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By their logic this should be considered a big win. Amazon is no longer force feeding their high paid jobs into the local market. Those neighborhoods will be mo
by dahdum 8y ago
By their logic this should be considered a big win. Amazon is no longer force feeding their high paid jobs into the local market. Those neighborhoods will be more equal now, even if it means having less.
- manfredo 8y agoThis is a terrible kind of logic. It's better for everyone to be worse off just to make sure some people don't benefit more than others? This kind of toxic mentality is one of the things that turns me off the most from many so-called progressive movements.
- epistasis 8y agoAgree on the "so-called" adjective. The attitude you're describing is not a progressive attitude, it's literally a reactionary attitude.
- lukeschlather 8y agoIt's definitely a mixed bag. Someone above asked if you would rather live in a city where everyone makes $20k or a city where some people make $20k and some make $50k. The missing part of that equation is obviously cost of living. The latter sounds nicer in theory, unless it drives the minimum annual price of housing to $25k. In which case prosperity becomes an existential threat to the people making $20k. Now, with the right mix of upzoning, public housing, rent control, and social services, the threat doesn't have to hurt anyone, but in San Francisco and in Seattle we're not doing remotely near enough to ensure the people on the low end aren't hurt by the prosperity.
- manfredo 8y agoTalking about cost of living is avoiding the underlying point. Would you rather live in a society where everyone just gets enough to survive, or one where everyone gets enough to survive, half can afford basic consumer goods, and the other half can afford luxury consumer goods? A significant number of people would genuinely pick the former. Some people really do think the pursuit of equality is just even if it makes everyone worse off.
- CydeWeys 8y agoI think this is a strawman argument. I really don't believe there are a significant number of people that would rather have everyone be poor so long as they're equally poor.
- manfredo 8y agoPlenty of people support policies that do exactly that. Plenty of people also have positive opinions of, say, the Cuban revolution despite all the metrics indicating that the overwhelming majority of Cubans were ultimately worse off because of it.
- CydeWeys 8y agoYou're moving the goalposts now from "people actively want this" to "people support policies that I say have this as a side effect".
- manfredo 8y agoThere really are people who think that eliminating inequality is worth it even if it makes everyone worse off, and say so explicitly. Usually they try to frame it as having some sort of positive externalities, but when you dig deep and probe specifically they will say that lowering inequality is good even if it leaves everyone worse off. I've met plenty of these people. Maybe I'm exposed to this view more often than you seeing as I live in San Francisco.
- CydeWeys 8y agoI don't live in SF so I can't speak to that, but I really don't think this is a widely held view. It sounds very fringe.
- dahdum 8y agoIt's not just people supporting policies with that effect (like the GND). I've met plenty of people pushing for equality of outcome over opportunity, and seriously proposing confiscating all the wealth of the rich to do so.