7 ms·

A better metric than income inequality would be the standard of living of the poorest. If everyone has access to medical care, housing, and education, does it r

A better metric than income inequality would be the standard of living of the poorest. If everyone has access to medical care, housing, and education, does it really matter if some people have more on their bank account?

loxodrome 1y ago
By that logic it’d be okay to have everyone making the minimum wage if it was high enough. Do you realize what a communist distopia that would be?
- lucyjojo 1y ago
  everyone with a universal income? with no unnecessary suffering for housing, health, food or education? that's an utopia.
jjice 1y ago
I don't know enough about anything to intellectually comment on this kind of thing, but I do agree that the standard of living for the poorest is probably a good metric of a society. If the poorest people in a country get to live a happy, healthy life with people that love in not be stressed about food or housing, that sounds like a fantastic world. Do any countries current achieve this? Japan maybe? I have no clue.
- johnnyanmac 1y ago
  These days, I believe every country is struggling with housing in some regard. But a good part of the EU and Japan and maybe South Korea might have had all those in the 2010's
- socalgal2 1y ago
  It's hard to compare countries. Japan has a culture of lots of construction, and that housing is not an investment. They also have far less zoning rules and far less housing requirements (less of "must have 2 parking spaces, must have N meters of space in front of lot, must have X size bathroom", etc. The result is there are plenty of inexpensive and small places to rent. For example, I just did a search on suumo.jp on one train line 1 or 2 stops from Shibuya. 36 units came up under $275 a month. (would be several hundred units if I search all lines that go through Shibuya). The units are small (7.5 to 15 square meters), Many don't even have a shower (you'd walk to a public bath). But, you'll have shelter. So even on a minimum wage part time salary you can probably afford to have a roof over your head. And, that was in Shibuya. Go out 10-15 stops and it will get even cheaper or they'll get larger with more amenities for the same price. Food can also be affordable in Japan.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- bongoman42 1y ago
  I think all GCC countries achieve this for their citizens, going well above just living wage.
AliAbdoli 1y ago
Yes it does. I presume you don't wanna live in a world where Elon owns every company and you have no choice to work for him even if his wage is livable
candiddevmike 1y ago
We all only have so much time on this earth. Why is it fair for some folks to spend a disproportionate amount of that time toiling away for basic sustenance while others spend their days on their personal hotel sized yachts?
- lotsofpulp 1y ago
  It’s not fair, just like most of life due to the genes/parents/geography/etc you are born to.
- delichon 1y ago
  For the same reason that it's fair when one seed falls on asphalt and dies when another seed falls in shit and thrives: it isn't. Fairness turns out not to be one of the forces of the universe.
  - candiddevmike 1y ago
    Wealth inequality isn't some random thing though, our government and economic system enables it. It's not like we have no control over it.
    - delichon 1y ago
      Wealth inequality broadly follows the Pareto distribution, which is natural and does derive from randomness. We could define fairness as a flat distribution and redistribute accordingly, but that requires continual work to be done against the random Pareto distribution or it reverts. It's do-able, but it requires a long term consensus that doesn't currently exist.
      - scienceman 1y ago
        There is no one pareto distribution — it is a family of distributions, with different parameters meaning different intercepts, and therefore different levels on inequality.
    - 1y ago
danans 1y ago
> If everyone has access to medical care, housing, and education, does it really matter if some people have more on their bank account? It still matters when some people have 6+ orders of magnitude more wealth than the median person. Because of this wealth disparity, through the legal channels of campaign contributions, they are able to have a disproportionate and therefore antidemocratic effect on government policy.
- msgodel 1y ago
  That's always going to exist. Unless you make people themselves absolutely uniform you're always going to have individuals with unusual amounts of influence. Instead of freaking out over this you should try to ensure their interests are aligned as closely as possible and that they're not abusing each other.
  - user____name 1y ago
    Political influence is not a step function.
  - TFYS 1y ago
    With the technologies we have today, I'm pretty sure it would be possible to create a system that doesn't have to give anyone so much influence that it becomes a problem. If you allow a system to have such concentrations of power, it's only a matter of time until someone incompetent or otherwise faulty person takes control and a lot of lives are ruined.
  - surgical_fire 1y ago
    Maybe if we bow enough to our billionaire overlords they will spare us is your rationale? This is bullshit. You can have lower income inequality without necessarily having an elite with destructive amounts of money with proper regulations and taxation against the most wealthy. It's alright for a rich guy to live in a nice house ans drive around in a luxury car. It's not right when they have enough money to just buy access to the highest levels of everything to their benefit (and the rest of society prejudice).
  - 1y ago
abdullahkhalids 1y ago
Because even modern democracies are much closer to 1-money-1-vote than 1-person-1-vote. "If some people have more on their bank account", what we have observed is that they use that money to change the rules of the game to extract even more wealth from those who have less in their bank account. So pretty soon the system evolves to where many don't have "access to medical care, housing, and education". Give me a viable political system where wealth is not correlated with political power, and I will be liable to agree with you.
- twoodfin 1y ago
  If that’s the scheme it’s failing miserably: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N
stego-tech 1y ago
Because once you change the goal post, it becomes gameable. If we say the better metric is healthcare, housing, and education, then: * Healthcare will be defined as “Primary Care Visits with approved in-network physicians”, who will also have proportionally lower pay so those who made that definition can keep more money for themselves * Housing will be redefined to include cockroach-infested squallor, so landlords can pocket more money * Education will have more stratas put in place at higher costs, such that “free” or “baseline” education is increasingly worthless, wages depressed, and only those of means may participate in society All of those circle back to wealth inequality, and is why that metric won’t go away - and why the rich have a vested interest in convincing the poor that it’s everyone and everything else’s fault for their precarity. It’s all about money. When more people have a larger share of the money, better decisions and outcomes are more likely than 1.1% of people hoarding 50% of global wealth for themselves. The math is absolutely that simple, as are the solutions (TAXES).
rangestransform 1y ago
I think housing is the biggest problem here, the ideology-based encouragement of homeownership led to homeowners voting for people who would protect their “””””investment””””” and preserve their particular lifestyle. Restrictive zoning and well meaning but restrictive laws (affordable housing requirements, minimum floor area, union labour requirement, countless procedural burdens) mean that we will effectively never have the Japan housing situation in the US
ajuc 1y ago
Income inequality is not exactly the right metric. Wealth inequality is what matters. But I think that's what you meant because you talked about the bank account. But, anyway - it does matter, obviously. Money are a way for the society to decide what is more important. The more money you have the more decisions in a society you make. If a few people have most of the money - they get to decide for the whole society what is actually happening. TL;DR: high enough wealth inequality turns democracy into oligarchy. Even if it's a nice cozy oligarchy with good social - odds are it probably won't stay that way forever.
user____name 1y ago
Inequality always expends until the political interests of the rich and poor diverge so much that societies come apart at the seams. Relative equality is just as important, people get all kinds of stress related illnesses if they cannot keep up. One example is people people putting themselves in debt in order to get a college degree. Furthermore, the financial system works as a procyclical tool for the wealthy, since they can use debt financing as a leverage mechanism, while the poor have an insufficient credit score. This makes is easy for those with money to commandeer an outsized share of the available resources within an economy. For example, wealthy owners using real estate and as an investment vehicle, bidding up house prices for everyone. The banks make a killing on selling mortgages while the population becomes indebted and precarity rises. Here are some theories which I find interesting: The Iron Law of Oligarchy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy Structural Demographic Theory https://peterturchin.com/structural-demographic-theory/ https://peterturchin.com/structural-demographic-theory/ Elite Overproduction https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_overproduction https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_overproduction Firm Hierarchy predicts Income https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2022/11/19/firming-up-hierarchy/ https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2022/11/19/firming-up-hi...
drewcoo 1y ago
> people have more on their bank account That's a measure of liquid wealth inequality, not income inequality.
Herring 1y ago
Yes unfortunately it does matter. Concentration of economic power generally leads to concentration of political power (ie non-democracy). There are tons of pathways, eg campaign finance, lobbying, media ownership, threat of capital flight, regulatory capture, to name a few. Then lack of political power leads right back to lower standard of living for the poor.

loxodrome 1y ago

By that logic it’d be okay to have everyone making the minimum wage if it was high enough. Do you realize what a communist distopia that would be?

lucyjojo 1y ago
everyone with a universal income? with no unnecessary suffering for housing, health, food or education? that's an utopia.

jjice 1y ago

I don't know enough about anything to intellectually comment on this kind of thing, but I do agree that the standard of living for the poorest is probably a good metric of a society. If the poorest people in a country get to live a happy, healthy life with people that love in not be stressed about food or housing, that sounds like a fantastic world. Do any countries current achieve this? Japan maybe? I have no clue.

johnnyanmac 1y ago
These days, I believe every country is struggling with housing in some regard. But a good part of the EU and Japan and maybe South Korea might have had all those in the 2010's
socalgal2 1y ago
It's hard to compare countries. Japan has a culture of lots of construction, and that housing is not an investment. They also have far less zoning rules and far less housing requirements (less of "must have 2 parking spaces, must have N meters of space in front of lot, must have X size bathroom", etc. The result is there are plenty of inexpensive and small places to rent. For example, I just did a search on suumo.jp on one train line 1 or 2 stops from Shibuya. 36 units came up under $275 a month. (would be several hundred units if I search all lines that go through Shibuya). The units are small (7.5 to 15 square meters), Many don't even have a shower (you'd walk to a public bath). But, you'll have shelter. So even on a minimum wage part time salary you can probably afford to have a roof over your head. And, that was in Shibuya. Go out 10-15 stops and it will get even cheaper or they'll get larger with more amenities for the same price. Food can also be affordable in Japan.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
bongoman42 1y ago
I think all GCC countries achieve this for their citizens, going well above just living wage.

AliAbdoli 1y ago

Yes it does. I presume you don't wanna live in a world where Elon owns every company and you have no choice to work for him even if his wage is livable

candiddevmike 1y ago

We all only have so much time on this earth. Why is it fair for some folks to spend a disproportionate amount of that time toiling away for basic sustenance while others spend their days on their personal hotel sized yachts?

lotsofpulp 1y ago
It’s not fair, just like most of life due to the genes/parents/geography/etc you are born to.
delichon 1y ago
For the same reason that it's fair when one seed falls on asphalt and dies when another seed falls in shit and thrives: it isn't. Fairness turns out not to be one of the forces of the universe.
- candiddevmike 1y ago
  Wealth inequality isn't some random thing though, our government and economic system enables it. It's not like we have no control over it.
  - delichon 1y ago
    Wealth inequality broadly follows the Pareto distribution, which is natural and does derive from randomness. We could define fairness as a flat distribution and redistribute accordingly, but that requires continual work to be done against the random Pareto distribution or it reverts. It's do-able, but it requires a long term consensus that doesn't currently exist.
    - scienceman 1y ago
      There is no one pareto distribution — it is a family of distributions, with different parameters meaning different intercepts, and therefore different levels on inequality.
  - 1y ago

danans 1y ago

> If everyone has access to medical care, housing, and education, does it really matter if some people have more on their bank account? It still matters when some people have 6+ orders of magnitude more wealth than the median person. Because of this wealth disparity, through the legal channels of campaign contributions, they are able to have a disproportionate and therefore antidemocratic effect on government policy.

msgodel 1y ago
That's always going to exist. Unless you make people themselves absolutely uniform you're always going to have individuals with unusual amounts of influence. Instead of freaking out over this you should try to ensure their interests are aligned as closely as possible and that they're not abusing each other.
- user____name 1y ago
  Political influence is not a step function.
- TFYS 1y ago
  With the technologies we have today, I'm pretty sure it would be possible to create a system that doesn't have to give anyone so much influence that it becomes a problem. If you allow a system to have such concentrations of power, it's only a matter of time until someone incompetent or otherwise faulty person takes control and a lot of lives are ruined.
- surgical_fire 1y ago
  Maybe if we bow enough to our billionaire overlords they will spare us is your rationale? This is bullshit. You can have lower income inequality without necessarily having an elite with destructive amounts of money with proper regulations and taxation against the most wealthy. It's alright for a rich guy to live in a nice house ans drive around in a luxury car. It's not right when they have enough money to just buy access to the highest levels of everything to their benefit (and the rest of society prejudice).
- 1y ago

abdullahkhalids 1y ago

Because even modern democracies are much closer to 1-money-1-vote than 1-person-1-vote. "If some people have more on their bank account", what we have observed is that they use that money to change the rules of the game to extract even more wealth from those who have less in their bank account. So pretty soon the system evolves to where many don't have "access to medical care, housing, and education". Give me a viable political system where wealth is not correlated with political power, and I will be liable to agree with you.

twoodfin 1y ago
If that’s the scheme it’s failing miserably: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N

stego-tech 1y ago

Because once you change the goal post, it becomes gameable. If we say the better metric is healthcare, housing, and education, then: * Healthcare will be defined as “Primary Care Visits with approved in-network physicians”, who will also have proportionally lower pay so those who made that definition can keep more money for themselves * Housing will be redefined to include cockroach-infested squallor, so landlords can pocket more money * Education will have more stratas put in place at higher costs, such that “free” or “baseline” education is increasingly worthless, wages depressed, and only those of means may participate in society All of those circle back to wealth inequality, and is why that metric won’t go away - and why the rich have a vested interest in convincing the poor that it’s everyone and everything else’s fault for their precarity. It’s all about money. When more people have a larger share of the money, better decisions and outcomes are more likely than 1.1% of people hoarding 50% of global wealth for themselves. The math is absolutely that simple, as are the solutions (TAXES).

rangestransform 1y ago

I think housing is the biggest problem here, the ideology-based encouragement of homeownership led to homeowners voting for people who would protect their “””””investment””””” and preserve their particular lifestyle. Restrictive zoning and well meaning but restrictive laws (affordable housing requirements, minimum floor area, union labour requirement, countless procedural burdens) mean that we will effectively never have the Japan housing situation in the US

ajuc 1y ago

Income inequality is not exactly the right metric. Wealth inequality is what matters. But I think that's what you meant because you talked about the bank account. But, anyway - it does matter, obviously. Money are a way for the society to decide what is more important. The more money you have the more decisions in a society you make. If a few people have most of the money - they get to decide for the whole society what is actually happening. TL;DR: high enough wealth inequality turns democracy into oligarchy. Even if it's a nice cozy oligarchy with good social - odds are it probably won't stay that way forever.

user____name 1y ago

Inequality always expends until the political interests of the rich and poor diverge so much that societies come apart at the seams. Relative equality is just as important, people get all kinds of stress related illnesses if they cannot keep up. One example is people people putting themselves in debt in order to get a college degree. Furthermore, the financial system works as a procyclical tool for the wealthy, since they can use debt financing as a leverage mechanism, while the poor have an insufficient credit score. This makes is easy for those with money to commandeer an outsized share of the available resources within an economy. For example, wealthy owners using real estate and as an investment vehicle, bidding up house prices for everyone. The banks make a killing on selling mortgages while the population becomes indebted and precarity rises. Here are some theories which I find interesting: The Iron Law of Oligarchy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy Structural Demographic Theory https://peterturchin.com/structural-demographic-theory/ https://peterturchin.com/structural-demographic-theory/ Elite Overproduction https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_overproduction https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_overproduction Firm Hierarchy predicts Income https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2022/11/19/firming-up-hierarchy/ https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2022/11/19/firming-up-hi...

drewcoo 1y ago

> people have more on their bank account That's a measure of liquid wealth inequality, not income inequality.

Herring 1y ago

Yes unfortunately it does matter. Concentration of economic power generally leads to concentration of political power (ie non-democracy). There are tons of pathways, eg campaign finance, lobbying, media ownership, threat of capital flight, regulatory capture, to name a few. Then lack of political power leads right back to lower standard of living for the poor.