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Capitalism and Inequality

• Flenser 8y ago
  I'm trying to find an essay I remember reading in the past 5 years titled something like "Inequality in Equalville" but my googling isn't finding it. Does anyone remember what it was called?
  • Flenser 8y ago
    Found it: http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2011-01-10-inequality-in-equalland.html http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2011-01-10-inequality-in-equ...
• umvi 8y ago
  I just don't understand how inequality can be truly eliminated in a world where people are motivated by money and power. Until you can build a society where people actually love and care for each other instead of themselves, a certain percentage of the population will always try to become more equal than the others. And, they will become more equal than the others, just like the pigs in Animal Farm, because once you have power, you can change any rules.
  • strikelaserclaw 8y ago
    I don't think the goal is to build an "equal" society, which god knows will never work because people are just so different. I think the ideal goal is to build a society which even the lowest members of society have their basic needs met, a meal, a roof, health care.
    • arez 8y ago
      you just described the system of the scandinavian countries
    • maxxxxx 8y ago
      I would go one step further and say that all levels of society should benefit on average equally from growth. It's ok that higher incomes get a larger share but that share shouldn't be growing disproportionately as it has done over the last decades.
    • claudiawerner 8y ago
      This is correct; this is even what the socialists argued for[0] and at least according to SEP[1] there is only one identifiable proposal of a "perfect" equality (as some in this thread have taken it to be) in the history of philosophy. The confusion over what [in]equality means and what can or should be reduced is a sticking point in a lot of political debates. [0] "When we say that experience and reason prove that men are not equal, we mean by equality, equality in abilities or similarity in physical strength and mental ability. [...] It goes without saying that in this respect men are not equal. No sensible person and no socialist forgets this. But this kind of equality has nothing whatever to do with socialism. In brief, when socialists speak of equality they always mean social equality, equality of social status, and not by any means the physical and mental equality of individuals." - V.I. Lenin, "A Liberal Professor on Equality" (1914) [1] "Simple equality, meaning everyone being furnished with the same material level of goods and services, represents a strict position as far as distributive justice is concerned. It is generally rejected as untenable. Hence with the possible exception of Barbeuf (1796), no prominent author or movement has demanded strict equality."
  • tonyedgecombe 8y ago
    You clearly can because some countries do much better than others. The trick is to avoid throwing out the baby with the bath water.
  • tomp 8y ago
    No, it won't work. You get inequality even in money-less societies. E.g. most people use Instagram not for money, but they still compete, and feel good/bad due to inequality - they compete for likes, followers, photo quality, ... - in other words, status. It's deep in the human psyche. I don't think we can escape it.
    • moate 8y ago
      I think most of us taking up this fight are perfectly fine with people fighting for status and visibility if there aren't children dying of curable diseases and homeless people dying in the streets.
      • tomp 8y ago
        > there aren't children dying of curable diseases and homeless people dying in the streets Then that should be the goal, not eliminating inequality. At least, that's my goal - I see more downsides than upsides from eliminating inequality altogether (e.g. the downfall of communism, no Elon Musk, etc)
  • vanderZwan 8y ago
    There's a ton of prisoner's dilemma-inspired research into this that has many types of answers to this question. Not perfect answers (perfect equality is not attainable), but interesting options still. For example, as soon as you have a system that allows for punishing each other, then people turn out to be willing to punish cheaters even at their own expense. And the addition of that to group dynamics tends to make it self-stabilizing. If many in the group can chip in to gravely punish a cheater at a small cost to themselves, the group can become quite stable and egalitarian. But I can also see how that can be stifling and oppressive-by-majority (think small-minded villages).
  • ishjoh 8y ago
    This reminds me of a quote by the historian Will Durant. "Nature smiles at the union of freedom and equality in our utopias. For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies."
    • kragacles 8y ago
      Created an account just to thank you for the post; one of my favorite Will Durant quotes. And so true.
  • simonh 8y ago
    The thing is it's not just money and power that motivate inequality, it's freedom. In a truly free society, some people will turn out to be particularly talented, or motivated, or hard working, or lucky and will end up benefiting from those things. Other people will choose to do things of limited or no economic benefit, or choose or only show any ability at undemanding jobs, or be the victims of illness, accidents or other obstacles. Then there's always a few people who are criminal, or will cheat the system. The thing is we do need to encourage people to want to work hard, find something they are talented at and do jobs that have large economic returns for themselves and society. We all benefit from this. People who work hard, take risks, build business, employ lots of people and provide valuable goods and services to their customers deserve to be well compensated. If they are to grow their business and employ people, how are they going to do that if they are not well compensated? I do believe in a fair and progressive society. I live in the Uk and I think on balance we get this about right. We have a functioning social safety net, including a world class health service that's free at the point of use. We have a decent education system that's free for all up to secondary level. I wish we had free university education, but that would be tough to find the funds for. Yet we also have a dynamic and productive economy that funds all of that. The thing is you can't have the social safety net and free health and education without a well functioning economy. The resources have to come from somewhere. It's not perfect by a long shot, but not everyone that is wealthy got there by cheating.
    • mberning 8y ago
      One of the few quality comments in this thread. Thank you.
      • throwaway1984b 8y ago
        I agree. I'd like to clarify my reply to the GP is only with regard to the UK not really being fair and progressive to all who are in its society. With regard to the other items, about the importance of reward and economy, etc., I agree.
    • throwaway1984b 8y ago
      I live in the UK too, and sadly I must disagree that we have a fair and progressive society or a functional social safety net at the moment. There are a great many people outside the system, for whom the system doesn't function. Many different groups. Abandoned elderly. Abandoned young people leaving care. But I'll talk about just one of the groups for whom the safety net is failing - migrants. There is a large cohort of people who are long-term denied access to NHS care ("right to healthcare" is a boolean flag in a database), denied lawful access to housing ("right to rent anywhere" is a boolean flag in a database), cannot claim any government benefits ("recourse to public funds" is a boolean flag in a database), and cannot work -- absurdly, not even volunteer work -- and so, perversely, cannot pay tax. Try imagining how it feels to have an easily cured, but terminal if untreated disease in that scenario. And try to imagine what happens if you are pregnant or break a leg. Yes, pregnant people avoid hospital in the UK for fear of discovery and forced break-up of their existing family. Try imagining being dependent on friends to provide food and a place to sleep. Because no housing agency will rent to you, and you have no money, and no matter what your skills, you're not allowed to use them. Try imagining getting your healthcare from secret places, run by doctors who do it on the side, and it has to stay out of your medical records, Try imagining every business you start has to be an illegal business, no matter how innocent it is. Try imagining everything you make, everything you build, everything you own, and everyone you know and care about including your own family, could be separated permanently from you in a midnight raid at any time. Yes, families are permanently broken up in midnight raids. Try imagining your mental health, and try imagining that you daren't speak to any therapists about what's really happening in your life. And try imagining, you have done everything by the book. You are innocent. Every application, every fee, every bit of paperwork, every bit of evidence. You're married, you've been here for 30 years, you have a connection to the UK, you've paid £x0,000+ in fees, you've been bounced around the system for years or in some cases decades in this state. But the system rejects you, or keeps you in limbo, for reasons lawyers can't explain, civil servants don't explain, and judges overturn - if you're lucky enough to afford to get in front of one. You are innocent, but screwed. I know people in that kind of situation. Because of those circumstances, they rely on friends to provide all their food and accommodation, they can't use basic services to look after themselves, they are permanently scared of losing everything, and they daren't speak to almost anyone about it. Those are the lucky ones - they have friends who will do that, for years, at personal cost to themselves. I have a lot of admiration for friends who will do that. And they do it secretly. You might know someone, without knowing. It's a big strain on everyone, and it certainly isn't a functioning social safety net. I don't regard it as a fair and progressive society if it's "more fair to some than others", to paraphrase Orwell. The worst part, for me? That so many people of the UK seem to celebrate this. They want more of it. There is an unpleasant "I've got mine, and they deserve it" attitude all over the place. Certainly not everyone is like that. But too many are. Lead, perhaps, by the current PM, who was chief architect of much of the hostile environment (it hasn't always been like this in the UK, it got much worse), and continues to encourage it.
  • thinkingemote 8y ago
    One thought experiment is to think that people are motivated by love and empathy to their family and neighbors and future generations and it's this very thing which leads to war and power and inequality. People are motivated to succeed for their family and society not for power and money on its own. They want their sons and daughters and their family and their family's family to also do well. The manic evil tycoon is a fairy tale. Now I think Marxism or communism also agreed that people were motivated by love for their family and society so they sought to get rid of the family. more Brave New World than Animal Farm.
• colinyoung 8y ago
  He says he wants a new narrative, but makes no suggestion of how we can curb inequality other than the standard Valley tech-bro "government is hella inefficient" statement.
  • hockeybias 8y ago
    No. He says Times of change are times of change. And we can’t change some things but not everything... And that’s where we are. We are not willing to move away from the things of the past to get the things of the future. So our elected officials decide to try to give us both and we struggle with how to pay for it all.
  • jasode 8y ago
    >, but makes no suggestion of how we can curb inequality Fred's version of "curb inequality" is different than yours. He's saying there's moral vs immoral inequality: - immoral inequality: billionaires exist while poor people don't have basic needs met - moral inequality: billionaires are ok if the poorest people have adequate healthcare, education, and some UBI His blog post is about moving the narrative towards the 2nd scenario of inequality. One can also disagree with Fred's 2nd scenario. I'm just pointing out the nuance in his essay.
    • samastur 8y ago
      I am tired of this shtick where when companies fail, it is a beauty of free market at work, but when government projects do, it is because government is inefficient and same people who keep expounding how you have to put money into all sorts of ridiculous ideas because you can't tell which one will work, turn around, lose all humility and just know how they could do better governing.
      • pcstl 8y ago
        The main difference is that companies fail with their own cash (or that of private investors) and everyone who loses money in the process had contributed that money voluntarily. When government fails, it’s with the money of taxpayers who had no choice of not contributing and who might in fact have been heavily opposed to the failed project.
• rglover 8y ago
  A good place to start combatting inequality is the education system. It's a long-term bet, but improving our schools, the information they give students, and the skills they prepare them with for life will vastly improve their chances of success. The "obedient worker" model of education is obsolete. Kids should be given more freedom to explore (a la the Montessori Method). They're inherently creative and we should nurture that, not stifle it. Curricula based on practical work that teaches high-level concepts like organization, perseverance, and patience would do wonders. Add in basic finance skills and boy howdy. Give a kid context and I'd bet they'd shine. "Okay kids, we're going to learn mathematics by learning how to design a space shuttle." That is easily a full semester/year long project that could touch on a TON of different topics. Kids wouldn't be left out because different jobs in designing the space shuttle could be assigned, each touching on core concepts (e.g., "hold a successful meeting with five other students to decide what happens if an engine fails").
  • frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago
    A better way to start combatting inequality through the education system would be to outlaw private schools, end the funding of public schools through property (or any other local) tax, allow any kid to go to any public school anywhere, make public college free and make legacy admissions illegal. In order to fight inequality we must be willing to place ourselves in the same bucket as poor people. However policies like the ones I mentioned are hated exactly because they do that and so we look to other, more technocratic methods which only serve to triangulate us closer to 'separate but equal.' It's a sham and we should pull the band-aid off.
  • cal5k 8y ago
    Here's the problem, though: what do you do about individuals with a low IQ? Not even crazy low, but low enough that STEM fields are out of their grasp? There's little evidence that IQ can be substantially increased through education... and I think those of us who pursued that path tend to incorrectly assume it's open to anyone if they just had a better school.
    • umvi 8y ago
• nateberkopec 8y ago
  FTA: >I also understand that government is bloated and there are many places where we could cut spending The problem with this critique (the right-wing rallying cry since at least Reagan) is that no one ever wants to cut any particular program (which Fred acknowledges later in his charter school story). The right in the US, for example, bemoans government spending every year, then doesn't cut any spending, raises military spending, and then cuts taxes. Again, Fred acknowledges this, but doesn't take the next step of doing the unpopular, hard work of deciding where we can size down. I'd like to hear exactly what spending Fred thinks we should cut, otherwise this position is pretty empty. > If we were to force it to go through the same technological revolution that the private sector is going through, we would see massive efficiencies Again, this is what the Republican party has been saying for 30 years, but has been unable to deliver. We can say we want "more efficient government" until the cows come home, but there is something in the system that is preventing us from doing so. What is that thing? Let's talk about that. Otherwise, this post is just a rehash of Republican talking points and slogans, without any real proposals.
  • BurningFrog 8y ago
    A lot of people wants to cut a lot of spending!! It is politically impossible because the spending has very strong political power behind it. That's why it exists in the first place.
    • ksdale 8y ago
      A lot of people say they want to cut a lot of spending, but everyone wants to cut different things. Ask half a dozen people what they want to cut and they’ll say things like everything but military spending, or everything but Medicare or Medicaid or SS, and after you tally up the un-cuttables and cut everything else, you’ve still got a budget that’s 95% of the current one.
      • sokoloff 8y ago
        I’m not anti-military by any means, but I’d be more than happy to cut the JSF project (and replace it with something else, so not 100% net savings). The problem as I see it is the same outcome but different mechanisms as you describe. Those who benefit from a project are very willing to spend time, energy, thought, and money to preserve the status quo, while those who are opposed have a very diffuse opposition to most of the specific programs.
• strikelaserclaw 8y ago
  I agree with the author but how exactly do we fund a basic income type system for the masses without raising taxes on someone or some entity?
  • conanbatt 8y ago
    Carving out the government. The US government today spends 23k per person/year. https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/per_capita https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/per_capita
    • notahacker 8y ago
      That figure mostly shows how little wiggle room to create a UBI exists. I have a feeling that eliminating all funding for education and healthcare to create a new $12k pa handout for people not currently entitled to welfare or social security might not be a universally popular move...
      • conanbatt 8y ago
        I think it shows plenty of wiggle room. You think all the dollars that go to health spending are well spent? 5k year per capita means that the government spends 400U$S per person for all the health expenditures it has, on top of the 400--700~ a month american spend for PPO plans for themselves without getting government health assistance. Just pensions and healthcare are almost half the expenditures, 2 things absolutely in the realm of inefficiency.
        • notahacker 8y ago
          I don't think the US healthcare budget can't be improved. I just don't think the way to improve it is to eliminate it altogether to pay for a fraction of the US population to receive $12k handouts instead. And the pensions budget is mostly spent on disbursing cash to people with the right social security number - precisely the thing you're advocating doing more of....
    • 8y ago
• golemotron 8y ago
  In an ideal world, school kids would be taught how power law networks work - how they result from preferential attachment. Then they'd be able to connect the pieces and see that popularity and capitalism are the same and produce the same inequalities. Inequality is not about money.
  • quacked 8y ago
    Exactly. This is what foster inequality among individuals doesn't go away with a different economic system.
  • plainOldText 8y ago
    Agreed. We need more tools to study complexity, and the study of networks is one such tool.
• ThrustVectoring 8y ago
  Concentration of wealth is the price we pay as a society for having a system where we pay people to give us what we want. It's extraordinarily difficult to have an Amazon without a Bezos, or a Microsoft without a Gates, or a Walmart without a Walton. This isn't to say that we should ignore concentration of wealth, or that we shouldn't ensure that wealth generation produces positive externalities. Rather, we should remain aware of the tradeoffs we're necessarily making when we tamp down on inequality.
  • _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
    > It's extraordinarily difficult to have an Amazon without a Bezos, or a Microsoft without a Gates, or a Walmart without a Walton. This presupposes that any of these are desirable.
    • ThrustVectoring 8y ago
      For what it's worth, more affordable consumer goods are way more important to the everyday blue-collar folks who tend to not be the readership of this forum. If you're making six figures, you care a lot less about a thirty cents a pound price difference of ground beef, and can afford to care about the concentration and centralization of the retail industry.
      • _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
        I'm not talking about the desirability of large corporations generally, but about those three particular examples. There are large companies like Costco (though obviously Costco is not targetting blue-collar people as much as say Walmart) that deliver cheaper goods via economies of scale but are organised rather differently from Walmart or Amazon.
        • ThrustVectoring 8y ago
          How do you propose interfering with Walmart's ability to compete aggressively on price without interfering with Costco's?
• jawns 8y ago
  So many people think that capitalism and socialism are the only economic systems -- two ends of a spectrum, and society needs to decide where on that spectrum it falls. The English writer G.K. Chesterton, who popularized the idea of distributist economics, calls distributism a "third way" that doesn't fall on the spectrum, but sits outside the line entirely. Chesterton pointed out that both capitalism and socialism entail consolidation of ownership of productive property. Under capitalism, you end up with Big Business, and under socialism you end up with Big Government. Chesterton advocated for distributism, where the ideal is that the ownership of productive property should be as widely distributed as possible. Note that distributism does not advocate for a redistribution of wealth, but rather economic policies that make widespread ownership possible, such as those that help address some of the disadvantages that small businesses and worker- and consumer-owned cooperatives face when it comes to competing against megacorps.
  • claudiawerner 8y ago
    >Chesterton pointed out that both capitalism and socialism entail consolidation of ownership of productive property. Under capitalism, you end up with Big Business, and under socialism you end up with Big Government. Is Chesterton aware that (going by what you describe here) what he wants is exactly what both Marx (in Critique of the Gotha Program) and the anarcho-Communist socialists wanted all along? Furthermore, post-Marxist socialisms like John Roemer's argue for a redistribution of productive resources. As to whether this solves what researchers see as exploitation inherent in today's system remains a question.
  • _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
    Distributism also has an interesting model for devolution of power structures generally (not, of course, devolving everything in the same way or to the same extent, but rather according to the relevant properties of the thing/institution).
  • rapnie 8y ago
    Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism
  • 8y ago
• GoodJokes 8y ago
  Exploitation of the worker is the main driver of I equality. People don’t become billionaires without exploiting workers. Perhaps this person should look at higher taxes on the rich as redistributing resources in a more fair way. Fighting the wrong on exploitation. Also, I hope his kids laughed in his face. What a chud.
• ashtonbaker 8y ago
  That headline from The Hill seems a bit disingenuous. The full quote was: > “I do think that a system that allows billionaires to exist when there are parts of Alabama where people are still getting ringworm because they don’t have access to public health is wrong” And also: > “It’s not to say someone like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet are immoral people,” she said. “I don’t believe that.” Both of which seem basically in agreement with Fred's response to the quote.
  • kylestlb 8y ago
    Yeah. Author claims AOC/followers are ignorant yet falls into the clickbait headline trap. Yikes.
  • refurb 8y ago
    Ringworm is an odd disease to pick out. It's not a parasite, it's a fungal infection of the skin and quite common. Even if people have access to quality healthcare, they can still get ringworm. And in fact, you can self-treat with over the counter anti-fungals. I think the author of that quote doesn't know what ringworm is.
    • helen___keller 8y ago
      Correct, "(Also, for what it’s worth - I meant to say hookworm*)": https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1087884746129108993 https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1087884746129108993
    • ahallock 8y ago
      You are 100% correct. I remember wrestlers getting it in high school and it was easily treatable.
      • rco8786 8y ago
        AOC corrected later that she misspoke, meant to say hookworm.
    • smileysteve 8y ago
• quantumwoke 8y ago
  I find myself wanting more specifics from this short essay. A lot is said by the author who has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo with vague references to UBI and other changes but no concrete policies that would actually implement real change in society. As is, the Silicon Valley establishment is certainly not invested in paying more tax, thank you very much. While I don't believe billionaires are inherently immoral, I would like to see sample implementations of UBI rather than yet more posts equivocating about it.
• kylestlb 8y ago
  "The one part of the economy that seems immune to re-imagination is the government. If we were to force it to go through the same technological revolution that the private sector is going through, we would see massive efficiencies, and massive job losses, that would free up a huge amount of capital that could be used to pay for things like medical care for all, affordable education for all, and some amount of income for all." What would this look like? The author doesn't really back up their claims from the first stanza with this massive hand-wavey argument. I am all for reimagining the government but I'm a little wary of throwing technology at a problem and expecting it to go away.
  • maxxxxx 8y ago
    You would probably have to run government like a company which basically means a dictatorship where management makes all decisions.
    • tlb 8y ago
      The exact opposite approach would be better. You want it to work like a healthy part of the economy, which means companies of all sizes competing to provide better services at lower costs.
      • maxxxxx 8y ago
        Who makes the decision to pick the best service? Essentially government contracting in theory works exactly like you are describing.
        • pcstl 8y ago
          Government contracting is heavily incentivized to privilege companies which have close ties to government officials. Have a look at the political scandals of the last 8 years in Brazil. Nearly all of them had to do with officials getting “favors” from companies in exchange for government investment and contracting deals. As long as the government deals in the peoples’ money instead of suffering from its own choices, you cannot compare government contracting with the open market.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• griffinkelly 8y ago
  From a fiscal perspective a higher tax rate would not make much of a dent in the the US deficit; a piece in the WSJ addressed much of it: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-crippling-cost-of-70-tax-rates-11548104300 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-crippling-cost-of-70-tax-ra...
• TaylorAlexander 8y ago
  So, a few things. First, I don’t feel like the author really addresses the problems people have with inequality. In my mind, the real issue is that the floor is too low, which is related to inequality. If one person makes a billion dollars a year and another person can’t make $1000 a year, they’re very unequal. If we could adjust the system so the first person still makes a billion a year but the second person makes $100k/yr, we’ve reduced inequality. But we have huge structural problems in the US that I think could be mitigated by stronger social support programs. I’m a “libertarian socialist” which is a real thing, but it means I don’t really advocate that we use the government to form social programs, but I do strongly advocate that we form social programs through voluntary means. Unfortunately the left ignores the ways we could help each other without the government and the right ignores the fact that some people actually want to pay to help others. I feel as though the right could get a lot of what they want by working with the left to form strong voluntary social support programs that compare favorably to government programs. However, I’m not against using the government to help people. Martin Luther King Jr was a brilliant man who understood the needs of his people, and he advocated both for community power and for government programs. We have real problems in the US that leave millions struggling to feed themselves. Millions our children grow up with poor schooling, which can lead bright people down a dark path. Soon we throw them in prison and forget about them. My issue with billionaires is not that we have billionaires, but that we have billionaires and starving people. We have homeless people who die every winter because it gets too cold. We have enough money to care for them! The wealth is there. But we’ve failed to organize ourselves well enough to use it effectively. I don’t mind billionaires, but I do mind that we have billionaires and destitute people. We have enough wealth to do better. It is not immoral in itself to have billionaires, but I do think a system that produces both billionaires and poverty is wrong. The left wants a solution and all they can think of is taxes. I really wish the right would see that helping build community power would reduce the need for government support. Also someone please break the military industrial complex.
• helen___keller 8y ago
  This entire post is based on a strawman argument. AoC said that a system that allows billionaires to emerge alongside extreme poverty is immoral - with reference to hookworm(which she incorrectly referred to as ringworm) in Alabama. It's hard to disagree with that, and it's a VERY different point than claiming billionaires should not exist (which OP argues against). By the way, the point AoC was trying to make when put in context is exactly the argument that the OP was making, which is that people getting rich is OK but it's immoral that people are getting rich and also people are living in extreme poverty, so we should improve the system so people aren't living in extreme poverty. Where OP differs from AoC is (of course) in his assessment of how we eliminate extreme poverty - AoC is famously advocating a 70% marginal tax rate, while OP suggested some unspecified mix of "technological improvement" and "re-imagining of government" to achieve elimination of poverty. Frankly I think OP is just naive. Maybe he thinks government is literally in the stone age with an army of clerks shuffling paperwork, but I just don't see how eliminating some unnecessary jobs (useful, yes) in government can achieve "medical care for all, affordable education for all, and some amount of income for all" (OP's listed aims). On top of that, ANY change to government is inherently political. The kind of revolutionary upgrades in government efficiency that OP wants would need to be a major party initiative - which would be opposed by the opposite party, watered down during negotiations, and subjected to compromise by the political process. This is simply a fact about how the world works. We're not an autocracy which means we don't get a visionary Steve Jobs figure who can dictate what the government will do for the next 10 years, and we have to accept both the good and the bad that comes with that. To think that technology will magically save us from real world problems plaguing real people by "reimagining government" and "cutting unnecessary jobs" is literally wishful thinking. It belongs in a bygone era where tech enthusiasts were sure facebook and google would revolutionize the world by spreading democratic and free speech ideals to every corner of the earth. There aren't easy solutions to every hard problem and OP doesn't seem to appreciate this fact.
  • zethus 8y ago
    Completely unrelated to the content of your post, but I find it interesting that you lowercase the o in AOC as if it's a technology like IoT.
• klaudius 8y ago
  Inequality is a consequence of technological progress and barriers to entry. Some human activities today have high level of productivity. A doctor can only serve one patient at a time. Top tier athletes or actors can serve millions of people simultaneously. Local bar can serve fewer people than Facebook and those who own a local bar will be much poorer than those who own Facebook. - Another component are barriers to entry. Some professions are relying on brand power (acting) and others on credentials (surgeons). Anyone can do a job of a janitor, but not everyone can be a highly skilled engineer or surgeon or be highly recognizable name in entertainment. Some businesses have barriers to entry (economy of scale, networks effects) while others are in fierce competition. -- People who are poor are doing relatively unskilled, low productivity work (service industry professions). People who are wealthy are relying on high productivity and barriers to entry. Why is Zuckerberg so wealthy? Because Zuckerberg's business can serve billions of people every day directly and has monopoly power due to network effects. Some low level Facebook employee is selling his services to one company which is a low productivity activity (they are not selling anything directly to billions of people, but selling services to one company) and those services can probably be done by millions of people around the world so the barriers to entry are low. Once you understand this, you will realize that inequality is a structural thing.
  • zip1234 8y ago
    Totally agree--look at ANY communist experiment. All ended up with massive amounts of inequality (in addition to incredible poverty).
• ak39 8y ago
  I’m not a millennial but I’m with his kids. Tax the wealthy. Rebalance directly. Any notion of trickledown and secondary effect rebalancing is fraught with complexities and conditionalities. It would also take an entire generation to figure out whether the approach worked or not.
  • refurb 8y ago
    The US has a more progressive taxation scheme than a lot of other countries.[1] [1]https://www.economist.com/united-states/2017/11/23/american-taxes-are-unusually-progressive-government-spending-is-not https://www.economist.com/united-states/2017/11/23/american-...
• specialist 8y ago
  Creating the middle class was a deliberate policy choice [1]. Hard fought and narrowly won. That the rich get richer is just math. It's not a value statement. Without active wealth redistribution, accelerating inequity is inevitable. -- I personally don't care how we do it. UBI, cashectomies of windfall profits, restoring progressive taxation to subsidize the safety net. Whatever. I am tired, however, of the bickering over the details. As though the primary issue at hand is tax brackets and capital gains. These food fights just muddy the core conundrum. The trick is balancing capitalism with democracy, lifting the floor without lowering the ceiling. -- [1] Kevin Phillips, Reagan's conservative economist, detailed our history of purposefully creating a middle class and the upper class' efforts to thwart such efforts: Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich Paperback [2003] https://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Democracy-Political-History-American/dp/0767905342 https://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Democracy-Political-History-Am...
  • Ygg2 8y ago
    > Without active wealth redistribution, accelerating inequity is inevitable. Having watched Mark Blyth, he has a theory that the capitalistic system can operate in one of two modes (https://vimeo.com/247596824 https://vimeo.com/247596824): A) Mode that favors the workers (US before 1970) B) Mode that favors the capitalists (US after Reagan & Thatcher) When capitalism is in Mode A), you get horrible level of inflation, but rising wages and profits for the workers (and since one man's wage is another man's expense the prices rise too). It creates great environment for taking credits, since inflation devours any profit bank can make on a credit. This hurts the returns of capitalist and investors, who stage a "market-friendly revolution" that will change system to B). When capitalism is in Mode B) you get stagnating wages, and rising profits for capitalists. On the other hand, this causes inequality. Credits are available, but generally a bad idea, since the wages are decreasing. Usually in this environment the Supply Chain is Globalized making it really hard for Labor to move, but making it super easy for Capital to transfer (as Mark says "Good luck striking, if I can move my production to China")
    • CryptoPunk 8y ago
      1. Income redistribution via social welfare programs has massively increased since 1970. The actual statistics contradict the theses of the equality sophists. 2. The unions that pushed wages up 1950-1970 also eroded America's manufacturing competitiveness and efficiency, which contributed to the outsourcing of manufacturing. The reason union membership numbers in the private sector declined was because the industries that employed unions contracted. And that was largely the doing of unions and the very generous collective bargaining agreements they got for themselves. IOW the gains they brought about were not sustainable. In contrast, the wage gains attained in the pre-union, free market era of the late 19th century were sustainable. They accompanied an increase in the competitiveness of American manufacturing, instead of coming at its expense.
• java_script 8y ago
  The author doesn't back up anything, quotes no theory on either side, no history or economic data. It contains killer anecdotes and gut feelings though - a ratio of about 100%-0% between navel gazing and chin scratching VS reading Marxist theory where people have, you know, talked about the thing you're talking about for over a century. It's particularly stunning that an essay on inequality does not mention the word "profit". My favorite part is the killer anecdote that seals the deal at the end, which is basically the equivalent of "You dislike Wall St but you own an iPhone? Interesting". It may as well have been pulled from a boomer Facebook meme.
  • sokoloff 8y ago
    I think that being late to a rally against charter schools because you were busy trying to get your kid into a charter school is quite a bit more specific and powerful form of hypocrisy than the above meme. It’s strong evidence to me of a deep hypocrisy in a way that deciding you’d prefer an iPhone over Android is not.
    • java_script 8y ago
      No it's collective action vs individual self interest. Or actual politics versus consumerism. Not the same thing at all and should not be confused. If you think a charter or private school is the best for your kid right now and for you then that's one thing. And what is best for other families and teachers in your community may be another. You can support them politically. Also who gives a shit about the hypocrisy of protest attendees anyway? It has no bearing on the what is right.
      • sokoloff 8y ago
        > If you think a charter or private school is the best for your kid right now and for you then that's one thing. If you think that, act on that, and simultaneously seek to deny that to others, I think you’re a hypocrite and adjust the coefficient of my caring about your opinion on the topic to zero or negative.
• scrollbar 8y ago
  We are talking about opinions here, tips of extremely vast icebergs, so I'll try to be careful. Disclaimer is that I disagree with Fred, agree with AOC. I can agree with Fred that the bottom should have the basics covered, and that's the most important point here. That is, we want an economic system that allocates more resources to those at the bottom than we currently have. Where do these resources come from? I think that the presence of billionaires is simply the other side of the mathematical equation here. Assume with me that wealth follows a power law distribution. Presumably we have the ability to adjust the shape of that distribution (as AOC advocates in some way). The outcome of shifting the power law from, for example, alpha=1.5 to alpha=3.5 is a dramatic evening out of the distribution. The curve is flatter and the top earners will have less relative to the average. So you would have fewer billionaires. OK- instead of flattening out the overall curve, maybe you put a floor instead, as Fred argues for. What part of the distribution would you have to take from to add the extra tail weight? Most of the weight in the distribution is at the head, where the billionaires are... so I would assume it would come from there. Hence, no/fewer billionaires, no? I think Fred's and others' broader point is that we should continue having incentives for success. I agree. Maybe a little less incentive, though. I'm glad we have the opportunity to start discussing this topic on a national stage. EDIT: grammar
  • zanny 8y ago
    A good question to ask is how many orders of magnitude of what the average person makes do you need to make to be "incentivized" to be productive. Would the current billionaire stop participating in the economy if they suddenly could only make five orders of magnitude more than the average worker instead of six?
    • antepodius 8y ago
      They'd have their analysts re-evaluate expected profits, and, if they could increase returns by shifting some processes from their current country to somewhere else, they would.
  • tomp 8y ago
    I'm not sure what are you trying to say. Do you agree with AOC or not?! A tax rate of 1000% won't result in "fewer billionaires" as 0 of the top 10 (and approximately 0 of the top 100 I guess) billionaires made their wealth through salary. It's almost always either entrepreneurship or inheritance or marriage or more multiple of these. Taxing income won't change that. AOC's suggestion is a cheap political play that encourages the low-vs-middle-class adversity and might win her some votes, but really most billionaires would applaud it, because, again, they'll escape unscathed. She can't suggest taxing profits/capital gains/inheritance/trust funds of course, because then she'd make enemies of actually powerful people.
• eric_b 8y ago
  The discussion is always around increasing or decreasing the size and expense of the government. So I like that the author is advocating increasing efficiency instead. Doing more with the same amount of spending is a good goal. And I think there are a lot of places the government could be made more efficient. But, as a staunch capitalist myself, I believe we do need to start raising taxes on the rich. I think the 70% marginal rate on people making 10M a year is a good start, but ultimately more a token gesture than anything meaningful. It won't raise enough money, since there aren't enough of those people. We need to start counting capital gains as income. No more long term 15% rate. If your investments are kicking out money that you live on, that should be taxed at the same marginal rates as my wages! The problem of course is that the true rich have influence over the politicians. So they point the politicians at the upper middle class, and say "hey, raise the marginal rates on these people instead!" Pretty soon the narrative is "oh, you make more than 100k a year, that's immoral!" And the wealth divide would just get bigger and bigger. TLDR: We need to tax wealth in some capacity. There are many many approaches to this, but we need to find a way to actually tax the rich, not just fleece the upper middle class.
  • dantheman 8y ago
    If you tax capital gains then no one will invest unless things are 100% guaranteed. Your winnings need to cover your losses. Capital gains aren't wages
• drugme 8y ago
  I will end with a story from a book I read a few years ago. Talk is cheap. Rather than end on a touch-and-feely note, I'd much prefer that he get back to the core question: Instead of merely stating that he is a "fan" of things like Basic Income and (truly) universal education (not to mention at least having a hope of dealing in some reasonable way with climate change) -- The question to ask is: which progressive taxation measures, specifically, is he willing to publicly endorse as a means (almost certainly the only viable means) of attaining these goals? Hard numbers, please. If it isn't AOC's particular step function -- "75 percent on all income above 10 million" -- then which progressive taxation schemes would he be in favor of -- and be willing to publicly and state as much? The question of whether we "allow" billionaires or not is, to some extent, a semantic dodge. What matters is that, at the end of the day, in order to achieve any of these goals -- we pretty much have to "soak the rich" (in addition to ending corporate tax evasion and related measures). It follows from Occam's Razor and any level-headed assessment of all the ethical and economic factors involved. The only questions are when (to which we already know the answer: as soon as humanly possible) and how exactly. So again, it all comes down to hard numbers: Which progressive taxations is he willing to support? And what's the best way to get them implemented in time to avert further carnage and social disintegration -- that is, as soon as humanly possible? (AOC = Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez)
  • beaconstudios 8y ago
    he said in the article that he doesn't think higher taxes are the solution - that the government itself needs to be improved if additional programs are to be introduced.
    • drugme 8y ago
      Without any arguments or evidence that this would either (1) be attainable or (2) actually free up enough cash to fund all the good stuff he (claims to) support.
      • beaconstudios 8y ago
        2) applies to progressive taxation as well. There's no reason to believe that raising taxes on the wealthy is just a free wellspring of enough money to fund huge, nation-wide social programs. There are myriad things that can go wrong: loss of investment pools harming the economy, disincentivising entrepreneurialism, the wealthy moving abroad, the actual collectable amount being less than you'd expect (because "wealth" is a very fuzzy concept in modern economies), the actual cost of these social programs being higher than you'd expect, etc etc. Not that I want to shit all over the idea, it could equally work really well (I have no idea what the outcome would be), but a lot of the time these ideas don't receive the clear-headed analysis they deserve because they're ideological rather than logical in nature (taxation from the left, government efficiency from the right). I'd love it if we could pool all the ideas for ways to raise the minimum living standard, experiment with them and compare the results in a scientific way rather than just having two sides shouting at each other that their way is better.
• dollar 8y ago
  It is not immoral for the ant to let the grasshopper starve. We don’t have equality of risks or equality of labor. We don’t have equality of abilities. The world is not equal. Life is not fair. What is immoral is two wolves and a lamb voting what’s for dinner. This entire situation is an angry mob of participation trophy winners who want to change the rules of the game.
  • yanslookup 8y ago
    Are you implying that Fred Wilson and his ilk are lambs?
  • zanny 8y ago
    The adage is perfectly reasonable when you recognize that influence in government comes not from popularity but from money. I always refer back to the Cambridge study that correlated money to legislation and that citizens will has no impact on what becomes law[1]. So yes, there are lambs being served up for dinner by wolves, but its not that there are more wolves than lambs - the lambs simply don't get to have a say. THAT is why inequality is so detrimental to society. When money buys influence, and a few dozen men can wield as much as half of everyone else, only their desires matter. Everyone else is functionally unrepresented. [1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B/core-reader https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...
• lbj 8y ago
  The great thing about inequality is, that it's only a problem if you're the jealous sort.
• g_sch 8y ago
  Some other commenters have pointed out that The Hill selectively quoted Ocasio-Cortez in the tweet mentioned in the article, but I want to engage the selective quote ("Economic system that allows billionaires is 'immoral'") on its own, and argue that it stands on its own. I think that we've lost some perspective on how obscenely much money a billion dollars really is, and it's worth thinking about the implications of this gigantic number. Money is something we give people in exchange for labor. Is it possible to imagine any amount of labor that would be fairly compensated with a billion dollars? If a restaurant worker makes $25,000 in a year, what kind of work could one person possibly do to deserve 40,000 years' worth of restaurant wages? For that matter, we can even compare those numbers to the earnings of a software developer. If you make a salary of $150,000, it would take you 166 lifetimes (6,666 years / 40 working years in a lifetime) to make a billion dollars. I know that capitalism offers ample justification for why someone might accumulate that much money (risk! market efficiencies!) but none of those add up to a moral case for me.
  • gnarbarian 8y ago
    Without the ability for a single man to acquire that much capital we wouldn't have Tesla or SpaceX. Labor doesn't always have value. If I spend 8 hours digging a hole nobody wants there is no value in it despite strenuous effort involved. But if someone with the talent, ability, resources and balls to earn a billion and then risk it on a new company to cure cancer, or solve similarly worldwide problems does so they deserve it. I'd argue that musk and bill Gates are far more effective with their money to improve humanity as a whole than if 90% of it were distributed to the destitute. SpaceX has also proven to be far more flexible, efficient, and agile than NASA in recent memory.
• yonran 8y ago
  It’s true that the current income tax has shortcomings due to the mobility of capital owners. I think it would promote competition to focus more on wealth taxes on immobile assets (on e.g. land, patents, spectrum, and ownership of networks) as an alternative to some income taxation. See e.g. Glen Weyl’s book Radical Markets on this topic (https://www.amazon.com/Radical-Markets-Uprooting-Capitalism-Democracy/dp/0691177503 https://www.amazon.com/Radical-Markets-Uprooting-Capitalism-... https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2818494 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2818494)
• achou 8y ago
  A question for those of you in France (or Europe more generally) - many of the changes being proposed -- universal healthcare, free or low cost education, paid for with higher taxes on the wealthy -- basically already exist in your country. Yet France has seen the yellow jackets, and there seems to be a feeling of discontent that's spread far and wide throughout Europe. So my question is, why? And what does that bode for the US if we move in that direction? (BTW, out of curiosity I looked up taxes in France and I didn't realize that it had a real wealth tax, which goes up to 1.5% of all assets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_France).
  • zozbot123 8y ago
    The "feeling of discontent" in France goes far beyond the Yellow Vests protests, which are more like a "Tea Party" populist movement pushing for stagnation and short-term complacency. The low-productivity fraction of their labor force is essentially shut out of the labor market due to a combination of high taxes + extremely hostile regulatory environment. And no, they can't adopt something sensible like UBI or EITC - not without reforming the way their government is run from the ground up. Which is exactly the sort of reform the "average dudes" that are now powering the Yellow Vests protests don't want. France is FUBAR - "God-Emperor" Macron had been trying to start seriously working on fixing the mess, but he is clearly failing just like his many forerunners.
  • zanny 8y ago
    France provides healthcare and education. It doesn't guarantee food, shelter, or power. Of course there are relief programs in place if you are without, but there is a substantial difference - as can be seen in any countries welfare programs - between "everyone gets this for free all the time" and "apply and qualify for this limited offer program only if you really need it and we think you do". The equivalent of the NHS and public education for the later three would be things like widely available public housing with short enrollment periods, maybe even "public" hotels you can stay at. Public food kitchens without needs requirements - just free meals provided by the city if you want them. Free groceries, up to a threshold, per person - something like "food stamps for all". Same with electricity, you could have a "free" amount every month for what the minimum a person should have would be. Of course when you talk about it all like that you eventually just get to UBI as a means to accomplish all those without the bureaucracy. But as long as France only guarantees a portion of the bottom rung of the hierarchy of needs there will be discontent amongst those who cannot fulfill the rest through the market economy.
• SCAQTony 8y ago
  He seemingly believes that the government is a barbarous relic in need of computational analytics and technology to make it work fairly. What this has to do with capitalism was missed by me. Perhaps we can all agree that if we the people were granted a 'capitalistic infrastructure' that allowed anyone who wanted to work could work and have the most important factors in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs scale fulfilled; (food, water, shelter, electricity, security, education) we would have less envy, anger, violence towards one another and way less crime Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs scale: https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html
• Zigurd 8y ago
  Government in the US is a captive of corporations and money politics. Many laws are written by lobbying groups working for large corporations. Do you see these laws improving the quality of government?
• vernie 8y ago
  Contrary to popular belief I'm not a billionaire, just a humble centimillionaire.
• vernie 8y ago
  Give that domain over to the VideoLAN project already.
• sunshinelackof 8y ago
  While personally I don't think anyone's work can be worth billions a year, I don't think people necessarily have a problem with the dollar amount of money that the wealthy have. In my view it's the feeling of impotence and lack of agency people feel. If you work a normal job that most people would expect to work their whole lives you feel powerless for the most part. Your only option is to plug away for an indeterminate amount of time until you retire (?) And it's not guaranteed you'll work there forever as the lifespan of most jobs has shrunk. It leaves a paternalistic relationship between the business and the average worker. They don't get to feel like they're interfacing with the labor market, they're at the will of their employer. They should be grateful that your employer provides healthcare otherwise they might actually die. Maybe they should open a GoFundMe if they can't afford it. They should respect the patronage of private donations and privately funded grants your city benefits from. The reason why universal programs are attractive is because they give the average person a sense of agency. Because they're universal they aren't a "handout," they're part of what it means to interact with society. Everyone pays in and everyone gets paid out. But if they're not universal they quickly become handouts for the poor instead of features of society.
• yourbandsucks 8y ago
  This fucking guy leads with an anecdote about a family ski trip? My heart goes out to him and the other poor maligned ultra rich.
• aphextron 8y ago
  There's nothing new about rich people wanting to kill off government. Fortunately it hasn't entirely worked yet, and our current safety net (as paltry as it may be) is still somewhat protecting the vulnerable margins of our society from being mercilessly swept up in the maw of modern scorched earth capitalism. This new generation of politicians like AOC will be our savior from the last three decades of self-serving grifters picking away at what was once a great nation with a sense of civic duty.
  • ahallock 8y ago
    You completely ignore the scorched earth left by war. How is that exactly protecting the vulnerable? It would not be possible without massive entities like the State.
• socrates1998 8y ago
  Jesus this was shit post. He doesn't make any sense or have ANY decent argument in favor of billionaires. He just rambles on about how "I know a few and they don't seem like bad people" Whatever. Billionaires exist because any system where people are given different opportunities when starting out end in vastly different outcomes. Modern business scales to the point where you can create something in your basement that people around the world can buy. Bill Gates isn't 100 billion times smarter than the top software people he worked with at IBM. Yet, he is worth that much more than them. Income inequality destroys the social fabric of a community. And our country will continue down it's long dark path as long as billionaires and the rich elite hoard their wealth and power from middle and lower class Americans.
  • njarboe 8y ago
    This topic is of course ripe for a flame war, but what I think is almost always missing from this discussion is that not all "elite" rich people are all the same. How people got and use their wealth is very important in the consideration on whether or not "income inequality destroys the social fabric of a community". Paul Graham's essay "How to make wealth"[1] is a great read on this topic. One of the key values that emerged in the West was that if the people with the power of violence in society do not just take everything from the productive people, the whole society becomes much better off. The people who take by force, the rentiers, the rich who steal by fraud, the ones who just spend their days on yachts and luxurious island estates eating caviar and drinking champagne, these rich elites should be scorned and reviled. We should strive to make laws to punish them and take their wealth and power. But we do want inequality in the amount of society's assets that can be accessed by people. Hard working people who have the skills, talents, networks, drive, etc. to get important, very difficult, things accomplished should have access to greater wealth so they can do great things for society. Musk created and is the leader of SpaceX that is building reusable rockets. He also spends a great deal of time and effort running Tesla, which made the first great electric cars and is forcing positive change on the whole automobile industry. Jobs and Wozniak built and sold great personal computers. Gates may have been a bit of an asshole when running Microsoft, but he was part of bringing computers to the masses and he seems to be really interested to doing good in the world. A billionaire who has almost all of their productive assets tied up in productive activities in which they are a critical component, can do great good. They are not consuming but producing. Look for people who strive to produce win-win situations. A free market system (a system where people are free to trade with anyone else) with a strong rule of law and allowing people to keep what others give them seems to work pretty well. 80% income tax rates are not a good idea (and shouldn't we really tax wealth and not income, if we want to get rid of the idle rich?). It does not seem to me that governments will spend assets better than the best of the wealthy elite, just move it to someone that is much more unaccountable. One should remember that there are hierarchies that are built on competency and cooperation as opposed to those built on the power of violence. We should support the former and tear down the later. A hard problem, but a least something better to strive for then just generic "tax the rich" refrain. [1]http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html
• DFHippie 8y ago
  I stopped reading after this: >I also understand that government is bloated and there are many places where we could cut spending to fund these new innovative programs that could help counter the immoral wealth imbalance we have in our country. His understanding is wrong. To the extent that there's fat you can cut from the U.S. federal budget to fund other programs it's in healthcare or defense. "Waste, fraud, and abuse" are the equivalent of the Underpants Gnomes' "???". It's a placeholder for a real argument.
• jondubois 8y ago
  The fact that there are billionaires in the world is unfair. Most of them didn't create any value for society. They just captured value created by others. They were just at the right place and at the right time. Wealth is so concentrated today that it has turned capitalism into a zero-sum lottery. It's a lottery not only in the sense that there are very few winners and that the payouts are huge but also in the sense that the winners are chosen randomly. Investors invest randomly because they have no idea what's going to work; that's why less than 10% of all companies succeed. There is no skill involved in distributing capital efficiently; it's either completely random or the result of monopolistic wealth-concentration.
• smileysteve 8y ago
  I want to jump in on this because of the hookworm topic as I'm located near Alabama. The Huffington Post article on Hookworm cites a homeowner that pays a mortgage for a mobile home on land that has a broken septic system. Unfortunately for the inequality argument, the article cites utility and mortgage costs that are higher than if the homeowner were to move to a different (newer or more permanent building on a different lot. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/05/hookworm-lowndes-county-alabama-water-waste-treatment-poverty https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/05/hookworm-low... Rudolph has a $611/mo mortgage payment and $300 electricity costs -- on a trailer on a "campsite" (non appreciating asset, especially when considering the hazmat of broken septic systems). Perusing Zillow, there are many newer, larger, permanent structures, on land, ranging from 20k-150k (read $150-$600 month mortgages on appreciating property). Alabama also has a 3% downpayment step up grant program for households w/ less than $97k of income. Is this an affordable option on $1,200 month income (plus social security in 3 years,) maybe not, but it's probably more affordable than fixing a septic system on land she doesn't own and a house falling apart - and indicates rentals, especially between Lowndes Co and Montgomery or Atlanta would be viable, healthier options.
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• CryptoPunk 8y ago
  OAC appeals to the instinct of shared sacrifice. "Let's all sacrifice some of our liberty to ensure no one is left behind" It's a useful instinct in small villages of 180 closely related people. It does not work for countries constituting 300 million people with very little linking them together. First pragmatically: social democracy has tremendous adverse effects on economic growth. The poor are better off with less redistribution and a higher rate of recurring economic growth. This can be demonstrated mathematically, no matter what our gut instinct may say. Second, as a matter of principle, we do not have a moral right to force others into this shared sacrifice pact, simply on the basis of shared nationality. Billionaire or not. People may claim billionaires amidst poverty is immoral. I think it's far more immoral to violate the principle of voluntarism and force people to sacrifice alongside us.
• profalseidol 8y ago
  Yet it is the Billionaires that keep the inequality in place, they keep the minimum wage static, raise prices, destroy quality of life for the majority by removing social funding. Publicly funded projects work, CERN, NASA, the Internet, Telco Technology, all funded by taxpayers. It's proven we don't need these Billionaires. Their talent is welcome but not worth the lives of everyone else. There is plenty of great individuals that are not as greedy as your clients. > Those entrepreneurs, like Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan, Bezos, Page, Zuckerberg, build very powerful monopolies and amass billions. And what do they (or their descendants) do now? It is also worth noting that the Federal Reserve (the biggest scam of all) which keeps printing money out of thin air at will was the idea of a group that included Morgan (or Rockefeller).