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That is an interesting study, but it isn't too surprising to me. I think most people recognize that a certain level of inequality is natural, and is often drive

That is an interesting study, but it isn't too surprising to me. I think most people recognize that a certain level of inequality is natural, and is often driven by legitimate differences in personal character and discipline. I think the aspect of inequality in America that irritates most people is the degree of inequality combined with the fact that it's only the rich that is experiencing an improving quality of life. This on top of the fact that inequality is being driven less by differences in personal character and more by differences in the return on capital vs return on labor. There are multimillionaires who aren't any better than the rest of us, but because they have significant stores of capital, they do much better than the rest of us.

CalRobert 9y ago
One thing that's forgotten, I think, is that some degree of income inequality is a natural result of giving people freedom to choose how to live their lives. Person A might say "I want to have lots of cool stuff so I'll work 12 months a year" and earn 100k. Person B might say "I want to stop and smell the roses so I'll work 6 months a year" and live off of 50k. Sadly, this isn't really possible. By designing a system in which you more or less start life indebted, health care is tied to full time employment, and you will be forcefully removed from land that isn't "yours" (though really it was stolen a few centuries ago from a peasant or a native American for most of the world) the latter option is removed from a lot of people. We've somehow built the worst of both worlds, I worry, with near-feudal degrees of inequality (though admittedly the baseline is higher), combined with reduced individual freedom and leisure to live the life one chooses with respect to balancing work and life. Sometimes I wonder if more of the poor, given the choice, would prefer to live a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle like that of people thousands of years ago, if only we hadn't made it illegal via enclosure.

CalRobert 9y ago

One thing that's forgotten, I think, is that some degree of income inequality is a natural result of giving people freedom to choose how to live their lives. Person A might say "I want to have lots of cool stuff so I'll work 12 months a year" and earn 100k. Person B might say "I want to stop and smell the roses so I'll work 6 months a year" and live off of 50k. Sadly, this isn't really possible. By designing a system in which you more or less start life indebted, health care is tied to full time employment, and you will be forcefully removed from land that isn't "yours" (though really it was stolen a few centuries ago from a peasant or a native American for most of the world) the latter option is removed from a lot of people. We've somehow built the worst of both worlds, I worry, with near-feudal degrees of inequality (though admittedly the baseline is higher), combined with reduced individual freedom and leisure to live the life one chooses with respect to balancing work and life. Sometimes I wonder if more of the poor, given the choice, would prefer to live a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle like that of people thousands of years ago, if only we hadn't made it illegal via enclosure.