book, but I recall that the experiment ended because she had more unforseen expenses than she could keep up with. I think her car broke down a few times and as she had no money in her pocket, she had to take out payday loans to get it repaired. Eventually she couldn't do that anymore so no car, no way to get to work, no job and no income.
- averagewall 9y agoI can tell this article is preaching to the choir because it doesn't bother to explain why inequality is bad. It just assumes that we agree it is. So why is it bad? Especially since most Americans don't even know about it, how can it be hurting them? Two possibilities I can think of: A) Jealousy B) Risk of revolution
- DarkKomunalec 9y ago"since most Americans don't even know about it, how can it be hurting them?" By spending limited resources on yachts instead of schools and hospitals?
- nine_k 9y agoUS hospitals charge exorbitant money for their services. Spending on schools, while not nearly as exorbitant, is still higher than in many previous decades. (Don't get me started about college tuition.) it's not lack of finite resources that is the source of their problems. Of course, medicine and education could put some more money to good use, but likely invested very differently.
- vixen99 9y agoIs expenditure on schools proportional to attainment? Very often not. Given that health care spending in the U.S. far exceeds that of other high-income countries, is injecting yet more cash the answer to a better outcome?
- throw2016 9y agoThese threads are always depressing on HN. They reveal a worrying sociopathy that one can only hope is not reflective of a wider pattern and limited to a small subset of readers here. This is why more power in the hands of SV companies like Google, Facebook and other VC funded startups become worrying as with power they will build a desolate soulless uncaring world. Devaluing other human beings is like cutting the branch you sit on, you only devalue yourself. You can't build a healthy country or society without a collective and empathy. What happens during harder times? One wonders if this is because of religious ideologies like calvinism and others in their ilk or some taking sociopathic ideologies by people like rand designed purely to appeal to egoistic individualism and the rich seriously.
- JCzynski 9y agoIt uses wealth as a measure of inequality, which is an instant sign that it's not written by someone who has thought about the problem and tried to honestly change minds. I'm about to start a first job at one of the big programming shops next month and have been able to pay for Bay rents; according to a wealth calculator, 0% of Americans are poorer than me. This is an idiotic result.
- autokad 9y agoIts really important to take a step back and see what they really mean. They are talking about NET WORTH. Its an almost guarantee that a fresh college student has a negative net worth, but does that mean they are poorer or worse off than an begger who just received a dollar? To use their logic, the day I broke 0$ net worth, I owned more than 50% of the nation's wealth. hardly. The only thing that video shows me is people dont really think very hard about their expectations between the very top and the very bottom.
- JCzynski 9y ago>The average American believes that the richest fifth own 59% of the wealth and that the bottom 40% own 9%. The reality is strikingly different. The top 20% of US households own more than 84% of the wealth, and the bottom 40% combine for a paltry 0.3%. The Walton family, for example, has more wealth than 42% of American families combined. >We don’t want to live like this. In our ideal distribution, the top quintile owns 32% and the bottom two quintiles own 25%. As the journalist Chrystia Freeland put it, “Americans actually live in Russia, although they think they live in Sweden. And they would like to live on a kibbutz.” Norton and Ariely found a surprising level of consensus: everyone — even Republicans and the wealthy—wants a more equal distribution of wealth than the status quo. You'd think they'd sanity check their poetic description against professed beliefs. If your metric says that most Americans "would like to live on a kibbutz", then your metric is wrong. What this actually shows is that most Americans have no idea what wealth inequality looks like. Ask the same group of people their predicted and ideal income inequality measurements. I predict you'll get the same numbers, plus a little noise. A closely related question: is asking in terms of percentages biasing? And the answer is: Very Yes. http://journal.sjdm.org/12/121027/jdm121027.html http://journal.sjdm.org/12/121027/jdm121027.html >Norton and Ariely (2011) set out to answer a remarkably important set of questions: How much inequality do ordinary Americans believe exists in the U.S.? And how much inequality do they desire? These questions have a range of important policy implications. However, the initial answers to these questions need to be reconsidered. Our findings indicate that the remarkably low estimates of wealth inequality given by Norton and Ariely’s respondents depended on the particular measure (quintile percentages) that was used. When asked to state quintile percentages for either household wealth, teacher salaries, or web page clicks, our respondents seemed to use an anchoring-and-adjustment heuristic leading to very similar responses across very different domains. >When respondents were relieved of aggregating their intuitions about inequality into quintile percentages, another picture emerged. According to this new picture, Americans do not tend to have extremely biased perceptions of current levels of inequality. Nor do they entertain an ideal of near-perfect egalitarianism. Rather they seem to prefer a world where the poor are not as poor as they are today. Further investigation into this more tractable ideal might provide a basis for workable policy prescriptions.