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Say there's someone who wants to reduce inequality, and we ask them whether they approve of various scenarios: Situation: "People living on a certain well-off

Say there's someone who wants to reduce inequality, and we ask them whether they approve of various scenarios: Situation: "People living on a certain well-off island discover a way to farm more efficiently, which means they produce 10% more food, but that technology only works on their island. Is this good or bad?" Inequality reducer: "This is bad, because that island's average income will go up while the rest of the world stays the same" Situation: "We discover a free, simple cure for Alzheimer's" Inequality reducer: "That's horrible, because Alzheimer's does the most damage to highly educated countries - those countries will now have way more mentally together, experienced 70-year-olds making them even richer, which will increase economic inequality with poorer countries where fewer people suffer from alzheimer's" You have got to see this is a bit weird, right? It's a focus on minimizing local distortions sometimes can have a bad effect. In fact, imagine we really did have "equality" - the anti-inequality advocate would object to any change in that world, since it would lead to a temporary bit of inequality as information about the change propagated through it. Even simple things like the first invention of mechanized agriculture, or machines to make clothing, introduced tons of inequality at first, since there was only one copy of them at first! But we're better off now that our civilization doesn't have to devote 50% of everyone's life to growing food & making clothes by hand! The other way to think about it is that that we just have to make sure everyone has at least a basic level of food, health, education, and freedom. That lets us focus on the main problems (people who don't have enough), and never could lead us into condemning gains in human quality of life.

matthewmacleod 12y ago
That's an absolute straw man - someone wanting to reduce inequality doesn't want to do it at the expense of all other considerations, which is the assumption you've made. Complaining about an increasing wealth gap does not mean that the only other option is perfect equality of wealth. Have you seen the breakdown of wealth in America? The gap between, say, the top 1% and the rest of society is staggering. The top 0.1% have more wealth than the bottom 90%! It's a broken system that results in some people having wealth so wildly out of proportion with the rest of society, and its hard to argue its proportional to the value of their contributions.
- JanezStupar 12y ago
  What if it is not broken, but inevitable?
  - matthewmacleod 12y ago
    Then you need to speak to a philosopher…
  - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
    There's nothing economically inevitable about spending public subsidy on the rich instead of the poor.
    - JanezStupar 12y ago
      How did you get public subsidy into discussion anyway? I have posted a simple question. What if large asset control inequality is inevitable? Is bringing down the wealthy, so that a new class of wealthy takes over and possibly destroying large means of the assets in process benefit society? Thus far that is the biggest outcome generated by previous attempts at decreasing inequality.
      - unclebucknasty 12y ago
        >How did you get public subsidy into discussion See sd8f9iu's comment below. For instance: "If congress passes a tax cut for the top 1%, that increases inequality, not because some group has suddenly "found a way to farm more efficiently" That is, public subsidy is naturally a part of the discussion. >What if large asset control inequality is inevitable? There is nothing "inevitable" about asset control because there is nothing "inevitable" about our economic system. It is all a function of the choices that we make, so you are begging the question to some degree. Some of the choices are related to, say, tax-policy, as noted. But, the system itself is one that we have constructed from the ground up to allocate resources (from property rights to market function to fiat currency). We've created ALL of the rules from whole cloth, so how can we turn around and say, "well, that's inevitable", as if nature has decided? >Is bringing down the wealthy, so that a new class of wealthy takes over... This is a strawman similar to monkeypiza's comment above. "Bringing down the wealthy", creating a new class of wealthy that "takes over", etc. are not the stated desire or inevitable result of making the system more equitable. It's not a binary proposition. When we have, say, tax code that favors capital over labor, while we simultaneously assault unionization, the outcome is clearly skewed in one direction. Surely, you see that these factors are out of balance in disfavor of one group. And, if so (and your interest is in fairness), then you would have to flip your original argument in the other direction.
sd8f9iu 12y ago
You make inequality out as the result of purely economic factors, when it is as much the result of political decisions. If congress passes a tax cut for the top 1%, that increases inequality, not because some group has suddenly "found a way to farm more efficiently" or discovered a cure to Alzheimer's, but because we decided it that way. And as matthewmacleod has stated, you have constructed a complete straw man for someone against inequality. The inequality movement doesn't believe in destroying productive resources. The idea behind redistribution (e.g. taxing the rich and giving it – possibly through increased social spending – to the poor) is to make up for what is seen as an unfair rewarding of wealth and inequality of opportunity. And before you say that this results in the same thing as destroying resources because it drags the economy, I invite you to look into the research being done on the negative economic effects of inequality, not to mention its effect on society as a whole.
- monkeypizza 12y ago
  At the margin, I think we both mainly want to help poor people, right? I'm just pointing out that using measures like the Gini coefficient can inadvertently reward bad behavior. Of course neither side directly wants to destroy resources, but if we're comparing national Gini numbers & policies, there's no good way to distinguish between good vs bad ways to lower it. i.e. China's Gini has been going up, but they also are pulling tons of people out of poverty - is it bad or not? I'm not in favor of inequality, but just pointing out that historically the things that have moved people out of poverty have been market based innovation (the world since 1800), not direct assaults on inequality (USSR, Chinese revolutions, cuba etc.)
  - sd8f9iu 12y ago
    > I'm just pointing out that using measures like the Gini coefficient can inadvertently reward bad behavior Great, duly noted. When you make grand assertions about the inequality movement in the future, I suggest you do some background research and actually understand their claims first. > just pointing out that historically the things that have moved people out of poverty have been market based innovation (the world since 1800), not direct assaults on inequality (USSR, Chinese revolutions, cuba etc.) You need a history lesson. First of all, reducing inequality is not the same as moving a nation out of poverty (remember, technically, the US is the richest nation in the world). And secondly, look at the US in the 1930s-40s, when JFK's New Deal and WWII – not "market based innovation" – led to the largest expansion of the middle class yet. See http://spot.colorado.edu/~kaplan/econ3080/Krugman-middle.html http://spot.colorado.edu/~kaplan/econ3080/Krugman-middle.htm... Inequality in the US is a result of decisions we have made, not because the rich have suddenly become more innovative.
xorcist 12y ago
Could you at least try to get the basics right about what wealth inequality even means? Piketty popularized the subject last year, it is a great place to start.

matthewmacleod 12y ago

That's an absolute straw man - someone wanting to reduce inequality doesn't want to do it at the expense of all other considerations, which is the assumption you've made. Complaining about an increasing wealth gap does not mean that the only other option is perfect equality of wealth. Have you seen the breakdown of wealth in America? The gap between, say, the top 1% and the rest of society is staggering. The top 0.1% have more wealth than the bottom 90%! It's a broken system that results in some people having wealth so wildly out of proportion with the rest of society, and its hard to argue its proportional to the value of their contributions.

JanezStupar 12y ago
What if it is not broken, but inevitable?
- matthewmacleod 12y ago
  Then you need to speak to a philosopher…
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  There's nothing economically inevitable about spending public subsidy on the rich instead of the poor.
  - JanezStupar 12y ago
    How did you get public subsidy into discussion anyway? I have posted a simple question. What if large asset control inequality is inevitable? Is bringing down the wealthy, so that a new class of wealthy takes over and possibly destroying large means of the assets in process benefit society? Thus far that is the biggest outcome generated by previous attempts at decreasing inequality.
    - unclebucknasty 12y ago
      >How did you get public subsidy into discussion See sd8f9iu's comment below. For instance: "If congress passes a tax cut for the top 1%, that increases inequality, not because some group has suddenly "found a way to farm more efficiently" That is, public subsidy is naturally a part of the discussion. >What if large asset control inequality is inevitable? There is nothing "inevitable" about asset control because there is nothing "inevitable" about our economic system. It is all a function of the choices that we make, so you are begging the question to some degree. Some of the choices are related to, say, tax-policy, as noted. But, the system itself is one that we have constructed from the ground up to allocate resources (from property rights to market function to fiat currency). We've created ALL of the rules from whole cloth, so how can we turn around and say, "well, that's inevitable", as if nature has decided? >Is bringing down the wealthy, so that a new class of wealthy takes over... This is a strawman similar to monkeypiza's comment above. "Bringing down the wealthy", creating a new class of wealthy that "takes over", etc. are not the stated desire or inevitable result of making the system more equitable. It's not a binary proposition. When we have, say, tax code that favors capital over labor, while we simultaneously assault unionization, the outcome is clearly skewed in one direction. Surely, you see that these factors are out of balance in disfavor of one group. And, if so (and your interest is in fairness), then you would have to flip your original argument in the other direction.

sd8f9iu 12y ago

You make inequality out as the result of purely economic factors, when it is as much the result of political decisions. If congress passes a tax cut for the top 1%, that increases inequality, not because some group has suddenly "found a way to farm more efficiently" or discovered a cure to Alzheimer's, but because we decided it that way. And as matthewmacleod has stated, you have constructed a complete straw man for someone against inequality. The inequality movement doesn't believe in destroying productive resources. The idea behind redistribution (e.g. taxing the rich and giving it – possibly through increased social spending – to the poor) is to make up for what is seen as an unfair rewarding of wealth and inequality of opportunity. And before you say that this results in the same thing as destroying resources because it drags the economy, I invite you to look into the research being done on the negative economic effects of inequality, not to mention its effect on society as a whole.

monkeypizza 12y ago
At the margin, I think we both mainly want to help poor people, right? I'm just pointing out that using measures like the Gini coefficient can inadvertently reward bad behavior. Of course neither side directly wants to destroy resources, but if we're comparing national Gini numbers & policies, there's no good way to distinguish between good vs bad ways to lower it. i.e. China's Gini has been going up, but they also are pulling tons of people out of poverty - is it bad or not? I'm not in favor of inequality, but just pointing out that historically the things that have moved people out of poverty have been market based innovation (the world since 1800), not direct assaults on inequality (USSR, Chinese revolutions, cuba etc.)
- sd8f9iu 12y ago
  > I'm just pointing out that using measures like the Gini coefficient can inadvertently reward bad behavior Great, duly noted. When you make grand assertions about the inequality movement in the future, I suggest you do some background research and actually understand their claims first. > just pointing out that historically the things that have moved people out of poverty have been market based innovation (the world since 1800), not direct assaults on inequality (USSR, Chinese revolutions, cuba etc.) You need a history lesson. First of all, reducing inequality is not the same as moving a nation out of poverty (remember, technically, the US is the richest nation in the world). And secondly, look at the US in the 1930s-40s, when JFK's New Deal and WWII – not "market based innovation" – led to the largest expansion of the middle class yet. See http://spot.colorado.edu/~kaplan/econ3080/Krugman-middle.html http://spot.colorado.edu/~kaplan/econ3080/Krugman-middle.htm... Inequality in the US is a result of decisions we have made, not because the rich have suddenly become more innovative.

xorcist 12y ago

Could you at least try to get the basics right about what wealth inequality even means? Piketty popularized the subject last year, it is a great place to start.