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Income inequality != it’s worse for the poor Look at every metric of poverty or things affecting the poor (literacy, hunger, access to education) and its impro
by zpeti 5y ago
Income inequality != it’s worse for the poor
Look at every metric of poverty or things affecting the poor (literacy, hunger, access to education) and its improved like no other time in history in the last 50 years.
Just because the rich got richer in the process might annoy you, but it benefitted a lot of others. What do you want? No income inequality and therefore everyone living in terrible conditions, or a large divide between rich and poor but things actually improving?
- TFYS 5y agoWhat's bad is relative. Bad quality of life 10000 years ago meant something different than it did 500 years ago or 200 years ago. People will always look at how other people in their community live. A poor person today can't compare himself to a poor person 50 years ago. They compare themselves to the people they see around them. If you put an average person from today to a future where the average person lives forever and is in a constant state of happiness, would you say the person from today is doing well?
- machinebun 5y agoDue to hedonic adaptation, what matters is not the absolute state of existence, but the trajectory that that state takes throughout your life. (a small positive slope in terms of life quality is much better than a negative or neutral slope at the same level - or even at a higher level). And people underestimate the importance of relative standing as opposed to absolute. Ultimately, we are a packet of genes that are made to reproduce (with a brain attached). Relative standings matter a lot more than absolute quality of life as far as reproduction is concerned (and as far as our genes are concerned). The human brain is but a simple abstraction on top of those genetic drives. > standings