A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality • Hacker News Board

Re: A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality

#101

Post by 0181109 » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 10:49 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #36

csallen wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who are you talking about?

Karl Marx. And I see the point the parent is making, although that's probably more of an issue in the USA than in Europe for instance. And I do agree that it's a shame because the writings of Marx are extremely interesting and deserve to be studied and discussed even if you don't believe in socialism and communism, it's really about economy in general first and foremost. Dismissing this important ground-breaking work…

That's the point. You have a problem with people misappropriating Marxism, so why not start with the people who claim to be Marxists? If you ask cultural Marxists to explain socialism then they'll tell you to go read Capital, but I think you should be able to answer questions about it if you have and you have understood it. If you don't understand it then you have no good reason to recommend it.

Marx isn't responsible for cultural Marxists, Nietzsche isn't responsible for Nazis and Darwin isn't responsible for social Darwinists.

Re: A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality

#102

Post by malandrew » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 10:49 PM UTC

munk-a wrote: post #81

malandrew wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you actually do end up with 0.5x instead of 1.2x because in World 2 you have eliminated the profit motive that drives progress forward. Basically you forego all progress that would have happened with the opportunity to profit by creating and inventing things and then making those things faster, cheaper and better.

Sorry, so part of your scenario to divine why wealth inequality isn't so bad is an assumption (without grounding or explanation) that a lack of wealth inequality necessarily leads to high levels of economic inefficiency? I feel like your initial question is just coming from a very disingenuous place, the discussion of the relative economic efficiency of unequal vs. perfectly equally distributed wealth is a bit aside…

The view that "wealth = money" is myopic. Wealth is access to goods and services. At any point in time, money is just the means to get more goods and services, but over long periods of time, goods and services becoming cheaper and more accessible is a form of wealth.

https://fee.org/articles/you-are-richer-than-john-d-rockefel...

The problem with people who focus on inequality is that they completely ignore ∂t. If you're trying to improve the lives of 7.6 billion people, time is of utmost importance.

Re: A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality

#103

Post by munk-a » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 10:50 PM UTC

rb808 wrote: post #96

munk-a wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has, on a global scale, long had higher standards of living than a large remainder of the world so balancing US workers with foreign workers to elevate the standard of living in third world countries isn't a bad thing. The issue is more that while this process was happening a small segment of the US population has managed to sequester a nearly incomprehensible portion of that wealth for no good reason.

> long had higher standards of living than a large remainder of the world Not really 200 years ago most Americans were scratching a living in a new world fighting off the natives and importing slaves. >The issue is more that while this process was happening a small segment of the US population has managed to sequester a nearly incomprehensible portion of that wealth for no good reason. Agreed its a big change from th…

Sorry, to clarify here, long is defined as ~80 years, which, I'll grant, isn't actually very long. My apologies for the confusion.

Re: A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality

#104

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 10:50 PM UTC

darawk wrote: post #88

dragonwriter wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He was unique in the way he self-deprecated government, This is false on two levels: First, Reagan was not a monarch who shared personality with the State, so any deprecation of government he did was not self-deprecation Second, he is not at all unique in that. Bush (43 more than 41) and Trump have done much the same, and even Clinton did it off and on.

> First, Reagan was not a monarch who shared personality with the State, so any deprecation of government he did was not self-deprecation It is absolutely legitimate to characterize the president denigrating government as self-deprecating, splitting hairs about this is silly. > Second, he is not at all unique in that. Bush (43 more than 41) and Trump have done much the same, and even Clinton did it off and on. Reagan…

> It is absolutely legitimate to characterize the president denigrating government as self-deprecating

No, it's generally not (there may be specific cases where it is), especially when the President in question is selling himself as an ally of the people against government.

> Reagan was more unique in his ability to actually do it

Actually do what? If you mean literally denigrating the Government, no, Trump's done much more of that.

If you meant reducing it's role.. Reagan didn't even do that; he shifted the burden of paying for it, sure. But it was much bigger, more intrusive, and more expensive when he left office than when he entered.

Re: A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality

#105

Post by malandrew » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 10:51 PM UTC

chii wrote: post #85

malandrew wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you actually do end up with 0.5x instead of 1.2x because in World 2 you have eliminated the profit motive that drives progress forward. Basically you forego all progress that would have happened with the opportunity to profit by creating and inventing things and then making those things faster, cheaper and better.

Is it really proven that profits are what drives progress? Would Einstein have stilled discovered relativity regardless if he had been paid large amounts of monney for doing research or not? Sure, there are examples like Ford - where without profit motive, they would not have gotten the advances that happened. But those examples tend to have less impact than the non-profit driven motives.

I'm sure it's not the only contributor, but it's a major one if not the most important one. There are other things that drive progress such as war.

Re: A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality

#106

Post by commandlinefan » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 10:52 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #46

darkerside wrote: post #34

Is there an inherent problem with income inequality? Would you rather live in: * World 1, where everybody has x, except one person has 100x * World 2, where everybody has .5x and is thus totally equal (I realize assets and income are not equal, but I think the point stands)

> Is there an inherent problem with income inequality? Yes, because once you get past the truly abject absolute poverty (which isn't an issue for most of the developed world), there's a lot of indication that experienced utility or disutility is driven more by relative material position than absolute position. So, yes, outside of very poor economies (where absolute gains that increase inequality may still improve uti…

Well, I think what he's saying (which I don't necessarily disagree with) is that if I have everything I need, what difference does it make to me - besides jealousy - if the guy down the street has more than he needs?

Re: A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality

#107

Post by beat » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 10:52 PM UTC

conanbatt wrote: post #58

WhompingWindows wrote: post #2

What's the best solution to this - if wealthy and high-income individuals get more power via political lobbying, they can then gain more wealth and higher incomes, gaining even more lobbying power. They can also flood the media with advertising money and propagandist messaging to convince voters to care more about less impactful issues. It feels like an endless cycle to me. Other than war or complete societal upheava…

This mad-max painting of economics is not really true. Since the 80's, global wealth exploded like nothing else. Extreme poverty face an erradication unlike any other period. Recently it was published that for the first time, the majority of the world is middle class. Ever.

Globally, not locally. I've read Factfulness and felt profoundly inspired by Hans Rosling's insights, but he's talking about the nations who are catching up, not the nations at the top.

I suspect what happens is that nations climb out of the steady-state of poverty, and into the steady-state of fully modern economies, and the growth rate ceases. At that point, the powers in control of the flow of money become ever more sophisticated at directing any growth to themselves, until we see roughly 100% of all post-inflation growth going to a tiny minority at the top.

I don't know how to fix this, but I think it's a reasonable observation of the source of the problem.

Re: A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality

#108

Post by munk-a » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 10:56 PM UTC

malandrew wrote: post #102

munk-a wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, so part of your scenario to divine why wealth inequality isn't so bad is an assumption (without grounding or explanation) that a lack of wealth inequality necessarily leads to high levels of economic inefficiency? I feel like your initial question is just coming from a very disingenuous place, the discussion of the relative economic efficiency of unequal vs. perfectly equally distributed wealth is a bit aside…

The view that "wealth = money" is myopic. Wealth is access to goods and services. At any point in time, money is just the means to get more goods and services, but over long periods of time, goods and services becoming cheaper and more accessible is a form of wealth. https://fee.org/articles/you-are-richer-than-john-d-rockefel... The problem with people who focus on inequality is that they completely ignore ∂t. If yo…

I agree entirely with you in theory. I agree that increased compensation drives innovation and that innovation is the primary driven of our standard of living. In ~1700 france if the extreme wealth of the monarchy and clergy had been redistributed to the common folk their standard of living would almost certainly be below that of people living in slums in the modern day. I think that over the last three hundred years we've all gotten to a place where we're much better off, but the relative standard of living people experience has slid downward in the first world in recent decades and I think that is an issue that's worth solving, or at least finding the source of so we can mitigate it in the future.

Re: A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality

#109

Post by rwcarlsen » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 10:57 PM UTC

eecc wrote: post #100

rwcarlsen wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an engineer and computational scientist, drawing conclusions from correlations like this is absurd. Maybe Reagan was good for income inequality or maybe he was bad for it. Did you control for the other variables before drawing your conclusions? What about: * The governments' legislation and economic policies in countries like the USSR, China, etc. in the 80s * Changing technology especially communication technolog…

Oh, and while throwing all sorts of alternative world scenarios in the wild hope one might make a reasonable argument that Neoliberal policies aren’t the driver of inequality... you forgot Occam’s Razor.

I didn't throw out any "alternative world scenarios". I was just pointing out that a lot of things were going on in the world that could easily have had a very significant impact on things such as income inequality. There are also many examples in economics where a simple/obvious solution actually has the opposite of the intended effect. Rent price control would be an obvious example (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_regulation#Economists'_vi...).

If you want to dig in to the gory details of reaganomics, economists have researched and debated about its effects for decades. There are many economists who make cases both for and against it having appreciably affected income inequality in various ways.

Re: A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality

#110

Post by jahaja » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 11:02 PM UTC

conanbatt wrote: post #58

WhompingWindows wrote: post #2

What's the best solution to this - if wealthy and high-income individuals get more power via political lobbying, they can then gain more wealth and higher incomes, gaining even more lobbying power. They can also flood the media with advertising money and propagandist messaging to convince voters to care more about less impactful issues. It feels like an endless cycle to me. Other than war or complete societal upheava…

This mad-max painting of economics is not really true. Since the 80's, global wealth exploded like nothing else. Extreme poverty face an erradication unlike any other period. Recently it was published that for the first time, the majority of the world is middle class. Ever.

I'm seeing this sentiment often. Some people seem to think that the storming of the Bastille would never have happened if the people would just have known how much better France's trading partners had progressed over the last decade or so.