3 ms·

This is a really important question; the answer is yes. Thomas Piketty's book Capital in the 21st century is a thesis on this topic and I would highly recommend

This is a really important question; the answer is yes. Thomas Piketty's book Capital in the 21st century is a thesis on this topic and I would highly recommend it if you are interested in hard data on wealth inequality.

anovikov 4y ago
Wealth inequality is OK, it can go as high as needed because poor people live off work - they don't need any wealth. My concern was about income inequality...
- truckerbill 4y ago
  Are you poor or wealthy? How do you define what is ‘needed’?
  - anovikov 4y ago
    My point was: INCOME issue is certainly mentioned in this article, not wealth issue. I see a disconnect between per capita GDP doubling in a generation and median person seemingly losing some buying power in same time - hard to understand where the money goes. It's easy to explain where the WEALTH goes, sure, but not where INCOME goes. As for "needed" - well, goal of this whole thing is to provide overall growth. Concentration of wealth boosts growth. Concentration of income reduces growth. That's the principal difference.
    - truckerbill 4y ago
      I understand where you're coming from. Growth has worked well for the past 80 years (for some definition of 'well'). I think human contentment should be the key metric, not growth though, for all our sake. Growth is an means to an end, right? Otherwise we're just paperclip maximizers. There is of course the question of measuring that. I think there's good evidence to show an excess of wealth (thus power / corruption) in the hands of a small group of people is detrimental to overall contentment. The communist regimes of the 20th century didn't remove this wealth + power disparity between elites and proles and that is why it failed, along with aggressive competitive moves from and towards the U.S. I wonder if green socialism in a circular economy has a hope of working outside of a global hegemony though.
      - anovikov 4y ago
        What's circular economy? A nice term for "autarky"?
      - anovikov 4y ago
        And as for the key metric - the key metric is happiness of the stakeholders, the people who get to decide on things, i.e. rich and powerful. Overall growth lets them achieve that in an optimal way (because it doesn't require poor to become poorer, and even increases acceptable inequality through "Inequality possibility frontier")
anovikov 4y ago
I also have a much simpler version: salaries don't matter as much as they used to. People simply get bigger chunk of their income in different ways - by contracting, by running side gigs, by leasing their extra properties.

anovikov 4y ago

Wealth inequality is OK, it can go as high as needed because poor people live off work - they don't need any wealth. My concern was about income inequality...

truckerbill 4y ago
Are you poor or wealthy? How do you define what is ‘needed’?
- anovikov 4y ago
  My point was: INCOME issue is certainly mentioned in this article, not wealth issue. I see a disconnect between per capita GDP doubling in a generation and median person seemingly losing some buying power in same time - hard to understand where the money goes. It's easy to explain where the WEALTH goes, sure, but not where INCOME goes. As for "needed" - well, goal of this whole thing is to provide overall growth. Concentration of wealth boosts growth. Concentration of income reduces growth. That's the principal difference.
  - truckerbill 4y ago
    I understand where you're coming from. Growth has worked well for the past 80 years (for some definition of 'well'). I think human contentment should be the key metric, not growth though, for all our sake. Growth is an means to an end, right? Otherwise we're just paperclip maximizers. There is of course the question of measuring that. I think there's good evidence to show an excess of wealth (thus power / corruption) in the hands of a small group of people is detrimental to overall contentment. The communist regimes of the 20th century didn't remove this wealth + power disparity between elites and proles and that is why it failed, along with aggressive competitive moves from and towards the U.S. I wonder if green socialism in a circular economy has a hope of working outside of a global hegemony though.
    - anovikov 4y ago
      What's circular economy? A nice term for "autarky"?
    - anovikov 4y ago
      And as for the key metric - the key metric is happiness of the stakeholders, the people who get to decide on things, i.e. rich and powerful. Overall growth lets them achieve that in an optimal way (because it doesn't require poor to become poorer, and even increases acceptable inequality through "Inequality possibility frontier")

anovikov 4y ago

I also have a much simpler version: salaries don't matter as much as they used to. People simply get bigger chunk of their income in different ways - by contracting, by running side gigs, by leasing their extra properties.