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Is our goal to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor, or to improve the lives of the poor? Because the gap itself is actually irrelevant to poor people's

Is our goal to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor, or to improve the lives of the poor? Because the gap itself is actually irrelevant to poor people's lives. Rich people's improvement outpacing poor people's is not necessarily an issue. Second, a financial gap does not necessarily translate to a material gap. Someone with 1,000,000x someone else's net worth still buys the same iPhone and drinks the same coca cola. Many important wellbeing factors are not actually blocked by finance, like healthcare and education. Even if you take all the rich people's money and repurpose to education not much will change. Maybe an iPad for every kid, but what good does that do? Housing is actually a great example. Real estate has a way of sucking up entire GDPs worth of money. As a country you can't pay your way out of housing problems. Look at something like China which has been consistently overbuilding housing for decades now. They still have housing issues.

hakfoo 2y ago
> Rich people's improvement outpacing poor people's is not necessarily an issue. That's like saying "the fact there's a black hole in the centre of the galaxy is not an issue." Extreme wealth distorts the universe around it. There are people who have no business making nation-state level decisions that are still on the speed dial of the people who are, because of their financial positions. There's also a strong case that education blocked by finance, on a second order. Wealth creates flight opportunities. Parents who can afford it take their kids out of the default public school and take them to a magnet, charter, or private school. Not everyone can afford that, even if some are nominally tuition-free-- if they don't offer the same bussing, for example, that's going to add thousands of dollars a year in bus or petrol costs to get the kid to and from campus. But aside from that, when the parents take their kids away, they also take their volunteerism, activity support, and holding staff accountable. The public school ends up supported by the least resourced and least concerned parents, and the students left behind suffer. Housing is probably solvable with a more holistic central-planning mindset. Everyone wants to live in a few desirable areas, but we have no mechanism to generate more desirable areas. A planned economy could help by steering new economic development to places where housing can be built affordably, perhaps with build-out mandates. The Chinese "Ghost Cities" are actually a great idea in retrospect-- if you build everything at once before the first residents arrive, you can avoid some of the very expensive retrofit problems. Building a subway on the barren ground of a planned city is a lot cheaper than drilling under Lower Manhattan. A secondary problem is that housing costs and the need for retirement/end of life savings creates a doom loop-- if you're paying 60% of your income on a mortgage, you can't invest in any other way, so it HAS to be the nest egg. I'm not sure how to address that-- richer and more universal pensions might help reduce the load on home equity, and there are certainly ways to de-asset-ify land (maybe replacing outright land ownership with peppercorn leases-- people wouldn't be able to "buy" a house, at best they could try to bribe the existing owner to abandon the lease and hope to grab it when the property goes back up for redistribution)
- sokoloff 2y ago
  > Parents who can afford it take their kids out of the default public school and take them to a magnet, charter, or private school. I think it’s pointless to try to prevent this. Try to block it and parents who can afford to will just move to where the public schools are good. There’s no level of forced equality (other than everyone living in abject squalor) where there won’t be a spread of resources and some will choose to direct theirs in less or more long-term productive ways.
  - harimau777 2y ago
    You are correct that there will never be perfect equality. However, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't take steps to get closer to equality. For example, wealthy parents sending their kids to private schools isn't as much of an issue when it doesn't take money away from public schools (e.g. via vouchers).
  - kelseyfrog 2y ago
    It's fairly easy to prevent. Accreditation is a legitimization mechanism eminently modulatable by law. When only state schools are accredited and truancy is enforced, there is no other option. The funding issue is also trivial, local property taxes should be transferred to the state rather than being used directly. The idea that somehow poor neighborhoods should have poor schools is asinine and re-enforces existing class structure.
    - sokoloff 2y ago
      It’s not a funding issue, or at least not just a funding issue. In many states, the lower performing districts have more per-pupil funding than higher performing schools. Parents and community are a massive influence, and parents will move as needed to attend better school districts, even if private schools are outlawed.
      - kelseyfrog 2y ago
        We can find a reason for any intervention to fail, but empiricism should be our guide, not our ability to conjure failure scenarios.
ryandrake 2y ago
If robotics and AI are doing all the work, what are the former workers going to do for money? Nothing. They won’t have money. It’s not like the rich will have 1e6 x the poor. The poor will have nothing at all. The future is a tiny elite leisure class with all the wealth and property and access to robotics and automation that does all the work for them and a huge underclass with nothing, nothing to do, and no access to that automation. Plus something that physically isolated the elites from the have-nothings so they aren’t in danger.
- p1esk 2y ago
  What will happen to those of us who are not rich but also not poor? Upper middle class with net worth between 1 and 10 million?
  - Uehreka 2y ago
    Net worth of over $1 million is rich. An extremely small number of people have that much money. Those people will probably be fine, though if you’re in that $1-10million zone you could be at risk of running out of money eventually if you don’t end up being one of the people owning the automation.
    - p1esk 2y ago
      1% of world population have more than $1M. That will be almost 100M people globally. I don’t see how you can own anything substantial (eg datacenter, power plant, factory, etc) if you have less than 100M net worth, hence my original question.
      - stoperaticless 2y ago
        So you can own whole percent of something substantial.
    - harimau777 2y ago
      It seems to me that when people use the term "rich" they generally mean some combination of "wealthy enough that you don't have to work" and "wealthy enough that normal rules don't apply to you"[1]. In modern America, $1 million isn't enough to not have to work outside of small towns and certainly isn't enough that the rules don't apply to you. [1] I don't even necessarily mean big things like hiring high power attorneys to get away with crimes. I mean things like cutting through bureaucracy, access to influential people/resources, the ability to bend regulations, etc.
harimau777 2y ago
Two great of a gap between rich and poor produces a number of problems: It produces a two tier society where different rules apply to the rich and the poor. It insulates the rich from the negative impact their actions have on the poor. It results in the rich having a much greater say in democracy than the poor. It produces problems when the rich and the poor are competing for resources (e.g. housing). It can encourages the market to focus on the desires of the rich at the expense of the desires of the poor. It damages social cohesion due to the rich and poor having increasingly different life experiences and worldviews.
- kelseyfrog 2y ago
  Humans have an innate sense of fairness that isn't satisfied by "everyone played by the same rules, so wildly different outcomes are ok." Eventually resentment builds up and an extra-legal solution transpires.
  - seventhtiger 2y ago
    If a mob demands sacrifice we must appease it? That sounds very different to the story of poor people's plight. Especially if you consider that random condition will create winners and losers.
    - kelseyfrog 2y ago
      We can try to fight against human nature all we want, but the Peasant's Revolt, the French Revolution, American Revolution, Haitian, Revolution, Russian Revolution, etc all stem from a group feeling like things weren't fair. Convincing the aristocracy that they need to change the system so to one that doesn't create winners and losers, doesn't seem to work, so nature has a pressure relief valve whether they want one or not.
insane_dreamer 2y ago
> Is our goal to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor, or to improve the lives of the poor? Because the gap itself is actually irrelevant to poor people's lives. The resources to improve the lives of the poor (and not just the very poor but the struggling middle classes), have to come from somewhere. They are not infinite. So unless you're creating a bunch of wealth from nothing, then it naturally requires a more equal distribution of existing wealth. > China which has been consistently overbuilding housing for decades now. They still have housing issues. This is in fact a problem of unequal distribution of resources: one of the main reasons there are housing issues is because houses have been seen as an investment and gobbled up by those who can afford to do so (all my friends in Beijing own multiple apartments), so prices rise and the poor can't get them anyway.
- seventhtiger 2y ago
  But financial wealth is not equal to material wealth. Financial wealth literally is created from nothing, and its mapping to material wealth is arbitrary. The last 4 years are a great example of massive paper gains while everyone was losing. There are real diminishing returns to money. Some issues are surely caused by lack of funding, but that's not most real issues. Most real issues will remain even despite maximal funding. So before you start advocating for taking people's wealth you have to make a convincing argument that it can solve something.

hakfoo 2y ago

> Rich people's improvement outpacing poor people's is not necessarily an issue. That's like saying "the fact there's a black hole in the centre of the galaxy is not an issue." Extreme wealth distorts the universe around it. There are people who have no business making nation-state level decisions that are still on the speed dial of the people who are, because of their financial positions. There's also a strong case that education blocked by finance, on a second order. Wealth creates flight opportunities. Parents who can afford it take their kids out of the default public school and take them to a magnet, charter, or private school. Not everyone can afford that, even if some are nominally tuition-free-- if they don't offer the same bussing, for example, that's going to add thousands of dollars a year in bus or petrol costs to get the kid to and from campus. But aside from that, when the parents take their kids away, they also take their volunteerism, activity support, and holding staff accountable. The public school ends up supported by the least resourced and least concerned parents, and the students left behind suffer. Housing is probably solvable with a more holistic central-planning mindset. Everyone wants to live in a few desirable areas, but we have no mechanism to generate more desirable areas. A planned economy could help by steering new economic development to places where housing can be built affordably, perhaps with build-out mandates. The Chinese "Ghost Cities" are actually a great idea in retrospect-- if you build everything at once before the first residents arrive, you can avoid some of the very expensive retrofit problems. Building a subway on the barren ground of a planned city is a lot cheaper than drilling under Lower Manhattan. A secondary problem is that housing costs and the need for retirement/end of life savings creates a doom loop-- if you're paying 60% of your income on a mortgage, you can't invest in any other way, so it HAS to be the nest egg. I'm not sure how to address that-- richer and more universal pensions might help reduce the load on home equity, and there are certainly ways to de-asset-ify land (maybe replacing outright land ownership with peppercorn leases-- people wouldn't be able to "buy" a house, at best they could try to bribe the existing owner to abandon the lease and hope to grab it when the property goes back up for redistribution)

sokoloff 2y ago
> Parents who can afford it take their kids out of the default public school and take them to a magnet, charter, or private school. I think it’s pointless to try to prevent this. Try to block it and parents who can afford to will just move to where the public schools are good. There’s no level of forced equality (other than everyone living in abject squalor) where there won’t be a spread of resources and some will choose to direct theirs in less or more long-term productive ways.
- harimau777 2y ago
  You are correct that there will never be perfect equality. However, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't take steps to get closer to equality. For example, wealthy parents sending their kids to private schools isn't as much of an issue when it doesn't take money away from public schools (e.g. via vouchers).
- kelseyfrog 2y ago
  It's fairly easy to prevent. Accreditation is a legitimization mechanism eminently modulatable by law. When only state schools are accredited and truancy is enforced, there is no other option. The funding issue is also trivial, local property taxes should be transferred to the state rather than being used directly. The idea that somehow poor neighborhoods should have poor schools is asinine and re-enforces existing class structure.
  - sokoloff 2y ago
    It’s not a funding issue, or at least not just a funding issue. In many states, the lower performing districts have more per-pupil funding than higher performing schools. Parents and community are a massive influence, and parents will move as needed to attend better school districts, even if private schools are outlawed.
    - kelseyfrog 2y ago
      We can find a reason for any intervention to fail, but empiricism should be our guide, not our ability to conjure failure scenarios.

ryandrake 2y ago

If robotics and AI are doing all the work, what are the former workers going to do for money? Nothing. They won’t have money. It’s not like the rich will have 1e6 x the poor. The poor will have nothing at all. The future is a tiny elite leisure class with all the wealth and property and access to robotics and automation that does all the work for them and a huge underclass with nothing, nothing to do, and no access to that automation. Plus something that physically isolated the elites from the have-nothings so they aren’t in danger.

p1esk 2y ago
What will happen to those of us who are not rich but also not poor? Upper middle class with net worth between 1 and 10 million?
- Uehreka 2y ago
  Net worth of over $1 million is rich. An extremely small number of people have that much money. Those people will probably be fine, though if you’re in that $1-10million zone you could be at risk of running out of money eventually if you don’t end up being one of the people owning the automation.
  - p1esk 2y ago
    1% of world population have more than $1M. That will be almost 100M people globally. I don’t see how you can own anything substantial (eg datacenter, power plant, factory, etc) if you have less than 100M net worth, hence my original question.
    - stoperaticless 2y ago
      So you can own whole percent of something substantial.
  - harimau777 2y ago
    It seems to me that when people use the term "rich" they generally mean some combination of "wealthy enough that you don't have to work" and "wealthy enough that normal rules don't apply to you"[1]. In modern America, $1 million isn't enough to not have to work outside of small towns and certainly isn't enough that the rules don't apply to you. [1] I don't even necessarily mean big things like hiring high power attorneys to get away with crimes. I mean things like cutting through bureaucracy, access to influential people/resources, the ability to bend regulations, etc.

harimau777 2y ago

Two great of a gap between rich and poor produces a number of problems: It produces a two tier society where different rules apply to the rich and the poor. It insulates the rich from the negative impact their actions have on the poor. It results in the rich having a much greater say in democracy than the poor. It produces problems when the rich and the poor are competing for resources (e.g. housing). It can encourages the market to focus on the desires of the rich at the expense of the desires of the poor. It damages social cohesion due to the rich and poor having increasingly different life experiences and worldviews.

kelseyfrog 2y ago
Humans have an innate sense of fairness that isn't satisfied by "everyone played by the same rules, so wildly different outcomes are ok." Eventually resentment builds up and an extra-legal solution transpires.
- seventhtiger 2y ago
  If a mob demands sacrifice we must appease it? That sounds very different to the story of poor people's plight. Especially if you consider that random condition will create winners and losers.
  - kelseyfrog 2y ago
    We can try to fight against human nature all we want, but the Peasant's Revolt, the French Revolution, American Revolution, Haitian, Revolution, Russian Revolution, etc all stem from a group feeling like things weren't fair. Convincing the aristocracy that they need to change the system so to one that doesn't create winners and losers, doesn't seem to work, so nature has a pressure relief valve whether they want one or not.

insane_dreamer 2y ago

> Is our goal to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor, or to improve the lives of the poor? Because the gap itself is actually irrelevant to poor people's lives. The resources to improve the lives of the poor (and not just the very poor but the struggling middle classes), have to come from somewhere. They are not infinite. So unless you're creating a bunch of wealth from nothing, then it naturally requires a more equal distribution of existing wealth. > China which has been consistently overbuilding housing for decades now. They still have housing issues. This is in fact a problem of unequal distribution of resources: one of the main reasons there are housing issues is because houses have been seen as an investment and gobbled up by those who can afford to do so (all my friends in Beijing own multiple apartments), so prices rise and the poor can't get them anyway.

seventhtiger 2y ago
But financial wealth is not equal to material wealth. Financial wealth literally is created from nothing, and its mapping to material wealth is arbitrary. The last 4 years are a great example of massive paper gains while everyone was losing. There are real diminishing returns to money. Some issues are surely caused by lack of funding, but that's not most real issues. Most real issues will remain even despite maximal funding. So before you start advocating for taking people's wealth you have to make a convincing argument that it can solve something.