2 ms·

Your comment does exactly what I am describing. Your advocacy assumes all of the following are true without actually offering any evidence for them: - "too

Your comment does exactly what I am describing. Your advocacy assumes all of the following are true without actually offering any evidence for them: - "too much" wealth inequality is an a priori problem - "extreme" inequality negatively impacts opportunity and mobility - the increase in school tuition is somehow a symptom of this You also said I'm taking things too literally, but is Elon Musk not an example of the "extreme" wealth inequality you are describing?

dragonwriter 13y ago
> You also said I'm taking things too literally, but is Elon Musk not an example of the "extreme" wealth inequality you are describing? How can an individual be an example of extreme wealth inequality?
- haberman 13y ago
  Because that one individual comprises 0.00000001% of the world's population but controls 0.003% of its wealth. His net worth is 210,314 times what would be "allowed" in a world with perfect equality.
  - dllthomas 13y ago
    I expect the above was at least partly a joke - inequality is a relation between multiple parties, so not a property of one individual. Obviously, points of reference were implicit.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    When people talk about extreme wealth inequality, they aren't talking about the existence of individual outliers from the mean, they are talking about the overall characteristics of the distribution function as shown in measures like the Gini coefficient. A coherent community smaller than the whole universe of interest that demonstrates the same distributional features can be an example of extreme wealth inequality, an individual cannot -- this is important, because you can have extreme outliers with a relatively flat overall distribution, so its an error to try to say that being against extreme wealth inequality (in the sense that people are usually speaking when complaining about it) means being against any individual extremely wealthy person.

dragonwriter 13y ago

> You also said I'm taking things too literally, but is Elon Musk not an example of the "extreme" wealth inequality you are describing? How can an individual be an example of extreme wealth inequality?

haberman 13y ago
Because that one individual comprises 0.00000001% of the world's population but controls 0.003% of its wealth. His net worth is 210,314 times what would be "allowed" in a world with perfect equality.
- dllthomas 13y ago
  I expect the above was at least partly a joke - inequality is a relation between multiple parties, so not a property of one individual. Obviously, points of reference were implicit.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  When people talk about extreme wealth inequality, they aren't talking about the existence of individual outliers from the mean, they are talking about the overall characteristics of the distribution function as shown in measures like the Gini coefficient. A coherent community smaller than the whole universe of interest that demonstrates the same distributional features can be an example of extreme wealth inequality, an individual cannot -- this is important, because you can have extreme outliers with a relatively flat overall distribution, so its an error to try to say that being against extreme wealth inequality (in the sense that people are usually speaking when complaining about it) means being against any individual extremely wealthy person.