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A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

cryoshon.co

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

#231

Post by dang »

Umn44 wrote: post #154

"I find it astonishing that people compare modern-day income equality and the position of the poor in our time, in the Western world, to that of historical slavery" I'm sorry to tell you but you're a moron if you believe there isn't mass suffering when you are poor and low status. The amount of psychological abuse you take and feelings of self worth and being treated as subhuman by society and the business community…

This breaks the HN guidelines. Please comment civilly and substantively or not at all.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10828285 and marked it off-topic.

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

#232

Post by meagain20000 »

dang wrote: post #230
meagain20000 wrote: post #201

Meh. Your feelings are hurt boohoo. If you are poor and low status why don't you do something about it instead of whining about it and saying how we are all hurting your feelings. Sure, there are cases where you need outside help to get out of your current situation. Yes people should help if they can. But if I provide you help and you waste it like it is tipically the case than it is on you. It is not my responsibil…

This breaks the HN guidelines. Please comment civilly and substantively or not at all. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10828763 and marked it off-topic. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Yeah. Sorry. You are right. Should have kept my tone civil.

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

#233

Post by tie_ »

sangnoir wrote: post #221
tie_ wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a break in your logic: your conclusion would only make sense if not producing wealth is the only way of becoming poor. I read the strong obligation of stopping people becoming poor as stopping any people from becoming poor, rather than stopping some people from becoming poor. If there is a single feasible way to become poor, then some people would go that way, and we have failed that obligation. The flaw i…

> At the lowest level of income in a society, you're poor, as everyone else is making more than you do. That doesn't sound like the correct definition of being poor. To me - poverty isn't relative but absolute: if you live on less than $X amount a day, you're poor. The amount may vary, depending on who you ask (and where), and this amount depends on the cost of living rather than income percentiles. If most people ma…

> To me - poverty isn't relative but absolute: if you live on less than $X amount a day, you're poor.

I agree that the poverty that we should be fighting against is the absolute one. The complaints about "income inequality", however, are by definition dealing with the relative type of poverty.

Indeed, if the topic was "increasing the wealth/well-being/opportunities of the poorest", the discussion would be completely different. Alas, inequality, implying rich people robbing poor ones is so much juicer of an idea.

The second part, about "live on less than $X amount a day" I find badly defined. It's not about money, but about having access to basic wealth (food, clothes, shelter, etc). The money (in any currency) that can buy that wealth changes not only by region, but with time as well. Money is far too fast moving of a target, and it doesn't bear an intrinsic value.

I'd wager that what a poor man has nowadays is way ahead than what a poor man got 50 years back. As somebody above pointed out, the vast majority of households below poverty level in the US have TV set, DVR, cell phone, air conditioning, etc. I don't think that a poor guy in the middle of the last century would think twice about changing places with a poor guy today.

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

#234

Post by ddingus »

puredemo wrote: post #199
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well of course people aren't equally talented. I don't see what that has to do with the economy, though. A market is a stochastic nonconvex optimization machine, not a tree of skill increases and level-ups in some MMORPG: it's not supposed to provide a neatly metagamed return-on-investment curve for your skills, it's supposed to match willing buyers of commodities with willing sellers.

It sounds like you're saying job markets are not meritocracies? I'd have to disagree, at least to a large extent.

They are, but we need a floor.

The guy who takes care of your shit, garbage, makes your sammich, serves up your cup 'o joe, may not have the talent you and others have. But, those basic labors are necessary labors. They vary. We might not need our coffee served up, but we are more likely to need janitorial and sanitary services.

Do you want to do those things yourself and spend that talent inefficiently? Of course not, and it's awful nice to have them done for you, and you can take that time and put your talent to great uses that may benefit everyone.

Those people need to make enough to get by. Or are we to punish them for losing the genetic lottery?

That's what this discussion is all about.

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

#235

Post by collyw »

tezza wrote: post #137
cryoshon wrote: post #6

I hope I didn't go too overboard by dissecting PG's essay like this, but I felt it was necessary to correct many of the items that I read. It may seem spurious now, but economic inequality is relevant for the tech industry, too. The massively increased productivity that information technology provides is very infrequently distributed proportionally to the people who actually forged it-- exactly the same condition as…

It was a nice riposte. Altough the concentration on income inequality overall is perplexing to me. Income can be measured and is emotive ( I earn X but my cousin earns 10X ), yet I think concentrating on this metric is obscuring some bigger issues. You do touch on them in your counterpoint. Karl Marx in Das Kapital explains the situation post Industrial Revolution and prior to the World Wars. The landlords conspired…

Property prices are probably one of the most manipulated I can think of. Certainly in the UK, it is far from a free market.

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

#236

Post by ddingus »

dang wrote: post #67
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.

I have read both, and there is value added here, despite it having a large overlap with the earlier discussion.

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

#237

Post by ddingus »

dang wrote: post #79
thenerdfiles wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Narcissistic pricks. Not only do you have to be saving the world, but as it turns out, you have to be causing all of the problems as well. You Silicon Valley cunts have managed to begin asphyxiating yourselves from shoving your heads up your own assholes too far. Go read Thomas Sowell[0], and stop wasting everybody's time with your self-righteous publicized ego deaths. — [0]: http://www.worldmag.com/2014/12/thomas_so…

We've banned this account for breaking the HN guidelines. If you would prefer it not to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com. We're happy to unban accounts if there is reason to believe they will follow the site rules in the future.

Thanks for this informative and welcoming bit. A ban is often tough to get past. Leaving them an out is good form.

Just expressing a little appreciation.

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

#238

Post by ddingus »

meagain20000 wrote: post #223
eropple wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you are poor and low status why don't you do something about it Because the deck is so fundamentally and incontrovertibly stacked against them that they can't ? I'd say that this would be obvious except that that itself would be too obvious given your posting history here; I've seen a lot of shitty posts around here, but yours is in the top five of most overtly antisocial and unempathic, ever, full stop.

I stand by everything I said. You should really read my comment again and you will notice that I mention that there are situations where you should provide help. There are people that really do need help And it should be provided. Being poor myself as a you a young kid, parents that only had elementary education and working their asses off in minimum wage I didn't actually consider myself incapable of doing what I wa…

I too came up in poverty. It was extreme for a while. Like wondering about eating type extreme.

Somehow, I have a great memory of my childhood. I've also remained connected to my peers well enough to get some data on this.

The primary data point is luck. I know some really smart peers, who shared my circumstances. They didn't have the same outcome as I did, and my outcome was reasonable. Why?

I got lucky. No joke. Sometimes the right conversation, or job choice can lead to great things. Other times it may not.

There are plenty of driven, smart, capable people out there trapped, or who are stunted as an artifact of the policy.

A "blame yourself" or worse, "blame the parents" type argument simply is not productive.

Now, I'll leave it there.

Consider what we do going forward. These people exist. An awful lot of us aren't making it, and as we don't make it, we get older, and we need stuff. No matter what, unless we just make sure and help them die quickly, or some other crappy irrational thing, they are going to cost us. No free lunches here.

Those costs will fall on those of us who are making it, and for a very large fraction of those of us making it, those costs are going to be notable. May impact life choices type notable.

So the discussion isn't one of blame.

It's all about what we can do to improve the state of things.

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

#239

Post by collyw »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #171
makomk wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, purchasing power has increased massively for fancy new 2016 products like cellphones, TVs and gadgets. Unfortunately it's also plummeted for old-fashioned 1970s-esque products like food, fuel to go to work, and a roof over your head and even though it's 2016 people still need those products. Having a 42" television for a price that would have seemed astonishing a few years ago is little help if you can't feed y…

Not true for food or energy, hard to find (imputed) rent vs income. http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/03/02/389578089/you... https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=10891

In the 70's a family with only one breadwinner earned enough to pay for a mortgage as well as all the other food and energy.

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

#240

Post by collyw »

Pyxl101 wrote: post #94
quxbar wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd take options 1 in a heartbeat, my student debt would vanish and my rent in NYC would be almost nothing.

Are you sure? You wouldn't have a personal computer, a cell phone, or the Internet. You'd have a rotary telephone in your house only. You'd have a TV that looks something like this: http://www.rewindmuseum.com/images3/hmv2647side.gif On that TV you can watch 1970s programming only. A 25" TV in 1970 cost $850 dollars ('77 Sylvania), which is equivalent to $5200 dollars today. I can hardly even find a TV that costs $5k…

Beer still existed in the 70's.
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