4 ms·

> The upper classes have something of a tendency to view all details of lower class life like every single bit of it is terrible and more bad news. There is a t

by teraku 6y ago

> The upper classes have something of a tendency to view all details of lower class life like every single bit of it is terrible and more bad news. There is a tendency to never see any stats in any kind of positive light. If you are poor, well it must suck to be you and you must be a victim every step of the way. I mean it's the general fault in all the communication of politicians and media since the late 70s that depict receivers of social security as beggars and undeserving and everybody who is poor is responsible for it themselves. I know this varies a bit from country to country, but even in Germany where we have a "strong" social security system (although it was weakened in the early 00s), the general public's opinion is receivers of social benefits are freeloaders, even among poor people. Although studies show time and again that even if you are able to become a higher-earner, it still won't make you rich. The strongest indication for wealth is inheritance. And the top percent (owners, not earners) also pay less tax per wealth. So why are they not depicted as freeloaders?

DoreenMichele 6y ago
So why are they not depicted as freeloaders? Probably in part because hanging on to wealth involves some degree of stewardship. Inheriting wealth is the best way to get rich, but you can inherit wealth, run through your inheritance and end up a pauper in short order. Of course, that's abusable because "he who has the gold makes the rules." People from wealthy families tend to be in a better position than poor people to influence the laws that get written and this tends to foster a situation where "them that has, gets." This is something we need to guard against. In order to have a healthy society, we need to actively work at making sure that being born into the lower classes (or falling into them) isn't a trap because of wealthy people actively sabotaging the efforts of poor people to build something of value and accrue value to themselves legitimately. I'm not for UBI because it breaks that connection between wealth and the creation of value. It actively encourages people to forget how to be productive in a way that is plugged into the larger system (I'm a former homemaker -- I assure you, knowing how to be productive in a way that is good for your own life doesn't automatically teach you how to be productive in a way that plugs you into the world of paid work). In order for human society to continue to have wealth, there must be incentives for all humans to find ways to add value to the system. One of the ways to add value to the system is with good stewardship. It may not seem obviously like a skill, but I spent some time reading every article and watching every TV show I could about what happens to lottery winners and two-thirds are bankrupt within five years. So simply being handed a whole lot of money doesn't, per se, tell you how to keep it. The concept of UBI is a concept of wealth as a giant pile of gold somewhere that we can just tap into. It's a broken mental model. Societal wealth is an abundance of goods and services and it takes human wisdom and human effort and human self restraint to make sure societal wealth lives on and doesn't disappear suddenly. Once it's gone, it's a lot harder to recreate than it is to maintain the existence of. I think UBI is a recipe for killing the goose that's laying the golden eggs. Our challenge currently in the world is to figure out where to go from here without doing that. Stewardship (without being an abusive classist asshole crapping all over the lower classes and treating them as your de facto slaves) is a valid part of finding those solutions so we can foster a golden age instead of stumbling into a dark age as our next stage.
- imtringued 6y ago
  The basic foundations on which first world economies are built are actually broken. There is barely any consumer inflation which means there is no demand for low income workers. Asset inflation on the other hand is growing steadily which means high income workers and capitalists see their incomes rise rapidly. Inflation is merely the rise in price when demand exceeds supply. Since consumer inflation is dead it follows that there is an abundance of goods, primarily because companies have access to a lot of capital but they don't have to deploy that capital in the USA or Europe and actually employ workers there. They can simply deploy it in countries with low labor costs. In principle that is perfectly fine because countries like India and China deserve to grow but in practice it means that a lot of the money printing is completely misguided. It's like taking the wrong medicine. It won't cure you but you will still suffer from side effects. The end result is a lot of overalued stocks without any of the economic performance to justify their market cap. Instead of a UBI it would make sense to have jobs programs that invest into public infrastructure like road maintenance or into the power grid. Those jobs cannot be shipped away to another country and they are the type of "busywork" that is actually useful without directly competing with private industry.
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    I don't think the economies of first world countries are necessarily broken. I think our economy is changing such that we don't really understand what is going on currently, so we don't know what metrics we even need to be using to make sure we are keeping things healthy. A previous comment by me: I'm trying to say something like: When your caterpillar morphs into a butterfly, harping on how your butterfly is "failing to thrive according to standard, well-established caterpillar metrics used globally for the past thousand years and certified as super duper accurate for caterpillars by many respected institutions." is basically gibberish that says damn near nothing about the state of the butterfly's actual health for which we have zero established metrics, having never seen one before. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22028732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22028732 I'm trying to figure out how to write more about that and mostly failing. Though I do like your idea of investing in infrastructure. I'm trying to figure out how to provide planning and economic development resources and services to small communities and I really appreciate your observation as food for thought for that effort.

by teraku 6y ago

DoreenMichele 6y ago

So why are they not depicted as freeloaders? Probably in part because hanging on to wealth involves some degree of stewardship. Inheriting wealth is the best way to get rich, but you can inherit wealth, run through your inheritance and end up a pauper in short order. Of course, that's abusable because "he who has the gold makes the rules." People from wealthy families tend to be in a better position than poor people to influence the laws that get written and this tends to foster a situation where "them that has, gets." This is something we need to guard against. In order to have a healthy society, we need to actively work at making sure that being born into the lower classes (or falling into them) isn't a trap because of wealthy people actively sabotaging the efforts of poor people to build something of value and accrue value to themselves legitimately. I'm not for UBI because it breaks that connection between wealth and the creation of value. It actively encourages people to forget how to be productive in a way that is plugged into the larger system (I'm a former homemaker -- I assure you, knowing how to be productive in a way that is good for your own life doesn't automatically teach you how to be productive in a way that plugs you into the world of paid work). In order for human society to continue to have wealth, there must be incentives for all humans to find ways to add value to the system. One of the ways to add value to the system is with good stewardship. It may not seem obviously like a skill, but I spent some time reading every article and watching every TV show I could about what happens to lottery winners and two-thirds are bankrupt within five years. So simply being handed a whole lot of money doesn't, per se, tell you how to keep it. The concept of UBI is a concept of wealth as a giant pile of gold somewhere that we can just tap into. It's a broken mental model. Societal wealth is an abundance of goods and services and it takes human wisdom and human effort and human self restraint to make sure societal wealth lives on and doesn't disappear suddenly. Once it's gone, it's a lot harder to recreate than it is to maintain the existence of. I think UBI is a recipe for killing the goose that's laying the golden eggs. Our challenge currently in the world is to figure out where to go from here without doing that. Stewardship (without being an abusive classist asshole crapping all over the lower classes and treating them as your de facto slaves) is a valid part of finding those solutions so we can foster a golden age instead of stumbling into a dark age as our next stage.

imtringued 6y ago
The basic foundations on which first world economies are built are actually broken. There is barely any consumer inflation which means there is no demand for low income workers. Asset inflation on the other hand is growing steadily which means high income workers and capitalists see their incomes rise rapidly. Inflation is merely the rise in price when demand exceeds supply. Since consumer inflation is dead it follows that there is an abundance of goods, primarily because companies have access to a lot of capital but they don't have to deploy that capital in the USA or Europe and actually employ workers there. They can simply deploy it in countries with low labor costs. In principle that is perfectly fine because countries like India and China deserve to grow but in practice it means that a lot of the money printing is completely misguided. It's like taking the wrong medicine. It won't cure you but you will still suffer from side effects. The end result is a lot of overalued stocks without any of the economic performance to justify their market cap. Instead of a UBI it would make sense to have jobs programs that invest into public infrastructure like road maintenance or into the power grid. Those jobs cannot be shipped away to another country and they are the type of "busywork" that is actually useful without directly competing with private industry.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  I don't think the economies of first world countries are necessarily broken. I think our economy is changing such that we don't really understand what is going on currently, so we don't know what metrics we even need to be using to make sure we are keeping things healthy. A previous comment by me: I'm trying to say something like: When your caterpillar morphs into a butterfly, harping on how your butterfly is "failing to thrive according to standard, well-established caterpillar metrics used globally for the past thousand years and certified as super duper accurate for caterpillars by many respected institutions." is basically gibberish that says damn near nothing about the state of the butterfly's actual health for which we have zero established metrics, having never seen one before. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22028732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22028732 I'm trying to figure out how to write more about that and mostly failing. Though I do like your idea of investing in infrastructure. I'm trying to figure out how to provide planning and economic development resources and services to small communities and I really appreciate your observation as food for thought for that effort.