4 ms·

Capitalism vs. Democracy

4 points by flurpitude 13y ago

pedalpete 13y ago
What I fail to understand in many of these arguments regarding income inequality, is why inequality matters? Personally, I think the argument shouldn't be focused on how much the top 1% have, but rather on how well (or currently not well) the bottom 20% are living. If everybody has effective health care, abundant availability of healthy food, access to knowledge and the ability to be a productive member of society who doesn't have to work more than 40 hours a week in order to struggle to survive, who cares if the top guy earns 10000x more. Do we need to demonize the top 1% in order to motivate us to help the bottom 20-50%?
ergoproxy 13y ago
This NYTimes article is behind a paywall. When I click on it, I get shaken down for money, with the following message: "Thank you for visiting NYTimes.com We hope you’ve enjoyed your 10 free articles this month." Then it tells me I need to pay between $3.75 and $8.75 per week to continue. Since I'm in the bottom 20%, I can't afford this stomm! If I want to read this article, educate myself about income inequality, and become a more informed voter, then I need sacrifice something, like food. But if I were in the top 1%, I wouldn't need to think twice about subscribing. The first sentence of this op-ed is obscured but readable. I can see its about the work of a french academic named Thomas Picketty, whose website is at http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/fr/ http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/fr/ The facts published on his site don't seem controversial. His papers seem well researched and reasoned, albeit very narrowly focused, highly repetitious, and not particularly enlightening or useful. I did not see any kind of "demonization" of the rich in his work. I routinely see Fox news pundits demonize the poor, angry for example that 50 million Americans get $80 billion in Food Stamps per year, while never mentioning that Ben Bernake's QE3 prints $85 billion per month for the rich. Fed money printing seems to be the main cause of income inequality. And anyone who wants to reverse the growing income inequality should make abolishing the Fed their #1 priority.

4 points by flurpitude 13y ago

What I fail to understand in many of these arguments regarding income inequality, is why inequality matters? Personally, I think the argument shouldn't be focused on how much the top 1% have, but rather on how well (or currently not well) the bottom 20% are living. If everybody has effective health care, abundant availability of healthy food, access to knowledge and the ability to be a productive member of society who doesn't have to work more than 40 hours a week in order to struggle to survive, who cares if the top guy earns 10000x more. Do we need to demonize the top 1% in order to motivate us to help the bottom 20-50%?

ergoproxy 13y ago

This NYTimes article is behind a paywall. When I click on it, I get shaken down for money, with the following message: "Thank you for visiting NYTimes.com We hope you’ve enjoyed your 10 free articles this month." Then it tells me I need to pay between $3.75 and $8.75 per week to continue. Since I'm in the bottom 20%, I can't afford this stomm! If I want to read this article, educate myself about income inequality, and become a more informed voter, then I need sacrifice something, like food. But if I were in the top 1%, I wouldn't need to think twice about subscribing. The first sentence of this op-ed is obscured but readable. I can see its about the work of a french academic named Thomas Picketty, whose website is at http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/fr/ http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/fr/ The facts published on his site don't seem controversial. His papers seem well researched and reasoned, albeit very narrowly focused, highly repetitious, and not particularly enlightening or useful. I did not see any kind of "demonization" of the rich in his work. I routinely see Fox news pundits demonize the poor, angry for example that 50 million Americans get $80 billion in Food Stamps per year, while never mentioning that Ben Bernake's QE3 prints $85 billion per month for the rich. Fed money printing seems to be the main cause of income inequality. And anyone who wants to reverse the growing income inequality should make abolishing the Fed their #1 priority.