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A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

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Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#61

Post by owyn »

Pyxl101 wrote: post #36
jgord wrote: post #9

PGs articles aren't wrong - but they are second order, when we need a first order response to a current evil [ before it leads to bloody revolution ] If you look at income distribution its a hockey stick - you really have to slap yourself on the face and realise there is no middle class - what you thought of as professional-middle-class-contributor is actually college-debt-burdened-lower-class - no matter how many ye…

> People aren't asking for "income equality" they are asking for some level of humanity and democracy to be restored to our version of Capitalism, to strengthen that capitalism. That phrase could mean anything in practice that anyone wants it to mean. If we're going to discuss these things, we should be specific. What specific policy is desired, and how is it going to help? "Humanity" and "democracy" are not economic…

It's not as if wealthy people take their money and put it under their mattress. No, they invest it. That investment money flows to other corporations who then spend it on goods and services, or spend it on their employees.

No they don't. From what I've read (Piketty etc) they do not re-circulate it into the general economy. They use investment vehicles which are increasingly divorced from "real world" economics and more like moving chips around on a poker table. It's wealth in the service of wealth creation. All of that happens in an almost separate level of the economy. No poor or middle class person is even involved.

I'd "hazard a guess" that wealthy investors might be more effective at creating more wealth, but not at raising the standard of living of the countries they are in. In fact, the standard of living in the United States is declining.

Approximately 100% of the money that poor and middle class people spend goes to corporations. If you give them money, they spend it on goods and services. That's pretty efficient.

The alternative, if you tax the rich, is that the same money flows to the government and the government spends it on programs.

Is that the only alternative? At this point, probably. I don't trust the government either, it's a bloated plutocracy. But you could still make a completely economic/utility theory argument that the benefit to 100M+ people outweighs the overall good for the 1K+ people at the top of the current hierarchy.

Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#62

Post by gaius »

ryandamm wrote: post #20

I think it's useful to draw a bright line around the 'value creation' that PG is referring to, also. It's not just creating chairs, it's aggregating great wealth by 'disrupting' traditional industries. Those traditional industries have workers and shareholders who lose out. What makes successful startups so profitable is they displace a large and less-efficient system with a small, efficient one. Efficient in terms o…

Disruption is merely skirting the law and pocketing what you would have spent on compliance as profit. AirBnB cleverly disguises its actual employees - the people cleaning its hotel rooms - as independent contractors. They are employees in every sense apart from having rights. And the genius of it is, they do it to themselves!

This is not "creating value", it is destroying it.

Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#63

Post by jessriedel »

ryandamm wrote: post #20

I think it's useful to draw a bright line around the 'value creation' that PG is referring to, also. It's not just creating chairs, it's aggregating great wealth by 'disrupting' traditional industries. Those traditional industries have workers and shareholders who lose out. What makes successful startups so profitable is they displace a large and less-efficient system with a small, efficient one. Efficient in terms o…

Peter Thiel encourages founders to seek (legal) monopoly rents, but he acknowledges that they don't last forever, nor can extract 100% of the value created. I don't know why you think the public doesn't capture a good chunk, or even most, of that value.

Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#64

Post by cryoshon »

natural219 wrote: post #41

I'll give a short explanation as to why I flagged this: This piece irrationally pisses me off, for purely petty social dynamics reasons. 1) There's a first-mover advantage to thinkpiece responses. Everyone obviously is going to read the first response, many people are probably writing responses of their own. This seems like a quick way to jump into a discussion and say "hey, look at me!" You better have something use…

I'll admit that I read PG's piece coincidentally when it was just posted and formed my article shortly after, but I'd have been writing something else ("thinkpiece") around that period of time anyway if I hadn't come across it. I've wanted to start writing about economic inequality for quite some time, and this was a convenient stepping off point.

I take issue with #2, though: if everyone knows those points, why did PG fail to address them adequately in his original piece? The data supporting my perspective are quite compelling and not yet disproven.

I'll agree my piece isn't insightful: I considered it a diligence to reply point by point (by the book, perhaps) specifically because influential people cannot go unchallenged when they make faulty arguments.

Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#65

Post by wfo »

mwcampbell wrote: post #44
jgord wrote: post #9

PGs articles aren't wrong - but they are second order, when we need a first order response to a current evil [ before it leads to bloody revolution ] If you look at income distribution its a hockey stick - you really have to slap yourself on the face and realise there is no middle class - what you thought of as professional-middle-class-contributor is actually college-debt-burdened-lower-class - no matter how many ye…

> So, just as "All Lives Matter" is not a good response to the "Black Lives Matter" movement, It's tangential, but can you please explain this part? It seems to me that "All Lives Matter" really is the more apt phrase, because it shifts the focus from an us-versus-them conflict to actual justice. Edit: Got it. I'll stop being part of the problem. The only remaining question is this: What's the most effective way to b…

Of course everyone believes that all lives matter. But the context is important. If someone says "black lives matter" and your response is "ALL lives matter", you're not just saying you think all lives matter, you're saying you don't think it's a racial issue. And willfully ignoring the problem of racism is what has allowed racism to flourish in, say, police departments.

So when you say "all lives matter" you're essentially saying "This problem that effects specifically black people doesn't matter. Let's focus on the more general and still important but less urgent problem that effects white people too, and maybe the problems facing black people will go away". It's like if someone comes to you with statistics about how horribly out of proportion police brutality is towards African Americans and your response is an anecdote about this one time the cops beat up a white guy. Or if someone brings up how serious sexual assault and harassment is for women and all you talk about is how men can be sexually harassed too. If you willfully refuse to recognize the problem, you're part of it.

Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#67

Post by dang »

bad_user wrote: post #60

This article is being buried, dropping from second place to tenth in an instant. Interestingly it's being surpassed by articles that are both older and with less points.

The thread is clearly a duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10826838. Normally we bury duplicates outright. We're actually holding off doing that here, because some people seem to feel strongly about it.

Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#69

Post by marshray »

dnautics wrote: post #45
nickbauman wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Masters actually bought slaves. They weren't cheap. So they had to, you know, feed them and care for them somewhat. Now when you aren't needed at the 7/11 you can almost just go die in a fire: have you seen was homelessness is like in the US? I have.

You do understand that this is basically the argument that slaveowners used to justify continuing slavery in the 19th century?

Except that no one is justifying slavery, it's just the opposite.

Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#70

Post by [deleted] »

dnautics wrote: post #45
nickbauman wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Masters actually bought slaves. They weren't cheap. So they had to, you know, feed them and care for them somewhat. Now when you aren't needed at the 7/11 you can almost just go die in a fire: have you seen was homelessness is like in the US? I have.

You do understand that this is basically the argument that slaveowners used to justify continuing slavery in the 19th century?

[deleted]
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