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Societal progress (vs. technological progress) is clearly tied to wealth inequality, as is evident by the US having high wealth inequality and underperforming o
by bugglebeetle 3y ago
Societal progress (vs. technological progress) is clearly tied to wealth inequality, as is evident by the US having high wealth inequality and underperforming other developed countries on various other measures of health and well-being (e.g. infant and maternal mortality, educational performance, lifespan, rates of interpersonal violence etc). It’s a crude yardstick, but wealth inequality is negatively correlated with any common-sense understanding of societal progress (“societal” being inherently collective, after all).
- akoboldfrying 3y agoThanks for clarifying, but I see no correlation. If we doubled the wealth of the richest 1% but held the poorest 1%'s wealth constant, do you think infant mortality, educational performance, etc., would worsen for anyone in society? I surely don't.
- defrost 3y agoYou might look to the wealth distribution in (say) Australia and the US and life expectancy and Quality of life metric. The wealthy in US are much wealthier than the remaining population in the US (greater inequality than Australia), the US as a country has lower life expectancy and qality of life reported overall. Your "thought experiment" isn't particularly realistic, "double the wealth" for the wealthy isn't something that magically happens in isolation.
- bugglebeetle 3y agoIndeed, it comes at the expense of everyone else, which is again evident in all these quality of life measures.