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When talking about income inequality it may be too narrow to only look at "how poor are the poorest people," because what's important in an inequality is the in
by jal278 13y ago
When talking about income inequality it may be too narrow to only look at "how poor are the poorest people," because what's important in an inequality is the increasingly vast disparity between the poorest and the richest.
Focusing on the disparity is important because it highlights that there is systematic concentration of wealth, i.e. that the economic game seems to be stacked for the wealthiest: the rich really do get richer, while the poor really do get poorer.
Otherwise, when you look at the poorest of the poor, the knee-jerk rebuttal of some is just that, sure, some people are really poor, but they deserve it -- e.g. they are the deadbeats of society, or they should work harder, or they should get better educated. In constrast, the increasing disparity between the rich and poor gives evidence that something larger is going on.
I do agree that social mobility is important, as is expanding the middle class. But more than expanding the middle class, the income of the middle class should increase with the overall increase of wealth, which has not been occurring as of late.
Also, the concept of "more of us can move into the top 2% or 3%" is tautologically impossible :)
- ebfe 13y agoThe poor don't get poorer, though. The poor today are the richest they've been at any point in recorded history- they live longer, are more likely to own a home and cars, and are more likely to go to college than the kings of 100 years ago. Inequality is, in and of itself, a meaningless metric- what we really care about is the absolute quality of people's lives. If the social structures that result in the highest absolute quality of people's lives (by driving economic and technological progress) require inequality, then it's absurd to suggest we abandon them for a more equal society with a lower absolute quality of life.
- jal278 13y agoI agree that overall the modern poor are likely doing better than they have historically -- although I disagree that they "never get poorer"; the trend in the last few decades as minimum wage has remained the same is would seem to indicate a decrease in their wealth due to inflation. But in any case it is a non sequitur to say that because the poor are doing as well as they ever have, that we no longer need to worry about them: If we have a surplus of planetary resources such that no one need starve, and people still starve, it is remains a moral situation we should want to remedy. Just about any indirect metric is meaningless by itself, yet we still use them, e.g. GDP, literacy rate, etc. And in the case of income inequality, it is likely only indicative of something nefarious when it becomes extreme. I'm not suggesting that we should aim for absolute equality in income. But, when income becomes extraordinarily concentrated in the hands of a few, it spells problems for society -- money often equals influence, and incredible concentration of wealth becomes equated with incredible concentration of influence, which is worrisome for a functional democracy. Finally, I agree, if somehow the perfect social structure that most raised the average overall quality of people's lives required incredibly inequal distribution of income, then we should not simply discard that system on principle. While I could imagine a certain level of income inequality being necessary for a functional capitalistic society -- I do not see why extreme inequality would be necessary, or how that extreme inequality in itself would increase the average citizen's quality of life.
- ebfe 13y agoIf a scientist discovered a cure for cancer tomorrow, inequality would increase drastically. Millions of people would each be tens of thousands of dollars poorer, and one man/corporation would be billions of dollars richer. Surely you would not consider this a bad thing? The same was true for the invention of electricity, the telephone, cars, planes, computers, and every other device that reduced the labor needed to perform a given task. Inequality is the inseparable byproduct of technological progress.
- jal278 13y agoRight, I am agreeing that innovation deserves compensation, and as a result you'll have inequality. But the degree of that inequality overall in society is separable from technological progress -- i.e. through progressive tax rates or other intervention. You might disagree about whether such intervention agrees with you personally, but technological progress need not strictly increase the degree of income inequality