7 ms·

My same exact thought process. I think the real issue is poverty. Globally, poverty still exists on a mass scale. That is the sad part, not the fact that .01% b

My same exact thought process. I think the real issue is poverty. Globally, poverty still exists on a mass scale. That is the sad part, not the fact that .01% buy private planes and the bottom 50% in the US buys used Toyotas. My other question with GDP / income stats that I never see answered is, why is lower income worse? While 50 years ago it seems maximizing personal income was the main career goal, that is definitely not true for a large % of the population today. People are looking for fulfillment, working for non profits, taking time off to travel and choosing lower income jobs that they enjoy more. It is represented as a negative thing that those people are making less money even if they end up happier.

VLM 12y ago
"that is definitely not true for a large % of the population today" What you're seeing is rationalization as a defense mechanism. Also bragging about low level jobs is a peculiar form of conspicuous display of wealth for trust fund babies, who are pretty rare outside the largest cities so their behavior is fairly irrelevant on a very large scale (like country wide scale) Another issue is we have various untrue slogans about everyone having a political voice or everyone being equal under the law, in practice that is strictly financial wealth based, and when wealth is relatively equal the cognitive dissonance is very low and doesn't usually matter very much, but consider the social effects when wealth is very unequal and the sloganeering doesn't pacify the masses anymore.