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> it's clearly horrible for society. Would you be willing to articulate why wealth inequality is bad for society? I am fairly certain that wealth inequality gl

by Veelox 3y ago

> it's clearly horrible for society. Would you be willing to articulate why wealth inequality is bad for society? I am fairly certain that wealth inequality globally is higher than it was in 2000. At the same time, well the poorest globally are doing much much better on average. In my mindset as long as the median is improving and the poorest are improving, the ratio of rich to poor isn't important and isn't clearing a bad thing if the inequality is increasing. You seem to think otherwise, why?

deleted 3y ago
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deleted 3y ago
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AlecSchueler 3y ago
You're quite right that while the rich have gotten richer the poor have gotten richer too, just to a lesser extent. But it doesn't mean the poor are better off in every way. That's only true if we look purely at monetary wealth/purchasing power. But because we live in a society that gives a bigger voice to people with money, many people who are relatively poor can feel increasingly disconnected from a feeling of being an active participant in society. The issues are broad and subtle with wealth inequality, too much for the scope of an HN comment, but I would posit that inequality issue are about more than access to goods.
- Veelox 3y ago
  Thanks for taking the time to have a thoughtful reply. I think pointing to wealth inequality as the reason there is increasing disconnection is a stretch. Yes it's a factor but I don't think it's the chief one. Do you have a pointer to a resource that covers some of the more broad and subtle issues with wealth inequality?
  - JKCalhoun 3y ago
    > I think pointing to wealth inequality as the reason there is increasing disconnection is a stretch. I think it is the chief one. Every time I have seen it suggested that it is some other thing — you don't have to peel but a few layers and find money in fact behind that other thing.
morbicer 3y ago
Inequality is usually measured by Gini index and a quick search will indeed tell you that inequality rose since 2000 in USA. Inequality gives rise to populism and extremism all the way up to civil unrest. If the middle class ignores the woes of poor it is swept by revolution aimed at rich.
- Veelox 3y ago
  Your making a pretty broad claim with no evidence. Can you provide some evidence?
  - morbicer 3y ago
    I know US history education isn't greatest but you might have heard about French revolution, rise of Nazism or various communism uprisings, Mexican revolution in 1910s. With better outcomes for society: labor movement at the turn of century and in 30s. More recently: Arab spring, Chile 2019
    - Veelox 3y ago
      I think it's a big stretch to point to all of those and say wealth inequality is the main reason all of those happen. For example, people were starving around the French revolution. With Germany I believe it was just as much (if not more) general depression and national embarrassment rather than wealth inequality. With Arab Spring you can point to poor leadership as opposed to innate wealth inequality. I'm not convinced wealth inequality is the underlying reason.
      - imadierich 3y ago
        [dead]
      - morbicer 3y ago
        Just open Wikipedia man. It has citations to primary sources. "Although the 18th century was a period of increasing prosperity, the benefits were distributed unevenly across regions and social groups. Those whose income derived from agriculture, rents, interest and trade in goods from France's slave colonies benefited most, while the living standards of wage labourers and farmers on rented land fell." Same for Arab spring, it's like second sentence on the wiki. It's also heavily about corruption, but guess what, those two go hand in hand. Open maps for corruption and Gini index and you will see strong correlation. Of course there are more reasons. Society is complex.
JKCalhoun 3y ago
I was just reading (from HN recently) about when, in the Nineteenth Century, I believe) England did away with trust perpetuity. It destroyed the dynastic family wealth but instead kicked off the greatest entrepreneurial expansion the country had ever seen. Even if the poor fared a little better we cannot say if they would not have fared even better still had we less of a wealth divide.
- gottorf 3y ago
  19th century England was the height of the Industrial Revolution. Trust perpetuity probably had no effect on entrepreneurial expansion, especially considering that the aristocrats who were the primary beneficiaries of these dynastic trusts weren't the people who were engaging in entrepreneurship to begin with.
Jochim 3y ago
> Would you be willing to articulate why wealth inequality is bad for society? I am fairly certain that wealth inequality globally is higher than it was in 2000. At the same time, well the poorest globally are doing much much better on average. Wealth inequality is an issue largely borne out within a particular society. In the UK we've seen rising poverty and food insecurity at the same time as a rapid increase in the wealth of those at the top. That global poverty has improved means little to someone who is now struggling to put food on their table, or stay on top of their mortgage. > In my mindset as long as the median is improving and the poorest are improving, the ratio of rich to poor isn't important and isn't clearing a bad thing if the inequality is increasing. You seem to think otherwise, why? Wealth buys power. Allowing it to concentrate into a small group of people leads to issues. Social cohesion seems to suffer as inequality rises.
- kwhitefoot 3y ago
  > Social cohesion seems to suffer as inequality rises. I don't think there is any seems about it. I'm quite confident that social cohesion/solidarity is poorer in the UK now than it was fifty years ago and considerably worse than here in Norway where we have more compressed income and wealth ranges.
  - Jochim 3y ago
    FWIW I agree personally. I find that stating a position too strongly sometimes leads to a debate about semantics rather than the merit of the explanation/justification. My opinion is that inequality destroys people's ability to relate to one another. My worries now are completely different to those I had growing up, and the people who have staff to run their lives increasingly show themselves to have no concept of what life is like for the rest of us. It feels like there's a fairly dangerous game being played in the UK at the minute, with frustrations around inequality are being exploited and redirected as anger towards out-groups. The issue is that leaving the EU and attacking immigrants doesn't actually solve the underlying issue. The people behind it still benefit in the meantime but eventually it's going to blow up in someone's face. My sincerest hope is that it's theirs.
kwhitefoot 3y ago
Rising wealth inequality grants power disproportionately to the wealthy. Money is power, the means to make your view stick. And guess what, people with money want to hang on to it and the life it gives them so they promote ideas and behaviours that help them do that regardless of whether this is good or bad for everyone else.

by Veelox 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

AlecSchueler 3y ago

You're quite right that while the rich have gotten richer the poor have gotten richer too, just to a lesser extent. But it doesn't mean the poor are better off in every way. That's only true if we look purely at monetary wealth/purchasing power. But because we live in a society that gives a bigger voice to people with money, many people who are relatively poor can feel increasingly disconnected from a feeling of being an active participant in society. The issues are broad and subtle with wealth inequality, too much for the scope of an HN comment, but I would posit that inequality issue are about more than access to goods.

Veelox 3y ago
Thanks for taking the time to have a thoughtful reply. I think pointing to wealth inequality as the reason there is increasing disconnection is a stretch. Yes it's a factor but I don't think it's the chief one. Do you have a pointer to a resource that covers some of the more broad and subtle issues with wealth inequality?
- JKCalhoun 3y ago
  > I think pointing to wealth inequality as the reason there is increasing disconnection is a stretch. I think it is the chief one. Every time I have seen it suggested that it is some other thing — you don't have to peel but a few layers and find money in fact behind that other thing.

morbicer 3y ago

Inequality is usually measured by Gini index and a quick search will indeed tell you that inequality rose since 2000 in USA. Inequality gives rise to populism and extremism all the way up to civil unrest. If the middle class ignores the woes of poor it is swept by revolution aimed at rich.

Veelox 3y ago
Your making a pretty broad claim with no evidence. Can you provide some evidence?
- morbicer 3y ago
  I know US history education isn't greatest but you might have heard about French revolution, rise of Nazism or various communism uprisings, Mexican revolution in 1910s. With better outcomes for society: labor movement at the turn of century and in 30s. More recently: Arab spring, Chile 2019
  - Veelox 3y ago
    I think it's a big stretch to point to all of those and say wealth inequality is the main reason all of those happen. For example, people were starving around the French revolution. With Germany I believe it was just as much (if not more) general depression and national embarrassment rather than wealth inequality. With Arab Spring you can point to poor leadership as opposed to innate wealth inequality. I'm not convinced wealth inequality is the underlying reason.
    - imadierich 3y ago
      [dead]
    - morbicer 3y ago
      Just open Wikipedia man. It has citations to primary sources. "Although the 18th century was a period of increasing prosperity, the benefits were distributed unevenly across regions and social groups. Those whose income derived from agriculture, rents, interest and trade in goods from France's slave colonies benefited most, while the living standards of wage labourers and farmers on rented land fell." Same for Arab spring, it's like second sentence on the wiki. It's also heavily about corruption, but guess what, those two go hand in hand. Open maps for corruption and Gini index and you will see strong correlation. Of course there are more reasons. Society is complex.

JKCalhoun 3y ago

I was just reading (from HN recently) about when, in the Nineteenth Century, I believe) England did away with trust perpetuity. It destroyed the dynastic family wealth but instead kicked off the greatest entrepreneurial expansion the country had ever seen. Even if the poor fared a little better we cannot say if they would not have fared even better still had we less of a wealth divide.

gottorf 3y ago
19th century England was the height of the Industrial Revolution. Trust perpetuity probably had no effect on entrepreneurial expansion, especially considering that the aristocrats who were the primary beneficiaries of these dynastic trusts weren't the people who were engaging in entrepreneurship to begin with.

Jochim 3y ago

> Would you be willing to articulate why wealth inequality is bad for society? I am fairly certain that wealth inequality globally is higher than it was in 2000. At the same time, well the poorest globally are doing much much better on average. Wealth inequality is an issue largely borne out within a particular society. In the UK we've seen rising poverty and food insecurity at the same time as a rapid increase in the wealth of those at the top. That global poverty has improved means little to someone who is now struggling to put food on their table, or stay on top of their mortgage. > In my mindset as long as the median is improving and the poorest are improving, the ratio of rich to poor isn't important and isn't clearing a bad thing if the inequality is increasing. You seem to think otherwise, why? Wealth buys power. Allowing it to concentrate into a small group of people leads to issues. Social cohesion seems to suffer as inequality rises.

kwhitefoot 3y ago
> Social cohesion seems to suffer as inequality rises. I don't think there is any seems about it. I'm quite confident that social cohesion/solidarity is poorer in the UK now than it was fifty years ago and considerably worse than here in Norway where we have more compressed income and wealth ranges.
- Jochim 3y ago
  FWIW I agree personally. I find that stating a position too strongly sometimes leads to a debate about semantics rather than the merit of the explanation/justification. My opinion is that inequality destroys people's ability to relate to one another. My worries now are completely different to those I had growing up, and the people who have staff to run their lives increasingly show themselves to have no concept of what life is like for the rest of us. It feels like there's a fairly dangerous game being played in the UK at the minute, with frustrations around inequality are being exploited and redirected as anger towards out-groups. The issue is that leaving the EU and attacking immigrants doesn't actually solve the underlying issue. The people behind it still benefit in the meantime but eventually it's going to blow up in someone's face. My sincerest hope is that it's theirs.

kwhitefoot 3y ago

Rising wealth inequality grants power disproportionately to the wealthy. Money is power, the means to make your view stick. And guess what, people with money want to hang on to it and the life it gives them so they promote ideas and behaviours that help them do that regardless of whether this is good or bad for everyone else.