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Productivity also drives inequality. It’s at least a double edged sword.
by closeparen 5y ago
Productivity also drives inequality. It’s at least a double edged sword.
- ksdale 5y agoAre you suggesting it would be better if everyone were poor instead of just some people?
- closeparen 5y agoPoverty is relative to your contemporaries. What does it mean to be poor in a developed country today? Flush toilets, a thermostat, a cell phone, probably even a car. A thousand calories from McDonalds for half an hour's labor. You'd be the envy of world history. Yet you're very obviously poor, because of the even better stuff that other people have. In the same way, the invention and adoption of all those things created a condition of poverty in the previously normal people who didn’t have them.
- ksdale 5y agoSo that's a yes?
- closeparen 5y agoGood for material conditions, bad for social conditions. How you balance those is your political alignment.
- ddingus 5y agoThere is another measure of wealth and that is time. Wealthy people purpose the majority of their time themselves. Poor people have most of their time purposed for them. When viewed this way, we see poverty is rampant here, even though many people have the various baubles and trinkets our modern society can produce.
- imtringued 5y agoProductivity decreases demand for full time employment. Desiring full time employment is the double edged sword. The robots do the work for you but you still want to work and you want to do the "productive" part.
- tomjen3 5y agoWe measure equality wrong. We measure it on income, but should measure it on what we can get for it. And that way we are more equal now than we have ever been. A cheap car is better, more fuel efficient and safer than a good car was 20 years ago. Poor people can get treatment for AIDS today, something rich people couldn't 30 years ago.