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It's not that relative poverty isn't important so much as that it's a zero-sum game. If you raise one person's social status relative to a second, you're lower
by Symmetry 7y ago
It's not that relative poverty isn't important so much as that it's a zero-sum game. If you raise one person's social status relative to a second, you're lowering that second person's relative to the first's. By contrast, with the comfort wealth brings we first of all can raise everyone's comfort and secondarily moving money from the rich to the poor increases the poor's comfort more than it damage's the rich's comfort.
You possibly can do something about the pain caused by relative status by making the opulence of the wealthy less visible to the poor but I think that brings complications that make the whole enterprise doubtful.
- nabla9 7y agoRelative poverty is not a zero-sum game. You may take the relative too literally for the sake of the argument. Reducing relative poverty can also increase the quality of life for the rich in a ways that goes past disposable income. High income inequality reduces the people you meet and befriend and places you visit. Big TV-screens, game consoles, smartphones etc. are possible because there is enough people to create economies of scale that justify massive investments. It's not economical to spend billions over decades for R&D to produce these technologies to few million wealthy people.