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What's the elephant in that metaphor? That the rich make the poor better off by proximity? If so, I think you're missing the point. It's not a particularly g

What's the elephant in that metaphor? That the rich make the poor better off by proximity? If so, I think you're missing the point. It's not a particularly good thing to have lots of people in "tolerable poverty" rather than total squalor. The slight reduction in suffering isn't enough. The real elephant in the room is the long term result of massive inequality. Social unrest, violence, revolution. History is littered with these outcomes, and many of those examples end with public executions.

avar 8y ago
No, the elephant in the room is what supposed issues income inequality creates. Surely if there's such a discrepancy in this number between different states that's going to be measurable in some way. My biases align with the sentiments of the article. I think that income inequality is bad, but that doesn't make me immune to recognizing lazy journalism. The article does nothing to question that assumption. If an increase in income inequality makes the difference between "tolerable poverty" and "total squalor", isn't there going to be more of the latter in New York than West Virgina? The map in this article is almost the exact opposite of the one in the article, showing an inverse correlation between income inequality and the poverty rate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_poverty_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ... So what exactly are the negative effects? I'm sure there's some, but the article isn't helping us talk about those.
taneq 8y ago
> The real elephant in the room is the long term result of massive inequality. Is all that violence really the result of inequality? Or is it the result of poverty? If the absolute poorest people lived in middle-class comfort I can't see them plotting a revolution, no matter how large a boat their neighbour owned.

avar 8y ago

No, the elephant in the room is what supposed issues income inequality creates. Surely if there's such a discrepancy in this number between different states that's going to be measurable in some way. My biases align with the sentiments of the article. I think that income inequality is bad, but that doesn't make me immune to recognizing lazy journalism. The article does nothing to question that assumption. If an increase in income inequality makes the difference between "tolerable poverty" and "total squalor", isn't there going to be more of the latter in New York than West Virgina? The map in this article is almost the exact opposite of the one in the article, showing an inverse correlation between income inequality and the poverty rate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_poverty_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ... So what exactly are the negative effects? I'm sure there's some, but the article isn't helping us talk about those.

taneq 8y ago

> The real elephant in the room is the long term result of massive inequality. Is all that violence really the result of inequality? Or is it the result of poverty? If the absolute poorest people lived in middle-class comfort I can't see them plotting a revolution, no matter how large a boat their neighbour owned.