81–90 of 284 posts
So what? Inequality should only matter to you personally if it means the lower bound on income, the poorest of the poor, is going down. If the richest is getting richer, maybe that means the poorest are becoming poorer as a consequence, but not necessarily, in fact, most likely not.
The riches they amass come from exploiting the people. Its not something that should be taken lightly.
There was an interesting study posted (I believe here) on how a flat 10% re-distribution (10% taxed from everyone, then redistributed evenly across everyone, aka basic income), created a more stable "society" in simulation. It did this by helping support a larger "middle class". Does anyone know the link/can point me to the study? Google is failing me at the moment...
With UBI everyone will have more money but overall production would drop which is the only meaningful way to improve peoples lives. So people would be worse off because prices would adjust to the decreased supply and the increased demand of goods and services.
Maybe read up a bit on fiscal multipliers. Government spending (redistribution) is one of the better ones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiscal_multiplier
Just imagine how much influence these popular YouTubers have compared to regular folks, the impact they have on cultural and political life. Should we allow a tiny group of YouTubers to have such a massive subscribers_count and influence?
I say NO! Behind every popular YouTube channel lies a great crime.
There was an interesting study posted (I believe here) on how a flat 10% re-distribution (10% taxed from everyone, then redistributed evenly across everyone, aka basic income), created a more stable "society" in simulation. It did this by helping support a larger "middle class". Does anyone know the link/can point me to the study? Google is failing me at the moment...
With UBI everyone will have more money but overall production would drop which is the only meaningful way to improve peoples lives. So people would be worse off because prices would adjust to the decreased supply and the increased demand of goods and services.
Also, worker productivity is through the roof. Perhaps we can talk about giving back some of those production gains, if it funds things we like.
There was an interesting study posted (I believe here) on how a flat 10% re-distribution (10% taxed from everyone, then redistributed evenly across everyone, aka basic income), created a more stable "society" in simulation. It did this by helping support a larger "middle class". Does anyone know the link/can point me to the study? Google is failing me at the moment...
With UBI everyone will have more money but overall production would drop which is the only meaningful way to improve peoples lives. So people would be worse off because prices would adjust to the decreased supply and the increased demand of goods and services.
Citation/explanation needed. I don't see it working out this way – that seems like a dramatic simplification of the economics at play.
There was an interesting study posted (I believe here) on how a flat 10% re-distribution (10% taxed from everyone, then redistributed evenly across everyone, aka basic income), created a more stable "society" in simulation. It did this by helping support a larger "middle class". Does anyone know the link/can point me to the study? Google is failing me at the moment...
With UBI everyone will have more money but overall production would drop which is the only meaningful way to improve peoples lives. So people would be worse off because prices would adjust to the decreased supply and the increased demand of goods and services.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The central idea of capitalism is the extraction of surplus value via property relations and wage labor. Voluntary exchange is not capitalism. Voluntary exchange has existed since the dawn of society. Capitalism is a form of production that developed with the industrial revolution. I can't tell if you've fallen for or are employing a sleazy equivocation.
I've always found this idea that capitalism was "invented" to be so strange. e.g. When an ancient king had land, and let poor people work the land in exchange for a part of their production, what would you call that? Sure sounds like, "the extraction of surplus value via property relations and wage labor" to me. Same story if the lord has a mill and charges people to use it. Or a bridge and charges people to cross it…
> e.g. When an ancient king had land, and let poor people work the land in exchange for a part of their production, what would you call that? Sure sounds like, "the extraction of surplus value via property relations and wage labor" to me.
Ok, if you want me to be more precise, private property relations, which are very different from feudal property relations. In fact, since property is a legal construct, this aspect of the development of capitalism could be called an invention, and the idea that capitalist forms of property are particularly ""natural and organic"" compared to other forms is quite suspect-- at least without any argument provided for it. As a foot note, one of the processes that developed private property was Enclosure [0] which was by no means nonviolent.
But I'm not going to try to be as precise and rigorous as a history textbook in Internet comments I compose in between compiles. Feel free to believe that capitalism is natural and organic, or read a history book. Idk.
This article provides paragraph after paragraph of supporting data that the richest have gotten richer, but none that I can see supporting its claim that “billions of poorer people across the world have seen their wealth standstill or decline”.
The richest have gotten richer To be exact, it seems to be saying that the richest 500 are x% richer at the end of the year, not that the 500 richest at the beginning of the year are %x richer at the end of it. These are two different things because they are two different sets of people. In decades past the richest and the poorest people don't remain in that part of the income distribution very long; this is especial…
I would say this is especially not true in the US where social mobility is notoriously bad.
"Several large studies of mobility in developed countries in recent years have found the US among the lowest in mobility." [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not to say I disagree because I do think the wealthiest should contribute meaningfully to society. But when you say "without visible contributions to society." why should an extremely wealthy person have to contribute to society?
People who do not contribute to society are what we call parasites. Just because your father or grand-grand-father did something useful to the world doesn't justify that you have to live like a king. Modern society destroyed the old feudal order exactly to avoid this kind of social injustice.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not to say I disagree because I do think the wealthiest should contribute meaningfully to society. But when you say "without visible contributions to society." why should an extremely wealthy person have to contribute to society?
People who do not contribute to society are what we call parasites. Just because your father or grand-grand-father did something useful to the world doesn't justify that you have to live like a king. Modern society destroyed the old feudal order exactly to avoid this kind of social injustice.
Regardless of how rich I am, I still need to eat and live and put clothes on my back. Are these not contributions?
Or are you suggesting that the wealthiest are parasites simply because they should contribute more to society than someone less financially well off?