7 ms·

"Everyone agrees that some wealth disparity is a good and necessary part of a healthy economy." Nope.

by gnosis 16y ago

drunkpotato 16y ago
While I agree with you and disagree with the original poster, indeed, not everyone agrees that some wealth disparity is a good and necessary part of a healthy economy, I think the discussion merits more than a dismissive "Nope". Perhaps, if you are one of those that disagrees, you could lay out your position and argument. It is difficult to see how to avoid wealth disparity. We can argue all day about whether that is good or evil, but it is a dangerous and destructive proxy for the complex question that, I believe, most of us actually want to answer: How do we get the most good to the most people while simultaneously preserving most or all of the autonomy, freedom, and privacy that Western cultures traditionally also value?
- Confusion 16y ago
  You can't disagree with either cperciva or btilly, because they've merely been presenting facts and figures. I don't see an opinion there
  - gjm11 16y ago
    The original article said: Is there too much inequality in the world? Sure. And cperciva reiterated that opinion above. That's what drunkpotato is disagreeing with. It is clearly an opinion that isn't purely a matter of facts and figures. (One with which, as I happen, I agree.)
    - Confusion 16y ago
      I don't think drunkpotato is disagreeing with that at all. He's supporting someone that states that wealth disparity is not a good thing.
      - gjm11 16y ago
        Whoops, yes, I got that backwards. Anyway, the point is that what he's agreeing and disagreeing with are opinions that aren't just a matter of unambiguous facts and figures.
        Confusion 16y ago
        I don't think that opinion of cperciva is relevant to the point btilly made, which is the subject of this subdiscussion. As such, there are no opinions to disagree with. I may be imagining things, but I've seen too many cases of people discarding facts because of some not directly relevant opinion the author/collector/presentor of the facts also happens to have.
      - drunkpotato 16y ago
        I was acknowledging that not everyone agrees that wealth disparity is necessary. I did not state my opinion on the matter, merely that it is difficult to see how it could be avoided should we want to. I was trying to point out that a glib "Nope" doesn't bring anything new to the table. Moving on to my personal opinion, I think it's more productive to think in terms of how much wealth disparity is part of a reasonably robust and functioning economy. We've all seen the numbers that show a steady trend upwards over the last 3 decades. That does not seem to be a good thing.
axod 16y ago
Why? Do you think that success should also be uniformly distributed amongst the entire population? I'd say reward people who are successful. The fact is the majority of people aren't successful or really very useful to society. The top 1% of society do most of the work, so they get most of the reward. That's pretty fair IMHO. Human motivation requires that success be rewarded. If there is no success, or "success equality" amongst everyone, then there's no motivation to do anything.
- bkmartin 16y ago
  I would disagree here. The top 1% don't do most of the "work". They might own most of the stocks of big companies, or they might be our greatest "innovators", but they don't do most of the work. We have a TON of small business in the United States. You mean to tell me that those small business owners aren't doing a lot of work? They are certainly more than 1% of the population. Of course success isn't and couldn't be uniformly distributed amongst the entire population. And I agree, those who are successful should be rewarded for their efforts. But I wouldn't go throwing your garbage man under the bus because he isn't in the top 1% of society. Take your own garbage to the land fill each week and see how useful he is. You can get off your high horse any time and come back to the realities of society. Money doesn't equal success. And by only looking at money, you short those people who are underpaid for the work they do to keep your cushy life so sweet. By the way, I agree with your last statements as well.
- loewenskind 16y ago
  Good lord, how did a post like that get an upvote? It's ignorant well beyond the point of normally being considered a troll post. >The fact is the majority of people aren't successful or really very useful to society. That's an insanely arrogant thing to say, not to mention complete garbage. The only reason we even have a society at all is because of that majority you dismiss. They are the ones who spend the money, do the mundane jobs that the top 1% can't be bothered to and so on. >The top 1% of society do most of the work, so they get most of the reward. That's pretty fair IMHO. Wtf? Citations? Actually I'm not sure what kind of citation could possibly be provided to demonstrate such a statement was anything but full retard. How do you define "work"? Obviously not manual labor. I will venture a guess that you must be talking about CEO's, but there is no metric you could name that you can't find people lower on the food chain who outwork any CEO on. >Human motivation requires that success be rewarded. More Rush Limbaugh-esque nonsense. Rewards take many different forms. A college professor might take reward in the results of his research, even though he'll never be compensated like e.g. Larry Ellison who some would qualify as a blot on the IT industry.
InclinedPlane 16y ago
So you think a high-school dropout who spends his days playing Black Ops should have the same wealth as a trained surgeon who saves lives in the ER? No thanks. That idea is brain dead.
- cdavid 16y ago
  That reductio ad absurdum, and most likely not what the OP meant. The idea that a fair society is one where inequalities are rather low is not exclusive to extreme left ideologies. How you articulate inequality and justice is one of the most pertinent way to describe right vs left ideologies, and economics do not preclude either view (up to a certain degree). If you read serious works about how fairness and inequality relate in modern democracy (for example John Rawls), you will realize that the concept is certainly worth of consideration. Being of a normative nature, it is obviously a matter of personal judgement and opinion, but the idea that inequalities are mostly bad by nature cannot be dismissed as naive, stupid or both. Finally, I have never seen any serious economic work which claim that inequality was necessary for an health economy. There is a lot of studies about policies which tried to decrease inequalities with disastrous consequences, of course, but that's different.
  - btilly 16y ago
    Low inequalities and no inequalities are very different. Suppose that we start with equal wealth. And then I buy and consume a chocolate bar. Odds are that I'm now happier and poorer than you. Who would seriously argue that this wealth inequality is a bad thing? I'm right there with people who complain about the amount of inequality that we have today. I don't think that it is healthy or productive. But if you believe in having private property and money, you have accepted that some level of inequality is acceptable.
    - cdavid 16y ago
      Well, sure, it is impossible to have 0 inequality if you consider pure equality, but that's a trivial remark. The notion of equality almost always makes sense only in a statistical sense (are two values statistically different), unless you have a discrete observation.
speleding 16y ago
Capitalism, and the income inequality it causes, has proven itself time and again as the most efficient organizing principle to create wealth. You may not like that but I don't think there is any way around that fact. If you want to go to a less efficient organizing principle you will have to accept that there will be less wealth. If history is any guide the people who will suffer the most from there being less wealth will be the ones at the bottom, not those at the top. Be careful what you wish for.
- s_jambo 16y ago
  I think a large amount of our monetary inequality is down to the way we've allowed our markets to become warped. The numerous examples of CEOs who kill their company but still make out like a bandit. The traders who're supposedly part of price discovery mechanisms but who actually just seem to keep blowing bubbles. The musicians who're granted a government monopoly to sell something we already have too much of (pop music). These are alot of the top 10% and mostly they're doing so well because our capitalist systems are broken. Even when you get to what you might think of as 'real' work. Advertising is generally not informative but emotive - thus these jobs mostly exist to distort markets. Lobbyists are in the same line of work but using government edict to achieve the same distortions. Yes the EMH demonstrates that markets are efficient at distributing resources, but it assumes products are fungible, actors are rational and have perfect information. Vast swaths of our economy are about stopping products being fungible (branding, copyright, patents, lobbying) and limiting how rational actors are (marketing, branding).
  - speleding 16y ago
    I agree. My position is not that capitalism is infallible, far from it, and the distortions of incentives you mention can and should be addressed. But you will find even worse excesses in nations organized around communism.
- loewenskind 16y ago
  >Capitalism, and the income inequality it causes, has proven itself time and again as the most efficient organizing principle to create wealth. Bizarre statement. Compared to what? Primitive cultures that didn't have money? At what do you mean by "wealth"? Fiat currency (in which case Mugabe has been the most successful)? Accumulated toys and gadgets? Because if you're talking about anything else you're talking about capitalist countries. Sweden is capitalist, as in Denmark (despite both having over 50% tax rates). Hell, so is "communist" China. The question is just how much regulation they use and where, but make no mistake: they are all capitalist systems.
lukev 16y ago
There's a difference between equality of wealth and equality of opportunity. Genuine equality of opportunity is unequivocally something to be desired and should be the ultimate goal of any society. Equality of wealth cannot and should not happen, because people are different. Enforcing equal wealth means limiting opportunity for those who want to take advantage of it. I would argue that this is a fundamental fact of human nature: even in a ideal communist or utopian system where there is no money, wealth would just take the form of respect and influence.

"Everyone agrees that some wealth disparity is a good and necessary part of a healthy economy." Nope.

by gnosis 16y ago

"Everyone agrees that some wealth disparity is a good and necessary part of a healthy economy." Nope.

While I agree with you and disagree with the original poster, indeed, not everyone agrees that some wealth disparity is a good and necessary part of a healthy economy, I think the discussion merits more than a dismissive "Nope". Perhaps, if you are one of those that disagrees, you could lay out your position and argument. It is difficult to see how to avoid wealth disparity. We can argue all day about whether that is good or evil, but it is a dangerous and destructive proxy for the complex question that, I believe, most of us actually want to answer: How do we get the most good to the most people while simultaneously preserving most or all of the autonomy, freedom, and privacy that Western cultures traditionally also value?

Confusion 16y ago
You can't disagree with either cperciva or btilly, because they've merely been presenting facts and figures. I don't see an opinion there
- gjm11 16y ago
  The original article said: Is there too much inequality in the world? Sure. And cperciva reiterated that opinion above. That's what drunkpotato is disagreeing with. It is clearly an opinion that isn't purely a matter of facts and figures. (One with which, as I happen, I agree.)
  - Confusion 16y ago
    I don't think drunkpotato is disagreeing with that at all. He's supporting someone that states that wealth disparity is not a good thing.
    - gjm11 16y ago
      Whoops, yes, I got that backwards. Anyway, the point is that what he's agreeing and disagreeing with are opinions that aren't just a matter of unambiguous facts and figures.
      - Confusion 16y ago
        I don't think that opinion of cperciva is relevant to the point btilly made, which is the subject of this subdiscussion. As such, there are no opinions to disagree with. I may be imagining things, but I've seen too many cases of people discarding facts because of some not directly relevant opinion the author/collector/presentor of the facts also happens to have.
    - drunkpotato 16y ago
      I was acknowledging that not everyone agrees that wealth disparity is necessary. I did not state my opinion on the matter, merely that it is difficult to see how it could be avoided should we want to. I was trying to point out that a glib "Nope" doesn't bring anything new to the table. Moving on to my personal opinion, I think it's more productive to think in terms of how much wealth disparity is part of a reasonably robust and functioning economy. We've all seen the numbers that show a steady trend upwards over the last 3 decades. That does not seem to be a good thing.

axod 16y ago

Why? Do you think that success should also be uniformly distributed amongst the entire population? I'd say reward people who are successful. The fact is the majority of people aren't successful or really very useful to society. The top 1% of society do most of the work, so they get most of the reward. That's pretty fair IMHO. Human motivation requires that success be rewarded. If there is no success, or "success equality" amongst everyone, then there's no motivation to do anything.

bkmartin 16y ago
I would disagree here. The top 1% don't do most of the "work". They might own most of the stocks of big companies, or they might be our greatest "innovators", but they don't do most of the work. We have a TON of small business in the United States. You mean to tell me that those small business owners aren't doing a lot of work? They are certainly more than 1% of the population. Of course success isn't and couldn't be uniformly distributed amongst the entire population. And I agree, those who are successful should be rewarded for their efforts. But I wouldn't go throwing your garbage man under the bus because he isn't in the top 1% of society. Take your own garbage to the land fill each week and see how useful he is. You can get off your high horse any time and come back to the realities of society. Money doesn't equal success. And by only looking at money, you short those people who are underpaid for the work they do to keep your cushy life so sweet. By the way, I agree with your last statements as well.
loewenskind 16y ago
Good lord, how did a post like that get an upvote? It's ignorant well beyond the point of normally being considered a troll post. >The fact is the majority of people aren't successful or really very useful to society. That's an insanely arrogant thing to say, not to mention complete garbage. The only reason we even have a society at all is because of that majority you dismiss. They are the ones who spend the money, do the mundane jobs that the top 1% can't be bothered to and so on. >The top 1% of society do most of the work, so they get most of the reward. That's pretty fair IMHO. Wtf? Citations? Actually I'm not sure what kind of citation could possibly be provided to demonstrate such a statement was anything but full retard. How do you define "work"? Obviously not manual labor. I will venture a guess that you must be talking about CEO's, but there is no metric you could name that you can't find people lower on the food chain who outwork any CEO on. >Human motivation requires that success be rewarded. More Rush Limbaugh-esque nonsense. Rewards take many different forms. A college professor might take reward in the results of his research, even though he'll never be compensated like e.g. Larry Ellison who some would qualify as a blot on the IT industry.

InclinedPlane 16y ago

So you think a high-school dropout who spends his days playing Black Ops should have the same wealth as a trained surgeon who saves lives in the ER? No thanks. That idea is brain dead.

cdavid 16y ago
That reductio ad absurdum, and most likely not what the OP meant. The idea that a fair society is one where inequalities are rather low is not exclusive to extreme left ideologies. How you articulate inequality and justice is one of the most pertinent way to describe right vs left ideologies, and economics do not preclude either view (up to a certain degree). If you read serious works about how fairness and inequality relate in modern democracy (for example John Rawls), you will realize that the concept is certainly worth of consideration. Being of a normative nature, it is obviously a matter of personal judgement and opinion, but the idea that inequalities are mostly bad by nature cannot be dismissed as naive, stupid or both. Finally, I have never seen any serious economic work which claim that inequality was necessary for an health economy. There is a lot of studies about policies which tried to decrease inequalities with disastrous consequences, of course, but that's different.
- btilly 16y ago
  Low inequalities and no inequalities are very different. Suppose that we start with equal wealth. And then I buy and consume a chocolate bar. Odds are that I'm now happier and poorer than you. Who would seriously argue that this wealth inequality is a bad thing? I'm right there with people who complain about the amount of inequality that we have today. I don't think that it is healthy or productive. But if you believe in having private property and money, you have accepted that some level of inequality is acceptable.
  - cdavid 16y ago
    Well, sure, it is impossible to have 0 inequality if you consider pure equality, but that's a trivial remark. The notion of equality almost always makes sense only in a statistical sense (are two values statistically different), unless you have a discrete observation.

speleding 16y ago

Capitalism, and the income inequality it causes, has proven itself time and again as the most efficient organizing principle to create wealth. You may not like that but I don't think there is any way around that fact. If you want to go to a less efficient organizing principle you will have to accept that there will be less wealth. If history is any guide the people who will suffer the most from there being less wealth will be the ones at the bottom, not those at the top. Be careful what you wish for.

s_jambo 16y ago
I think a large amount of our monetary inequality is down to the way we've allowed our markets to become warped. The numerous examples of CEOs who kill their company but still make out like a bandit. The traders who're supposedly part of price discovery mechanisms but who actually just seem to keep blowing bubbles. The musicians who're granted a government monopoly to sell something we already have too much of (pop music). These are alot of the top 10% and mostly they're doing so well because our capitalist systems are broken. Even when you get to what you might think of as 'real' work. Advertising is generally not informative but emotive - thus these jobs mostly exist to distort markets. Lobbyists are in the same line of work but using government edict to achieve the same distortions. Yes the EMH demonstrates that markets are efficient at distributing resources, but it assumes products are fungible, actors are rational and have perfect information. Vast swaths of our economy are about stopping products being fungible (branding, copyright, patents, lobbying) and limiting how rational actors are (marketing, branding).
- speleding 16y ago
  I agree. My position is not that capitalism is infallible, far from it, and the distortions of incentives you mention can and should be addressed. But you will find even worse excesses in nations organized around communism.
loewenskind 16y ago
>Capitalism, and the income inequality it causes, has proven itself time and again as the most efficient organizing principle to create wealth. Bizarre statement. Compared to what? Primitive cultures that didn't have money? At what do you mean by "wealth"? Fiat currency (in which case Mugabe has been the most successful)? Accumulated toys and gadgets? Because if you're talking about anything else you're talking about capitalist countries. Sweden is capitalist, as in Denmark (despite both having over 50% tax rates). Hell, so is "communist" China. The question is just how much regulation they use and where, but make no mistake: they are all capitalist systems.

lukev 16y ago

There's a difference between equality of wealth and equality of opportunity. Genuine equality of opportunity is unequivocally something to be desired and should be the ultimate goal of any society. Equality of wealth cannot and should not happen, because people are different. Enforcing equal wealth means limiting opportunity for those who want to take advantage of it. I would argue that this is a fundamental fact of human nature: even in a ideal communist or utopian system where there is no money, wealth would just take the form of respect and influence.