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So you think that the huge inequalities we have today in developed countries are a "huge success"? When the richest man in the world has 100B$, and yet 12% of A

So you think that the huge inequalities we have today in developed countries are a "huge success"? When the richest man in the world has 100B$, and yet 12% of Americans live under the poverty line?

mmirate 9y ago
Yes. The richest people have produced orders of magnitude more value than those under the poverty line. And yes I'm talking about value for their customers. You know, the people who paid for their products and thereby made them rich.
- pistoriusp 9y ago
  "value" at the cost of the environment isn't value. It's debt.
  - mmirate 9y ago
    Ah, true, the EPA has been rather incompetent in fully charging the proprietors of certain industrial processes for their pollution of the environment. But I don't see why that problem can only be fixed by socialism. (Indeed my prior expectation is that this problem is easier to fix it with a societal structure that places greater importance on private property rather than abolishing it.)
- foldr 9y ago
  Then Venezuela is a success too, by your definition. Its poor are not "producing value", and hence are poor.
  - mmirate 9y ago
    That's only half of it; are the rich producing value? or stealing it instead?
    - foldr 9y ago
      Regardless, their poverty is not the problem, from your point of view.
      - mmirate 9y ago
        Correct.
        foldr 9y ago
        So in fact the problem with 'socialism' in Venezuela has nothing directly to do with the living conditions described in the article, but is just that the rich in Venezuela are not sufficiently rich, or are rich for the wrong reasons.
        mmirate 9y ago
        > rich for the wrong reasons Bingo! I hear that being the state-appointed redistributors-of-wealth (or maybe their friends and relatives, too?) is important, and that actually doing or making anything of value ... isn't. For instance, they otherwise wouldn't have shortages of price-controlled chicken. (It's apparently a very easy animal to raise; cf another comment-thread here.) The living conditions are a consequence, not a root-cause. EDIT since fuck you HN why can I not reply to my repliers anymore: The poor being poor is indeed a consequence of their preference to queue-up for handouts rather than do anything productive e.g. raise their own chickens. Which is to say they are indeed getting exactly what they deserve. I'm puzzled at having to repeatedly state the obvious throughout this comment-section.
        foldr 9y ago
        The poor in Venezuela, then, are getting what they deserve in correspondence to the value they produce. The economic system is failing only the rich
        mmirate 9y ago
- door 9y ago
  haha what they've produced more shareholder value, but they sure as hell haven't produced more value for the world
- coldtea 9y ago
  >Yes. The richest people have produced orders of magnitude more value than those under the poverty line. The richest people have not produced anything by themselves - maybe they got some ideas and secured some funding. The millions of people working for them have produced that value, and continue to produce it. >And yes I'm talking about value for their customers. You know, the people who paid for their products and thereby made them rich. It's even worse for their customers. Rich people like Henry Ford understood trickle-up economics -- pay your employees more to create a more vibrant economy. Today's rich people, are more like robber barons of yore, by affecting legislation, passing favorable deals, screwing over markets, dodging taxes, and so on, while moving their operations elsewhere whenever that made them more profits, have royally screwed over their customer base. The people, who, you know, are also workers making a living, for their whole life, as opposed to consumers (which they are only for a short period every day). And that's not even considering externalities such as environmental cost and hampering democracy.
krona 9y ago
The poverty rate as a percentage hasn't really changed since the mid 1960's, so I'm not sure what your point is. I'd much rather be in poverty in 2017 than in 1960.
- rtpg 9y ago
  in the 60 years since 1960 we have somehow been unable to bring everyone out of poverty despite the massive increase in productivity we've seen? Meanwhile the gap between the richest and poorest person has grown immensely, and real wages have stagnated for 30 years. Sure, everyone has an iPhone, but there's a universe where everyone has an iPhone and almost nobody is underwater. And we actively choose to not be in it every time we subscribe to "our billionaire benefactor" theories.
  - Mary-Jane 9y ago
    Our legal definition of poverty is floating and generally translates to "the bottom 30 percent", so of course we haven't seen a drop! This definition is problematic, not just because it makes the people pointing it out look like in-compassionate jerks, it obscures the real problems many people in poverty have and makes their causes harder to understand and address. It also gives many an excuse to dismiss the poor because, "the government is giving iPhones to them; they're problems can't be that bad."
- coldtea 9y ago
  >I'd much rather be in poverty in 2017 than in 1960. You'd be surprised. In 1960 it was easy to find occasional job gigs and make some money. Plus, in the fifties even a simple month's salary got a long way.
matte_black 9y ago
There will always be a poverty line, so that percentage can never be 0.
- cdancette 9y ago
  That makes no sense. What if everyone is above the poverty line ? If everyone can live a normal life without being afraid of lacking food or shelter, then the percentage is 0 IMO.
  - gaius 9y ago
    Organizations such as the Joseph Rowntree foundation define poverty as being in the lowest third of income. Then periodically issue angry press releases that one third of children are below the poverty line...
  - yorwba 9y ago
    Usually the poverty line is defined in some way relative to the income distribution. So if everyone gets richer by the same factor, the percentage below the poverty line does not change. I think that's a mistake. The poverty line should track how many people can't afford enough food to supply the recommended amount of nutrients, how many are not reliably protected from freezing to death, how many can't see a doctor when they have an infection, and so on. In short, the poverty line should track how many people are physically suffering because they don't have enough money.
tuna-piano 9y ago
Poverty is the problem to me, not inequality. I like the hypothetical of "If 1% of people had 100 yachts, and 99% of people had 1 yacht each, would that be a problem?" And the type of poverty we have in the developed world is very different than the type of poverty they have in Socialist countries. Poor in the USA have enough to eat, TVs, etc. Of course life is tough, but of course there's not the kind of suffering you see in Venezuela. Poor people choose with their feet, and they choose more capitalism! The opposite way is almost absurd to think about. -How many of the 12% in poverty in Flordia flee to Cuba for free Cuban healthcare? -How many of the poor in West Berlin fled to East Berlin? -How many of the poor in Hong Kong fled to Communist China? -How many poor in Colombia are fleeing to Venezuela? We can have the reasonable discussions on whether Medicaid spending should be increased, but the praise of Chavez and true socialism (which I see in a new Netflix Documentary, lots of Michael Moore stuff, Bernie Sanders rhetoric, Antifa, etc) is disconcerting to me.
- foldr 9y ago
  > Poor in the USA have enough to eat This is a surprisingly persistent myth. A quick google search will show you that this is not the case. http://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/impact-of-hunger http://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/impact-of-hu...
Mary-Jane 9y ago
Serious comment. Help me understand the problem with economic inequality. If I can afford two cars, a nice house, plenty of food for my family, and all the other things we've become comfortably accustomed to in the first world, why should it matter that my boss can afford twice as much, and that her boss can afford 30, 300, or even 30000000 times more than that? Don't take this to mean I am ignorant if the poverty problem in the US, but that's a separate concern. Comparatively, the US has a reasonable safety net (sure, it could be better, but again, separate issue). Given the choice, I'd rather be economically unequal and live in poverty in the US than economically equal and living in poverty in places like Venezuela.
- cdancette 9y ago
  You're absolutely right. I think inequality is fine as long as it's not hurting the economy (which it is when the inequality is large enough) and thus making things worse for the poorest people. Moreover, someone that possess more resources than some countries in the world has a huge power over other individuals, sometimes more than governments. I think we want to avoid that if possible. Think of the majority of the press being possessed -in France at least, I'm not sure how it is in the US- by a few individuals. Do you like the idea that everything you see on TV or read on the news is decided by a few individuals ? So I'd say poverty is not the unique issue here. Avoiding concentration of too much wealth also avoids concentration of too much power.

So you think that the huge inequalities we have today in developed countries are a "huge success"? When the richest man in the world has 100B$, and yet 12% of Americans live under the poverty line?

mmirate 9y ago

Yes. The richest people have produced orders of magnitude more value than those under the poverty line. And yes I'm talking about value for their customers. You know, the people who paid for their products and thereby made them rich.

pistoriusp 9y ago
"value" at the cost of the environment isn't value. It's debt.
- mmirate 9y ago
  Ah, true, the EPA has been rather incompetent in fully charging the proprietors of certain industrial processes for their pollution of the environment. But I don't see why that problem can only be fixed by socialism. (Indeed my prior expectation is that this problem is easier to fix it with a societal structure that places greater importance on private property rather than abolishing it.)
foldr 9y ago
Then Venezuela is a success too, by your definition. Its poor are not "producing value", and hence are poor.
- mmirate 9y ago
  That's only half of it; are the rich producing value? or stealing it instead?
  - foldr 9y ago
    Regardless, their poverty is not the problem, from your point of view.
    - mmirate 9y ago
      Correct.
      - foldr 9y ago
        So in fact the problem with 'socialism' in Venezuela has nothing directly to do with the living conditions described in the article, but is just that the rich in Venezuela are not sufficiently rich, or are rich for the wrong reasons.
        mmirate 9y ago
        > rich for the wrong reasons Bingo! I hear that being the state-appointed redistributors-of-wealth (or maybe their friends and relatives, too?) is important, and that actually doing or making anything of value ... isn't. For instance, they otherwise wouldn't have shortages of price-controlled chicken. (It's apparently a very easy animal to raise; cf another comment-thread here.) The living conditions are a consequence, not a root-cause. EDIT since fuck you HN why can I not reply to my repliers anymore: The poor being poor is indeed a consequence of their preference to queue-up for handouts rather than do anything productive e.g. raise their own chickens. Which is to say they are indeed getting exactly what they deserve. I'm puzzled at having to repeatedly state the obvious throughout this comment-section.
        foldr 9y ago
        The poor in Venezuela, then, are getting what they deserve in correspondence to the value they produce. The economic system is failing only the rich
        mmirate 9y ago
door 9y ago
haha what they've produced more shareholder value, but they sure as hell haven't produced more value for the world
coldtea 9y ago
>Yes. The richest people have produced orders of magnitude more value than those under the poverty line. The richest people have not produced anything by themselves - maybe they got some ideas and secured some funding. The millions of people working for them have produced that value, and continue to produce it. >And yes I'm talking about value for their customers. You know, the people who paid for their products and thereby made them rich. It's even worse for their customers. Rich people like Henry Ford understood trickle-up economics -- pay your employees more to create a more vibrant economy. Today's rich people, are more like robber barons of yore, by affecting legislation, passing favorable deals, screwing over markets, dodging taxes, and so on, while moving their operations elsewhere whenever that made them more profits, have royally screwed over their customer base. The people, who, you know, are also workers making a living, for their whole life, as opposed to consumers (which they are only for a short period every day). And that's not even considering externalities such as environmental cost and hampering democracy.

krona 9y ago

The poverty rate as a percentage hasn't really changed since the mid 1960's, so I'm not sure what your point is. I'd much rather be in poverty in 2017 than in 1960.

rtpg 9y ago
in the 60 years since 1960 we have somehow been unable to bring everyone out of poverty despite the massive increase in productivity we've seen? Meanwhile the gap between the richest and poorest person has grown immensely, and real wages have stagnated for 30 years. Sure, everyone has an iPhone, but there's a universe where everyone has an iPhone and almost nobody is underwater. And we actively choose to not be in it every time we subscribe to "our billionaire benefactor" theories.
- Mary-Jane 9y ago
  Our legal definition of poverty is floating and generally translates to "the bottom 30 percent", so of course we haven't seen a drop! This definition is problematic, not just because it makes the people pointing it out look like in-compassionate jerks, it obscures the real problems many people in poverty have and makes their causes harder to understand and address. It also gives many an excuse to dismiss the poor because, "the government is giving iPhones to them; they're problems can't be that bad."
coldtea 9y ago
>I'd much rather be in poverty in 2017 than in 1960. You'd be surprised. In 1960 it was easy to find occasional job gigs and make some money. Plus, in the fifties even a simple month's salary got a long way.

matte_black 9y ago

There will always be a poverty line, so that percentage can never be 0.

cdancette 9y ago
That makes no sense. What if everyone is above the poverty line ? If everyone can live a normal life without being afraid of lacking food or shelter, then the percentage is 0 IMO.
- gaius 9y ago
  Organizations such as the Joseph Rowntree foundation define poverty as being in the lowest third of income. Then periodically issue angry press releases that one third of children are below the poverty line...
- yorwba 9y ago
  Usually the poverty line is defined in some way relative to the income distribution. So if everyone gets richer by the same factor, the percentage below the poverty line does not change. I think that's a mistake. The poverty line should track how many people can't afford enough food to supply the recommended amount of nutrients, how many are not reliably protected from freezing to death, how many can't see a doctor when they have an infection, and so on. In short, the poverty line should track how many people are physically suffering because they don't have enough money.

tuna-piano 9y ago

Poverty is the problem to me, not inequality. I like the hypothetical of "If 1% of people had 100 yachts, and 99% of people had 1 yacht each, would that be a problem?" And the type of poverty we have in the developed world is very different than the type of poverty they have in Socialist countries. Poor in the USA have enough to eat, TVs, etc. Of course life is tough, but of course there's not the kind of suffering you see in Venezuela. Poor people choose with their feet, and they choose more capitalism! The opposite way is almost absurd to think about. -How many of the 12% in poverty in Flordia flee to Cuba for free Cuban healthcare? -How many of the poor in West Berlin fled to East Berlin? -How many of the poor in Hong Kong fled to Communist China? -How many poor in Colombia are fleeing to Venezuela? We can have the reasonable discussions on whether Medicaid spending should be increased, but the praise of Chavez and true socialism (which I see in a new Netflix Documentary, lots of Michael Moore stuff, Bernie Sanders rhetoric, Antifa, etc) is disconcerting to me.

foldr 9y ago
> Poor in the USA have enough to eat This is a surprisingly persistent myth. A quick google search will show you that this is not the case. http://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/impact-of-hunger http://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/impact-of-hu...

Mary-Jane 9y ago

Serious comment. Help me understand the problem with economic inequality. If I can afford two cars, a nice house, plenty of food for my family, and all the other things we've become comfortably accustomed to in the first world, why should it matter that my boss can afford twice as much, and that her boss can afford 30, 300, or even 30000000 times more than that? Don't take this to mean I am ignorant if the poverty problem in the US, but that's a separate concern. Comparatively, the US has a reasonable safety net (sure, it could be better, but again, separate issue). Given the choice, I'd rather be economically unequal and live in poverty in the US than economically equal and living in poverty in places like Venezuela.

cdancette 9y ago
You're absolutely right. I think inequality is fine as long as it's not hurting the economy (which it is when the inequality is large enough) and thus making things worse for the poorest people. Moreover, someone that possess more resources than some countries in the world has a huge power over other individuals, sometimes more than governments. I think we want to avoid that if possible. Think of the majority of the press being possessed -in France at least, I'm not sure how it is in the US- by a few individuals. Do you like the idea that everything you see on TV or read on the news is decided by a few individuals ? So I'd say poverty is not the unique issue here. Avoiding concentration of too much wealth also avoids concentration of too much power.