4 ms·

It's an interesting question. Most of peoples incomes are rising, it's just whose incomes are rising more than others. Is that still fair?

1001101 9y ago
No, it's not fair. If you're an anarcho-capitalist, "what is this minimum wage thing?," if you're a communist "seize the means of production!"
- swiftting 9y ago
  If you're an anarcho-capitalist, "what is this minimum wage thing?," I thought eliminating the minimum wage was a common sense libertarian ideal. Google Economist Walter Williams!
peatmoss 9y ago
Economists don't generally buy the buy idea that you can make some people better off without making others worse off. In short, if all the gains happen for one group, even if the other group isn't directly losing money, their purchasing power will be eroded by the rich. And I'll add that this sort of thing keeps stacking up, because as the rich continue to be able to buy up things like land at a higher rate than the poor, the rich are then able to extract even more money from the poor through rents.
- logicchains 9y ago
  >Economists don't generally buy the buy idea that you can make some people better off without making others worse off. Which economists? Economists generally support freer trade, more open borders and the like because they see trade as fundamentally not a zero sum game: if two parties are willing to make an exchange, it must be because the exchange somehow makes them better off than they would be without it. All of developmental economics is built on this: it's why the majority of the world's population enjoy an incredibly greater standard of living than they did 100 years ago. Everyone is better off. Which is not to say there aren't situations where economists recognise trade-offs. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factor_price_equalization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factor_price_equalization: a commonly accepted economic theory that proposes that international trade between poorer and richer countries will make unskilled wages in the poorer countries higher and in the richer countries lower.
  - mcguire 9y ago
    http://www.oecd.org/social/in-it-together-why-less-inequality-benefits-all-9789264235120-en.htm http://www.oecd.org/social/in-it-together-why-less-inequalit... "This long-run increase in income inequality not only raises social and political concerns, but also economic ones. It tends to drag down GDP growth, due to the rising distance of the lower 40% from the rest of society. Lower income people have been prevented from realising their human capital potential, which is bad for the economy as a whole." " Causes and Consequences of Income Inequality: A Global Perspective", from the IMF. "First, we show why policymakers need to focus on the poor and the middle class. Earlier IMF work has shown that income inequality matters for growth and its sustainability. Our analysis suggests that the income distribution itself matters for growth as well. Specifically, if the income share of the top 20 percent (the rich) increases, then GDP growth actually declines over the medium term, suggesting that the benefits do not trickle down. In contrast, an increase in the income share of the bottom 20 percent (the poor) is associated with higher GDP growth. The poor and the middle class matter the most for growth via a number of interrelated economic, social, and political channels."
  - peatmoss 9y ago
    Economists familiar with Arthur Pigou. And here I'll point out that there's a difference between economists with a relatively complete grounding in modern economic theory, and the politicians engaged in economic policy.
dvdhnt 9y ago
Personally, I think it is blatantly unfair. It's like if we had a big bad of skittles and every time I took 1 skittle, you took 10 skittles.
- logicchains 9y ago
  More like, if we had a big patch of strawberries and every day I picked 100 and you picked 1000, why should I get to take yours?
  - js8 9y ago
    Because you're cheating - I saw some Mexicans picking them for you.
    - dsacco 9y ago
      Why is that cheating?
    - logicchains 9y ago
      Why are the Mexicans picking them for me, not for you or for themselves? Assuming I didn't enslave them, I must be offering them something that makes it worth their while. Maybe I spent some time building better tools for berry picking, so using those tools they can take home more berries overall than they could without my help even if they're giving some to me. Maybe I saved some berries, traded them for supplies with someone else, and built some kind of shelter over the berry bush. Maybe I've got a spear to scare off the men who threaten them when they try to pick berries in Mexico. I think this is particularly relevant to software developers. It's often fairly easy for us to go into contracting, or start our own business, but many developers with those opportunities (myself included) still choose to work for others. Perhaps we prefer the stability of not having to manage our own business, perhaps we like the projects a particular company is working on and lack the resources to attempt them ourselves, perhaps we want to acquire more savings before starting out on our own, perhaps we want to learn from a particular company. And even when we do start our own businesses, for some reason we still tend to prefer traditional structures over more equal structures like cooperatives, prefer structures in which people work for others.
DarkKomunalec 9y ago
Businesses are all too happy to use tactics that aren't 'fair', as long as they're legal-ish. Even then, they lobby for favourable laws, that are rarely also favourable for consumers, and more often hostile. Make no mistake, only one side is concerned with 'fair'.

1001101 9y ago

No, it's not fair. If you're an anarcho-capitalist, "what is this minimum wage thing?," if you're a communist "seize the means of production!"

swiftting 9y ago
If you're an anarcho-capitalist, "what is this minimum wage thing?," I thought eliminating the minimum wage was a common sense libertarian ideal. Google Economist Walter Williams!

peatmoss 9y ago

Economists don't generally buy the buy idea that you can make some people better off without making others worse off. In short, if all the gains happen for one group, even if the other group isn't directly losing money, their purchasing power will be eroded by the rich. And I'll add that this sort of thing keeps stacking up, because as the rich continue to be able to buy up things like land at a higher rate than the poor, the rich are then able to extract even more money from the poor through rents.

logicchains 9y ago
>Economists don't generally buy the buy idea that you can make some people better off without making others worse off. Which economists? Economists generally support freer trade, more open borders and the like because they see trade as fundamentally not a zero sum game: if two parties are willing to make an exchange, it must be because the exchange somehow makes them better off than they would be without it. All of developmental economics is built on this: it's why the majority of the world's population enjoy an incredibly greater standard of living than they did 100 years ago. Everyone is better off. Which is not to say there aren't situations where economists recognise trade-offs. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factor_price_equalization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factor_price_equalization: a commonly accepted economic theory that proposes that international trade between poorer and richer countries will make unskilled wages in the poorer countries higher and in the richer countries lower.
- mcguire 9y ago
  http://www.oecd.org/social/in-it-together-why-less-inequality-benefits-all-9789264235120-en.htm http://www.oecd.org/social/in-it-together-why-less-inequalit... "This long-run increase in income inequality not only raises social and political concerns, but also economic ones. It tends to drag down GDP growth, due to the rising distance of the lower 40% from the rest of society. Lower income people have been prevented from realising their human capital potential, which is bad for the economy as a whole." " Causes and Consequences of Income Inequality: A Global Perspective", from the IMF. "First, we show why policymakers need to focus on the poor and the middle class. Earlier IMF work has shown that income inequality matters for growth and its sustainability. Our analysis suggests that the income distribution itself matters for growth as well. Specifically, if the income share of the top 20 percent (the rich) increases, then GDP growth actually declines over the medium term, suggesting that the benefits do not trickle down. In contrast, an increase in the income share of the bottom 20 percent (the poor) is associated with higher GDP growth. The poor and the middle class matter the most for growth via a number of interrelated economic, social, and political channels."
- peatmoss 9y ago
  Economists familiar with Arthur Pigou. And here I'll point out that there's a difference between economists with a relatively complete grounding in modern economic theory, and the politicians engaged in economic policy.

dvdhnt 9y ago

Personally, I think it is blatantly unfair. It's like if we had a big bad of skittles and every time I took 1 skittle, you took 10 skittles.

logicchains 9y ago
More like, if we had a big patch of strawberries and every day I picked 100 and you picked 1000, why should I get to take yours?
- js8 9y ago
  Because you're cheating - I saw some Mexicans picking them for you.
  - dsacco 9y ago
    Why is that cheating?
  - logicchains 9y ago
    Why are the Mexicans picking them for me, not for you or for themselves? Assuming I didn't enslave them, I must be offering them something that makes it worth their while. Maybe I spent some time building better tools for berry picking, so using those tools they can take home more berries overall than they could without my help even if they're giving some to me. Maybe I saved some berries, traded them for supplies with someone else, and built some kind of shelter over the berry bush. Maybe I've got a spear to scare off the men who threaten them when they try to pick berries in Mexico. I think this is particularly relevant to software developers. It's often fairly easy for us to go into contracting, or start our own business, but many developers with those opportunities (myself included) still choose to work for others. Perhaps we prefer the stability of not having to manage our own business, perhaps we like the projects a particular company is working on and lack the resources to attempt them ourselves, perhaps we want to acquire more savings before starting out on our own, perhaps we want to learn from a particular company. And even when we do start our own businesses, for some reason we still tend to prefer traditional structures over more equal structures like cooperatives, prefer structures in which people work for others.

DarkKomunalec 9y ago

Businesses are all too happy to use tactics that aren't 'fair', as long as they're legal-ish. Even then, they lobby for favourable laws, that are rarely also favourable for consumers, and more often hostile. Make no mistake, only one side is concerned with 'fair'.