Economic Inequality: The Simplified Version

Much of that "people were happy under communism" BS is just that: BS. As anyone past the age of about 30 would tell you, you tend to forget the shitty stuff a lot faster than the good stuff. As a result we often hold these romanticized notions of how things used to be. Yet if you actually go ahead and look at some videos from 20-30 years ago from those parts of the world, you see North Korea. No one seriously wants to go back to that, except for US "progressives" who believe rich people should not exist.

Except, cryoshon simply echos what a large proportion of the population feels.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/07/23/around-the-w...

> Americans and publics in Africa are less dissatisfied, but they are hardly happy about the way things are going. More than half of Americans (56%) say the U.S. economy is doing poorly. In the nine African nations surveyed, a median of 51% believe economic conditions are bad. Within Africa there is a particularly wide divergence of opinion. More than seven-in-ten Ghanaians (73%) judge their economy to be performing poorly, while nearly nine-in-ten Ethiopians (89%) believe their economy is in good condition.

https://www.salon.com/2016/01/03/the_middle_class_is_just_th...

> Down here at the pedestrian level, between 2010 and 2014 poverty increased in one third of America’s 3,000 counties, when compared to the 2005 to 2009 period, according to the U.S. Census’s American Community Survey. In fact, the “recovery,” that pastel-colored unicorn, was only seen in the 4 percent of the nation’s counties where poverty actually declined. The rest remained stagnant.

> It should come as no surprise. Millions of Americans lost their homes, and with them the foundation of their household wealth. During the “recovery,” census data documents that the median U.S. household income has actually declined for three years in a row and remains below its peak in 1999.

And the fact that the middle class has been hollowed out:

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/12/09/459087477/...

I agree with this article on its descriptions but not its conclusions. In particular, the conclusion that we should not attack economic inequality directly.

Attacking economic inequality directly might be a good thing to do in many cases. It may be operationally easier and more efficient to have certain restrictions that prevent economic inequality. It can be thought of as a fail-safe when the more direct policy solutions are failing, e.g. legislation that attacks poverty.

For instance, having a maximum wage is executionally simple legislation compared to the legislation required to improve education, healthcare, transportation, etc. Not saying we shouldn't have the more complicated legislation, just that it will take more time and is more complicated and prone to failure. Additionally, not saying maximum wage is a good idea, just using it as an example.

I see what PG is saying, and I think he would agree with my points here, and I agree with the spirit of what he is saying. He's just not that great expressing himself through writing. He tends to make overly strong statements without nuance and write against hypothetical absolute simplistic counterarguments that don't really exist.

Obviously, nothing with multiple disparate causes and effects is bad per se. But inequality does have at least one negative effect, which is that it distracts the attention of institutions (government, press, academia) towards serving and protecting the interests of the wealthy.

In my view the rhetoric of "attacking" inequality is overblown, even if I'm guilty of having used it myself. Instead, let's just say that some form of redistribution -- to use a broad term -- is not an "attack" per se, but simply a practical way to maintain a decent society.

The way the phrase is thrown about is unmistakably negative IMO.

For a start, 'inequality' is a phrase borrowed from far clearer grievances such as inequality in legal rights for women, minorities etc. By using it in this economic debate it already frames the question as one of harm to a group of people.

A neutral phrase would be something like 'wealth concentration.'