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Aren't those the same? If you raised everyone's income above a minimum threshold, that would reduce income inequality by almost any measure. Gini coefficient

Aren't those the same? If you raised everyone's income above a minimum threshold, that would reduce income inequality by almost any measure. Gini coefficient (the most commonly used inequality measure) effectively uses logarithms in its calculations: so raising incomes away from zero is the most effective way of reducing inequality by this metric (and most other metrics, and, I think, in most people's minds). [Edit: are y'all down-voting because I said something technically wrong, or because you disagree in your mind? I'd like to know.]

darkerside 6y ago
What if you did it in a way that makes Bezos even richer? What if you could increase low end incomes while simultaneously worsening inequality? Should we do it? My vote is, of course. But I'm genuinely curious to hear the counter argument.
- learnstats2 6y ago
  The fact that Bezos can get incredibly richer this year, while other people struggle harder is symptomatic of a system that allows inequality - it's not that Bezos getting richer in itself causes inequality. Bezos's wealth is already effectively unbounded. He has the same wealth as ~50% of the population of United States altogether. That won't immediately change if you uplift poor people's income (since income is not wealth). Why is it important to consider his right to get even richer?
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    > Why is it important to consider his right to get even richer? Because it has a correlation with making a lot of other peoples' lives better. For example, I needed to do some repairs two days ago, and ordered the parts necessary from Amazon, and received the parts yesterday. I didn't have to spend 2 hours driving somewhere to get those parts. That extra 2 hours is a benefit to my life. Amazon, in aggregate, has saved me a great deal of time. Another benefit Amazon provides is selection - I can find much more exactly what I want, rather than accepting whatever the store has.
    - learnstats2 6y ago
      This example is a specific benefit, but not one that Amazon has provided. It's a benefit that online shopping has provided, which Amazon has monopolized, partly via suppressing competition and exploiting labour (which society has to pay for in other ways).
      - WalterBright 6y ago
        Amazon utterly revolutionized online shopping, a benefit Amazon provided. There's simply no way it could have otherwise grown to the biggest company in the world from a garage in Bellevue. 25 years later it's easy to assume that online shopping was always like it is today. No way. Nobody even conceived of what it has become. I remember, for example, when ordering by mail meant "allow 3 to 6 weeks for delivery". I'm still astonished by next day delivery - which Amazon created and made ordinary.
        darkerside 6y ago
        I agree. They revolutionized it in a way nobody else was prepared to do. I think there should be regulations to make sure labor is treated fairly, rather than any kind of specific measure to reduce inequality, which seems like a vanity metric to me.
        WalterBright 6y ago
        Yes, nobody is arguing for unfair labor practices. For another example, Sears used to be the king of mail order. Famously, you could even mail order a house! It was delivered on a pallet and you got to put it together. I used to buy lots from the Sears mail order catalog. It was fun just thumbing through it. Amazon wiped it off the map, from a garage.
        learnstats2 6y ago
        > partly via suppressing competition and exploiting labour
- eeZah7Ux 6y ago
  > What if you could increase low end incomes while simultaneously worsening inequality? That it absurd. If you double the wealth and income of every person on the world, nothing changes. Same gini coefficient, same poverty. The sum of all money and other financial objects might change in numerical value but still represents the current amount of goods and land that exist on the planet.
  - nicoburns 6y ago
    I'd argue that you haven't really increased incomes at all if you simply double the monetary amount. To actually increase wealth/incomes you'd have increase the amount of material goods, services, and realise improvements to their quality of life.
    - andi999 6y ago
      And that exactly happend with globalization for US cititin.
    - eeZah7Ux 6y ago
      > I'd argue that you haven't really increased incomes at all if you simply double the monetary amount That's what I wrote.
  - olalonde 6y ago
    > Same gini coefficient, same poverty. That statement is obviously false. The US and Haiti have about the same gini coefficient. > If you double the wealth and income of every person on the world, nothing changes. The commenter surely meant doubling material wealth (as you put it, the "current amount of goods and land that exist on the planet"), not just some abstract numerical value.
    - eeZah7Ux 6y ago
      >> Same gini coefficient, same poverty. > That statement is obviously false. The US and Haiti have about the same gini coefficient. I'm comparing before the doubling and after, not across different countries. facepalm > The commenter surely meant doubling material wealth That post clearly reads "What if you could increase low end incomes".
- nicoburns 6y ago
  > What if you could increase low end incomes while simultaneously worsening inequality? If you could increase them more than you would be able to by redistributing wealth, then I think you should. But I can't think of any scenario where this is evenly remotely close to being the case. In practice we have plentiful but finite resources, and by far the easiest and most practical way to increase lower end incomes would be to redistribute our existing wealth.
  - andi999 6y ago
    The size of the cake is not fixed. Excessive redistribution somehow leads to less cake production.
    - nicoburns 6y ago
      It's not fixed, but neither is it unbounded. > Excessive redistribution somehow leads to less cake production. Indeed, but emphasis on excessive. I'd argue that we currently have an excessive lack of redistribution which is also leading to less cake production.
      - andi999 6y ago
        Agree, a balance has to be found, I would say most of Europe is in balance. Cake could be (practically) unbounded, since (real) value can increase with actually less consumption of resources.
        nicoburns 6y ago
        > Cake could be (practically) unbounded, since (real) value can increase with actually less consumption of resources. I don't think this follows. Yes we can make better use of resources, but there's a limit. And given the huge wealth differentials (two or three orders of magnitude) it's feasible and even likely that that limit is lower than the amount of wealth available for redistribution.
        6y ago
- adsche 6y ago
  Seems to me that everything then would simply become more expensive to sustain Bezos's (or others') wealth?

darkerside 6y ago

What if you did it in a way that makes Bezos even richer? What if you could increase low end incomes while simultaneously worsening inequality? Should we do it? My vote is, of course. But I'm genuinely curious to hear the counter argument.

learnstats2 6y ago
The fact that Bezos can get incredibly richer this year, while other people struggle harder is symptomatic of a system that allows inequality - it's not that Bezos getting richer in itself causes inequality. Bezos's wealth is already effectively unbounded. He has the same wealth as ~50% of the population of United States altogether. That won't immediately change if you uplift poor people's income (since income is not wealth). Why is it important to consider his right to get even richer?
- WalterBright 6y ago
  > Why is it important to consider his right to get even richer? Because it has a correlation with making a lot of other peoples' lives better. For example, I needed to do some repairs two days ago, and ordered the parts necessary from Amazon, and received the parts yesterday. I didn't have to spend 2 hours driving somewhere to get those parts. That extra 2 hours is a benefit to my life. Amazon, in aggregate, has saved me a great deal of time. Another benefit Amazon provides is selection - I can find much more exactly what I want, rather than accepting whatever the store has.
  - learnstats2 6y ago
    This example is a specific benefit, but not one that Amazon has provided. It's a benefit that online shopping has provided, which Amazon has monopolized, partly via suppressing competition and exploiting labour (which society has to pay for in other ways).
    - WalterBright 6y ago
      Amazon utterly revolutionized online shopping, a benefit Amazon provided. There's simply no way it could have otherwise grown to the biggest company in the world from a garage in Bellevue. 25 years later it's easy to assume that online shopping was always like it is today. No way. Nobody even conceived of what it has become. I remember, for example, when ordering by mail meant "allow 3 to 6 weeks for delivery". I'm still astonished by next day delivery - which Amazon created and made ordinary.
      - darkerside 6y ago
        I agree. They revolutionized it in a way nobody else was prepared to do. I think there should be regulations to make sure labor is treated fairly, rather than any kind of specific measure to reduce inequality, which seems like a vanity metric to me.
        WalterBright 6y ago
        Yes, nobody is arguing for unfair labor practices. For another example, Sears used to be the king of mail order. Famously, you could even mail order a house! It was delivered on a pallet and you got to put it together. I used to buy lots from the Sears mail order catalog. It was fun just thumbing through it. Amazon wiped it off the map, from a garage.
      - learnstats2 6y ago
        > partly via suppressing competition and exploiting labour
eeZah7Ux 6y ago
> What if you could increase low end incomes while simultaneously worsening inequality? That it absurd. If you double the wealth and income of every person on the world, nothing changes. Same gini coefficient, same poverty. The sum of all money and other financial objects might change in numerical value but still represents the current amount of goods and land that exist on the planet.
- nicoburns 6y ago
  I'd argue that you haven't really increased incomes at all if you simply double the monetary amount. To actually increase wealth/incomes you'd have increase the amount of material goods, services, and realise improvements to their quality of life.
  - andi999 6y ago
    And that exactly happend with globalization for US cititin.
  - eeZah7Ux 6y ago
    > I'd argue that you haven't really increased incomes at all if you simply double the monetary amount That's what I wrote.
- olalonde 6y ago
  > Same gini coefficient, same poverty. That statement is obviously false. The US and Haiti have about the same gini coefficient. > If you double the wealth and income of every person on the world, nothing changes. The commenter surely meant doubling material wealth (as you put it, the "current amount of goods and land that exist on the planet"), not just some abstract numerical value.
  - eeZah7Ux 6y ago
    >> Same gini coefficient, same poverty. > That statement is obviously false. The US and Haiti have about the same gini coefficient. I'm comparing before the doubling and after, not across different countries. facepalm > The commenter surely meant doubling material wealth That post clearly reads "What if you could increase low end incomes".
nicoburns 6y ago
> What if you could increase low end incomes while simultaneously worsening inequality? If you could increase them more than you would be able to by redistributing wealth, then I think you should. But I can't think of any scenario where this is evenly remotely close to being the case. In practice we have plentiful but finite resources, and by far the easiest and most practical way to increase lower end incomes would be to redistribute our existing wealth.
- andi999 6y ago
  The size of the cake is not fixed. Excessive redistribution somehow leads to less cake production.
  - nicoburns 6y ago
    It's not fixed, but neither is it unbounded. > Excessive redistribution somehow leads to less cake production. Indeed, but emphasis on excessive. I'd argue that we currently have an excessive lack of redistribution which is also leading to less cake production.
    - andi999 6y ago
      Agree, a balance has to be found, I would say most of Europe is in balance. Cake could be (practically) unbounded, since (real) value can increase with actually less consumption of resources.
      - nicoburns 6y ago
        > Cake could be (practically) unbounded, since (real) value can increase with actually less consumption of resources. I don't think this follows. Yes we can make better use of resources, but there's a limit. And given the huge wealth differentials (two or three orders of magnitude) it's feasible and even likely that that limit is lower than the amount of wealth available for redistribution.
        6y ago
adsche 6y ago
Seems to me that everything then would simply become more expensive to sustain Bezos's (or others') wealth?