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> It's less a tutorial or analysis and more a thinly veiled attempt to ease concerns about wealth inequality. Given in Graham's essay he comes out and discusse

> It's less a tutorial or analysis and more a thinly veiled attempt to ease concerns about wealth inequality. Given in Graham's essay he comes out and discusses the Gini coefficient, it doesn't seem like a "thinly veiled" anything. The point of the essay is to discuss how much inequality itself matters (as opposed to, say poverty, lack of access to health care, or other things other people are raising as legitimate concerns). > What he fails to mention is that concerns about wealth inequality aren't concerned with how wealth was generated but rather the growing wealth gap that has accelerated in recent decades. My take away from Graham's article is that, all else being equal, we should care about how wealth was generated, and the gap itself is less important. > Tech has made startups both cheaper and easier but only for a small percentage of people. This is probably true, but again I think it misses the point that Graham is making: Creating a new company is overall simpler today than it was in the 1970's and 1980's, and so the "small percentage of people" who can start companies now is larger than it was 40 years ago. > Paul paints a rosy picture but doesn't mention that incomes for lower and middle-class families have fallen since the 80s. For a more thorough and balanced analysis of what this author refers to, see Russ Roberts's series on these questions: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRZf05zFBLXIKLD3blbnnFIv85OesJaKc https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRZf05zFBLXIKLD3blbnn... . There are several factors that make these long-term trend analyses hard: changing family compositions, changing quality of goods, and challenges with price indexes.

stevieoop 6y ago
> we should care about how wealth was generated, and the gap itself is less important what? what makes the gap less important? its a big deal if the rich get richer while the poor keep getting poorer. so what: we should just ignore that gap, and instead praise the rich because they are so smart, and talented?
SamBam 6y ago
> we should care about how wealth was generated, and the gap itself is less important. I don't understand this. How does finding out what caused the wealth gap — and then nodding appreciatively that's it exists for the "right" reasons — help the bottom four-fifths who are getting more and more left behind? If all that matters is that those attaining wealth are doing so now more "meritocratically," will it still be fine if the number of people becoming wealthy dwindles down to a smaller and smaller percent of the population, so long as they are all Bezoses who made their own companies? > so the "small percentage of people" who can start companies now is larger than it was 40 years ago. First of all, I'm not sure of your evidence of this — it may be "easier" in some sense, but is there actually more class mobility now, and is the percentage of people becoming wealthy actually growing? I think not [1] — but more importantly, if it's on the backs of the lower four-fifths of the population's wages stagnating or decreasing, how is it a good thing if one or two more percent can become wealthy? The probability of the average American earning equal to or more than their parents is lower than it has even been. [2] So are these families supposed to be happy that a couple more MBAs are able to make ten million dollars selling an app that lets you apply augmented reality to your cat? 1. Long-term decline in intergenerational mobility in the United States since the 1850s: https://www.pnas.org/content/117/1/251 https://www.pnas.org/content/117/1/251 2. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/social-mobility-upwards-decline-usa-us-america-economics https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/social-mobility-upwar...
ggjjjttt 6y ago
If we care about how the wealth is generated, should we not also care about what the rich do with their wealth?
titzer 6y ago
For 40 years, they've been telling me that a rising tide lifts all boats. As it turns out, that's false. So what PG's saying now is "a rising tide doesn't really lift all boats, but the important thing is that the boats it does lift really deserve it!" Paul, that's you and all your buddies' boats. Why does society need people who get insanely wealthy if no one else benefits? That seems like a bad deal for society. Society is waking up, and it's not listening to horseshit self-justifications from rich people anymore.

stevieoop 6y ago

> we should care about how wealth was generated, and the gap itself is less important what? what makes the gap less important? its a big deal if the rich get richer while the poor keep getting poorer. so what: we should just ignore that gap, and instead praise the rich because they are so smart, and talented?

SamBam 6y ago

> we should care about how wealth was generated, and the gap itself is less important. I don't understand this. How does finding out what caused the wealth gap — and then nodding appreciatively that's it exists for the "right" reasons — help the bottom four-fifths who are getting more and more left behind? If all that matters is that those attaining wealth are doing so now more "meritocratically," will it still be fine if the number of people becoming wealthy dwindles down to a smaller and smaller percent of the population, so long as they are all Bezoses who made their own companies? > so the "small percentage of people" who can start companies now is larger than it was 40 years ago. First of all, I'm not sure of your evidence of this — it may be "easier" in some sense, but is there actually more class mobility now, and is the percentage of people becoming wealthy actually growing? I think not [1] — but more importantly, if it's on the backs of the lower four-fifths of the population's wages stagnating or decreasing, how is it a good thing if one or two more percent can become wealthy? The probability of the average American earning equal to or more than their parents is lower than it has even been. [2] So are these families supposed to be happy that a couple more MBAs are able to make ten million dollars selling an app that lets you apply augmented reality to your cat? 1. Long-term decline in intergenerational mobility in the United States since the 1850s: https://www.pnas.org/content/117/1/251 https://www.pnas.org/content/117/1/251 2. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/social-mobility-upwards-decline-usa-us-america-economics https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/social-mobility-upwar...

ggjjjttt 6y ago

If we care about how the wealth is generated, should we not also care about what the rich do with their wealth?

titzer 6y ago

For 40 years, they've been telling me that a rising tide lifts all boats. As it turns out, that's false. So what PG's saying now is "a rising tide doesn't really lift all boats, but the important thing is that the boats it does lift really deserve it!" Paul, that's you and all your buddies' boats. Why does society need people who get insanely wealthy if no one else benefits? That seems like a bad deal for society. Society is waking up, and it's not listening to horseshit self-justifications from rich people anymore.