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> focus needs to be on absolute living standards Living standards of who, exactly? Are you talking about aggregate GDP regardless of how it's distributed? Is
by panarky 2y ago
> focus needs to be on absolute living standards
Living standards of who, exactly?
Are you talking about aggregate GDP regardless of how it's distributed?
Is it okay if the top 5 deciles do better, while the bottom decile does worse?
> a 10x Musk and no homeless people
That doesn't seem to be how it works, as the population of unsheltered people appears to be positively correlated with the population of billionaires.
- roenxi 2y ago> Living standards of who, exactly? Everyone. There isn't some group we should wish ill on in the abstract. The best way forward is one where everyone is better off. That is how the big leaps forward tend to work - the wealthy get insanely more wealthy, the middle gets more wealthy and the lower end of the wealth spectrum stays where it is but shrinks as a relative share of society [0]. I'd rather that than one of the big equalisation pushes like what we saw in Russia or China last century. The problem with the excessive focus on inequality is it is an easy way to lead people away from approaches where everyone wins. [0] Due to mental health and rare people with unusual personal preferences, the poorest person in society will always have basically nothing. I don't think that is theoretically possible to improve on. And the mechanical reason why I think "reducing inequality" is a really bad idea - the only reliable way to do that is drag people towards being impoverished.
- smeej 2y agoAs a percentage of the population? Or does total population growth account for this? (Genuinely asking; I know very little about this and would like to become more familiar with what people know about it.)