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'Fight Inequality' Is a Poor Rallying Cry

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Re: 'Fight Inequality' Is a Poor Rallying Cry

#21

Post by ZeroGravitas »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #15
crystalmeph wrote: post #4

If you want people to fight inequality with you, you have to first prove to them it's actually a problem. It's a bit of a leap to convince somebody that just because Bill Gates is much richer than the typical person, somebody more deserving must have gone without for him to get so rich.

It's not a leap at all. MS lost an anti-trust case. There were good legal and ethical reasons why MS in general and Gates in particular had to admit in a public courtroom that "cutting off the oxygen supply" to their competitors meant destroying other companies and other people's livelihoods. Aside from that, once a company gets big enough it effectively becomes a kind of proxy mini-government in its market space, an…

What you say is true, but it's also true that convincing people of this reality is hard. There's a counterfactual world somewhere where everyone is slightly better off because the MSFT monopoly was broken, and tech progressed faster than it did in our world, but people find that kind of thought process tricky, and it involves making enemies of someone rich and powerful in our actual world.

Re: 'Fight Inequality' Is a Poor Rallying Cry

#24

Post by gph »

eric_b wrote: post #6

Midway down the author mentions a study that showed most Americans object to "unfairness" rather than "inequality". I've found this to be the case for me personally. If someone tries hard, works diligently, and makes smart decisions, but are still living in poverty, I want to help them. No hardworking, disciplined, motivated person should live in poverty, or have trouble making ends meet, in my opinion. Unfortunately…

I think there's a bit of a squeeze area where people who work hard at jobs that pay between 30k and 50k (or even higher depending on the area) can find themselves basically paycheck to paycheck. And it's not all down to making bad decisions.

On top of that it's hard to hold every to a standard of making perfect decisions all the time. For example I know a couple people who bought houses right before the bubble burst in '08. Sure you can say that was a bad decision, but it's awfully heartless to expect everyone to be supremely wise to the real estate market.

There's people who probably don't have the ability to land a higher paying job yet still work hard at absolutely necessary jobs they have. And I think they deserve to have the comfort and safety, though perhaps not quite the luxury, as those who rise above them.

Re: 'Fight Inequality' Is a Poor Rallying Cry

#25

Post by nailer »

Jabanga wrote: post #12
heartsucker wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the children have no control over who their parents are, and we shouldn't punish with a lifetime of diminished opportunities because their parents aren't as "good" as others.

But we're not punishing them. We're simply not taking, by force, money from one person, to spend it raising the children of another. If we force people to subsidize other people's poor children, we create perverse incentives to have a maximum number of children with minimum personal investment in each. It cannot end well for society.

We force people to pay for roads, firefighters, police, healthcare and ensure all children have the same opportunity.

Healthy adults can stand for themselves, children and the ill need protection.

Re: 'Fight Inequality' Is a Poor Rallying Cry

#26

Post by thomasmeeks »

eric_b wrote: post #6

Midway down the author mentions a study that showed most Americans object to "unfairness" rather than "inequality". I've found this to be the case for me personally. If someone tries hard, works diligently, and makes smart decisions, but are still living in poverty, I want to help them. No hardworking, disciplined, motivated person should live in poverty, or have trouble making ends meet, in my opinion. Unfortunately…

It is a fair point and I know plenty of people like that as well.

However, to give another perspective on it. When I think of changing an unequal situation, I look at the situations you described like this: "Did something happen early on in that person's life that just kind of made them give up?" I've known people like that, and although it is _also_ true that they _could_ lift themselves out of that situation, when you take it in aggregate over a large population, it becomes a problem (at least to me it does).

Why is it a problem? Well, to me it is for two main reasons. First, it gives an indication that there may be a systemic problem that could be corrected (overzealous police, poor education, a political issue, etc.). Frankly, we're far along enough as a species that there's no reason to tolerate that. Second, it means a meaningful portion of the population isn't contributing to humanity/earth/however you want to think of it in a way they otherwise could, which holds all of us back.

One of the things that makes it complex is that the answer, I think, changes a lot depending on the population.

Re: 'Fight Inequality' Is a Poor Rallying Cry

#27

Post by Jabanga »

nailer wrote: post #25
Jabanga wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we're not punishing them. We're simply not taking, by force, money from one person, to spend it raising the children of another. If we force people to subsidize other people's poor children, we create perverse incentives to have a maximum number of children with minimum personal investment in each. It cannot end well for society.

We force people to pay for roads, firefighters, police, healthcare and ensure all children have the same opportunity. Healthy adults can stand for themselves, children and the ill need protection.

But that's not a justification. That's just telling me we do this a lot.

Re: 'Fight Inequality' Is a Poor Rallying Cry

#28

Post by radicalbyte »

heartsucker wrote: post #9
Jabanga wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally disagree that this should be the rallying cry. Why should someone who invests nothing in their own children get to see their children have equal opportunities to the children of another person who invests everything into their children? Why should a person who has 10 children get to see each one have the same amount of opportunity as each one of the children of someone who has 2 children, assuming equal…

Because the children have no control over who their parents are, and we shouldn't punish with a lifetime of diminished opportunities because their parents aren't as "good" as others.

..and any child with "bad" parents has to work ten times as hard because they've spent their entire life swimming against the current.

There's a reason why certain communities have radically different outcomes. The more motivated kind set their offspring up so that the default outcome is, on average, success. They have to try hard to not succeed.

Re: 'Fight Inequality' Is a Poor Rallying Cry

#29

Post by eric_b »

thomasmeeks wrote: post #26
eric_b wrote: post #6

Midway down the author mentions a study that showed most Americans object to "unfairness" rather than "inequality". I've found this to be the case for me personally. If someone tries hard, works diligently, and makes smart decisions, but are still living in poverty, I want to help them. No hardworking, disciplined, motivated person should live in poverty, or have trouble making ends meet, in my opinion. Unfortunately…

It is a fair point and I know plenty of people like that as well. However, to give another perspective on it. When I think of changing an unequal situation, I look at the situations you described like this: "Did something happen early on in that person's life that just kind of made them give up?" I've known people like that, and although it is _also_ true that they _could_ lift themselves out of that situation, when…

I totally agree with you. I've thought about this as well. Most of the folks I know in bad situations had some early stumbles and they sort of just gave up, as you say. The thing is - and where I struggle - is that the early stumbles weren't insurmountable. It's like they had no fire, no tenacity, no will power.

Re: 'Fight Inequality' Is a Poor Rallying Cry

#30

Post by eli_gottlieb »

eric_b wrote: post #6

Midway down the author mentions a study that showed most Americans object to "unfairness" rather than "inequality". I've found this to be the case for me personally. If someone tries hard, works diligently, and makes smart decisions, but are still living in poverty, I want to help them. No hardworking, disciplined, motivated person should live in poverty, or have trouble making ends meet, in my opinion. Unfortunately…

Counter-anecdote: my wife has a Master's degree and works 60 hours a week, trying to transition from biotech to teaching. She has to cobble together multiple jobs, some of which are in the "low-wage sectors". She works 60 hours a week because, well, budgets have been cut to school districts. She'll be earning $16k/year next year as a teaching fellow, albeit earning her education Master's while doing it.

We have a friend who scarcely makes $11.50/hour working in foodservice. Sure, the woman doesn't have the discipline or ambition to be a high-powered professional, but she never wanted to be a high-powered professional. She's working-class in the proper sense of the word: born to blue-collar workers, grew up in a blue-collar town, wants to just do a fair day's work for a day's livable pay. She doesn't get that choice, because everything outside the professional class has been gutted of livable wages and opportunities.

Nonetheless, how many jobs are professional jobs? 20%? 10% of new jobs inside this past decade? If your proposal is simply that inequality isn't a problem because everyone should be a professional, how are 100% of the people supposed to squeeze themselves into 10% of the jobs?

And if 90% of the people end up in the bottom 90% of the jobs, why should those jobs exploit them by paying unliveably low wages? After all, if there wasn't profit to be made employing those workers, nobody would do it, and minimum-wage rises at the municipal level have "destroyed" nowhere near as many jobs as predicted.

It looks to me like "inequality" really means "exploitation", a word Americans should start saying more often.

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