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So what? Inequality should only matter to you personally if it means the lower bound on income, the poorest of the poor, is going down. If the richest is gettin
by tw1010 9y ago
So what? Inequality should only matter to you personally if it means the lower bound on income, the poorest of the poor, is going down. If the richest is getting richer, maybe that means the poorest are becoming poorer as a consequence, but not necessarily, in fact, most likely not.
- staticassertion 9y agoIt matters to me personally that a small group of people have such a massive amount of power. It's already completely uneven regarding voting power - I can vote once in an election, but if I had a trillion dollars I could vote once, and then I could pay lobbyists, and fund advertisements, etc. I, as a single person or small group, with a trillion dollars, can have a massive influence. This is regardless of how poor anyone else is. No one should have this kind of money, it's really absurd.
- charlesdm 9y agoDidn't Trump get elected with 1/7th the budget of Hillary Clinton?
- staticassertion 9y agoI don't think boiling any single political event down to money is going to be meaningful. I can't imagine anyone denying that lobbyists exist and that large amounts of money can buy you a lot of political power.
- pmc1 9y ago> large amounts of money can buy you a lot of political power. That is not true. Hillary spent the most money in any American campaign (nearly $1 Billion) and still lost. Strategy matters more than money https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/8/14848636/hillary-clinton-tv-ads https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/8/14848636/hi...
- staticassertion 9y agoSee the post you replied to for the same response.
- balthasar 9y agoLooks to be half. https://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/09/trump-spent-about-half-of-what-clinton-did-on-his-way-to-the-presidency.html https://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/09/trump-spent-about-half-of-wh...
- pmahoney 9y agoThe situation is more complex than candidates' election spending. For example, many of the groups in [1] influence various radio and television programs, and through those, elections. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_activities_of_the_Koch_brothers#Think_tanks_and_political_organizations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_activities_of_the_Ko...
- crusso 9y agoKaty Perry has a massive amount of political power compared to you as well. How should we handle her and other celebrities? How about unions and union bosses? News media heads? If we're going to be fair, shouldn't we control anyone at all who has influence?
- staticassertion 9y agoWhat is this argument even?
- ccallebs 9y agoSome people are more influential than others. Money is only one vector of influence. He's rhetorically asking whether we should regulate the other vectors with hope that no one person has more influence than anyone else.
- phil248 9y agoFor purely practical reasons, we should make efforts to disperse power within society away from severe concentrations. Not uniformly, not absolutely, but we should work to keep the trend from becoming too strong in the direction of concentrated power. Otherwise, the vast masses are liable to suffer and experience reduced capacity to alleviate that suffering. See: All of human history
- sintaxi 9y agoThen create a better company then those people and give away your wealth.
- 0x27081990 9y agoThe poorer are getting richer, too. But the rich gets richer faster. I don't see a problem with it, but it's funny to see how besides having more regulations, higher taxes and more government intervention (most of the time in the name of making society more equal) increases inequality at a faster rate just to see the very same people saying "we need higher taxes and more government intervention!"
- balthasar 9y agoThe riches they amass come from exploiting the people. Its not something that should be taken lightly.
- sintaxi 9y agoDid Bill Gates exploit you? Please explain how.
- balthasar 9y agoHis wealth came from siphoning off profits from his employees and charging exorbitant prices for his products. The monopoly microsoft held was used to strangle smaller companies out of the market. None of these actions were directly targeted at me but the world is much larger than you or I.
- CaptSpify 9y agoYes He used his power to push shitty and proprietary software into my industry, thus limiting the impact that properly developed software could have created. I had no choice in this and he used everything from back-room deals to flat out lies to achieve this.
- jacquesm 9y ago> I had no choice in this and he used everything from back-room deals to flat out lies to achieve this. And a couple of well documented crimes.
- enraged_camel 9y ago>>Inequality should only matter to you personally if it means the lower bound on income, the poorest of the poor, is going down. Wrong. Inequality of wealth results in inequality of political representation and therefore power. And even though wealth is not zero-sum, power is.
- dbingham 9y agoBecause with large amounts of money comes enormous power -- especially in a mostly unregulated free market system. Power to influence the political conversation through media. Power to directly influence law makers through lobbyists and donations. Power to buy your way out of punishment ($100 speeding ticket or parking ticket is nothing to someone with millions or billions of dollars. It provides zero disincentive.) When inequality gets high enough and power concentrated enough, Democracy decays towards oligarchy, social mobility grinds to a halt, what was a free and relatively classless system becomes an ossified aristocracy and freedom slowly devolves to a dystopian tyranny. We're already seeing the beginning of this process in American society. Already, we have substantial evidence supporting the idea that Democracy has decayed into Oligarchy -- and it did so several decades ago. [1] This matters if you value a free and just society. It matters a lot. [1] https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...