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These discussions really aren't going to go anywhere productive, it's pure politics. I flag both the ones I disagree with and agree with, though I'll comment to
by lionhearted 16y ago
These discussions really aren't going to go anywhere productive, it's pure politics. I flag both the ones I disagree with and agree with, though I'll comment too if the community decides not to flag because it's worth talking about.
Commenting here - there's two biases they're missing. The first is the "middle choice" bias. If you give people three options: "Do you prefer nothing, a medium amount, or a large amount?" overwhelmingly the middle will be chosen. That's before getting into the merits - when you give someone uneducated on a topic a choice, intuition defaults to the middle.
Second is the word "distribution" - wealth isn't actually distributed. It's built, mined, manufactured, planted, harvested, bartered, bought, sold, negotiated, renovated, cleaned, transported, traded, invented, shipped, developed, and many more things. But it's not distributed. The word itself is flawed, though unfortunately, the most obvious other way to describe is also flawed. ("Should people who honestly build and create wealth be allowed to keep it or have it taken from them by force?" is biased in the other direction) But regardless of questions on framing a debate and choice of words, I doubt this sort of post is going to lead to a good discussion. Someone in favor of mandatory-wealth-moving-aroundedness is going to reply that distribution is a fine choice of word. Someone against is going to reply no it isn't, and taking-by-force is an accurate description. In the end, no one's mind will be changed, and we'll have learned nothing new or interesting.
- ajscherer 16y agoThe word "distribution" has a meaning in statistics that is perfectly appropriate and correctly applied in this situation. To wit: "A set of numbers and their frequency of occurrence collected from measurements over a statistical population."
- lionhearted 16y agoIn the context of "redistribution of wealth" people aren't talking about statistical distributions.
- lotharbot 16y agoAnother missing bias: people tend to think of wealth in terms of income rather than accumulation of assets. That is, they think in terms of what comes in over the short term rather than what's built up over the long term. To clarify: imagine a society where everyone makes the exact same income up until retirement (50 years in the workforce), and everyone saves the same percentage of their income each year in a personal retirement fund. Assume also that retirees spend their assets down to zero by death in a linear way. In this society with perfectly even income distribution, wealth by quintile will be as follows: Top quintile (40+ years working, or newly retired): 36% Second quintile: 28% Middle quintile: 20% Fourth quintile: 12% Bottom quintile (<10 years working): 4% According to the article, the group "most heavily skewed toward a top-heavy distribution" (those earning >$100k) gave their ideal as only slightly out of line with this. I don't think it's rational to conclude the "most skewed" group actually believes wealth should be distributed according to an almost-identical-salaries-for-all model; I think it's more rational to conclude that the people surveyed are using a flawed mental model of wealth that doesn't properly account for accumulation over time.