4 ms·

What I mean is a regression of wealth and income relative to the cost of living for most young people (ie pretty much anyone who doesn't work in tech or other S

by nfw2 5y ago

What I mean is a regression of wealth and income relative to the cost of living for most young people (ie pretty much anyone who doesn't work in tech or other STEM field). I don't mean relative to the most wealthy. Here is some data that compares the median income to the rising cost of living in the US. https://www.businessinsider.com/america-middle-class-living-expenses-family-of-four-2020-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/america-middle-class-living-... I think the Bezos-Ferrari question is a good one. I feel it is personally unethical for Bezos to spend that amount of wealth on luxuries when the resources could alternatively be spent reducing the suffering of others. However I also think it is impractical and misguided for a state to enact policies with the primary purpose of minimizing the number of Bezos Ferraris or to automatically attribute the lack of cars per capital to Bezos's excess of cars (although in some cases it might be)

maerF0x0 5y ago
this is where somethings get really tricky to measure, and i'm not trying to say i have the best answers.. But this article talks about housing being up and that's tricky because sq ft per person (and quality of each sq ft) is way up, I'm sure there is a similar story about health care costing more but also having better outcomes? I admit it's a difficult thing to measure and to discuss, but I also do think that the tide is rising, but being creatures who's feel good brain chemicals are related to relative outcomes (see the primates w/ cucumber vs grapes studies), we're also feeling a bad feeling because we see others doing better to a greater extent than we are...
- nfw2 5y ago
  Yeah, I see the point. My only good argument against trying to optimize relative outcomes is that it isn't practical to try to do so. To talk about the difficulties of implementing true socialism would be beating a dead horse, I think. But even if we could remove wealth inequality completely, people would still find ways to feel better or worse than others (sports, looks, social skills, intelligence, etc.). My high school in the suburbs was fairly homogenous from a socioeconomic standpoint, but that microcosm seemed more hierarchical than any other point in life. I also would expect the good-or-bad feelings people get by making comparisons are more-or-less ordinal in nature, so I think people would manage to feel just as bad about small wealth differences (keeping up with the Jones's) if there were no more billionaires.

by nfw2 5y ago

maerF0x0 5y ago

this is where somethings get really tricky to measure, and i'm not trying to say i have the best answers.. But this article talks about housing being up and that's tricky because sq ft per person (and quality of each sq ft) is way up, I'm sure there is a similar story about health care costing more but also having better outcomes? I admit it's a difficult thing to measure and to discuss, but I also do think that the tide is rising, but being creatures who's feel good brain chemicals are related to relative outcomes (see the primates w/ cucumber vs grapes studies), we're also feeling a bad feeling because we see others doing better to a greater extent than we are...

nfw2 5y ago
Yeah, I see the point. My only good argument against trying to optimize relative outcomes is that it isn't practical to try to do so. To talk about the difficulties of implementing true socialism would be beating a dead horse, I think. But even if we could remove wealth inequality completely, people would still find ways to feel better or worse than others (sports, looks, social skills, intelligence, etc.). My high school in the suburbs was fairly homogenous from a socioeconomic standpoint, but that microcosm seemed more hierarchical than any other point in life. I also would expect the good-or-bad feelings people get by making comparisons are more-or-less ordinal in nature, so I think people would manage to feel just as bad about small wealth differences (keeping up with the Jones's) if there were no more billionaires.