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Part of the problem is that the inequality leads to behavior that protects the inequality. Disney passing lobbying for laws that will keep their work out of pu

Part of the problem is that the inequality leads to behavior that protects the inequality. Disney passing lobbying for laws that will keep their work out of public domain despite how much they benefited from public domain. Drug companies lobbying to outlaw certain products that would help people but cut into profits. Enough inequality allows information control. Enough information control allows government control. Overall, if things were constantly getting better, I doubt people would care. But once things start stagnating for those at the bottom, they begin to consider not playing by the current set of rules.

oconnor663 9y ago
> Part of the problem is that the inequality leads to behavior that protects the inequality. I do agree with you, but I think it's worth nitpicking the examples. Is the Disney case an inequality problem? I'm not sure that it is. Suppose we waved a magic wand, and suddenly all of Disney's employees and shareholders were middle class people. Would that change Disney Inc's incentives around IP lobbying? I think that rather than an inequality problem, cases like Disney are something like a "concentrated interests" problem. Even if every individual person had exactly the same amount of money in the bank, they wouldn't all be equally invested in the exact same things, and competing interests would still emerge. Disney's incentives follow just from the fact that it has shareholders, regardless of how much wealth those shareholders have. And for what it's worth, as a society, this is definitely the problem we want! Concentrated interests solve huge problems, like how to make a $100 million movie that everyone wants to see, but that no one person could fund on their own.
- BearGoesChirp 9y ago
  >Suppose we waved a magic wand, and suddenly all of Disney's employees and shareholders were middle class people. Would that change Disney Inc's incentives around IP lobbying? I'm not sure the shareholders are the actual issue, since it is Disney's concentration of wealth that allows it to change the laws (and gives it incentives to do so). It doesn't much matter who owns the wealth, since the chain from owner to actual employees carrying out the actions that change the laws ends up removing most impact of the share holders.
briandear 9y ago
>Enough information control allows government control Yet the solution to income inequality is to increase government control of the means of production via confiscatory taxes and redistribution? So some advocate increasing government's ability to take money from you a gunpoint through taxes in order to prevent the government from being able to control people? > Overall, if things were constantly getting better, I doubt people would care. Poverty rates in the United States have been between 11 and 15% consistently since 1965. However, worldwide absolute poverty has dramatically dropped over the past 100 years. There are 3 times fewer extremely poor people in the world today than in 1970. So things are absolutely getting better -- dramatically better in fact.[1] If people were unaware of how much "rich" people have and just looked at their own ability to buy food, housing and small luxuries, wealth inequality wouldn't even be a thing worth mentioning. Why should it matter what my neighbor has -- as long as I have what I need. This whole "income inequality" cause is little more than Marxist class warfare rhetoric [2] rebranded for a modern audience: people are jealous that some people make more than them. So what. No matter what policies are enacted, poverty in the United States is practically unchanged since 1965 and vastly lower than it was in the 1950s when it was first measured. [3] The same crowd that cares about inequality also happen to be the same people who demand governments address climate change by essentially changing the balance of the means of production. Nobody cared about climate change in 1986. The first mainstream book on the subject wasn't even published until 1989. However, the industrial revolution started a low time before that. Apparently the climate change wasn't a catastrophic threat until someone wrote a book about it being a catastrophic threat? Were scientists simply sleeping for the past 100 years until some far-left journalist wrote a book about it? [4] But 1991, it started becoming a big thing. What happened between 1986-1991? Hint: something to do with the Soviets. Interesting more still is that the Palestinian cause is also supported by those who care about climate change and wealth inequality -- and the Palestinian cause was supported in a very big way by the Soviet KGB.[5] Interesting how climate change, income inequality, poverty and even the Palestinian situation all feature the same "cure" -- the end of US-dominated, global capitalism. Convenient how that all fits together so nicely. Fascinating how everything that was important to the Soviets has become the lightning rod of the left wing of American politics -- but those causes weren't even on the radar before 1998. Actual environmentalists were trying to save whales and the rain forests in the 1980s and not trying to restructure the entire world economic system. Anti-Capitalism didn't become a semi-mainstream idea until mid 1990s. I honestly miss the Greenpeace of the 1980s. Should the goal actually be 0% poverty? Is that even possible? If you took 100% of the wealth of the worlds 1000 richest people and distributed it equally among the poor -- it wouldn't make a dent. let's say that the world's richest combined assets were worth $2 trillion. And there are 2 billion people living in extreme poverty, that gives each of them about $500. But that's it. Because there'd be no more wealth to redistribute from those rich people because it would be all used up. So you go to the next 1000 rich people and so on until eventually everyone has just enough enough money to buy a pregnant chicken and five carrots -- with no pot to cook it in since nobody's going to bother making anything since it's just going to get taken away. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty/ https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty/ [2] https://www.jstor.org/stable/2562423?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents https://www.jstor.org/stable/2562423?seq=1#page_scan_tab_con... [3] https://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/what-current-poverty-rate-united-states https://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/what-current-poverty-rate-un... [4] http://environment.harvard.edu/news/huce-headlines/social-movements-and-climate-change http://environment.harvard.edu/news/huce-headlines/social-mo... [5] http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/103576/the-cold-wars-arab-spring http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/103576/the...
MR4D 9y ago
> Part of the problem is that the inequality leads to behavior that protects the inequality. Oddly, that statement (which I completely agree with) has nothing to do with being rich or poor. People in power want to stay in power - whether it's the US or a failing state like Venezuela, they use that power against others. I'd much rather be in a rich but unequal society - it's much more peaceful.
- namenotrequired 9y ago
  > a rich but unequal society - it's much more peaceful. That's not true. Violence is caused by inequality. Areas where everyone's equally poor are about as peaceful as areas where everyone's equally rich. It's dramatic inequality that causes violence. This is true no matter whether you look at neighborhood level, city level, national level etc.
  - dcosson 9y ago
    Do you have any sources for this? I don’t see how it can possibly be true. For one thing I don’t see how you can define areas where everyone is poor. Even looking at a place like North Korea, the top government officials are very well off compared to the average person. In general, poorer countries are much less safe than richer ones. Poorer neighborhoods are much less safe than richer ones. I can see the point that even in those cases it’s often related to inequality, e.g. theres gang related violence because gang leaders are much richer than the average person in the area. But that’s a tautology, because there’s nowhere that has absolutely no inequality.
    - 1ark 9y ago
      http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/338347?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/338347?seq=1#page_scan_t...
      - MR4D 9y ago
        Great paper by the way. If you look at the graph on page 8, you can see obvious clustering of poor countries vs other countries. This study does not compare the overall wealth of the countries against crime. The reason that is important, is that in a rich country, even poor people have many options. In a poor country like Venezuela, they don't. As a result, even if they had the same Gini coefficient, the crime would look much different. So when you take that into account (which is what I tried to do in my statement, but probably could have worded better), then being in a "rich but unequal" society is much better than a poor country of either high or low inequality. I think the high clustering of OECD countries demonstrates this.

oconnor663 9y ago

> Part of the problem is that the inequality leads to behavior that protects the inequality. I do agree with you, but I think it's worth nitpicking the examples. Is the Disney case an inequality problem? I'm not sure that it is. Suppose we waved a magic wand, and suddenly all of Disney's employees and shareholders were middle class people. Would that change Disney Inc's incentives around IP lobbying? I think that rather than an inequality problem, cases like Disney are something like a "concentrated interests" problem. Even if every individual person had exactly the same amount of money in the bank, they wouldn't all be equally invested in the exact same things, and competing interests would still emerge. Disney's incentives follow just from the fact that it has shareholders, regardless of how much wealth those shareholders have. And for what it's worth, as a society, this is definitely the problem we want! Concentrated interests solve huge problems, like how to make a $100 million movie that everyone wants to see, but that no one person could fund on their own.

BearGoesChirp 9y ago
>Suppose we waved a magic wand, and suddenly all of Disney's employees and shareholders were middle class people. Would that change Disney Inc's incentives around IP lobbying? I'm not sure the shareholders are the actual issue, since it is Disney's concentration of wealth that allows it to change the laws (and gives it incentives to do so). It doesn't much matter who owns the wealth, since the chain from owner to actual employees carrying out the actions that change the laws ends up removing most impact of the share holders.

briandear 9y ago

>Enough information control allows government control Yet the solution to income inequality is to increase government control of the means of production via confiscatory taxes and redistribution? So some advocate increasing government's ability to take money from you a gunpoint through taxes in order to prevent the government from being able to control people? > Overall, if things were constantly getting better, I doubt people would care. Poverty rates in the United States have been between 11 and 15% consistently since 1965. However, worldwide absolute poverty has dramatically dropped over the past 100 years. There are 3 times fewer extremely poor people in the world today than in 1970. So things are absolutely getting better -- dramatically better in fact.[1] If people were unaware of how much "rich" people have and just looked at their own ability to buy food, housing and small luxuries, wealth inequality wouldn't even be a thing worth mentioning. Why should it matter what my neighbor has -- as long as I have what I need. This whole "income inequality" cause is little more than Marxist class warfare rhetoric [2] rebranded for a modern audience: people are jealous that some people make more than them. So what. No matter what policies are enacted, poverty in the United States is practically unchanged since 1965 and vastly lower than it was in the 1950s when it was first measured. [3] The same crowd that cares about inequality also happen to be the same people who demand governments address climate change by essentially changing the balance of the means of production. Nobody cared about climate change in 1986. The first mainstream book on the subject wasn't even published until 1989. However, the industrial revolution started a low time before that. Apparently the climate change wasn't a catastrophic threat until someone wrote a book about it being a catastrophic threat? Were scientists simply sleeping for the past 100 years until some far-left journalist wrote a book about it? [4] But 1991, it started becoming a big thing. What happened between 1986-1991? Hint: something to do with the Soviets. Interesting more still is that the Palestinian cause is also supported by those who care about climate change and wealth inequality -- and the Palestinian cause was supported in a very big way by the Soviet KGB.[5] Interesting how climate change, income inequality, poverty and even the Palestinian situation all feature the same "cure" -- the end of US-dominated, global capitalism. Convenient how that all fits together so nicely. Fascinating how everything that was important to the Soviets has become the lightning rod of the left wing of American politics -- but those causes weren't even on the radar before 1998. Actual environmentalists were trying to save whales and the rain forests in the 1980s and not trying to restructure the entire world economic system. Anti-Capitalism didn't become a semi-mainstream idea until mid 1990s. I honestly miss the Greenpeace of the 1980s. Should the goal actually be 0% poverty? Is that even possible? If you took 100% of the wealth of the worlds 1000 richest people and distributed it equally among the poor -- it wouldn't make a dent. let's say that the world's richest combined assets were worth $2 trillion. And there are 2 billion people living in extreme poverty, that gives each of them about $500. But that's it. Because there'd be no more wealth to redistribute from those rich people because it would be all used up. So you go to the next 1000 rich people and so on until eventually everyone has just enough enough money to buy a pregnant chicken and five carrots -- with no pot to cook it in since nobody's going to bother making anything since it's just going to get taken away. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty/ https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty/ [2] https://www.jstor.org/stable/2562423?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents https://www.jstor.org/stable/2562423?seq=1#page_scan_tab_con... [3] https://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/what-current-poverty-rate-united-states https://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/what-current-poverty-rate-un... [4] http://environment.harvard.edu/news/huce-headlines/social-movements-and-climate-change http://environment.harvard.edu/news/huce-headlines/social-mo... [5] http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/103576/the-cold-wars-arab-spring http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/103576/the...

MR4D 9y ago

> Part of the problem is that the inequality leads to behavior that protects the inequality. Oddly, that statement (which I completely agree with) has nothing to do with being rich or poor. People in power want to stay in power - whether it's the US or a failing state like Venezuela, they use that power against others. I'd much rather be in a rich but unequal society - it's much more peaceful.

namenotrequired 9y ago
> a rich but unequal society - it's much more peaceful. That's not true. Violence is caused by inequality. Areas where everyone's equally poor are about as peaceful as areas where everyone's equally rich. It's dramatic inequality that causes violence. This is true no matter whether you look at neighborhood level, city level, national level etc.
- dcosson 9y ago
  Do you have any sources for this? I don’t see how it can possibly be true. For one thing I don’t see how you can define areas where everyone is poor. Even looking at a place like North Korea, the top government officials are very well off compared to the average person. In general, poorer countries are much less safe than richer ones. Poorer neighborhoods are much less safe than richer ones. I can see the point that even in those cases it’s often related to inequality, e.g. theres gang related violence because gang leaders are much richer than the average person in the area. But that’s a tautology, because there’s nowhere that has absolutely no inequality.
  - 1ark 9y ago
    http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/338347?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/338347?seq=1#page_scan_t...
    - MR4D 9y ago
      Great paper by the way. If you look at the graph on page 8, you can see obvious clustering of poor countries vs other countries. This study does not compare the overall wealth of the countries against crime. The reason that is important, is that in a rich country, even poor people have many options. In a poor country like Venezuela, they don't. As a result, even if they had the same Gini coefficient, the crime would look much different. So when you take that into account (which is what I tried to do in my statement, but probably could have worded better), then being in a "rich but unequal" society is much better than a poor country of either high or low inequality. I think the high clustering of OECD countries demonstrates this.