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> Is wealth inequality inherently bad? Lack of agency is. When people are not allowed to take decisions on their own they are unhappy. Once money covers your
by kartan 8y ago
> Is wealth inequality inherently bad?
Lack of agency is. When people are not allowed to take decisions on their own they are unhappy.
Once money covers your basic needs. Money becomes power. High wealth inequality is directly linked to high power inequality.
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2016/2/how-the-rich-control-policymaking.html http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2016/2/how-the-rich-co...
- Of the policies listed on the chart, the only one that was passed within four years was the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was opposed by the lowest-income voters and the median voter. On the other hand, the three policies supported by the bottom and middle deciles but opposed by the richest decile — ranging from tax increases to workplace protections — never passed. Across the board, the richest are most skeptical of redistributive policies.
From: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-bir...
- Rising immobility and rising inequality aren’t like two pieces of driftwood that happen to have shown up on the beach at the same time, he noted. They wash up together on every shore.
So, yes. Lack of wealth inequality is bad.
- BerislavLopac 8y agoWealth and power inequalities are correlated in modern Western societies because they are set up that way. Every society in history has had some level of power inequality, but the source of that inequality varied with different societies, and was not always correlated with wealth. In Nazi Germany, Jews were traditionally quite wealthy, but they had practically no power; in other authoritarian and/or militaristic regimes, the source of power is usually based on politics or military structure. The power in European feudalism was originally based on land ownership (so wealth-based), but in later stages it became based purely on nobility, so a dead broke nobleman could have had more power than a wealthy merchant (which led to various revolutions). The danger of equating wealth inequality with power inequality lies in the common belief that removing the former will remove the latter, but this is not the case: it will just be replaced with a different source for the power; a different type of "wealth" if you want.