Why is income inequality bad anyway?
Generally speaking, income inequality leads to social instability. In the limit, that means violent revolution.
IT is the cause of rising income and wealth inequality since the 1970s [pdf]
71–80 of 199 posts
Re: IT is the cause of rising income and wealth inequality since the 1970s [pdf]
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ok, let's say you're right. 1. Are you willing to leave behind, say, 40-50% of the population? Especially since that group could include people such as your parents or your partner or your kids. 2. If you're willing to leave them behind, what are you going to do with them?
If it's your parent, partner, or kids, (or even if it's not -- it could be anyone) you're welcome to provide for them yourself. You're also welcome to donate to (or even work for!) charities that provide for them. But it's not OK to force everyone else to provide for them.
Mark Blyth (prof. of political economy at Brown) has advice for anyone with this attitude: "The Hamptons is not a defensible position"[1]. What are you going to do when a large fraction of the population starts getting hungry and they decide taking what they need from you (and everyone else with wealth/resources)? Do you really think that the police will simply arrest them? What about when someone starts shooting and the protests turn into a mob burning down the city and the streets becoming a war zone?
Contrary to what other comments have suggested, welfare isn't about being a nice civilized society that doesn't leave people behind. Welfare is a bribe. It's a tribute ("danegeld"[2]) we pay to the poor so they don't burn down the city or murder anyone between them and food/shelter. Arresting that class of people would be more expensive as it still pays for their food and shelter.
Do you really want to give up the cheapest and safest option for defending yourself against the bottom ~quarter of the population? Recent events at Ferguson and Baltimor are warning. Ignoring them is not recommended if you value maintaining your current standard of living.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zzl4B3mrKQE
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danegeld
[3] Exact amount and the scope of what is mean by "national defense" is off topic.
Re: IT is the cause of rising income and wealth inequality since the 1970s [pdf]
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Makerspaces are sort-of empowering supercraftspeople.
I don't know. Anyone who I'd consider a supercraftsperson usually has their own shop & tools. Most of the stuff coming out of maker spaces are trinkets. You won't find there the old man who builds 1/10 models of steam locomotives.
The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment. --Warren Bennis
Bu imagine an alternative world without factories. The maker movement is still ahead of us. Imagine there exists an open-hape-wiki with 3d-models of every part of every thing we ever built (actually these models exist already but are not open source).
The shop & tools are would be a 3d-printer plus remote controlled robot arms (so that a person from Ukraine can deliver service to you).
Re: IT is the cause of rising income and wealth inequality since the 1970s [pdf]
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know. Anyone who I'd consider a supercraftsperson usually has their own shop & tools. Most of the stuff coming out of maker spaces are trinkets. You won't find there the old man who builds 1/10 models of steam locomotives.
The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment. --Warren Bennis Bu imagine an alternative world without factories. The maker movement is still ahead of us. Imagine there exists an open-hape-wiki with 3d-models of every part of every thing we ever built (actually these models exist already…
Sure, but why is the person from Ukraine in the loop?
Don't get me started on 3D printing (I have one). It has its uses, and more so (with all the hype) it doesn't have its uses.
Re: IT is the cause of rising income and wealth inequality since the 1970s [pdf]
#75Here's another possibility: The highly increased value of intellectual property that comes from IT has made transfer pricing a much more efficient means of tax avoidance for companies, who are free to move almost all their profits to the Cayman Islands and other tax havens. Expecting our tax authorities to judge whether a trade between two subsidiaries of a multinational is at 'fair market value' makes sense if they'…
I'd like to see corporation tax replaced with a Border Adjustment Tax [1]. The tax would be paid on the result of USA Revenue - USA Costs. If you were to move intellectual property offshore and licence it from that subsidiary then that would not be a USA Cost and therefore would not be deductible. If you brought it back onshore then it would only be deductible if there was a cost. If you moved into another company wi…
Hadn't heard of that before. Personally, I'm rooting for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formulary_apportionment
Re: IT is the cause of rising income and wealth inequality since the 1970s [pdf]
#76Re: IT is the cause of rising income and wealth inequality since the 1970s [pdf]
#77I really thought it was corrupt politicians giving away public resources to private mega corporations, irresponsible financing systems, wall street selling lel bonds, the undermining of the national working class, bogus copyright laws that are designed to squish small and upcoming competition, and people purchasing garbage degrees instead of useful ones with money they don't have guaranteeing they'll be indebted for…
There does seem to be a hostility towards people who work in tech on the left. To me this feels like pandering to that by Clintonian types who don't actually have any interest in dealing with class issues.
Re: IT is the cause of rising income and wealth inequality since the 1970s [pdf]
#78I really thought it was corrupt politicians giving away public resources to private mega corporations, irresponsible financing systems, wall street selling lel bonds, the undermining of the national working class, bogus copyright laws that are designed to squish small and upcoming competition, and people purchasing garbage degrees instead of useful ones with money they don't have guaranteeing they'll be indebted for…
Common media narratives like the ones you describe are usually wrong or at least they give misguided view of relative importance of different factors.
Re: IT is the cause of rising income and wealth inequality since the 1970s [pdf]
#79It isn't the technology that's to blame for how the wealth it creates is distributed. That's just silly. And honestly, an efficient socialist economy is made much more realistic by modern technology. There's a lot that can be done to offset some of the downsides that have been associated with it in the past.
Re: IT is the cause of rising income and wealth inequality since the 1970s [pdf]
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
The severely disabled, we should provide zero social supports for them and their families so? It's nobody's fault that they're garbage people. Luck of the lottery.
>The severely disabled, we should provide zero social supports for them and their families so? If "we" want to provide support to any group, it can be done through charity. I'd argue this way is more moral: it's more of a good deed to be generous with one's own money than with other peoples', and it's not much of a good deed to give money if one's only doing so due to threat of imprisonment for failing to comply. The…
>If "we" want to provide support to any group, it can be done through charity.
It's funny. Propertiarians frequently use the argument against Socialism that it's "human nature" to be greedy, while simultaneously relegating social support to charity, supposedly out of the goodness of human hearts :)