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I don’t see this as a problem, so long as the poor get richer too. The obsession with “wealth inequality” is jealousy when refusing to acknowledge how much bett

I don’t see this as a problem, so long as the poor get richer too. The obsession with “wealth inequality” is jealousy when refusing to acknowledge how much better the poor have it than ever. As the article notes, much of what we take for granted as baseline today (vaccines, HVAC, lights, rapid transport, etc) were simply not available to even the extremely rich until recently. I contend many rich are rich precisely because they improved life for so many poor. Earn $1 for improving life for each person on the planet and you reap billion$ - that’s fair & laudable.

KozmoNau7 6y ago
However we are not covering the basic needs of the poor. People are still dying of hunger, exposure and disease. We have more than enough collective wealth and resources to solve those issues, by securing housing, food and healthcare for everyone. Yet we choose not to, because it isn't profitable enough for those who already have plenty. The "not even medieval lords had access to HVAC" argument ignores that the baseline changes as society evolves. And a lot of people in first world countries still don't have access to the things you mentioned. That is an absolute travesty.
- ctdonath 6y ago
  Pedantic. That not literally everyone lives at a given baseline doesn’t disqualify fact that we’ve raised 90% of everyone from under to over that baseline in a few decades.
  - KozmoNau7 6y ago
    People in the richest nations in the history of humanity are starving, homeless and without access to healthcare. What does that say about those who have more wealth than they could spend in several lifetimes?
kiliantics 6y ago
The rich do not achieve anything on their own. They do so by employing a lot of labour and natural resources. And we know for a fact that the rich have disproportionate influence on regulation of labour practices and resources, skewing it drastically in their favour. If we all worked together to make the world better, why should only a few benefit so much?
- ctdonath 6y ago
  If you improve the lives of others (including by creating employment and reasonably leveraging resources), fair reward to reap a fraction of that improvement. Improve lives of billions, reap billion$.
  - mijamo 6y ago
    That would be true if income was proportional to your added value to blowback wellbeing. I would welcome a citation on that but to me it does not seem like that would hold at all. The greatest minds of the past centuries and the ones who contributed to the progress you are talking about were not billionaires, and for some of them were even quite poor. Your wealth depends on what you can extract from the market and what you can extract from the past wealth of your family. If I inherit 1 billion dollar and place it in the SP 500 I will increase my wealth progressively compared to basically everybody, but my productivity is 0. The state could have taxed my inheritance 100% and done a similar investment with the same effect to the economy except inequality would be lower instead of higher.
  - kiliantics 6y ago
    The "fraction" of the reward that the investor/owner/manager receives compared to the person doing the actual work has become outrageously high though. And the destruction of natural resources has gotten ever cheaper/less penalised and its effects foisted on the world's poor with no recompense.
harimau777 6y ago
There's a couple of problems with it: - In many of the most important areas, e.g. home ownership and choice of career, the poor in America have gotten poorer. - Due to America's lack of campaign finance reform, extreme wealth allows the rich to buy off the government. - Even if the poor get somewhat richer, that doesn't mean they got as much richer as they would in a more equitable system. - Inequality becomes a problem if the rich control so much of a resource (e.g. housing) that there is not enough available for the poor. - Inequality creates a power imbalance which can allow the rich to abuse the poor and/or make them unaccountable to society.
- ctdonath 6y ago
  You confirm my point.
  - tenebrisalietum 6y ago
    If trust-fund babies can coast through life without working, and those are taking over everything, when the poor still have to put in 12 hour days to live, even if they have it better than the past--that's not jealousy, that's simply asking why does person X have to work so hard when person Y doesn't under a system that supposedly claims all men are created equal.
    - throwaway98797 6y ago
      all men are created equal under the law.
      - jjeaff 6y ago
        Except we know having money gives you enormous advantage under the law. So we either have to fix the law or fix some of the inequality.
guerrilla 6y ago
It's a big problem for one simple reason: inequality of power and freedom increases. At some point you lose democracy entirely.

KozmoNau7 6y ago

However we are not covering the basic needs of the poor. People are still dying of hunger, exposure and disease. We have more than enough collective wealth and resources to solve those issues, by securing housing, food and healthcare for everyone. Yet we choose not to, because it isn't profitable enough for those who already have plenty. The "not even medieval lords had access to HVAC" argument ignores that the baseline changes as society evolves. And a lot of people in first world countries still don't have access to the things you mentioned. That is an absolute travesty.

ctdonath 6y ago
Pedantic. That not literally everyone lives at a given baseline doesn’t disqualify fact that we’ve raised 90% of everyone from under to over that baseline in a few decades.
- KozmoNau7 6y ago
  People in the richest nations in the history of humanity are starving, homeless and without access to healthcare. What does that say about those who have more wealth than they could spend in several lifetimes?

kiliantics 6y ago

The rich do not achieve anything on their own. They do so by employing a lot of labour and natural resources. And we know for a fact that the rich have disproportionate influence on regulation of labour practices and resources, skewing it drastically in their favour. If we all worked together to make the world better, why should only a few benefit so much?

ctdonath 6y ago
If you improve the lives of others (including by creating employment and reasonably leveraging resources), fair reward to reap a fraction of that improvement. Improve lives of billions, reap billion$.
- mijamo 6y ago
  That would be true if income was proportional to your added value to blowback wellbeing. I would welcome a citation on that but to me it does not seem like that would hold at all. The greatest minds of the past centuries and the ones who contributed to the progress you are talking about were not billionaires, and for some of them were even quite poor. Your wealth depends on what you can extract from the market and what you can extract from the past wealth of your family. If I inherit 1 billion dollar and place it in the SP 500 I will increase my wealth progressively compared to basically everybody, but my productivity is 0. The state could have taxed my inheritance 100% and done a similar investment with the same effect to the economy except inequality would be lower instead of higher.
- kiliantics 6y ago
  The "fraction" of the reward that the investor/owner/manager receives compared to the person doing the actual work has become outrageously high though. And the destruction of natural resources has gotten ever cheaper/less penalised and its effects foisted on the world's poor with no recompense.

harimau777 6y ago

There's a couple of problems with it: - In many of the most important areas, e.g. home ownership and choice of career, the poor in America have gotten poorer. - Due to America's lack of campaign finance reform, extreme wealth allows the rich to buy off the government. - Even if the poor get somewhat richer, that doesn't mean they got as much richer as they would in a more equitable system. - Inequality becomes a problem if the rich control so much of a resource (e.g. housing) that there is not enough available for the poor. - Inequality creates a power imbalance which can allow the rich to abuse the poor and/or make them unaccountable to society.

ctdonath 6y ago
You confirm my point.
- tenebrisalietum 6y ago
  If trust-fund babies can coast through life without working, and those are taking over everything, when the poor still have to put in 12 hour days to live, even if they have it better than the past--that's not jealousy, that's simply asking why does person X have to work so hard when person Y doesn't under a system that supposedly claims all men are created equal.
  - throwaway98797 6y ago
    all men are created equal under the law.
    - jjeaff 6y ago
      Except we know having money gives you enormous advantage under the law. So we either have to fix the law or fix some of the inequality.

guerrilla 6y ago

It's a big problem for one simple reason: inequality of power and freedom increases. At some point you lose democracy entirely.