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> Technology provides leverage on ability and luck, and in the process concentrates wealth and drives inequality. I think that drastic wealth inequality is lik

by girmad 12y ago

> Technology provides leverage on ability and luck, and in the process concentrates wealth and drives inequality. I think that drastic wealth inequality is likely to be one of the biggest social problems of the next 20 years. [2] We can—and we will—redistribute wealth, but it still doesn’t solve the real problem of people needing something fulfilling to do. What's the best case realistic scenario for redistributing wealth?

gphil 12y ago
Not sure if you're asking sama about his opinion or if you want others to chime in. A popular answer among the HN crowd that I tend to agree with is to tax the wealthy and distribute the proceeds to the poor via a "basic income" scheme.
- radmuzom 12y ago
  A really good article about basic income was published in Vox last year (seems to have been updated recently). http://www.vox.com/2014/9/8/6003359/basic-income-negative-income-tax-questions-explain http://www.vox.com/2014/9/8/6003359/basic-income-negative-in...
- shit_parade 12y ago
  A better answer is removing expensive barriers of entry to allow small businesses to compete with larger companies, removing artificial boundaries to allow labor to go where it is most needed just as capital is allowed the same today, and _reducing taxes_ allowing the middle class to thrive once more instead of giving special privileges to the wealthy and buying off the poor with free debt.
  - unprepare 12y ago
    As a member of the middle class, I'm honestly curious how reducing taxes would help me in the least. An extra thousand bucks or so at the end of the year gets me what exactly?
- delinka 12y ago
  Why wait for a tax? If we're in the top %x of income earners, why aren't we taking it upon ourselves to give away our wealth? Form a charitable organization that takes care of people, donate your money. Edit: I'm with the others here replying with "reduced burdens on the middle class and small businesses" and "...teach a man to fish..." I keep seeing this basic income and wealth distribution topic on HN and I would genuinely like to understand why those preaching for these ideas never actually do anything about it. "Make the government bigger" isn't the answer as it'll then be used as a tool of oppression. Further, assuming we implemented a basic income in the USA, how many generations until the motivators for innovation and advancing society are completely eliminated? I've everything I need at $BASIC_INCOME, and as soon as I start producing more income, the government is stripping it from me, so what's my motivation to ever do anything besides subsist on that minimum? And once everyone is just taking the minimum and not doing work, who's gonna farm the food? Drive the trucks? Operate a grocery? Build the houses?
  - pbreit 12y ago
    It doesn't work very well without broad participation.
  - gphil 12y ago
    I don't have a good answer for why this doesn't happen. However, the fact of the matter is that the wealthy, on the whole, don't naturally redistribute their wealth very effectively.
  - innguest 12y ago
    Because keynesians don't really want to help the poor, they want to be taxed which serves as flogging to atone for their guilt for the poor, which then makes them feel better about themselves. If we wanted to help the poor we would be making things easier for small businesses, not harder. You don't help people by giving them fish, you help them by teaching them how to fish. I can't believe I'm having to remind HNers about this.
  - ashark 12y ago
    The short answer? Game theory. The longer answer? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volunteer%27s_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volunteer%27s_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_rider_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_rider_problem And, more broadly: http://raikoth.net/libertarian.html#coordination_problems http://raikoth.net/libertarian.html#coordination_problems
- jnbiche 12y ago
  > distribute the proceeds to the poor via a "basic income" scheme Basic income goes to both the poor and the rich. It's universal. The net affect may be redistributive, but there's no preference given to the recipient's income level. Most rich people would just take the basic income as a small tax break, but they're still getting it. I know you know this, but it's important to frame this issue properly if you want to support it. There can be no question in basic income of "undeserving" groups getting it, because everybody gets it. This also has the worthy effect of eliminating all the bureaucracy that current benefits programs carry.
  - gphil 12y ago
    > Most rich people would just take the basic income as a small tax break, but they're still getting it. Right, I wasn't clear about this but you're correct that the idea is that technically everybody is given the same amount in one form or another.
  - loumf 12y ago
    This ideal has helped Social Security and Medicare keep popularity. They are not seen as poverty programs, but they help the poor a lot.
jnbiche 12y ago
Basic income. People may scoff, but this is one of the extremely rare ideas that can draw significant support from both sides of the isle in the US. There are pockets of strong opposition to the idea on both the right and the left, but I can only hope that the far left's opposition to basic income continues. That opposition in and off itself makes most politicians in this country take a serious look at the idea.
- shit_parade 12y ago
  The problem is implementation, do you really trust the US government to give it even more power over its people by allowing to hand out 'basic incomes' to everyone? I'm sure it will only become yet another tool to oppress dissent.
  - jeffreyrogers 12y ago
    I don't think your fears are well grounded, and I'm not aware of significant efforts by the US government to "oppress dissent" in other recent cases.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - shit_parade 12y ago
      Free speech zones, excessive pursuit of whistle blowers, proposed restrictions on cryptography, extensive use of national security letters, resisting FOIA requests, defending NSA programs, killing US citizens in secret. I'm flabbergasted you believe my fears of government overreach and suppression of dissent is not well grounded.
    - geoffbrown2014 12y ago
      The federal government has a terrible record of trying and succeeding in ruining people they perceive as a threat to the status quo, including people like MLK Jr., a Senate confirmed target of the FBI. These tactics continue today, they are currently being directed towards investigative journalists and whistle blowers. The threats are so great as to create a very real chill among conventional journalists to keep on approved topics and messages.
dnautics 12y ago
I am puzzled by this. There is also this first order decrease in cost of living that technology drives, that really is the 'rising tide that lifts all boats', in effect, a 'natural' progressive redistribution[0]. It would be hard to argue that inequality increased between, say, 1700 and 1900 because of the increase in technology. [0] This 'natural' redistribution tends to be counteracted by authorities that debase the money system. Currently we have an explicit anti-deflationist policy on the grounds that lowering prices are believed to inherently have a socially destabilizing effect. Monetary policy tends to be regressive redistribution, because the primary executors of these policies are connected to banks, and the secondary effects are to create upward market indexes that beat inflation (but are eventually corrected downward, hurting middle-class 'slow movers' like pension funds and disproportionately helping upper-class 'fast moving' investment classes).
- pixl97 12y ago
  > It would be hard to argue that inequality increased between Based on averages, why would it be? Inequality does not measure where you are coming from, it measures the relative economic distance between groups now. We can all live better these days and yet have a far greater difference in wealth between the richest and poorest.
  - dnautics 12y ago
    yeah, pretty sure the gini coefficient went down during that era.
tiler 12y ago
Imagine a system which levied taxes not to fund government expenditure but to carefully control inflation. In this system there is no need for the government to collect taxes from citizen X to fund the needs of citizen Y. How is this possible? Study U.S. fiscal policy and you will learn about such a system. Given enough consideration you will eventually see that 'the redistribution of wealth' from citizen X to Y is an antiquated idea given how our monetary system actually works. A more accurate description of what occurs is: given the growth of the productivity of the population as a whole, we can 'distribute wealth' to those with less as long as this distribution doesn't cause the system to become unstable.

by girmad 12y ago

gphil 12y ago

Not sure if you're asking sama about his opinion or if you want others to chime in. A popular answer among the HN crowd that I tend to agree with is to tax the wealthy and distribute the proceeds to the poor via a "basic income" scheme.

radmuzom 12y ago
A really good article about basic income was published in Vox last year (seems to have been updated recently). http://www.vox.com/2014/9/8/6003359/basic-income-negative-income-tax-questions-explain http://www.vox.com/2014/9/8/6003359/basic-income-negative-in...
shit_parade 12y ago
A better answer is removing expensive barriers of entry to allow small businesses to compete with larger companies, removing artificial boundaries to allow labor to go where it is most needed just as capital is allowed the same today, and _reducing taxes_ allowing the middle class to thrive once more instead of giving special privileges to the wealthy and buying off the poor with free debt.
- unprepare 12y ago
  As a member of the middle class, I'm honestly curious how reducing taxes would help me in the least. An extra thousand bucks or so at the end of the year gets me what exactly?
delinka 12y ago
Why wait for a tax? If we're in the top %x of income earners, why aren't we taking it upon ourselves to give away our wealth? Form a charitable organization that takes care of people, donate your money. Edit: I'm with the others here replying with "reduced burdens on the middle class and small businesses" and "...teach a man to fish..." I keep seeing this basic income and wealth distribution topic on HN and I would genuinely like to understand why those preaching for these ideas never actually do anything about it. "Make the government bigger" isn't the answer as it'll then be used as a tool of oppression. Further, assuming we implemented a basic income in the USA, how many generations until the motivators for innovation and advancing society are completely eliminated? I've everything I need at $BASIC_INCOME, and as soon as I start producing more income, the government is stripping it from me, so what's my motivation to ever do anything besides subsist on that minimum? And once everyone is just taking the minimum and not doing work, who's gonna farm the food? Drive the trucks? Operate a grocery? Build the houses?
- pbreit 12y ago
  It doesn't work very well without broad participation.
- gphil 12y ago
  I don't have a good answer for why this doesn't happen. However, the fact of the matter is that the wealthy, on the whole, don't naturally redistribute their wealth very effectively.
- innguest 12y ago
  Because keynesians don't really want to help the poor, they want to be taxed which serves as flogging to atone for their guilt for the poor, which then makes them feel better about themselves. If we wanted to help the poor we would be making things easier for small businesses, not harder. You don't help people by giving them fish, you help them by teaching them how to fish. I can't believe I'm having to remind HNers about this.
- ashark 12y ago
  The short answer? Game theory. The longer answer? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volunteer%27s_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volunteer%27s_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_rider_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_rider_problem And, more broadly: http://raikoth.net/libertarian.html#coordination_problems http://raikoth.net/libertarian.html#coordination_problems
jnbiche 12y ago
> distribute the proceeds to the poor via a "basic income" scheme Basic income goes to both the poor and the rich. It's universal. The net affect may be redistributive, but there's no preference given to the recipient's income level. Most rich people would just take the basic income as a small tax break, but they're still getting it. I know you know this, but it's important to frame this issue properly if you want to support it. There can be no question in basic income of "undeserving" groups getting it, because everybody gets it. This also has the worthy effect of eliminating all the bureaucracy that current benefits programs carry.
- gphil 12y ago
  > Most rich people would just take the basic income as a small tax break, but they're still getting it. Right, I wasn't clear about this but you're correct that the idea is that technically everybody is given the same amount in one form or another.
- loumf 12y ago
  This ideal has helped Social Security and Medicare keep popularity. They are not seen as poverty programs, but they help the poor a lot.

jnbiche 12y ago

Basic income. People may scoff, but this is one of the extremely rare ideas that can draw significant support from both sides of the isle in the US. There are pockets of strong opposition to the idea on both the right and the left, but I can only hope that the far left's opposition to basic income continues. That opposition in and off itself makes most politicians in this country take a serious look at the idea.

shit_parade 12y ago
The problem is implementation, do you really trust the US government to give it even more power over its people by allowing to hand out 'basic incomes' to everyone? I'm sure it will only become yet another tool to oppress dissent.
- jeffreyrogers 12y ago
  I don't think your fears are well grounded, and I'm not aware of significant efforts by the US government to "oppress dissent" in other recent cases.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - shit_parade 12y ago
    Free speech zones, excessive pursuit of whistle blowers, proposed restrictions on cryptography, extensive use of national security letters, resisting FOIA requests, defending NSA programs, killing US citizens in secret. I'm flabbergasted you believe my fears of government overreach and suppression of dissent is not well grounded.
  - geoffbrown2014 12y ago
    The federal government has a terrible record of trying and succeeding in ruining people they perceive as a threat to the status quo, including people like MLK Jr., a Senate confirmed target of the FBI. These tactics continue today, they are currently being directed towards investigative journalists and whistle blowers. The threats are so great as to create a very real chill among conventional journalists to keep on approved topics and messages.

dnautics 12y ago

I am puzzled by this. There is also this first order decrease in cost of living that technology drives, that really is the 'rising tide that lifts all boats', in effect, a 'natural' progressive redistribution[0]. It would be hard to argue that inequality increased between, say, 1700 and 1900 because of the increase in technology. [0] This 'natural' redistribution tends to be counteracted by authorities that debase the money system. Currently we have an explicit anti-deflationist policy on the grounds that lowering prices are believed to inherently have a socially destabilizing effect. Monetary policy tends to be regressive redistribution, because the primary executors of these policies are connected to banks, and the secondary effects are to create upward market indexes that beat inflation (but are eventually corrected downward, hurting middle-class 'slow movers' like pension funds and disproportionately helping upper-class 'fast moving' investment classes).

pixl97 12y ago
> It would be hard to argue that inequality increased between Based on averages, why would it be? Inequality does not measure where you are coming from, it measures the relative economic distance between groups now. We can all live better these days and yet have a far greater difference in wealth between the richest and poorest.
- dnautics 12y ago
  yeah, pretty sure the gini coefficient went down during that era.

tiler 12y ago

Imagine a system which levied taxes not to fund government expenditure but to carefully control inflation. In this system there is no need for the government to collect taxes from citizen X to fund the needs of citizen Y. How is this possible? Study U.S. fiscal policy and you will learn about such a system. Given enough consideration you will eventually see that 'the redistribution of wealth' from citizen X to Y is an antiquated idea given how our monetary system actually works. A more accurate description of what occurs is: given the growth of the productivity of the population as a whole, we can 'distribute wealth' to those with less as long as this distribution doesn't cause the system to become unstable.