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People Want Fairness, Not Economic Equality

theatlantic.com

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Re: People Want Fairness, Not Economic Equality

#101

Post by unclebucknasty »

Randgalt wrote: post #69
secstate wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to go all anti-objectivist, but I've yet to see a consistent equation where (quantity of work) * (quality of work) = wealth There's a myth of the hustle that gets perpetrated whenever a feel-good story about a hard working, intelligent person's success gets bandied about. The reality is that I'm where I am at least as much because of who I was born to as to how much hard work and diligence I've put into my profes…

Even to win the state lottery you have to make the effort to buy a ticket. Are you saying you've done nothing more significant than having good parents?

Not that one can do nothing significant, but that one is significantly advantaged by his or her parent's wealth.

And studies bear this out. One of the greatest predictors of a person's wealth is whether his or her parents are wealthy. And this, even when corrected for such factors as environment and behaviour.

Re: People Want Fairness, Not Economic Equality

#102

Post by zo1 »

mmanfrin wrote: post #85
stvswn wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're talking about equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome? This is specifically not what Sanders is talking about. He's saying that the basic fact that the rich have become richer than they used to be, relative to everyone else, is wrong and must change. How do you read this differently?: https://berniesanders.com/issues/income-and-wealth-inequalit...

Really? Every single point there is about increasing taxes on the rich and reducing taxes/burdens or increasing pay for the poor, leading to one thing: more opportunity for the poor to pursue life decisions that aren't mandated by position or need (e.g., not going to school because you cant afford it or dont have the time when not working your two jobs). The rich being richer and the poor being poorer is an indicatio…

What opportunities are you referring to, exactly? Which of them are inaccessible to some, but not to others?

Re: People Want Fairness, Not Economic Equality

#103

Post by chad_walters »

This article is terrible -- it sets up a false dichotomy. The article actually refutes it's own conclusion in the paragraphs about what people view as the ideal income distribution. We don't want total equality but we do want less inequality than is actually present today in every 1st world country. So we should care about the current (and growing!) levels of inequality -- even if we don't want a perfectly equal distribution, we want one that is more equal.

Re: People Want Fairness, Not Economic Equality

#104

Post by zo1 »

mmanfrin wrote: post #96
stvswn wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh -- so income inequality is evidence of disparity of opportunity, so you are actually concerned with income inequality. You'd prefer incomes to be more equal. If opportunity were perfectly equal (your ideal state), what would you imagine income distribution to look like? Would that be acceptable then? In other words, at what distribution would you not argue that the distribution itself is evidence of unfairness?

You'd prefer incomes to be more equal The way you've worded your questions you are trying to lead me in to a talk of wealth redistribution. Incomes being more equal is not about distributing , but in countering things that are naturally regressive by: Establishign a more progressive tax rate, ending on the cap of social security payments (which is the literal definition of a regressive tax), a livable minimum wage, e…

Progressive taxation is wealth redistribution. What definition of "wealth redistribution" are you working off of?

In my opinion, it's just word-trickery to call it anything else:

Take money from A, and give to B. As opposed to: Take money from A, pay C to provide service to B, so that B doesn't have to pay.

Moral discussion about "taking" vs "voluntarily giving" aside, of course. That never ends productively.

Re: People Want Fairness, Not Economic Equality

#105

Post by saulrh »

vox_mollis wrote: post #16
saulrh wrote: post #5

Even "Fairness" isn't quite as useful a metric - where do you draw the line between things that should be eliminated as being unfair and things that are valuable culture and individuality? Parental intelligence is strongly causally coupled with their children's future intelligence simply through their working vocabulary and talkativeness, which is clearly unfair from the perspective of the newborn child; how do you f…

Parental intelligence is strongly causally coupled with their children's future intelligence simply through their working vocabulary and talkativeness Your statement is correct, but your assumed cause is not. It's 60-80% genes: https://jaymans.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/iq-heritability-...

I guess I should have worded it to better indicate that what I gave is a simple, obvious, and uncontroversial example of things that go into causal coupling between parental and child intelligence, but not the only or even remotely the strongest element. There are many reasons why being born to unintelligent or poor parents is incredibly unfair.

It is present, but relatively weakly compared to genetics: http://literacy.rice.edu/thirty-million-word-gap

Re: People Want Fairness, Not Economic Equality

#106

Post by crimsonalucard »

AC__ wrote: post #90
crimsonalucard wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what you say. Biologically we aren't designed that way. We're designed to seek status and achievement as it aids in reproduction. Understanding the universe doesn't help you achieve this goal in anyway. It probably hinders you. Too many people like to think about themselves as robotic savants desiring only to be logical and more intelligent. This is a fantasy story that is somewhat true but side steps the issu…

Don't be absurd, in what reality can you actually believe any being understanding the nature of the Universe could "live like a hobo" whatever the hell that means. If you were truly intelligent you'd understand money is a man made construct that you've been socially engineered to want above all else as a means to control the masses. You honestly just asserted we're hard-wired to want money, sex, of course, but money,…

Understanding something doesn't change your nature. I understand eating KFC is bad for me. This does not suppress the desire.

Money is a social construct that is tied to status. We want money because we want status.

You claim not to seek power. But if it was in front of you would you take it? Which door? Be honest.

Re: People Want Fairness, Not Economic Equality

#107

Post by zo1 »

contingencies wrote: post #77
dnautics wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why not Benjamin Tucker's critique of Marx in "State Socialism and Anarchism", wherein he correctly predicts from first principles that state socialism eventually leads to gulags, about 20-30 years before it actually happened. http://praxeology.net/BT-SSA.htm

OK I'll bite. That logic is ridiculous. "Because X led to Y for one instance of Z, X leads to Y (ultimately and permanently) for all Z?" Spot the fallacy. (And what exactly do you mean by 'first principles' in a field of social science and political economy?) Counter-thoughts from reality: China's doing great, and the US has a higher percentage of its own population incarcerated than any other state in human history.

China appears to have forced labor in their prisons. Is that not what a gulag was?

https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2014/jun/22/inside-chin...

For that matter, the US has it as well (albeit to a 'cleaner' extent):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_Stat...

Re: People Want Fairness, Not Economic Equality

#108

Post by saulrh »

vinhboy wrote: post #34
saulrh wrote: post #5

Even "Fairness" isn't quite as useful a metric - where do you draw the line between things that should be eliminated as being unfair and things that are valuable culture and individuality? Parental intelligence is strongly causally coupled with their children's future intelligence simply through their working vocabulary and talkativeness, which is clearly unfair from the perspective of the newborn child; how do you f…

> people seem to be reliably made happier by throwing chunks of the pie on the floor That's a really bold statement to make. Where is your proof? Are you just making it up based on your own biases? If we're just going by anecdotes, then I can honestly say, I have never met anyone who wants to destroy other people's piece of the pie. If anything, I've met more people adamant about defending other people's pie pieces.…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game

When given the choice between fair-pie-on-the-floor and unfair-everybody-gets-more-pie, humans reliably choose fair-pie-on-the-floor.

Re: People Want Fairness, Not Economic Equality

#109

Post by saulrh »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #84
jsprogrammer wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you believe something like the Banach-Tarski paradox [0] is possible in our world, there is a relatively constant amount of matter within our reach. (In fact, there is a finite amount of matter that we will ever be able to reach.) This puts a hard cap on how much "stuff" can exist. Therefore, the pie is fixed. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banach%E2%80%93Tarski_paradox

I think most of us don't define "pie" that way. In particular, I (and, I presume, saulrh) were talking about the economy, not about the total amount of matter within reach of the human race. Even using your definition, though, the pie is not fixed. We can't mine the moon today. Perhaps someday we can. If so, the amount of matter available to us is not fixed. Or perhaps we can mine the earth's core. More mundanely, th…

I wasn't even defining it economically, although that's one very concrete way this mentality appears. It also appears in discussions of civil rights, in everyday social interactions, and even when people are offered sterilized game-theoretic experiments. It's a depressingly general pattern.

Re: People Want Fairness, Not Economic Equality

#110

Post by zo1 »

nemo44x wrote: post #93
mrchucklepants wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer to the first question is the time-value of money. The capitalist has put his capital into the production and is delaying the return on his investment to the future. The employee is being paid now, regardless of when the income from their labor is realized. This is why a good is sold for more than the worker is paid. The worker is not being paid less than their labor is worth.

And the money earned with labor is taxed heavily while the money earned with capital is taxed minimally. This seems fair?

Money earned through capital gains, yes.

Investing your capital into business/machinery yields higher profits. Those get taxed at corporate tax rate, which is 35%. This rate is only matched with the highest income-tax rate bracket.

It may not "look" fair on the surface, but to compare capital gains tax with income tax is an oversimplification. For one, invested capital is unpredictable.

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