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> outlaw anyone for trying to do anything Are you saying that people who don’t earn few millions a year are doing nothing? Mind you, the majority of people are

> outlaw anyone for trying to do anything Are you saying that people who don’t earn few millions a year are doing nothing? Mind you, the majority of people are in this situation and contribute a lot to the society (teachers, doctors, researchers, any workers really). I’m not a leftist but I recognize the concentration of money in a few hands is probablematic, and a lot of business models to get to this point are harmful to the society at large.

seibelj 7y ago
I understand your emotion, it’s coming through clear. At what salary do we need to seize someone’s further income out of fairness?
- joshuamorton 7y ago
  Depends on your ethical framework. A utilitarian could claim that after the point where the marginal value of the dollar to the rich person is so low that seizing it results in higher global utility, even taking into account the angst and disincentives on the rich as a result. Is society better off if you take 100 mil in income from Larry Ellison and Sundar pichai and build a few hundred units of low income housing? Even if it pisses off ellison and Google pays pichai less the next year?
  - seibelj 7y ago
    I see the wealthy person as someone who is clever and disciplined. The government is neither clever nor disciplined. I believe letting the billionaire keep his or her money is more likely to increase world utility. Elon and Bezos send people to space with the wealth they fairly gained. The government prints trillions of dollars every year to fund their deficits and wars. If the government needs another billion dollars, it’s quite easy for them to create it. Why seize money from the rare person who is talented enough to make so much of it?
    - pmoriarty 7y ago
      Let's say some incredibly talented person "fairly" comes to own all the water in the world. All the rest of us would depend on this person to live, and he/she could choose which of us lives or dies simply by not selling us any water. Would you want to live in such a world? Or do you think maybe the rest of us deserve to have some of that water, even if we're not as clever and we didn't "fairly" earn it? Dialing back to the real world, all these billionaires and other elites are having very real outsize impacts on the lives of the less wealthy -- from whether/where/how they work, to how they and their children get educated, to what information we have access to, to who goes to jail and who goes free, who goes to war and against whom, and who lives or dies. Incredible wealth gives people incredible power, and the concentration of this incredible power in the hands of a small minority is distorting the world in ways those not in this minority are having trouble swallowing, no matter whether this concentration of wealth and power was "fairly" arrived at or not.
      - bluecalm 7y ago
        If you are concerned about that focus on anti monopoly laws not taxes. If one person owns all the water so you prefer a solution that forces them to give % of income derived from it to others or do you prefer a solution that prevents them from owning all the water?
        pmoriarty 7y ago
        Anti-monopoly laws are not enough (even if we ignore the problems of regulatory capture). If all the water was owned by three people instead of one person, or even by five people, or a thousand, there'd still be the other seven billion of us which would die of thirst if these thousand commanded. But, yes, giving up some of what they own is one way of dealing with it... though one could argue that by the time they have control of all that water or wealth, it's too late, because by then they have so much power that they, not you, get to call the shots. Another way is to change the system so that they don't gain so much control in the first place, and so that water (or wealth) is distributed more equitably among all seven billion of us instead of just a tiny few.
  - drstewart 7y ago
    > A utilitarian could claim that after the point where the marginal value of the dollar to the rich person is so low that seizing it results in higher global utility, even taking into account the angst and disincentives on the rich as a result. A utilitarian could (and has) claimed that this marginal dollar occurs at the point where you have the bare minimum to survive: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y4Adk743X2ZoMBSBi/does-utilitarianism-require-extreme-self-sacrifice-if-not https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y4Adk743X2ZoMBSBi/does-utili... >"For example, utilitarianism apparently endorses killing a single innocent person and harvesting their organs if it will save five other people. It also appears to imply that donating all your money to charity beyond what you need to survive isn’t just admirable but morally obligatory. " So I don't think a strictly utilitarian argument is sufficient.
    - joshuamorton 7y ago
      > A utilitarian could (and has) claimed that this marginal dollar occurs at the point where you have the bare minimum to survive There's a few problems with this line of reasoning: 1. Its not clear to me that this argument is being made by a utilitarian, as you claim 2. You at least appear to show a misunderstanding of what "the marginal dollar" is. Every dollar is the marginal dollar. Its just that the relative value of dollar 1 (which you need to survive) is greater than the relative value of dollar 1 Billion, which you use to, uhhh, buy an island. I think what you're saying is that there is a point where the marginal value of your dollars is low enough that you are ethically obligated to donate them is at or around subsistence level, and that might be true, but it leads to the third problem: 3. Even for a strict utilitarian, if you take into account externalities, the right thing to do might not be to take all the money away from people. If you're optimizing for something like reducing death, reducing everyone in the US to subsistence level probably isn't the best solution: you'll likely do something unwarranted like cause a revolt. This has two major net negatives: a bunch of people die in the revolt, and you end up losing a lot of your money, either because you spend it to put down the revolt or because you don't and you lose and people take it back. 4. While improving the life of those in absolute poverty is a laudable goal, it's not clear that it makes sense for a government to do that, except when it ends up being beneficial to the government or its people. In other words, a government's moral imperative probably doesn't extend (far) beyond its borders. > So I don't think a strictly utilitarian argument is sufficient. People often forget about externalities. On the other hand, if you think of the supply of billionaires as a revenue source, and then you think of there being decreasing demand for being a billionaire as taxes go up, but increased revenue per billionaire as taxes go up, you can draw up supply and demand curves and optimize to maximize revenue from billionaires (or people in general really, its just that the marginal rates can likely be higher on billionaires and they're the talking point of the day). If there are 100 billionaires, and you tax 2% more, and 1 billionaire moves away, you're still up on revenue. I often hear people arguing that we should operate our government more like a business.
- hijinx 7y ago
  Emotion has nothing to do with it. A strong, functional middle class is critical for the economic health of the nation, as will as it's ability to survive as a Democracy. With very, very few exceptions - wealth disparity is inversely related to the health, stability, and happiness of a populace. Nations with greater wealth disparity generally have less freedom, choice and social mobility. This was recognized multiple times in the nation's history, and upon action, economic growth was spurred. These are not emotions, these are facts that I won't even cite because a simple google search results in many scientific studies backing them. On a slightly more emotional side: With individual productivity increasing annually, it's a shame that individuals are not seeing proportional wage increases in return. And none of that even touches upon the reality that those making the billions are rarely those with exceptional talent or skill. It's those who had the connections and financial wherewithall to build networks that are unreachable for those born into lower socioeconomic circumstances. No, I don't have data for that, but a simple unscientific survey of Execs making hundreds or thousands of times more than their employees are rarely from anything less than middle-upper class backgrounds, and most often have family money that allowed them opportunities never imaginable to lower rungs of society. I do not like the idea of paying higher taxes, but I also recognize that individuals and companies are sitting on trillions upon trillions of dollars because they are making so much money that they can't spend it all. Just ask Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, both who agree with this and argue for higher taxes. But emotions aside, it's simple economics. When social mobility is poor and inequality high, there simply aren't enough consumers to support the level needed for a country to remain 'first world'.
  - seibelj 7y ago
    The rate of wage increase for the lowest earners in America is higher than for the highest earners. Unemployment is lower than ever. I won’t even cite because you can prove this with a simple google search. The fact remains that you think it’s morally correct to take money from people simply because they have it. To me, that’s theft. What is the salary at which we should seize money? You still haven’t answered this original question.
    - tasogare 7y ago
rayiner 7y ago
But is it problematic? A teacher or doctor in America is better off than almost anywhere else in the world, including western european countries: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/gov_glance-2017-35-en.pdf?expires=1579336744&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=761AD31A2337638C89354010BF873506 https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/gov_glance-2017-35-e... (See 3.27) The countries with higher teacher salaries, like Canada, or in our general vicinity all have low corporate taxes. There are things we need to fix in the US, like people who don’t have healthcare, and the housing market. (All the losses in the share of GDP of labor since the 1980s went to landlords, not capital owners.) But it’s not clear to me that income inequality is in and of itself something worth fixing, at the risk of novel measures that could give other countries a competitor advantage over us.

seibelj 7y ago

I understand your emotion, it’s coming through clear. At what salary do we need to seize someone’s further income out of fairness?

joshuamorton 7y ago
Depends on your ethical framework. A utilitarian could claim that after the point where the marginal value of the dollar to the rich person is so low that seizing it results in higher global utility, even taking into account the angst and disincentives on the rich as a result. Is society better off if you take 100 mil in income from Larry Ellison and Sundar pichai and build a few hundred units of low income housing? Even if it pisses off ellison and Google pays pichai less the next year?
- seibelj 7y ago
  I see the wealthy person as someone who is clever and disciplined. The government is neither clever nor disciplined. I believe letting the billionaire keep his or her money is more likely to increase world utility. Elon and Bezos send people to space with the wealth they fairly gained. The government prints trillions of dollars every year to fund their deficits and wars. If the government needs another billion dollars, it’s quite easy for them to create it. Why seize money from the rare person who is talented enough to make so much of it?
  - pmoriarty 7y ago
    Let's say some incredibly talented person "fairly" comes to own all the water in the world. All the rest of us would depend on this person to live, and he/she could choose which of us lives or dies simply by not selling us any water. Would you want to live in such a world? Or do you think maybe the rest of us deserve to have some of that water, even if we're not as clever and we didn't "fairly" earn it? Dialing back to the real world, all these billionaires and other elites are having very real outsize impacts on the lives of the less wealthy -- from whether/where/how they work, to how they and their children get educated, to what information we have access to, to who goes to jail and who goes free, who goes to war and against whom, and who lives or dies. Incredible wealth gives people incredible power, and the concentration of this incredible power in the hands of a small minority is distorting the world in ways those not in this minority are having trouble swallowing, no matter whether this concentration of wealth and power was "fairly" arrived at or not.
    - bluecalm 7y ago
      If you are concerned about that focus on anti monopoly laws not taxes. If one person owns all the water so you prefer a solution that forces them to give % of income derived from it to others or do you prefer a solution that prevents them from owning all the water?
      - pmoriarty 7y ago
        Anti-monopoly laws are not enough (even if we ignore the problems of regulatory capture). If all the water was owned by three people instead of one person, or even by five people, or a thousand, there'd still be the other seven billion of us which would die of thirst if these thousand commanded. But, yes, giving up some of what they own is one way of dealing with it... though one could argue that by the time they have control of all that water or wealth, it's too late, because by then they have so much power that they, not you, get to call the shots. Another way is to change the system so that they don't gain so much control in the first place, and so that water (or wealth) is distributed more equitably among all seven billion of us instead of just a tiny few.
- drstewart 7y ago
  > A utilitarian could claim that after the point where the marginal value of the dollar to the rich person is so low that seizing it results in higher global utility, even taking into account the angst and disincentives on the rich as a result. A utilitarian could (and has) claimed that this marginal dollar occurs at the point where you have the bare minimum to survive: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y4Adk743X2ZoMBSBi/does-utilitarianism-require-extreme-self-sacrifice-if-not https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y4Adk743X2ZoMBSBi/does-utili... >"For example, utilitarianism apparently endorses killing a single innocent person and harvesting their organs if it will save five other people. It also appears to imply that donating all your money to charity beyond what you need to survive isn’t just admirable but morally obligatory. " So I don't think a strictly utilitarian argument is sufficient.
  - joshuamorton 7y ago
    > A utilitarian could (and has) claimed that this marginal dollar occurs at the point where you have the bare minimum to survive There's a few problems with this line of reasoning: 1. Its not clear to me that this argument is being made by a utilitarian, as you claim 2. You at least appear to show a misunderstanding of what "the marginal dollar" is. Every dollar is the marginal dollar. Its just that the relative value of dollar 1 (which you need to survive) is greater than the relative value of dollar 1 Billion, which you use to, uhhh, buy an island. I think what you're saying is that there is a point where the marginal value of your dollars is low enough that you are ethically obligated to donate them is at or around subsistence level, and that might be true, but it leads to the third problem: 3. Even for a strict utilitarian, if you take into account externalities, the right thing to do might not be to take all the money away from people. If you're optimizing for something like reducing death, reducing everyone in the US to subsistence level probably isn't the best solution: you'll likely do something unwarranted like cause a revolt. This has two major net negatives: a bunch of people die in the revolt, and you end up losing a lot of your money, either because you spend it to put down the revolt or because you don't and you lose and people take it back. 4. While improving the life of those in absolute poverty is a laudable goal, it's not clear that it makes sense for a government to do that, except when it ends up being beneficial to the government or its people. In other words, a government's moral imperative probably doesn't extend (far) beyond its borders. > So I don't think a strictly utilitarian argument is sufficient. People often forget about externalities. On the other hand, if you think of the supply of billionaires as a revenue source, and then you think of there being decreasing demand for being a billionaire as taxes go up, but increased revenue per billionaire as taxes go up, you can draw up supply and demand curves and optimize to maximize revenue from billionaires (or people in general really, its just that the marginal rates can likely be higher on billionaires and they're the talking point of the day). If there are 100 billionaires, and you tax 2% more, and 1 billionaire moves away, you're still up on revenue. I often hear people arguing that we should operate our government more like a business.
hijinx 7y ago
Emotion has nothing to do with it. A strong, functional middle class is critical for the economic health of the nation, as will as it's ability to survive as a Democracy. With very, very few exceptions - wealth disparity is inversely related to the health, stability, and happiness of a populace. Nations with greater wealth disparity generally have less freedom, choice and social mobility. This was recognized multiple times in the nation's history, and upon action, economic growth was spurred. These are not emotions, these are facts that I won't even cite because a simple google search results in many scientific studies backing them. On a slightly more emotional side: With individual productivity increasing annually, it's a shame that individuals are not seeing proportional wage increases in return. And none of that even touches upon the reality that those making the billions are rarely those with exceptional talent or skill. It's those who had the connections and financial wherewithall to build networks that are unreachable for those born into lower socioeconomic circumstances. No, I don't have data for that, but a simple unscientific survey of Execs making hundreds or thousands of times more than their employees are rarely from anything less than middle-upper class backgrounds, and most often have family money that allowed them opportunities never imaginable to lower rungs of society. I do not like the idea of paying higher taxes, but I also recognize that individuals and companies are sitting on trillions upon trillions of dollars because they are making so much money that they can't spend it all. Just ask Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, both who agree with this and argue for higher taxes. But emotions aside, it's simple economics. When social mobility is poor and inequality high, there simply aren't enough consumers to support the level needed for a country to remain 'first world'.
- seibelj 7y ago
  The rate of wage increase for the lowest earners in America is higher than for the highest earners. Unemployment is lower than ever. I won’t even cite because you can prove this with a simple google search. The fact remains that you think it’s morally correct to take money from people simply because they have it. To me, that’s theft. What is the salary at which we should seize money? You still haven’t answered this original question.
  - tasogare 7y ago

rayiner 7y ago

But is it problematic? A teacher or doctor in America is better off than almost anywhere else in the world, including western european countries: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/gov_glance-2017-35-en.pdf?expires=1579336744&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=761AD31A2337638C89354010BF873506 https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/gov_glance-2017-35-e... (See 3.27) The countries with higher teacher salaries, like Canada, or in our general vicinity all have low corporate taxes. There are things we need to fix in the US, like people who don’t have healthcare, and the housing market. (All the losses in the share of GDP of labor since the 1980s went to landlords, not capital owners.) But it’s not clear to me that income inequality is in and of itself something worth fixing, at the risk of novel measures that could give other countries a competitor advantage over us.