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As interesting as Frankfurt can be, this semantic quibbling is unhelpful. When most of us progressive types speak out against "economic inequality", we are not

• michaelscott 9y ago
  "Fairness alone does not guarantee a society where the outcome for the unwealthy is tolerable" I'd be really interested in an example of where this is the case. Personally, I can't conceive of a situation where, in a perfectly fair system, the man with the most money is utterly intolerable. Such a system naturally creates the inference that the man did something as an individual to acquire that wealth (and not necessarily in a zero sum manner). As pointed out in the article, the issue with rising inequality is not that the wealthy are getting wealthier necessarily, only that it comes at the expense of people who work just as hard or harder, but still struggle to get by from day to day. Since the perception is that more work leads to more reward in a fair system, the perception is also that this situation is unfair. Economic equality, however, is not necessary for such a situation to be fair. Flipped around, if the manual labourer who toils hard every day were paid more than the non-executive board member the situation would be perceived as fair, despite the fact that the two individuals would receive different compensation. I really can't see the difference between "fair" and "unequal" being a matter of "semantic quibbling".
  • dieterrams 9y ago
    > Personally, I can't conceive of a situation where, in a perfectly fair system, the man with the most money is utterly intolerable. I'm not sure how this is a response to what I wrote. I'm talking about the tolerability of outcomes for the UNwealthy, while you're talking about a rich person being intolerable? The semantic quibbling I'm referring to is the idea that when someone like Bernie Sanders rails about "economic inequality", they are implicitly advocating economic equality (which is incorrect, as I've stated in my original comment), and bouncing off that to present "fairness" as the real thing at issue.
• neilwilson 9y ago
  The assumption there is because the rich have something the poor must have less. In a monetary economy where bitcoins are mined by running a computer that is of course nonsense. Its perfectly possible to leave the rich with monetary wealth that they can show off to their friends about while the poor have material sufficiency - which is what they care about because they are more interested in their communities than coin collecting. The problem is the assumption that there is a one to one relationship between money and stuff. There isn't.
  • im3w1l 9y ago
    Wealth will help the rich win zero-sum games against the poor. The most important zero-sum games being political power and social status and desirable land.
    • neilwilson 9y ago
      The idea that you can change power by removing wealth by force has the same legitimacy as believing you can extract an egg from a baked cake.
      • justinclift 9y ago
        Hmmm, don't events like the French Revolution counter that?
        • deleted 9y ago
          [deleted]
        • zo1 9y ago
          It was only a temporary measure, if you ask me. More like a vacuum was created, and a new set of wealthy people took the positions. http://piketty.blog.lemonde.fr/2017/04/18/inequality-in-france/ http://piketty.blog.lemonde.fr/2017/04/18/inequality-in-fran... So I'd say no, it's not really a counter. There is something else, something intrinsic in our society, that causes the existence of the wealthy. Or "inequality" as others like to call it.
• nmstoker 9y ago
  Quite right. It's about equality of opportunity. Many of the more egregious examples unequal wealth in current society typically stem from previous inequality of opportunity passed down through generations, so the pressure to correct the wealth imbalance and the inequality of opportunity gets mixed together.
  • ajb 9y ago
    Equality of wealth is too strong a condition, but when you start to think about it, equality of opportunity is actually a pretty weak one. Of course, it would be good to have - I don't disagree with that. But one of the things the principal of equality is supposed to rule out is slavery. Suppose everyone is given the same education up to age 12, was then required to take an exam , with the top 1% becoming owners of the other 99%. That would still be equality of opportunity - but I think you'd agree that wouldn't be real equality. What I think people mean by equality is that it should not be possible for an individual or group to obtain some overbearing degree of dominance over another individual or group. So that even if there is a disparity in wealth, there should still be a sense in which you are dealing with each other as equals.
    • jakelazaroff 9y ago
      > What I think people mean by equality is that it should not be possible for an individual or group to obtain some overbearing degree of dominance over another individual or group. I think this is the crux of the issue, and money most often is just the most relevant and quantifiable measure of that.
      • platz 9y ago
        Rawl's "Veil of Ignorance" allows for _some_ inequality, but only as much as you would allow being born into if you didn't know where in the world you'd be born.
  • humanrebar 9y ago
    The richest people in the U.S. aren't Hapsburgs, Rockefellers, or Kennedys. They largely started out in upper middle class, maybe a little better off than that, and then founded huge empires based on a combination of business savvy and innovative disruption. The Waltons inherited their wealth, but the ones on the richest people list inherited directly from Sam Walton, whose story certainly fits that bill. "Passed down through generations" makes it seem like there's some sort of grand lineage, and I haven't seen any data to back that up.
• hutzlibu 9y ago
  "Fairness alone does not guarantee a society where the outcome for the unwealthy is tolerable " Why not?
  • pimmen 9y ago
    Because the market value of just being average in what you can do could be below what we deem tolerable. It does depend a lot on what's tolerable, admittedly. As long as we reason about it knowing that wether we like it or not, many of these people living in less than desirable circumstances will have kids and those kids have never done anything to effect wether or not their situation is tolerable.
    • humanrebar 9y ago
      I'm not sure macroeconomic systems affect the kids as much as socioeconomic ones like household mobility, addiction rates, mental health care, and family structure.
    • zo1 9y ago
      Yes, but then we're incentivizing the future supply of such "below average" individuals that you speak of. That in turn reduces their value by making it a race to the bottom. Which of course, causes our caring society to kick into even higher gear in terms of "caring" for them. And so the cycle continues, with the bottom half eventually tipping the scale immensely. That is why you're getting "inequality", because you're subsidizing its increase without fixing any of the underlying problems. Edit. Grammar.
  • matt4077 9y ago
    Just look at history, or current conditions in some parts of asia: child labor, 16-hour days in overcrowded fire hazards etc. But the more general point is: do you value an individual solely by what they can produce? Extreme example: Late at night, Mr.&Mrs. Miller get in a car accident and die. Their 5-years old daughter survives. She is not capable of sustaining herself with productive work. Is it fair for her to die? Yes, it's extreme. In any sane world, someone would somehow take the girl in and provide for her until she's old enough. But taking in an orphan and caring for them is already altruistic. Continue down that path, you'll soon stumble upon a social safety net that canonises these instincts. That's better than individual initiative because: - it can distribute the costs of caring equally, instead of burdening, say, one family with all the costs of raising little Amy Smith - it's fairer: your survival should not depend on you being cuter than someone else in need - it's dependable: there's value in knowing your child will be cared for should you suddenly be hit by a bus
• leifaffles 9y ago
  If the issue isn't fairness, how do you differentiate this view from an embrace of punitive envy politics?
  • sharemywin 9y ago
    as opposed to power equalization politics.
• danmaz74 9y ago
  You're mostly right. Unfortunately, there are enough extremists who want actual total "equality" (whatever that means - should beautiful people get scarred to be more equal?) that it's an easy straw-man to use for the regressive types.
  • jahnu 9y ago
    > Unfortunately, there are enough extremists who want actual total "equality" Are there? Where are they and how much influence do they have? As far as I can tell they are extremely rare and have little to no power. In contrast, the number of people who are market maximalists in actual positions of power is significant. Interested to see any evidence that my world view is wrong.
    • damnfine 9y ago
      There most definately are, although not extremely common. I recall reading a HAYES (pro-fat) article calling for beauty equalization or some rediculious thing. Sure its not common, but to dismiss any extreme you arent aware of does not help the conversation. The amount of impact is highly variable, but one must assume there is some, as many of these blogs have thousands of followers.
    • zo1 9y ago
      That is a big point of contention. One side says we already have equality of opportunity, and that the current state of things is a result of a normal distribution in skills/motivations/abilities in the population. The other turns that around and says no we don't because "structural racism/sexism/classism/etc". So, they argue against each-other because one sees the current inequality of outcome as a consequence of some sort of "biased" fairness in opportunity. And since the other side disputes the existence of that bias, they think that what's being advocated is pure equality, irrespective of any distribution of skills/talents/etc. It's an impasse, and we'll never get passed it until we start agreeing and quantifying the possibility that there are differences between sexes/races/cultures/ages. Only then can we correct for any supposed structural biases. It's a touchy topic, and one only need look at the type of controversy The Bell Curve book caused to understand the incredible difficulty that we face trying to conclusively resolve this scientifically.
• humanrebar 9y ago
  > ...increasing wealth concentrated in an increasingly tiny percentage of the population, while millions struggle to get by... I think these discussions are immensely helpful. Mostly because they give us clear criteria for accepting and rejecting proposed solutions. Many people, for example, are for confiscatory taxes on the rich to level the playing field. Your sentence here, for example, implies that the wealth concentrated in the hands of the tiny percantage of the population would relieve the millions who struggle if it were just redistributed. I don't believe the numbers back that up. As rich as Gates and Bezos are, they can't fund healthcare for everyone. Which is why redistributive tax schemes aren't about using the means of some to fund the needs of others as much as creating fairness (or at least the sense of one).
  • matt4077 9y ago
    Per the IRS, the total income of the top 5% of households is $1685472000000, which, when divided among the 139,960,580 households submitting tax returns, comes out at $12,000 per household. That sounds like it's in the ballpark of what you'd need for healthcare, US idiosyncrasies notwithstanding. Now, of course nobody is realistically suggesting taking all that money. That would be neither fair nor useful. Because everybody agrees that some reward is necessary to motivate people, and that they should get to enjoy the spoils.
    • LiteskinKanye 9y ago
      For one year...
    • rayiner 9y ago
      That number just shows why “tax the rich more” isn’t the way to pay for services everyone uses like healthcare. Top 5% isn’t just Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. Bay Area engineers will hit that living alone. So will a couple where e.g. one person is a nurse and another is in IT. It’s a very expansive group. Total spending at all levels of government in the US is almost $7 trillion. So even if you tax the top 5% at 75%, you’re covering 17% of total expenditures. European countries don’t build their welfare states by heavily taxing the rich. In say Germany, an entry level office worker will pay 30%+ of their income in taxes and mandatory insurance.
• zaphar 9y ago
  While this may in fact be true the messaging most people hear is purely concern about inequality alone. Like most nuanced ideological positions as soon as they go mainstream all of the nuance is lost. This is probably a significant part of the political divide in the US today.
• bnolsen 9y ago
  The difference is "progressives" or leftists still want to control it all instead letting people use their own initiative to let things happen. Whatever happens is fine as long as people play by the rules with integrety. Of course if concepts of morality, especially protestant christian ones, have been thrown out the window then it's all a crap shoot anyways.
  • matt4077 9y ago
    I have no idea how you can get from taxes to "protestant christian morality"? Your comment also seems entirely jingoistic when read in the context of what it's trying to reply to. What does "controlling it all" even mean? How should people "play by the rules with integrety[sic]", when you're apparently arguing against any such rules?
• Angostura 9y ago
  I think there's another aspect to the fairness too. Not just the magnitude of the pay, but the way that it is decided. There is a perception that a small group can apparently give themselves pay rises without being constrained by the same controls as others, thanks to the 'old boys' network. I think this is a root problem.
• kazinator 9y ago
  If you truly don't care about not everyone having equal wealth, then an increase in the division ought not bother you, either. Would you say, "I don't care whether public buildings and fixtures are clean and free of damage or not; I'm just concerned about any increase in vandalism."
• golemotron 9y ago
  > When most of us progressive types speak out against "economic inequality", we are not saying we want everybody to have equal wealth. Someone made the choice to use the term "inequality" and it was remarkably clever because it has a builtin foil. When people object, proponents can say "well of course we don't mean no inequality at all." This is what weaponized rhetoric looks like.
• wpietri 9y ago
  Yeah, I find the view of "equality" here to be weirdly specific. He seems to mean equality of allocation of goodies, and he seems to think that if it isn't the only thing people want, then they don't want it at all. Sure, I don't want a hellscape where everybody is equally miserable when compared with a well-off world where most people are happy and some people are miserable. But if I have to choose between an equal hellscape and a hellscape where some people are merely miserable and others are extra-screwed, then I'm going to pick the equal hellscape. I want both happiness and equality. The biggest omission to me here, though, seems to be completely ignoring power. Economic equality is tightly bound with the distribution of power. Powerful people have an easier time getting rich; rich people have more power across many dimensions. People signal their power and status through economic expenditure. Somehow, though, the word "power" doesn't even come up here. Maybe the thing people "really" want (if that framing isn't entirely broken) is equality of power. That shouldn't be a surprise in that America had a whole revolution about that, and then a civil war to boot.
• staticautomatic 9y ago
  However, there are many domains in which this kind of "semantic quibbling" is helpful. Propaganda is a good example. The success of a given "pitch" might well depend upon understanding the distinction at issue here. It might be a mistake to confuse the two, or it might be to one's advantage to exploit the conflation.
  • ztjio 9y ago
    This is especially true when one confronts the simple fact that, particularly in a political context, terms immediately lose their meaning in the sea of rhetoric. Just look at the term "liberal." Hahah wow. What a loss of value that word has had. It's practically become a slur, when ironically it should be a word that describes every single person with the slightest preference towards American style democracy given we enjoy a LIBERAL DEMOCRACY But I digress. The point is, the words equality and fairness mean nothing in a rhetorical context. One can not possibly approach the idea of correcting the audience's perceptions of those words. So if switching the word you use in your "sales pitch" of policy gets you closer to the idealistic end, then that is what should be done and it should be done without hesitation.
• wwweston 9y ago
  The fact that you have to make this distinction in order to clarify the progressive case shows a rhetorical weakness in the position. Progressives should want to avoid this having be part of the field of discussion. You don't want to get into a fight about what you really mean, particularly when there are so many who are eager to misrepresent progressive motivations precisely as the desire to try to make everyone equal in outcome. And this makes it trivial for political opposition to persuade people who value conscientiousness to be suspicious of progressive positions. Just start with "fair deals" as the value.
• unescape 9y ago
  > we are not saying we want everybody to have equal wealth. The concern is about rising inequality How can rising inequality be a bad thing, unless (wealth) inequality in itself is also a bad thing?
• JohnStrange 9y ago
  I agree with you but would like to add some remark about "fairness". This is a very broad term that encompasses many different issues. Principles of resource distribution are just one aspect of it. I have never met anyone in my life who argued for a completely egalitarian society but for some people, a more egalitarian society is fairer than a less egalitarian society, other factors and reasonable bounds notwithstanding. In fact, the vast majority of people fall into this category, since almost no one would want to live in a society with Gini index 1. If you ignore a few extremely radical die-hard libertarians whose positions are in my opinion not worth to be taken seriously (yes, I've read some Friedman, etc.; no, they are not more reasonable in their assumptions about human nature than communists), then the disagreements are more or less about: - just amounts: the levels of resource distribution that one would consider just, e.g. the Gini index one considers acceptable (or other indicators - that's all part of the debate) - just means: the mechanisms of resource distributions or other ways of obtaining a more egalitarian society that one considers just - acceptable trade-offs: the trade-offs between methods of resource distribution and other moral, individual and moral principles like the Pareto principle, maximization of individual freedom, solidarity, democratic division of power, the right to a due process, etc. The Pareto principle is economic and a right to individual freedom is perhaps best described as an ethical principle, but most of the other fundamental issues like Prioritarian or Egalitarian resource distribution principles, equal access to common goods, equality of opportunity, or democratic power division principles all concern different concepts of fairness. It's a fairly broad-reaching term and there are many trade-offs to make that define different political views. My personal view is that nobody needs billions of dollars to lead a happy and fulfilled life and that various democratic mechanisms to generally decrease differences between income classes are desirable and ultimately lead to a better life for everyone, including the richest. But I understand that other political positions weigh some of the above ingredients differently.
  • hacking_again 9y ago
    > My personal view is that nobody needs billions of dollars to lead a happy and fulfilled life I think having (needing) that much money is generally an indication that you don't lead a happy and fulfilled life.
• eli_gottlieb 9y ago
  >When most of us progressive types speak out against "economic inequality", we are not saying we want everybody to have equal wealth. The concern is about rising inequality, of increasing wealth concentrated in an increasingly tiny percentage of the population, while millions struggle to get by, often one bad month away from financial ruin. Eh, I definitely care about at least some degree of real equality of wealth, because wealth just is the material basis for both political power and personal freedom. What I terminally care about is equality of choice: the mostly equal ability of people from different origins in society to make meaningful choices based on their own needs, desires, and values. Not everyone can become an astronaut or a CEO, but if someone's born to a poor family in a minority neighborhood, we still want their choice to pursue being an astronaut to meaningfully affect the course of their life. Better that they make it into the Air Force and fail to make astronaut on their own merits than that they never get on that track in the first place because their station in life stops them from learning high-school physics.