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This is true in any country with high inequality: Those lucky enough to have the opportunities can make a killing, because it comes at the cost of everyone else

This is true in any country with high inequality: Those lucky enough to have the opportunities can make a killing, because it comes at the cost of everyone else.

chii 5y ago
> Those lucky enough to have the opportunities can make a killing, because it comes at the cost of everyone else. that's not strictly true. It's only true if the person making a killing is not producing any value. Wealth creation can be a positive-sum game, rather than a zero-sum game. I do believe that the USA's wealth creation opportunities are mostly positive-sum.
- kstenerud 5y ago
  That wasn't my experience in the 6 years I lived there. Even in the most advanced cities, the misery and squalor and decaying infrastructure was brutal. It's the only first world country I've lived in where I genuinely feared for my safety at times (especially in Chicago and Philadelphia). Did you know that they have to close down BART stations from time to time in order to clean out the human faeces that have gummed up the escalators? And the smaller towns in poor areas... yowsers! I've seen prison camps with better living conditions. Americans are always commenting about how unusually clean Canada is, but Canada is actually quite ordinary; that's how first world countries normally look.
  - vinay427 5y ago
    I’m not sure which part of the GP comment you’re responding to here. No one is suggesting inequality can't also be a problem, but this doesn’t negate a lot of the growth being positive-sum. Consider a country like Switzerland where I lived, which still has a good amount of inequality (though perhaps less than the US), or based on the Gini coefficient Germany (which by this metric is more unequal than the US) [1]. The base standard is high enough that even lower middle class Germans tend to have better lives with a higher purchasing power than many middle-class people in less wealthy developed countries such as Spain, and the inequality in Germany compared to someplace like Spain then isn’t a concern for their absolute quality of life. Of course, relative quality of life can pose psychological concerns, but that’s separate to positive vs. zero-sum growth. > Americans are always commenting about how unusually clean Canada is, but Canada is actually quite ordinary. That's how first world countries normally look. To be fair, the US is incredibly varied in this due in part to the inequality, and someplace like the UK seems to have a large number of cities I find especially dirty even from a US perspective. I would say urban Canada is notably better than the first-world country average. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...
    - kstenerud 5y ago
      > I’m not sure which part of the GP comment you’re responding to here. No one is suggesting inequality can't also be a problem, but this doesn’t negate a lot of the growth being positive-sum. While this can be true, it follows along a curve. Up to a certain level of inequality you can still have a net-positive sum, but after a certain point you start to see negative quality of life, lower nutrition, lower life expectency, higher infant mortality, lower security, etc. The USA mostly crossed over during the 1990s and early 2000s. > To be fair, the US is incredibly varied in this due in part to the inequality, and someplace like the UK seems to have a large number of cities I find especially dirty even from a US perspective. I would say urban Canada is notably better than the first-world country average. I've lived in the UK as well, and you're right that it has some pretty dirty cities. But it also has a serious class and inequality problem. Paris has similar problems, although not to the same degree as, say, Liverpool or San Francisco. Southern Europe has more inequality than the north (excepting the UK), and it shows (but they're also being squeezed by European monteary policy so I can't blame them too much). In America, I would say that Colorado is probably the most first-world-like place I saw, followed maybe by some parts of Montana, but all of the top cities had this ... decay for want of a better word ... about them.
      - ZacharyPitts 5y ago
        Colorado/Montanta/etc are just too damn cold in the winter for homeless to survive, so they migrate to other warmer places
        kstenerud 5y ago
        > Colorado/Montanta/etc are just too damn cold in the winter for homeless to survive, so they migrate to other warmer places It's this level of ignorance that is part of the problem. Just because someone is rendered homeless doesn't mean that they uproot and move away from their friends and family and job and life. If you're conjuring up images of vagabonds and junkies at the end of their tether, you really need to learn more. Chicago alone has almost 60,000 homeless, and it's a huge problem that so many die in the winter. https://s6624.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Homeless-Estimate-2021_FINAL.pdf https://s6624.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Homeless-Es...
cft 5y ago
I asked a friend who works at the local airport (no scheduled flights) about jet traffic. He said, once in a while, people come with a Spanish Cessna jet to hunt in Sierra Moreno. There are very rich people here too.
refurb 5y ago
Precisely. When everyone is equally lower income the differences aren’t as stark.

This is true in any country with high inequality: Those lucky enough to have the opportunities can make a killing, because it comes at the cost of everyone else.

chii 5y ago

> Those lucky enough to have the opportunities can make a killing, because it comes at the cost of everyone else. that's not strictly true. It's only true if the person making a killing is not producing any value. Wealth creation can be a positive-sum game, rather than a zero-sum game. I do believe that the USA's wealth creation opportunities are mostly positive-sum.

kstenerud 5y ago
That wasn't my experience in the 6 years I lived there. Even in the most advanced cities, the misery and squalor and decaying infrastructure was brutal. It's the only first world country I've lived in where I genuinely feared for my safety at times (especially in Chicago and Philadelphia). Did you know that they have to close down BART stations from time to time in order to clean out the human faeces that have gummed up the escalators? And the smaller towns in poor areas... yowsers! I've seen prison camps with better living conditions. Americans are always commenting about how unusually clean Canada is, but Canada is actually quite ordinary; that's how first world countries normally look.
- vinay427 5y ago
  I’m not sure which part of the GP comment you’re responding to here. No one is suggesting inequality can't also be a problem, but this doesn’t negate a lot of the growth being positive-sum. Consider a country like Switzerland where I lived, which still has a good amount of inequality (though perhaps less than the US), or based on the Gini coefficient Germany (which by this metric is more unequal than the US) [1]. The base standard is high enough that even lower middle class Germans tend to have better lives with a higher purchasing power than many middle-class people in less wealthy developed countries such as Spain, and the inequality in Germany compared to someplace like Spain then isn’t a concern for their absolute quality of life. Of course, relative quality of life can pose psychological concerns, but that’s separate to positive vs. zero-sum growth. > Americans are always commenting about how unusually clean Canada is, but Canada is actually quite ordinary. That's how first world countries normally look. To be fair, the US is incredibly varied in this due in part to the inequality, and someplace like the UK seems to have a large number of cities I find especially dirty even from a US perspective. I would say urban Canada is notably better than the first-world country average. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...
  - kstenerud 5y ago
    > I’m not sure which part of the GP comment you’re responding to here. No one is suggesting inequality can't also be a problem, but this doesn’t negate a lot of the growth being positive-sum. While this can be true, it follows along a curve. Up to a certain level of inequality you can still have a net-positive sum, but after a certain point you start to see negative quality of life, lower nutrition, lower life expectency, higher infant mortality, lower security, etc. The USA mostly crossed over during the 1990s and early 2000s. > To be fair, the US is incredibly varied in this due in part to the inequality, and someplace like the UK seems to have a large number of cities I find especially dirty even from a US perspective. I would say urban Canada is notably better than the first-world country average. I've lived in the UK as well, and you're right that it has some pretty dirty cities. But it also has a serious class and inequality problem. Paris has similar problems, although not to the same degree as, say, Liverpool or San Francisco. Southern Europe has more inequality than the north (excepting the UK), and it shows (but they're also being squeezed by European monteary policy so I can't blame them too much). In America, I would say that Colorado is probably the most first-world-like place I saw, followed maybe by some parts of Montana, but all of the top cities had this ... decay for want of a better word ... about them.
    - ZacharyPitts 5y ago
      Colorado/Montanta/etc are just too damn cold in the winter for homeless to survive, so they migrate to other warmer places
      - kstenerud 5y ago
        > Colorado/Montanta/etc are just too damn cold in the winter for homeless to survive, so they migrate to other warmer places It's this level of ignorance that is part of the problem. Just because someone is rendered homeless doesn't mean that they uproot and move away from their friends and family and job and life. If you're conjuring up images of vagabonds and junkies at the end of their tether, you really need to learn more. Chicago alone has almost 60,000 homeless, and it's a huge problem that so many die in the winter. https://s6624.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Homeless-Estimate-2021_FINAL.pdf https://s6624.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Homeless-Es...

cft 5y ago

I asked a friend who works at the local airport (no scheduled flights) about jet traffic. He said, once in a while, people come with a Spanish Cessna jet to hunt in Sierra Moreno. There are very rich people here too.

refurb 5y ago

Precisely. When everyone is equally lower income the differences aren’t as stark.