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The article mentions globalization but doesn't view inequality through a global lens. If you look only within rich nations, yes inequality has increased, becaus

The article mentions globalization but doesn't view inequality through a global lens. If you look only within rich nations, yes inequality has increased, because the poor and blue collar middle class have lost a lot of jobs to poorer countries. But that phenomenon is actually reducing inequality as measured from a global view. The biggest issue I have with the article is that it ignores the geopolitical trends that were actual checks on inequality historically. Inequality typically only decreases in the face of an existential threat to the wealthy; when the US passed 90% marginal tax rates, it was to fund a war where the ability of the wealthy to remain in power at all was in question. Getting pensions and many other social democratic policies which benefit the poor and middle class, in many countries in the world, often required blood instead of the free market.

lanevorockz 7y ago
Very true, in terms of poverty the world was never as equal as today. My guess is that Free Software had the consequence of providing a lot of value to people for free, taking part of the cost of the supply chain. This is the real equaliser, it is not tax and it's not the market. In all honesty even in their example, the 1% in the US is not stable .. it's more like a game of chair, if you blink you can loose your seat.
- majewsky 7y ago
  Free Software is a miniscule part of that process, if it even is a part at all. The main reason is reduced transport and communication costs making it feasible to outsource work across continents.
  - fkdo 7y ago
    Free software plays a very large role in our communication infrastructure.
    - majewsky 7y ago
      Yes, but it's easy to imagine a world where the Free Software movement never happened, yet there still is a ton of communication infrastructure. For proof, just consider that globalization started way before Free Software.
55873445216111 7y ago
"If you look only within rich nations, yes inequality has increased, because the poor and blue collar middle class have lost a lot of jobs to poorer countries. But that phenomenon is actually reducing inequality as measured from a global view." Exactly, this phenomenon is called the "Elephant Curve": https://www.brookings.edu/research/whats-happening-to-the-world-income-distribution-the-elephant-chart-revisited/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/whats-happening-to-the-wo...
closeparen 7y ago
Exactly who had to get killed for Social Security to be passed?
- opportune 7y ago
  Nobody but people did have to get killed for earlier employer-pensions to be passed. And cynically you can view a lot of the pro-labor progress in the US from the great depression through the 50s to be a response to the popularity of communism and socialism abroad
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    > the popularity of communism and socialism abroad Which took hold because workers were being abused. Various communist revolutions in history, and all the related violence, can be considered in part blood shed towards improving the conditions for the working class.
- paganel 7y ago
  Not the OP but I’d mention the 1871 Paris Commune deaths [1]. Bismarck saw the writing on the wall (i.e. take care of the masses or they’ll end up taking all your stuff away and worse) and that’s how the modern welfare State was born. The US Social Security system is in a way just a continuation of Bismarck’s policy applied to an industrialized Western country with a considerable middle class. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune
Mikeb85 7y ago
So it's OK to fuck over a large portion of your own population because it's trickling down to a poor country? The issue is that nations have a duty to their own citizens, good luck telling an entire generation that they need to make sacrifices for others while the rich keep getting richer.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  Hence the rise of populism over the last half decade. “Let then eat cake” isn’t a strategy.
- tim333 7y ago
  I'm not sure the rising inequality in the US is really a result of the poor countries getting richer. Lots of other developed countries have traded with the world with much less of that eg. Germany, Scandinavia. It's more a result of the kind of politics Fox News pushes.
  - Mikeb85 7y ago
    Globalism was literally a concerted effort to off-shore blue collar work with the expectation that the population of richer countries would become more educated and work in information intensive jobs (also siphoning off value from said off-shored industries). Where it went somewhat awry is that computers and automation have meant that less jobs are actually required in those sectors that we envisioned people having, leaving a large portion of the population under-employed in low paying service jobs. Globalism was literally a concerted effort undertaken after WWII, this isn't some sort of Fox News level conspiracy theory. It's history, literally stuff in economics textbooks and easily verifiable. As for why Scandinavia and Germany have managed to keep inequality at bay, they've got very robust welfare states and strong labour unions.
    - tim333 7y ago
      By Fox News politics I mean opposition to stuff like the robust welfare states and strong labour unions you mention.
boomboomsubban 7y ago
>If you look only within rich nations, yes inequality has increased, because the poor and blue collar middle class have lost a lot of jobs to poorer countries. But that phenomenon is actually reducing inequality as measured from a global view. How is that reducing inequality worldwide situation? Those foreign workers may be closer to the middle classes in rich nations, but the rich are getting further ahead
- opportune 7y ago
  It's reducing inequality by volume, as in the bottom 20-50th%iles are seeing their incomes rise closer to the 50-90%ile incomes. But yes the super rich are getting richer than ever before
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
coldtea 7y ago
>The article mentions globalization but doesn't view inequality through a global lens. If you look only within rich nations, yes inequality has increased, because the poor and blue collar middle class have lost a lot of jobs to poorer countries. But that phenomenon is actually reducing inequality as measured from a global view. Actually inequality (of percentage of the world's resources amassed) between poor and rich countries has increased as well. The get richer compared to their own past, but less than the world is getting richer overall. But that's a red-herring. Even if inequality among countries was lessening, that could just be part of poor countries getting richer, building infrastructure and so on. That wouldn't mean the richer countries having rising inequality and poverty is is not a problem, nor we should view it like "inequality in the west is being balanced as less inequality in other countries".
- mantas 7y ago
  > Actually inequality (of percentage of the world's resources amassed) between poor and rich countries has increased as well. The get richer compared to their own past, but less than the world is getting richer overall. That's an interesting claim to make. China, India, Eastern europe... Africa is having a boom too. Ask any westerner who used to go on dirt cheap super long vacations. The today's gap is miniscule compared to the glorious days.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    >That's an interesting claim to make. Apparently true too. E.g: https://ibb.co/gm33zJb https://ibb.co/gm33zJb
    - mantas 7y ago
      It seems to be comparing personal incomes rather than country-to-country difference. Isn't it? And it goes up to 1990 only. China and India boomed after that. Eastern europe was in the process of shrugging off their chains. Africa boom started more than a decade later. I'm talking about GDP PPP grouped by country. Coming from eastern european perspective, the difference is much smaller than it was in 90s or 70s. Both in how close we're to western europe and us and how China or India or Africa got closer to us.
rossdavidh 7y ago
Even if the Third World now had their own wealthy elite, such that the wealth of the Third World was closer to the richest countries, you could still have rising inequality in BOTH the richest and poorest countries. Which, also, is what really matters most. Democracy and the rule of law both start to break down when a few people have orders of magnitude more money than the median for that country; they can use their wealth to influence their own government in a way that the masses of that country cannot. That the gap between countries might have narrowed, is no help, if the inequality of both rich and poor countries goes up.
ulisesrmzroche 7y ago
By that logic, once those developing countries develop, inequality will rise again. So we’re back to square 1.

lanevorockz 7y ago

Very true, in terms of poverty the world was never as equal as today. My guess is that Free Software had the consequence of providing a lot of value to people for free, taking part of the cost of the supply chain. This is the real equaliser, it is not tax and it's not the market. In all honesty even in their example, the 1% in the US is not stable .. it's more like a game of chair, if you blink you can loose your seat.

majewsky 7y ago
Free Software is a miniscule part of that process, if it even is a part at all. The main reason is reduced transport and communication costs making it feasible to outsource work across continents.
- fkdo 7y ago
  Free software plays a very large role in our communication infrastructure.
  - majewsky 7y ago
    Yes, but it's easy to imagine a world where the Free Software movement never happened, yet there still is a ton of communication infrastructure. For proof, just consider that globalization started way before Free Software.

55873445216111 7y ago

"If you look only within rich nations, yes inequality has increased, because the poor and blue collar middle class have lost a lot of jobs to poorer countries. But that phenomenon is actually reducing inequality as measured from a global view." Exactly, this phenomenon is called the "Elephant Curve": https://www.brookings.edu/research/whats-happening-to-the-world-income-distribution-the-elephant-chart-revisited/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/whats-happening-to-the-wo...

closeparen 7y ago

Exactly who had to get killed for Social Security to be passed?

opportune 7y ago
Nobody but people did have to get killed for earlier employer-pensions to be passed. And cynically you can view a lot of the pro-labor progress in the US from the great depression through the 50s to be a response to the popularity of communism and socialism abroad
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > the popularity of communism and socialism abroad Which took hold because workers were being abused. Various communist revolutions in history, and all the related violence, can be considered in part blood shed towards improving the conditions for the working class.
paganel 7y ago
Not the OP but I’d mention the 1871 Paris Commune deaths [1]. Bismarck saw the writing on the wall (i.e. take care of the masses or they’ll end up taking all your stuff away and worse) and that’s how the modern welfare State was born. The US Social Security system is in a way just a continuation of Bismarck’s policy applied to an industrialized Western country with a considerable middle class. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune

Mikeb85 7y ago

So it's OK to fuck over a large portion of your own population because it's trickling down to a poor country? The issue is that nations have a duty to their own citizens, good luck telling an entire generation that they need to make sacrifices for others while the rich keep getting richer.

toomuchtodo 7y ago
Hence the rise of populism over the last half decade. “Let then eat cake” isn’t a strategy.
tim333 7y ago
I'm not sure the rising inequality in the US is really a result of the poor countries getting richer. Lots of other developed countries have traded with the world with much less of that eg. Germany, Scandinavia. It's more a result of the kind of politics Fox News pushes.
- Mikeb85 7y ago
  Globalism was literally a concerted effort to off-shore blue collar work with the expectation that the population of richer countries would become more educated and work in information intensive jobs (also siphoning off value from said off-shored industries). Where it went somewhat awry is that computers and automation have meant that less jobs are actually required in those sectors that we envisioned people having, leaving a large portion of the population under-employed in low paying service jobs. Globalism was literally a concerted effort undertaken after WWII, this isn't some sort of Fox News level conspiracy theory. It's history, literally stuff in economics textbooks and easily verifiable. As for why Scandinavia and Germany have managed to keep inequality at bay, they've got very robust welfare states and strong labour unions.
  - tim333 7y ago
    By Fox News politics I mean opposition to stuff like the robust welfare states and strong labour unions you mention.

boomboomsubban 7y ago

>If you look only within rich nations, yes inequality has increased, because the poor and blue collar middle class have lost a lot of jobs to poorer countries. But that phenomenon is actually reducing inequality as measured from a global view. How is that reducing inequality worldwide situation? Those foreign workers may be closer to the middle classes in rich nations, but the rich are getting further ahead

opportune 7y ago
It's reducing inequality by volume, as in the bottom 20-50th%iles are seeing their incomes rise closer to the 50-90%ile incomes. But yes the super rich are getting richer than ever before
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

coldtea 7y ago

>The article mentions globalization but doesn't view inequality through a global lens. If you look only within rich nations, yes inequality has increased, because the poor and blue collar middle class have lost a lot of jobs to poorer countries. But that phenomenon is actually reducing inequality as measured from a global view. Actually inequality (of percentage of the world's resources amassed) between poor and rich countries has increased as well. The get richer compared to their own past, but less than the world is getting richer overall. But that's a red-herring. Even if inequality among countries was lessening, that could just be part of poor countries getting richer, building infrastructure and so on. That wouldn't mean the richer countries having rising inequality and poverty is is not a problem, nor we should view it like "inequality in the west is being balanced as less inequality in other countries".

mantas 7y ago
> Actually inequality (of percentage of the world's resources amassed) between poor and rich countries has increased as well. The get richer compared to their own past, but less than the world is getting richer overall. That's an interesting claim to make. China, India, Eastern europe... Africa is having a boom too. Ask any westerner who used to go on dirt cheap super long vacations. The today's gap is miniscule compared to the glorious days.
- coldtea 7y ago
  >That's an interesting claim to make. Apparently true too. E.g: https://ibb.co/gm33zJb https://ibb.co/gm33zJb
  - mantas 7y ago
    It seems to be comparing personal incomes rather than country-to-country difference. Isn't it? And it goes up to 1990 only. China and India boomed after that. Eastern europe was in the process of shrugging off their chains. Africa boom started more than a decade later. I'm talking about GDP PPP grouped by country. Coming from eastern european perspective, the difference is much smaller than it was in 90s or 70s. Both in how close we're to western europe and us and how China or India or Africa got closer to us.

rossdavidh 7y ago

Even if the Third World now had their own wealthy elite, such that the wealth of the Third World was closer to the richest countries, you could still have rising inequality in BOTH the richest and poorest countries. Which, also, is what really matters most. Democracy and the rule of law both start to break down when a few people have orders of magnitude more money than the median for that country; they can use their wealth to influence their own government in a way that the masses of that country cannot. That the gap between countries might have narrowed, is no help, if the inequality of both rich and poor countries goes up.

ulisesrmzroche 7y ago

By that logic, once those developing countries develop, inequality will rise again. So we’re back to square 1.