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Would you be able to explain why wealth inequality is a societal problem and not actually a feature? I've long heard this but never was convinced
by peterhadlaw 9y ago
Would you be able to explain why wealth inequality is a societal problem and not actually a feature? I've long heard this but never was convinced
- maneesh 9y agoBecause at our heart we are monkeys and we're trained to feel 'that's not fair!!' when someone else is doing better than us. But I agree with you that, for the most part, the rising tide of wealth has raised all ships. Inequality is a natural outgrowth of the massive influx of wealth.
- logfromblammo 9y agoWealth inequality is not a problem. The change in the amount of wealth inequality is a problem, in that it seems to be moving further away from the optimal amount of wealth inequality, which is not zero. In other words, the proportion of rich to poor is skewing further away from optimal, which could be measured by a curve showing the wealth one has as a proportion of the next-wealthiest person, or by a graph showing the percentage of global wealth owned by a given equal-sized fraction of all people (i.e. the top 1% owns X%, the next 1% owns Y%). A perfectly flat graph indicates perfect communism. A sharply inflected curve indicates oligarchic plutocracy. An unspecified (and likely undiscovered) shape would be optimal economic conditions for civilization as a whole. My concern is that we are moving further away from that presumed optimum in the direction of oligarchic plutocracy, which historically has resulted in violent rebellion, every time it has been observed.