Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Explore Wealth and Income Inequality in the World Wealth and Income Database

wid.world

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–248 of 248 posts

Re: Explore Wealth and Income Inequality in the World Wealth and Income Database

#241

Post by MR4D »

1ark wrote: post #222
dcosson wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any sources for this? I don’t see how it can possibly be true. For one thing I don’t see how you can define areas where everyone is poor. Even looking at a place like North Korea, the top government officials are very well off compared to the average person. In general, poorer countries are much less safe than richer ones. Poorer neighborhoods are much less safe than richer ones. I can see the point that…

http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/338347?seq=1#page_scan_t...

Great paper by the way.

If you look at the graph on page 8, you can see obvious clustering of poor countries vs other countries. This study does not compare the overall wealth of the countries against crime.

The reason that is important, is that in a rich country, even poor people have many options. In a poor country like Venezuela, they don't. As a result, even if they had the same Gini coefficient, the crime would look much different.

So when you take that into account (which is what I tried to do in my statement, but probably could have worded better), then being in a "rich but unequal" society is much better than a poor country of either high or low inequality. I think the high clustering of OECD countries demonstrates this.

Re: Explore Wealth and Income Inequality in the World Wealth and Income Database

#242

Post by clairity »

ttoinou wrote: post #232
clairity wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

progress has no bounds. it's like water, finding a route where none existed before. even if you try to dam up some portion, the pressure mounts, and the dam breaks. do not worry about stifling advancement, especially through economic means. when it comes to wealth (in)equality, you basically want to balance greed on one side and anger on the other. sure, allow the greedy to amass a little weath to promote their playi…

Wealth is produced, not distributed. You earn stuff you created, not stolen from someone else

if you want such a simplistic view, then no, you don't really produce wealth, you accumulate it. we create value and that is what we accumulate in the form of wealth. money is used to abstract that value into a commonly exchangeable medium, which is the form in which wealth is generally accumulated. it's a pretty neat system at its core.

the concept of stealing is entirely beside the point.

Re: Explore Wealth and Income Inequality in the World Wealth and Income Database

#243

Post by ace_of_spades »

BearGoesChirp wrote: post #192
MR4D wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Part of the problem is that the inequality leads to behavior that protects the inequality. Oddly, that statement (which I completely agree with) has nothing to do with being rich or poor. People in power want to stay in power - whether it's the US or a failing state like Venezuela, they use that power against others. I'd much rather be in a rich but unequal society - it's much more peaceful.

I think the relationship isn't linear. Too much equality and there is no reason to go above and beyond, to innovate or to take risks. To much inequality, and we find the same result. Enough inequality to reward those who do more (with some understanding that there is elements of luck), but not so much inequality that people have to be lucky to succeed, if it is possible at all.

I think your example is too simplistic. There are more dimensions to equality than just wealth or money. People could be socially rewarded but still be on very similar wealth levels. There are some people actually persuing this as a life goal, it‘s called earning to give and comes from the effective altruism movement. They try to get into a really well paying position but give most of the earnings (like 50%+) to effective charities. It‘s not always about money for yourself but being able to work for something you believe in and a recognition of your efforts. How else would you explain suicide bombers and soldiers giving their life in unprofitable ways?

Re: Explore Wealth and Income Inequality in the World Wealth and Income Database

#244

Post by ace_of_spades »

dcosson wrote: post #200
namenotrequired wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a rich but unequal society - it's much more peaceful. That's not true. Violence is caused by inequality. Areas where everyone's equally poor are about as peaceful as areas where everyone's equally rich. It's dramatic inequality that causes violence. This is true no matter whether you look at neighborhood level, city level, national level etc.

Do you have any sources for this? I don’t see how it can possibly be true. For one thing I don’t see how you can define areas where everyone is poor. Even looking at a place like North Korea, the top government officials are very well off compared to the average person. In general, poorer countries are much less safe than richer ones. Poorer neighborhoods are much less safe than richer ones. I can see the point that…

Did not read the paper linked to by sibling but there are diminishing returns to wealth for a person. So unequality might be perceived as more severe in low income countries than richer countries when the basic needs are met.

Re: Explore Wealth and Income Inequality in the World Wealth and Income Database

#245

Post by ttoinou »

clairity wrote: post #242
ttoinou wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wealth is produced, not distributed. You earn stuff you created, not stolen from someone else

if you want such a simplistic view, then no, you don't really produce wealth, you accumulate it. we create value and that is what we accumulate in the form of wealth. money is used to abstract that value into a commonly exchangeable medium, which is the form in which wealth is generally accumulated. it's a pretty neat system at its core. the concept of stealing is entirely beside the point.

   we create value
How ?

Re: Explore Wealth and Income Inequality in the World Wealth and Income Database

#246

Post by clairity »

ttoinou wrote: post #245
clairity wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you want such a simplistic view, then no, you don't really produce wealth, you accumulate it. we create value and that is what we accumulate in the form of wealth. money is used to abstract that value into a commonly exchangeable medium, which is the form in which wealth is generally accumulated. it's a pretty neat system at its core. the concept of stealing is entirely beside the point.

we create value How ?

a good intro to the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_(economics)

Re: Explore Wealth and Income Inequality in the World Wealth and Income Database

#247

Post by ttoinou »

clairity wrote: post #246
ttoinou wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we create value How ?

a good intro to the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_(economics)

Spot on, this article precisely never talks about value creation.

   we create value and that is what we accumulate in the form of wealth
So if you go to a concert, you accumulate that experience into your wealth, and you think this value should rather be redistributed ?

Re: Explore Wealth and Income Inequality in the World Wealth and Income Database

#248

Post by dnautics »

dalbasal wrote: post #93
dnautics wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I think both of you are right. Inflation starts as a monetary phenomenon but it's net effects are not always monetary. Inflation is a policy choice, not a 'feature of the universe'.

It's sort of a policy choice. But, I think money creation and fiat currency is poorly understood. Even in a metal backed currency world, you still have money creation through lending. Money creation is a feature of lending, not just fiat currency printing. But in that world, currency value is fixed via metal redemption. So, the amount of money in an economy will still expand to 5-20 times the amount of metal, with th…

you do still have money creation through lending but i think that risk tolerance is a limited resource and has a fixed upper limit. If you are too tolerant of risk, your assets will snap back during a business cycle or war or solar flare or asteroid strike or whatever, and the money muliplier will regress to the steady state average.
Post reply on HN