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Is what you could claim if inequality wasn’t a detrimental to quality of life in and of it self, a fact which psychologists and sociologists have pretty well es

Is what you could claim if inequality wasn’t a detrimental to quality of life in and of it self, a fact which psychologists and sociologists have pretty well established at this point. Also ignoring climate change, and how disproportionately it affects those less well off while overwhelmingly caused by the rich. Your quality of life may be better than in the 1950s, but this is going to be reverse really quickly over the next 50 years when we are hitting 2-3 degrees of warming, unless you are part of the 1% that can buy your self out of the crisis.

weatherlite 4y ago
How do we define quality of life? I doubt the average American is mentally healthier than in the 50s.
- runarberg 4y ago
  Another excellent point. Many (most?) quality of life indexes have tons of obvious biases, and are quick to fail the sniff test.
sokoloff 4y ago
Fretting about inequality and focusing mental energy on someone else having more money than you is surely detrimental.
- runarberg 4y ago
  Sure, you can downplay the effects all you want, but this has been thoroughly studied, and there is a consensus within the scientific community that the negative effects of inequality are real. Disputing it at this point is kind of like disputing climate change.
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    If all of Bezos, Musk, Buffett, Ellison, and Gates’ wealth were instantly destroyed, inequality would fall quite a bit and yet my life would not be improved in any discernible way.
    - runarberg 4y ago
      That is not how this works. Collectively (all else being equal) a lot of lives would indeed improve, or at the very least, the collective perception of the quality of life would improve significantly (in a statistical sense). What you are saying is the equivalent of stating that today is cold, so climate change must be false.
      - sokoloff 4y ago
        Their possession of vast wealth is not a negative for me, nor would its destruction benefit me. There’s very few cases where we are competing against each other for goods and services. If you’re asking whether I’d be better off if you instead seized it and gave me some, of course I would, but it’s important to understand that that improvement comes from being given money, not by the reduction of inequality.
        runarberg 4y ago
        Its been a while since I read the literature, but if I remember correctly, this effect you are describing is usually controlled for. If I remember correctly, it is the inequality it self, that decreases quality of life, and is independent of the increase in wealth among the poorer public. That is, over a certain baseline, an increase in wealth does not yield significant improvement in quality of life (i.e. diminishing returns). Redistributing the wealth to increase inequality will improve the collective quality of life, not because the general public has more money, but because there is more equality. Again it is up to you if you don’t believe this, just be aware that your believes are contrary to the scientific consensus.
        sokoloff 4y ago
        I’m not sure if you’re inadvertently or intentionally trying to move the goalposts in our conversation. There’s no doubt that money has a declining marginal utility. That’s as established an economic fact as they come. There is still a leap from that fact to concluding that reducing inequality by vaporizing the wealth of five well-known billionaires would improve the economic lives of hundreds of millions of people. I believe it would not. I do agree that if that were true, it would be strong evidence that inequality standing alone is causally negative (rather than merely a lack of redistribution being the actual negative and inequality being merely a correlated outcome, which is what I think is the case).

weatherlite 4y ago

How do we define quality of life? I doubt the average American is mentally healthier than in the 50s.

runarberg 4y ago
Another excellent point. Many (most?) quality of life indexes have tons of obvious biases, and are quick to fail the sniff test.

sokoloff 4y ago

Fretting about inequality and focusing mental energy on someone else having more money than you is surely detrimental.

runarberg 4y ago
Sure, you can downplay the effects all you want, but this has been thoroughly studied, and there is a consensus within the scientific community that the negative effects of inequality are real. Disputing it at this point is kind of like disputing climate change.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  If all of Bezos, Musk, Buffett, Ellison, and Gates’ wealth were instantly destroyed, inequality would fall quite a bit and yet my life would not be improved in any discernible way.
  - runarberg 4y ago
    That is not how this works. Collectively (all else being equal) a lot of lives would indeed improve, or at the very least, the collective perception of the quality of life would improve significantly (in a statistical sense). What you are saying is the equivalent of stating that today is cold, so climate change must be false.
    - sokoloff 4y ago
      Their possession of vast wealth is not a negative for me, nor would its destruction benefit me. There’s very few cases where we are competing against each other for goods and services. If you’re asking whether I’d be better off if you instead seized it and gave me some, of course I would, but it’s important to understand that that improvement comes from being given money, not by the reduction of inequality.
      - runarberg 4y ago
        Its been a while since I read the literature, but if I remember correctly, this effect you are describing is usually controlled for. If I remember correctly, it is the inequality it self, that decreases quality of life, and is independent of the increase in wealth among the poorer public. That is, over a certain baseline, an increase in wealth does not yield significant improvement in quality of life (i.e. diminishing returns). Redistributing the wealth to increase inequality will improve the collective quality of life, not because the general public has more money, but because there is more equality. Again it is up to you if you don’t believe this, just be aware that your believes are contrary to the scientific consensus.
        sokoloff 4y ago
        I’m not sure if you’re inadvertently or intentionally trying to move the goalposts in our conversation. There’s no doubt that money has a declining marginal utility. That’s as established an economic fact as they come. There is still a leap from that fact to concluding that reducing inequality by vaporizing the wealth of five well-known billionaires would improve the economic lives of hundreds of millions of people. I believe it would not. I do agree that if that were true, it would be strong evidence that inequality standing alone is causally negative (rather than merely a lack of redistribution being the actual negative and inequality being merely a correlated outcome, which is what I think is the case).