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Income inequality is not the problem, it's a symptom

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Re: Income inequality is not the problem, it's a symptom

#211

Post by stuaxo »

MrTonyD wrote: post #14
rayiner wrote: post #10

Mr. Garret quotes Sanders: > The reality is that for the past 40 years, Wall Street and the billionaire class has rigged the rules to redistribute wealth and income to the wealthiest and most powerful people of this country. I am rather puzzled that this idea gets so much traction. Does anyone really believe that if only the rules weren't "rigged" local shops and businesses would be able to compete against Wal-Mart a…

It took me years to realize that economics isn't physics - and it isn't ruled by physics-like laws. Instead, economics is governed by laws created by our society. And what we think of as "free market" is really just norms of trade which are created by our society. There is no reason why the bulk of the billions taken-in by WalMart should go to the Walton family while their employees live on food-stamps - that is just…

Yes, exactly this. We choose the rules, so we can push to have rules that don't have those people on food stamps. Unfortunately when you bring this up, most people can't countenance it.

Re: Income inequality is not the problem, it's a symptom

#212

Post by gnaritas »

Avshalom wrote: post #175
gnaritas wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, simple rule changes like that could radically alter society. Not that I agree or disagree, but that example does support the main point, the rules matter and can be changed.

Oh its almost certainly a terrible idea (at least if done that drastically) if for no other reason that massive upheavals of the status quo tend to harm the poor the most. It is just yes an example of the sort of "fundamental" of our economy that's actually just the result of some rules we made ourselves, not something inherent in capitalism or free markets. Less drastically you could make employee/consumer owned bus…

Yup, exactly my suggestion elsewhere in this thread.

Re: Income inequality is not the problem, it's a symptom

#213

Post by dang »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #98

"I think the propaganda of "The Communists" has been drilled into the American public so solidly" You mean the part where communists murdered 100 million people in the last century? That "propaganda"?

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10829000 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Income inequality is not the problem, it's a symptom

#214

Post by dang »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #103
Turing_Machine wrote: post #98

"I think the propaganda of "The Communists" has been drilled into the American public so solidly" You mean the part where communists murdered 100 million people in the last century? That "propaganda"?

Do you think modding this down is going to make those 100 million corpses go away? 'Cause it isn't.

Please stop taking HN threads on generic ideological tangents.

Also, please avoid going on about downvotes in HN comments, as the site guidelines ask:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Income inequality is not the problem, it's a symptom

#215

Post by ericHosick »

paganel wrote: post #36
UK-AL wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you believe in property rights? Having a legal/police system to catch people who forcebly take property? Using trade to exchange property? This is the core of our system. And that system will always generate inequality. Not necessarily a bad thing. You can have laws to take the edge off inequality generated, but at the core of the system you can't really avoid it.

> Do you believe in property rights? Not the OP, but I think a lot more people nowadays should read (or re-read) Locke's "Two Treatises of Government". That book is famous mostly for the second part, where Locke actually intellectually imposes private property as a thing in the Western world, but I found the first part equally interesting, where Locke fights against a guy called Filmer, who was of the opinion (preval…

> In the end private property is indeed theft, more exactly the imposition of someone's moral values over the other's by intrinsic force (if you "steal" you might go to prison or worst).

What you're pointing out is a monopoly called "The Legal System": a single dispute resolution system everyone must adhere to without choice (Government/Mafia). This monopoly is often based on geolocation. Property will be inherently aggressive if one is forced to use a specific dispute resolution system.

Everyone withholds stuff from others: it is 100% universal. In this way, the notion of "property is theft" can not hold because everyone (even animals) do it: consciously or subconsciously.

There is then the system of dispute resolution. This defines if a particular act of withholding was an act of "theft".

The combination of withholding + dispute resolution results in what we call property.

Competing dispute resolution systems is really that free-market people hope for. Dispute resolution systems do not have to be based on geolocation. In fact, people form millions of these unique systems every day, freely, without resorting to monopolies or the lowest of low dispute resolution: killing one another.

> The sooner we realize this the better, there's no second-guessing about it.

So ya. Property in and of itself is not theft. Forcing others to use a specific dispute resolution could be viewed as the theft.

Re: Income inequality is not the problem, it's a symptom

#216

Post by dang »

kelukelugames wrote: post #131
dang wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's closer to "for health" than you'd think. If you talked to PG about this I'm sure you'd come away with the same sense. My impression is that he writes essays as a way of thinking and because it makes him happy. Edit: these are representative of talking to him about it: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/676834210976411648 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/680162174648492032

I bet he writes as a way of thinking and it makes him happy. I bet he has biases, leanings, and motives too. Some of them are private or even subconscious.

Sure, but you've replaced a very strong (implied) claim with a weak one that would be true of anybody.

Re: Income inequality is not the problem, it's a symptom

#217

Post by ZeroGravitas »

iofj wrote: post #156
natrius wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like social democracy. (I was just establishing the burden of proof, not taking a position.) I'm skeptical that America has enough social cohesion for such a thing to be fully implemented here. Literacy and median wages are fine for the white majority, so we've got most of the trappings of a social democracy for white America. Why would Americans use the state to benefit all people when Americans aren't even willin…

First thing that needs to happen to social cohesion in America is stopping focusing everything on race. Yes, minimum wage affects different races differently. But so does everything else. And one thing I'm pretty sure about : the rich are pushing down minimum wage for reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with race. Even if the people involved are racists, it still would have little to do with why this is happen…

You seem to accept that the powerful elite will work to push down wages (broadly including providing healthcare and the modern social democratic benefits) but are ignoring the possibility that the quickest and easiest way for them to achieve this is to divide and conquer the poor by race, and its working beautifully for them.

Re: Income inequality is not the problem, it's a symptom

#218

Post by yummyfajitas »

sytelus wrote: post #174
yummyfajitas wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The standard left wing complaint is that billionaires don't have enough lavish parties, but instead reinvest their wealth in new productive capacity. See, e.g., Picketty, Krugman, or anyone favoring stimulus directed at the bottom of the income distribution. Do you dispute this? As for erasing class distinctions, consider the possibility that we already have. Imagine telling a person in 1915 about the world today; th…

You are missing a big point. Sure super rich can only utilize fraction of their wealth however rest of the wealth rarely gets utilized to increase productivity of the society. The majority of investments in their portfolios (as per Piketty's carefully collected data) are actually in non-productive activities such as real estate, hedge funds, HFT, derivatives, commodity manipulation and so on. These investments manipu…

How are real estate, hedge funds or derivatives non-productive? A hedge fund or derivative investment ultimately directs productive assets towards real world uses. If the wealthy are getting high returns from this (and Picketty claim the wealthy get the highest returns), then the wealthy are better at directing real investments to their most productive use.

Could you point me to the place in Picketty where he does more than speculate about how the wealthy gain more wealth?

These investments manipulates markets such as real estate to perpetually increase value of their investments without positive impact on society.

You seem to be confusing middle class NIMBYs (the main people manipulating real estate markets) with the very rich. Middle class homeowners are the ones preventing new construction, it's the wealthy developers who are trying (and failing) to be productive.

Re: Income inequality is not the problem, it's a symptom

#219

Post by ZeroGravitas »

losvedir wrote: post #151
grecy wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does anyone really believe that if only the rules weren't "rigged" local shops and businesses would be able to compete against Wal-Mart and Amazon? What would happen is that Wal-Mart and Amazon, et al. would pay their fair share of taxes, and the owners (or share holders) would not be multi-billionaires, only single-digit millionaires at most. The effect would be that every single person in the United States would…

> the owners (or share holders) would not be multi-billionaires, only single-digit millionaires at most. Mmmm, I don't think your numbers add up... There are 500 people in the US who have more than a billion dollars. If we made them all "single digit millionaires", we'd be looking at a one time wealth transfer of less than a $1T dollars, or about 25% of the US Federal Budget for one year. Sure, that would make for a…

I liked how you undermined your own argument. If we truly are back where we started then we just do it again, and continue with the money being given to people who then spend it.

Re: Income inequality is not the problem, it's a symptom

#220

Post by nradov »

jonathankoren wrote: post #154
codeismightier wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the hate against Walmart. It only has a profit margin of 3.12% [1] and return on assets of 7.69%. Now I suppose you could argue that all the profits are hidden away somewhere, but that sounds like an unfalsifiable statement. It certainly would be illegal to hide assets from shareholders. [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=WMT

Perhaps you should read up on it's labor practices. Two cases in point: They encourage their employees to sign up for food stamps, which results in a $6.2B government subsidy[1]. Also, the workers are intentionally paid so little (via only part-time employment) the company asks customers to donate food to their employees. That company is scum. [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2014/04/15/report-w... [2] ht…

What's wrong with the government subsidizing low-income citizens? Where they happen to work is irrelevant.
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