5 ms·

I agree so much with this. I really find the focus on inequality weird and sort of childish. Complaining about inequality strikes me mostly as an attempt to sub

by darawk 8y ago

I agree so much with this. I really find the focus on inequality weird and sort of childish. Complaining about inequality strikes me mostly as an attempt to sublimate envy into a politically palatable narrative. What we really ought to focus on is not reducing "inequality", by pulling the ceiling down...but raising the minimum standard of living by pulling the floor up. I think UBI is an excellent way of doing that, but there are many.

Retra 8y ago
Wealth inequality is the main cause of power inequality, and is thus a major reason why something like UBI won't happen just because it benefits poor people. You can't make the world better if you are powerless, and you are powerless so long as you can be overruled by those with more wealth than you.
- darawk 8y ago
  > Wealth inequality is the main cause of power inequality, and is thus a major reason why something like UBI won't happen just because it benefits poor people. Poor people seem pretty powerful to me. In a world where rich people are infinitely powerful...what percentage of tax revenue do you think they'd be paying? 0%? 10%? The top 3% if earners paid over 50% of income tax in the US in 2016 [1]. That doesn't seem particularly powerful to me. Or, if it is, that power isn't wielded especially self-interestedly. > You can't make the world better if you are powerless, and you are powerless so long as you can be overruled by those with more wealth than you. Your inferences are correct, but your premises are wrong. And if you're worried about money influencing politics, well, i've got news for you: reducing wealth inequality is just going to make the influence of that money even less transparent than it is now. 1. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-14/top-3-of-u-s-taxpayers-paid-majority-of-income-taxes-in-2016 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-14/top-3-of-...
  - the_gastropod 8y ago
    > Poor people seem pretty powerful to me. In a world where rich people are infinitely powerful...what percentage of tax revenue do you think they'd be paying? 0%? 10%? The top 3% if earners paid over 50% of income tax in the US in 2016 [1]. That doesn't seem particularly powerful to me. Or, if it is, that power isn't wielded especially self-interestedly. Oh, give me a break. This is silly statistic often dragged out by right-wing pundits. If the entire US population earned $0 and one guy (pick anyone!) made $1 Trillion per year and paid his ~$400 Billion in taxes each year would you see him as a victim, too? Another silly example: New York, California, and Florida contribute 25% of the U.S's tax revenues, yet they don't account for 25% of congress. They don't get 25% of the electoral college votes in presidential elections. Poor them, right?
    - darawk 8y ago
      > Oh, give me a break. This is silly statistic often dragged out by right-wing pundits. If the entire US population earned $0 and one guy (pick anyone!) made $1 Trillion per year and paid his ~$400 Billion in taxes each year would you see him as a victim, too? Did I say anyone was a victim? No. You made a specific point: That the wealthy are disproportionately powerful due to income inequality. My point is: They don't seem to be powerful enough to not pay the overwhelming majority of taxes. I didn't say they were victims, or that they shouldn't be paying more in taxes. It was a counter-example to your point. > Another silly example: New York, California, and Florida contribute 25% of the U.S's tax revenues, yet they don't account for 25% of congress. They don't get 25% of the electoral college votes in presidential elections. Poor them, right? Well, actually, I would argue that yes, poor them. California and NY should be better represented in Congress and nationally, through electoral college reforms and other things, but that is pretty far afield from this discussion.
      - Retra 8y ago
        "How much tax you avoid" isn't a reliable measure of political power. Firstly, if paying taxes can work in their benefit, then there's no reason they shouldn't pay them. Secondly, "I pay your wages" is a pretty good way to influence people, and I don't see why it would fundamentally be different in congress. Thirdly, wealthy people do have more ability to avoid paying taxes. Thus the concept of "Tax havens."
jdavis703 8y ago
There’s a huge difference between the “I’m a young single college grad making $50k a year and billionaires are the reason I’m poor” narrative and literally stepping over potentially dead unsheltered people on your way to the office of a multi-billion dollar company. How can we make sure that people don’t have to sleep on the street and suffer from poor healthcare? Because currently income inequality is creating developing country, slum-like conditions in the US.
- darawk 8y ago
  > There’s a huge difference between the “I’m a young single college grad making $50k a year and billionaires are the reason I’m poor” narrative and literally stepping over potentially dead unsheltered people on your way to the office of a multi-billion dollar company. How can we make sure that people don’t have to sleep on the street and suffer from poor healthcare? Because currently income inequality is creating developing country, slum-like conditions in the US. How, exactly is income-inequality creating those conditions? It seems to me like the issue you're describing is one of a floor that is too low. Which is exactly what I said.
- BucketSort 8y ago
  > How can we make sure that people don’t have to sleep on the street and suffer from poor healthcare? The first step is a cultural change. I believe the ball is in the court of the writers, musicians, philosophers, poets, celebrities ... people involved with shaping culture. To give an example of how how toxic our culture has become, I'll recount something that just happened 30 minutes ago. There's this nice old lady near my hackerspace who operates a small food cart. Not many people visit her because where she's allowed to be is laughably secluded, so she mainly sits there all day waiting for customers. Another member of the hackerspace said he was going to Wallgreens to get a candy bar and asked if anyone else wanted something. I said: "Hey, there's the food cart lady who has that stuff and she's just a 1 minute walk away, instead of the Wallgreens which is 10 minutes away." Upon hearing this, another member grunted with disapproval. I asked what was up. He said: "She sold me a disgusting sandwich, you shouldn't support a business that is run that poorly." I replied: "She's an old lady! Did you give her any feedback on the sandwich, maybe she can improve?" Him: "A business run like that is beyond help." I'm still shocked how this person couldn't even see past the business into the person. This is a huge problem I see: we forget we are dealing with people because we classify them simply as objects of utility. Our consumerist abstractions are causing us to be quite nasty to others.
aaomidi 8y ago
Unfortunately the issue with inequality is that it breeds more inequality. Someone born into the .1% will continue to get richer and richer by literally not doing anything while others on different parts of the spectrum aren't in a position like that and many have negative assets. If the playing ground was equal at birth and people were differentiated based on their hardwork no one would complain. The issue is the playing ground is not level and every day it gets more and more skewed.
- darawk 8y ago
  > Someone born into the .1% will continue to get richer and richer by literally not doing anything while others on different parts of the spectrum aren't in a position like that and many have negative assets. What you're talking about here is wealth mobility. And I think we should definitely be talking about policies to promote that. Especially in the upwards direction.
  - aaomidi 8y ago
    We can't talk about this without talking about the inequality in wealth which is the biggest factor in economy mobility unfortunately.
    - darawk 8y ago
      > We can't talk about this without talking about the inequality in wealth which is the biggest factor in economy mobility unfortunately. That's an interesting theory. How does that work, exactly, though? How does wealth inequality squash income mobility? And if income mobility is the real goal, why are we talking about inequality, and not directly talking about mobility?
      - aaomidi 8y ago
        Honestly, I'm not an economist. But from what I've gathered from reading various opinions on this matter is that economic inequality is the main source of weak economic mobility in developed countries - especially in countries that don't have safety nets. The theory essentially is that strong economic mobility requires some "base" value of economic power. If you're born into a family with negative assets, thousands of dollars in credit card debt, bad neighborhood you're essentially starting your life with negative economic mobility and turning that positive is extremely difficult given the circumstances and in many cases you stay poor. For example, the effects of redlining is still seen to this day after nearly half a century has passed. On the other end, if you're born into a family with a strong economic background and proper investments. You're already starting your life with positive economic mobility. The way to think about it is, if you're on the bottom of the graph in terms of assets, you're going to be going further and further down (until where is the question?) and if you're on the top of the graph you're going to keep going up. College, various inheritance taxes, social safety nets, etc etc try to offset these differences by essentially making the top of the graph a little "weaker" and boosting the bottom of the graph. But is it working?
groby_b 8y ago
You might want to pay closer attention to the complaints about inequality. What that focus is about is the degree of inequality. Most people talking about it are not actually pursuing a world of absolute equality, but a world with reasonable levels of inequality, and with regulations that make a rapidly increasing spread less likely. I.e. we want floor and ceiling not too far apart, and not rapidly separating. Which means UBI alone, or minimum wage, or any number of floor-focused things are not the answer. Neither is a wealth tax, or any number of ceiling focused things the answer, by themselves.
- darawk 8y ago
  > You might want to pay closer attention to the complaints about inequality. What that focus is about is the degree of inequality. I pay quite a bit of attention to it. I'm aware of what it is people are complaining about. Everything I said stands. > Most people talking about it are not actually pursuing a world of absolute equality, but a world with reasonable levels of inequality, and with regulations that make a rapidly increasing spread less likely. I.e. we want floor and ceiling not too far apart, and not rapidly separating. Which means UBI alone, or minimum wage, or any number of floor-focused things are not the answer. Neither is a wealth tax, or any number of ceiling focused things the answer, by themselves. Why? What's good about that? What, exactly, is the benefit we get from pursuing a flat wealth distribution? People often promote this idea, making the implicit assumption that reducing inequality is somehow a good in and of itself. The point of these things should be to improve the material living standards of as many people as possible. If reducing inequality is a necessary side effect of doing that, then fine. But I see no reason to pursue that as an actual ultimate goal.
  - jjoonathan 8y ago
    The notion of "value" pursued and optimized by our economy is proportional to wealth. Feeding a starving poor person has no economic value, but helping a rich person drain middle class retirement accounts has enormous economic value. To the extent that the wealth distribution is unequal, our economy will ignore real, pressing issues among the poor in order to focus on the increasingly esoteric "needs" of the wealthy. That's why absurdly lopsided wealth distribution is a problem.
tomohawk 8y ago
When people focus on inequality, are they doing so because they love the poor and want to do something for them, or because they hate/envy the rich? Too often, it's the latter. Instead of UBI, a negative income tax is a much better approach. There's a lot of info out there about it, but here's a nice intro: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM
- koolba 8y ago
  In some ways we already have that with the earned income tax credit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit
  - darawk 8y ago
    Ya, the EITC is a negative income tax. But it should probably be expanded, it's a great policy.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > Ya, the EITC is a negative income tax EITC is a hybrid normal and inverse means-tested, and also behavior (by source of income) tested, welfare program managed through the tax system that was loosely inspired by negative income tax, but it is not actually a negative income tax.
      - darawk 8y ago
        Aka a form of negative income tax.

by darawk 8y ago

Retra 8y ago

Wealth inequality is the main cause of power inequality, and is thus a major reason why something like UBI won't happen just because it benefits poor people. You can't make the world better if you are powerless, and you are powerless so long as you can be overruled by those with more wealth than you.

darawk 8y ago
> Wealth inequality is the main cause of power inequality, and is thus a major reason why something like UBI won't happen just because it benefits poor people. Poor people seem pretty powerful to me. In a world where rich people are infinitely powerful...what percentage of tax revenue do you think they'd be paying? 0%? 10%? The top 3% if earners paid over 50% of income tax in the US in 2016 [1]. That doesn't seem particularly powerful to me. Or, if it is, that power isn't wielded especially self-interestedly. > You can't make the world better if you are powerless, and you are powerless so long as you can be overruled by those with more wealth than you. Your inferences are correct, but your premises are wrong. And if you're worried about money influencing politics, well, i've got news for you: reducing wealth inequality is just going to make the influence of that money even less transparent than it is now. 1. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-14/top-3-of-u-s-taxpayers-paid-majority-of-income-taxes-in-2016 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-14/top-3-of-...
- the_gastropod 8y ago
  > Poor people seem pretty powerful to me. In a world where rich people are infinitely powerful...what percentage of tax revenue do you think they'd be paying? 0%? 10%? The top 3% if earners paid over 50% of income tax in the US in 2016 [1]. That doesn't seem particularly powerful to me. Or, if it is, that power isn't wielded especially self-interestedly. Oh, give me a break. This is silly statistic often dragged out by right-wing pundits. If the entire US population earned $0 and one guy (pick anyone!) made $1 Trillion per year and paid his ~$400 Billion in taxes each year would you see him as a victim, too? Another silly example: New York, California, and Florida contribute 25% of the U.S's tax revenues, yet they don't account for 25% of congress. They don't get 25% of the electoral college votes in presidential elections. Poor them, right?
  - darawk 8y ago
    > Oh, give me a break. This is silly statistic often dragged out by right-wing pundits. If the entire US population earned $0 and one guy (pick anyone!) made $1 Trillion per year and paid his ~$400 Billion in taxes each year would you see him as a victim, too? Did I say anyone was a victim? No. You made a specific point: That the wealthy are disproportionately powerful due to income inequality. My point is: They don't seem to be powerful enough to not pay the overwhelming majority of taxes. I didn't say they were victims, or that they shouldn't be paying more in taxes. It was a counter-example to your point. > Another silly example: New York, California, and Florida contribute 25% of the U.S's tax revenues, yet they don't account for 25% of congress. They don't get 25% of the electoral college votes in presidential elections. Poor them, right? Well, actually, I would argue that yes, poor them. California and NY should be better represented in Congress and nationally, through electoral college reforms and other things, but that is pretty far afield from this discussion.
    - Retra 8y ago
      "How much tax you avoid" isn't a reliable measure of political power. Firstly, if paying taxes can work in their benefit, then there's no reason they shouldn't pay them. Secondly, "I pay your wages" is a pretty good way to influence people, and I don't see why it would fundamentally be different in congress. Thirdly, wealthy people do have more ability to avoid paying taxes. Thus the concept of "Tax havens."

jdavis703 8y ago

There’s a huge difference between the “I’m a young single college grad making $50k a year and billionaires are the reason I’m poor” narrative and literally stepping over potentially dead unsheltered people on your way to the office of a multi-billion dollar company. How can we make sure that people don’t have to sleep on the street and suffer from poor healthcare? Because currently income inequality is creating developing country, slum-like conditions in the US.

darawk 8y ago
> There’s a huge difference between the “I’m a young single college grad making $50k a year and billionaires are the reason I’m poor” narrative and literally stepping over potentially dead unsheltered people on your way to the office of a multi-billion dollar company. How can we make sure that people don’t have to sleep on the street and suffer from poor healthcare? Because currently income inequality is creating developing country, slum-like conditions in the US. How, exactly is income-inequality creating those conditions? It seems to me like the issue you're describing is one of a floor that is too low. Which is exactly what I said.
BucketSort 8y ago
> How can we make sure that people don’t have to sleep on the street and suffer from poor healthcare? The first step is a cultural change. I believe the ball is in the court of the writers, musicians, philosophers, poets, celebrities ... people involved with shaping culture. To give an example of how how toxic our culture has become, I'll recount something that just happened 30 minutes ago. There's this nice old lady near my hackerspace who operates a small food cart. Not many people visit her because where she's allowed to be is laughably secluded, so she mainly sits there all day waiting for customers. Another member of the hackerspace said he was going to Wallgreens to get a candy bar and asked if anyone else wanted something. I said: "Hey, there's the food cart lady who has that stuff and she's just a 1 minute walk away, instead of the Wallgreens which is 10 minutes away." Upon hearing this, another member grunted with disapproval. I asked what was up. He said: "She sold me a disgusting sandwich, you shouldn't support a business that is run that poorly." I replied: "She's an old lady! Did you give her any feedback on the sandwich, maybe she can improve?" Him: "A business run like that is beyond help." I'm still shocked how this person couldn't even see past the business into the person. This is a huge problem I see: we forget we are dealing with people because we classify them simply as objects of utility. Our consumerist abstractions are causing us to be quite nasty to others.

aaomidi 8y ago

Unfortunately the issue with inequality is that it breeds more inequality. Someone born into the .1% will continue to get richer and richer by literally not doing anything while others on different parts of the spectrum aren't in a position like that and many have negative assets. If the playing ground was equal at birth and people were differentiated based on their hardwork no one would complain. The issue is the playing ground is not level and every day it gets more and more skewed.

darawk 8y ago
> Someone born into the .1% will continue to get richer and richer by literally not doing anything while others on different parts of the spectrum aren't in a position like that and many have negative assets. What you're talking about here is wealth mobility. And I think we should definitely be talking about policies to promote that. Especially in the upwards direction.
- aaomidi 8y ago
  We can't talk about this without talking about the inequality in wealth which is the biggest factor in economy mobility unfortunately.
  - darawk 8y ago
    > We can't talk about this without talking about the inequality in wealth which is the biggest factor in economy mobility unfortunately. That's an interesting theory. How does that work, exactly, though? How does wealth inequality squash income mobility? And if income mobility is the real goal, why are we talking about inequality, and not directly talking about mobility?
    - aaomidi 8y ago
      Honestly, I'm not an economist. But from what I've gathered from reading various opinions on this matter is that economic inequality is the main source of weak economic mobility in developed countries - especially in countries that don't have safety nets. The theory essentially is that strong economic mobility requires some "base" value of economic power. If you're born into a family with negative assets, thousands of dollars in credit card debt, bad neighborhood you're essentially starting your life with negative economic mobility and turning that positive is extremely difficult given the circumstances and in many cases you stay poor. For example, the effects of redlining is still seen to this day after nearly half a century has passed. On the other end, if you're born into a family with a strong economic background and proper investments. You're already starting your life with positive economic mobility. The way to think about it is, if you're on the bottom of the graph in terms of assets, you're going to be going further and further down (until where is the question?) and if you're on the top of the graph you're going to keep going up. College, various inheritance taxes, social safety nets, etc etc try to offset these differences by essentially making the top of the graph a little "weaker" and boosting the bottom of the graph. But is it working?

groby_b 8y ago

You might want to pay closer attention to the complaints about inequality. What that focus is about is the degree of inequality. Most people talking about it are not actually pursuing a world of absolute equality, but a world with reasonable levels of inequality, and with regulations that make a rapidly increasing spread less likely. I.e. we want floor and ceiling not too far apart, and not rapidly separating. Which means UBI alone, or minimum wage, or any number of floor-focused things are not the answer. Neither is a wealth tax, or any number of ceiling focused things the answer, by themselves.

darawk 8y ago
> You might want to pay closer attention to the complaints about inequality. What that focus is about is the degree of inequality. I pay quite a bit of attention to it. I'm aware of what it is people are complaining about. Everything I said stands. > Most people talking about it are not actually pursuing a world of absolute equality, but a world with reasonable levels of inequality, and with regulations that make a rapidly increasing spread less likely. I.e. we want floor and ceiling not too far apart, and not rapidly separating. Which means UBI alone, or minimum wage, or any number of floor-focused things are not the answer. Neither is a wealth tax, or any number of ceiling focused things the answer, by themselves. Why? What's good about that? What, exactly, is the benefit we get from pursuing a flat wealth distribution? People often promote this idea, making the implicit assumption that reducing inequality is somehow a good in and of itself. The point of these things should be to improve the material living standards of as many people as possible. If reducing inequality is a necessary side effect of doing that, then fine. But I see no reason to pursue that as an actual ultimate goal.
- jjoonathan 8y ago
  The notion of "value" pursued and optimized by our economy is proportional to wealth. Feeding a starving poor person has no economic value, but helping a rich person drain middle class retirement accounts has enormous economic value. To the extent that the wealth distribution is unequal, our economy will ignore real, pressing issues among the poor in order to focus on the increasingly esoteric "needs" of the wealthy. That's why absurdly lopsided wealth distribution is a problem.

tomohawk 8y ago

When people focus on inequality, are they doing so because they love the poor and want to do something for them, or because they hate/envy the rich? Too often, it's the latter. Instead of UBI, a negative income tax is a much better approach. There's a lot of info out there about it, but here's a nice intro: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM

koolba 8y ago
In some ways we already have that with the earned income tax credit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit
- darawk 8y ago
  Ya, the EITC is a negative income tax. But it should probably be expanded, it's a great policy.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > Ya, the EITC is a negative income tax EITC is a hybrid normal and inverse means-tested, and also behavior (by source of income) tested, welfare program managed through the tax system that was loosely inspired by negative income tax, but it is not actually a negative income tax.
    - darawk 8y ago
      Aka a form of negative income tax.