51–60 of 248 posts
What does 'Income Equality' look like?
That is cumalative wealth up to 100%. The blue line is if everyone is equal (poorest 20% have 20% of the wealth). The red line is linear increase where the richest 20% have 5 times the wealth of the poorest 20%.
The yellow line is the actual wealth. These figures are just for the USA; the world one looks too much like a cliff.
The world as a whole is moving away from poverty and quality of life is improving which IMO is the most important metric here. Far more important to the average person than the relative wealth ratios at the top vs the bottom, which yes I know will skew the bottom end upwards in these averages, but regardless is still on an upward trajectory overall.
This should be the primary metric which success is measured by. And I hope in the effort to balance the wealth ratios this progress isn't crippled in the name of some abstract concept of equality.
The interplay between wealth and income is a hard one to navigate, but I think important. Part of the economic story of the last generation (IMO) is embedded in this interplay. Financialization is largely the process of turning future income into current assets. EG, I buy a house, get a house and a mortgage. My wealth is net 0. One house owned. One house-value owed. Part of my future income is now someone else's curr…
Changing the graph from "Share %" to "Average Income or Wealth" shows a much more optimistic looking chart, with every country ramping upwards, almost at an exponentially positive rate. The world as a whole is moving away from poverty and quality of life is improving which IMO is the most important metric here. Far more important to the average person than the relative wealth ratios at the top vs the bottom, which ye…
Wealth inequality changed drastically between 1900 and now. According to the graph, in 1901, the U.K.'s top 1% controlled 73.8% of the nation's wealth. Today it's about 20%. I wonder what factors caused that change. Wars and emigration maybe have something to do with it?
Ok. So I looked into it and I had my "OHHH!!" moment. It seems income/wealth inequality got magnified because of the number of opportunities went exponentially higher. Those who were able, took advantage of those opportunities if they had education, business acumen, surplus income, liquid wealth, or were fortunate enough to have ownership in an industry that was not valued very highly before and became very valuable…
Wealth has been increasingly taxed, poverty increasingly subsidized. For the bottom 50%, this matters.
Ok. So I looked into it and I had my "OHHH!!" moment. It seems income/wealth inequality got magnified because of the number of opportunities went exponentially higher. Those who were able, took advantage of those opportunities if they had education, business acumen, surplus income, liquid wealth, or were fortunate enough to have ownership in an industry that was not valued very highly before and became very valuable…
Changing the graph from "Share %" to "Average Income or Wealth" shows a much more optimistic looking chart, with every country ramping upwards, almost at an exponentially positive rate. The world as a whole is moving away from poverty and quality of life is improving which IMO is the most important metric here. Far more important to the average person than the relative wealth ratios at the top vs the bottom, which ye…
The world economy isn't homogeneous, and what we may be looking at is that the current system is pretty good at taking people in economic/industrialized state A -> B, but bad at going from B -> C. If that's the case, sooner or later more and more people will arrive at state B and we will have a problem. It's even more of a problem if we get to B and it has people slipping back to state A in life qualitative measures (irrespective of imperfect quantitative measures like GDP...).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
These days I don't see much production around. It's probably somewhere in the industrial zones on the outskirts of cities, but it's not something many people do. As a software developer I produce code. How would you exert democratic control over means of such production? Will it involve lots of tin foil?
Historically speaking you accept the governments unilateral offer and terms to produce code or men with guns come and place you in a camp.
Changing the graph from "Share %" to "Average Income or Wealth" shows a much more optimistic looking chart, with every country ramping upwards, almost at an exponentially positive rate. The world as a whole is moving away from poverty and quality of life is improving which IMO is the most important metric here. Far more important to the average person than the relative wealth ratios at the top vs the bottom, which ye…