5 ms·

> Equality is unavoidable as long as people are allowed to compete for stuff. The kind of inequality that is perceived as problematic is something different th

> Equality is unavoidable as long as people are allowed to compete for stuff. The kind of inequality that is perceived as problematic is something different though. It's the rent collection that transfers wealth from the poor to the rich.

NovemberWhiskey 7y ago
Can you give some examples of that? Most of the poor have no wealth in the first place.
- wang_li 7y ago
  >Most of the poor have no wealth in the first place. Plenty of the poor actively destroy value, see the sanitation nightmares that are homeless encampments in the Seattle area. And the rest of the poor don't produce life sustaining value. Wealth transfers in the US are exclusively from the middle class and wealthy to the poor. To say otherwise is simple demagoguery.
  - dang 7y ago
    Please don't take HN threads further into ideological flamewar. We're trying to avoid that here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - fzeroracer 7y ago
    This is nonsense and ignores that the rich and wealthy can actively destroy value on a far more massive scale. The damage fracking has done to the environment for example is far more than any homeless encampment and that's just one example. Most of the wealth from the poor is stolen through increasing rent seeking behaviors from landlords, insurance companies and lobbying. I could speak at length the ways banks organized things as to punish the poor by organizing deposits to occur after transactions so that they can charge overdraft fees or insurance companies deciding not to cover you because of pre-existing conditions.
    - wang_li 7y ago
      >Most of the wealth from the poor is stolen through increasing rent seeking behaviors from landlords, insurance companies and lobbying. I could speak at length the ways banks organized things as to punish the poor by organizing deposits to occur after transactions so that they can charge overdraft fees or insurance companies deciding not to cover you because of pre-existing conditions. You could go on at length about that stuff, but you'd mostly be wrong. Don't write checks unless the money is in the account to cover the check. Pre-existing conditions don't work like that. Ultimately, if it costs $18000/year for a person to live and they only earn $15000/year then they are short $3000 and that money comes from the middle class and wealthy. When you factor in all government services and transfers this is what happens to over 60% of the country. It is objective reality that the lifestyles of the bottom 60% are subsidized by the top 40% of tax payers. https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-2016/reports/51361-householdincomefedtaxesonecol.pdf https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-...
      - boomlinde 7y ago
        > It is objective reality that the lifestyles of the bottom 60% are subsidized by the top 40% of tax payers. You could turn the tables and say that the lower and middle classes subsidize employment terms that are favorable to the wealthy. To tax the top 40% because some subset of the top 40% can't pay the bottom 60% a living wage is just a way for the wealthy to extract further wealth from the middle class. I'd say that both perspectives are valid ways to look at it, and won't pretend that either of them is "objective reality", but with a growing wealth gap it seems obvious to me who benefits most from this system.
      - fzeroracer 7y ago
        No, I'd be right and if you're going to dismiss me, you should at least prove you're actually educated in the topic. Chase has had to settle class action lawsuits due to the predatory way they handled overdraft fees [1] so don't feed me that bullshit. It was something I personally experienced and saw my parents struggle through due to the way they were paid and Chases scummy behavior. As for pre-existing conditions that is literally how they worked before and is something that insurance companies constant lobby to go back to. Because when my mother had her stroke her insurance denied her immediately because they determined the stroke was somehow a pre-existing condition. And ultimately your logic is incredibly flawed because profits and productivity has gone up while pay for the workers has not kept up. This isn't wealth transfer, this is the rich deciding to underpay their workers to the point that they can't survive working for them, which then gets billed to the government. Your logic also offers zero explanation why wealth is concentrating towards the wealthy because wealth transfer would imply that, you know, it's actually going to the poor people. [1] https://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/chase-agrees-to-settle-lawsuit-on-overdraft-fees https://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/chase-agrees-to-s...
  - Rapzid 7y ago
    And yet 1% of the worlds population owns half of the worlds wealth.. EDIT: And 40% of the wealth in the USA as of 2017.
- blix 7y ago
  A poor person might momentarily accrue wealth from a paycheck and then lose it to rent, preventing real wealth growth. Low-income rental housing tends to be quite exploitative. https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/03/housing-rent-landlords-poverty-desmond-inequality-research/585265/ https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/03/housing-rent-landlord...
- jariel 7y ago
  "Can you give some examples of that? Most of the poor have no wealth in the first place" They don't have wealth arguably because it's taken by those with considerably greater leverage. Asymmetric parameters like avoiding regulations regarding 'full time employment' (i.e. Uber) is one very common way that employers keep workers down. It's not always obvious either - just as H1Bs can create a lot of value, in many cases, they are point blank just used to suppress wages. Consider many wealthy folks pay a lesser net tax rate than others due to income from capital gains - of course there is some rhyme and reason behind the fact capital is taxed at a lower rate than income, but one might argue that on the whole, this isn't really fair at all and is one of the primary drivers of inequality. I don't think inequality is inherently a bad thing, but too much of it is bad, and we should always be looking for ways to get people 'empowered' into positions wherein they can create real value and grab a fair/share piece of the pie. And we have to remember there are always people who won't be able to do that, and that we have a responsibility towards them as well.
  - CharlesColeman 7y ago
    BTW, you're banned, if you didn't already know. All your comments are hidden to most users unless someone who chose to see them vouches for them.
    - jariel 7y ago
      I'm aware, thank you though. Though I entirely object to my banned status and my comment history attests to a high degree of civility for which I have nary a regret, I don't have the energy to file a grievance. It's fine though, It's not a grand concern; I'm just a random voice in the chorus. Thanks for the clarity.
- letsgoyeti 7y ago
  One example is housing rent. A lot of landowners through regulatory capture or just obstruction make it too expensive to build houses, making it harder for poor people to afford to buy, hence being forced to rent.

NovemberWhiskey 7y ago

Can you give some examples of that? Most of the poor have no wealth in the first place.

wang_li 7y ago
>Most of the poor have no wealth in the first place. Plenty of the poor actively destroy value, see the sanitation nightmares that are homeless encampments in the Seattle area. And the rest of the poor don't produce life sustaining value. Wealth transfers in the US are exclusively from the middle class and wealthy to the poor. To say otherwise is simple demagoguery.
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't take HN threads further into ideological flamewar. We're trying to avoid that here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- fzeroracer 7y ago
  This is nonsense and ignores that the rich and wealthy can actively destroy value on a far more massive scale. The damage fracking has done to the environment for example is far more than any homeless encampment and that's just one example. Most of the wealth from the poor is stolen through increasing rent seeking behaviors from landlords, insurance companies and lobbying. I could speak at length the ways banks organized things as to punish the poor by organizing deposits to occur after transactions so that they can charge overdraft fees or insurance companies deciding not to cover you because of pre-existing conditions.
  - wang_li 7y ago
    >Most of the wealth from the poor is stolen through increasing rent seeking behaviors from landlords, insurance companies and lobbying. I could speak at length the ways banks organized things as to punish the poor by organizing deposits to occur after transactions so that they can charge overdraft fees or insurance companies deciding not to cover you because of pre-existing conditions. You could go on at length about that stuff, but you'd mostly be wrong. Don't write checks unless the money is in the account to cover the check. Pre-existing conditions don't work like that. Ultimately, if it costs $18000/year for a person to live and they only earn $15000/year then they are short $3000 and that money comes from the middle class and wealthy. When you factor in all government services and transfers this is what happens to over 60% of the country. It is objective reality that the lifestyles of the bottom 60% are subsidized by the top 40% of tax payers. https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-2016/reports/51361-householdincomefedtaxesonecol.pdf https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-...
    - boomlinde 7y ago
      > It is objective reality that the lifestyles of the bottom 60% are subsidized by the top 40% of tax payers. You could turn the tables and say that the lower and middle classes subsidize employment terms that are favorable to the wealthy. To tax the top 40% because some subset of the top 40% can't pay the bottom 60% a living wage is just a way for the wealthy to extract further wealth from the middle class. I'd say that both perspectives are valid ways to look at it, and won't pretend that either of them is "objective reality", but with a growing wealth gap it seems obvious to me who benefits most from this system.
    - fzeroracer 7y ago
      No, I'd be right and if you're going to dismiss me, you should at least prove you're actually educated in the topic. Chase has had to settle class action lawsuits due to the predatory way they handled overdraft fees [1] so don't feed me that bullshit. It was something I personally experienced and saw my parents struggle through due to the way they were paid and Chases scummy behavior. As for pre-existing conditions that is literally how they worked before and is something that insurance companies constant lobby to go back to. Because when my mother had her stroke her insurance denied her immediately because they determined the stroke was somehow a pre-existing condition. And ultimately your logic is incredibly flawed because profits and productivity has gone up while pay for the workers has not kept up. This isn't wealth transfer, this is the rich deciding to underpay their workers to the point that they can't survive working for them, which then gets billed to the government. Your logic also offers zero explanation why wealth is concentrating towards the wealthy because wealth transfer would imply that, you know, it's actually going to the poor people. [1] https://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/chase-agrees-to-settle-lawsuit-on-overdraft-fees https://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/chase-agrees-to-s...
- Rapzid 7y ago
  And yet 1% of the worlds population owns half of the worlds wealth.. EDIT: And 40% of the wealth in the USA as of 2017.
blix 7y ago
A poor person might momentarily accrue wealth from a paycheck and then lose it to rent, preventing real wealth growth. Low-income rental housing tends to be quite exploitative. https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/03/housing-rent-landlords-poverty-desmond-inequality-research/585265/ https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/03/housing-rent-landlord...
jariel 7y ago
"Can you give some examples of that? Most of the poor have no wealth in the first place" They don't have wealth arguably because it's taken by those with considerably greater leverage. Asymmetric parameters like avoiding regulations regarding 'full time employment' (i.e. Uber) is one very common way that employers keep workers down. It's not always obvious either - just as H1Bs can create a lot of value, in many cases, they are point blank just used to suppress wages. Consider many wealthy folks pay a lesser net tax rate than others due to income from capital gains - of course there is some rhyme and reason behind the fact capital is taxed at a lower rate than income, but one might argue that on the whole, this isn't really fair at all and is one of the primary drivers of inequality. I don't think inequality is inherently a bad thing, but too much of it is bad, and we should always be looking for ways to get people 'empowered' into positions wherein they can create real value and grab a fair/share piece of the pie. And we have to remember there are always people who won't be able to do that, and that we have a responsibility towards them as well.
- CharlesColeman 7y ago
  BTW, you're banned, if you didn't already know. All your comments are hidden to most users unless someone who chose to see them vouches for them.
  - jariel 7y ago
    I'm aware, thank you though. Though I entirely object to my banned status and my comment history attests to a high degree of civility for which I have nary a regret, I don't have the energy to file a grievance. It's fine though, It's not a grand concern; I'm just a random voice in the chorus. Thanks for the clarity.
letsgoyeti 7y ago
One example is housing rent. A lot of landowners through regulatory capture or just obstruction make it too expensive to build houses, making it harder for poor people to afford to buy, hence being forced to rent.