Is Inequality Inevitable? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#211

Post by chii » Wed, Nov 06, 2019, 10:07 PM UTC

miguelmota wrote: post #140

aantix wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Equality of outcome is more fair How so? To equalize outcomes for all parties, you must take from those that performed better?

I might have phrased it incorrectly but the message I was trying to convey is that those that perform better and produce more results should be rewarded more (as expected) because they put in the effort to achieved better outcomes, rather than giving someone a head start because of their race or economic status (ie affirmative action) which is inequality.

> rather than giving someone a head start

so you're saying your children should not inherit any wealth, and must be taken away to a state institution to be raised like everybody else?

I think inequality being inevitable isn't bad, as long as the floor is at an acceptable humane level.

Why does it matter if 1 person owned 99% of all the world's wealth, if the remaining 1% is enough to give basic human needs?

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#212

Post by amelius » Wed, Nov 06, 2019, 10:10 PM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #185

eberkund wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not claiming to know any exact value. But previous comparisons I've seen do it by looking at some good or asset which has remained relatively unchanged since ancient time and then using the modern day price of that good to extrapolate the growth of the economy since then.

I guess it seems clever, but also it seems like it wouldn't make any sense. I mean an obvious comparison would be some of the things on this list http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html but how does it even work - what things on that list have actually remained unchanged? Is a chicken in medieval times really the same as chicken today, and that's just in the last 800 years, not in the last 5000. And in what direc…

One counter-example would be the cost of health-care.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#213

Post by pdonis » Wed, Nov 06, 2019, 10:12 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #121

cryptonector wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make it sound as though the economic pie is fixed and economics zero-sum. But that's clearly not the case, otherwise we'd still be living with stone age per-capita GDP (i.e., ~0). And it's not just that "those that are better at competing will have more property". Every person is free to make a variety of choices for themselves, including how much they prioritize wealth creation. Since each one of us has only one…

Per capita GDP increased less from the Stone Age to now than you might think. Even if you discount all goods other than food to zero, it’s less than 100x growth in the last ~5-10,000 years. That’s less than 0.1% per year growth over that timeframe. Though valuing ancient goods at equivalent modern prices is debatable, it seems like a reasonable metric.

> Though valuing ancient goods at equivalent modern prices is debatable, it seems like a reasonable metric.

No, it's not a reasonable metric at all, because it ignores the fact that the vast majority of per capita GDP growth between the Stone Age and now is not that we have improved the quality of items that existed then. It's that we have invented a huge number of new items that Stone Age humans could not have even conceived. The huge growth in productivity and wealth from the Stone Age to now is not because we make stone tools that are that much better. It's because all they had was stone tools, where we have combine harvesters and backhoes and steel skyscrapers and railroads and container ships and airplanes and medical imaging devices and computers and the Internet and...

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#214

Post by 300bps » Wed, Nov 06, 2019, 10:13 PM UTC

lmilcin wrote: post #66

A lot of it misses the point. Equality is unavoidable as long as people are allowed to compete for stuff. If people are allowed to compete for property then those that are better at competing will have more property. It might be possible to have property equality when people have access to same things but compete for different things, for example status, choice of partners, etc. And the most important point people se…

Reminds me Harrison Bergeron

http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#215

Post by jariel » Wed, Nov 06, 2019, 10:13 PM UTC

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #143

praptak wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Equality is unavoidable as long as people are allowed to compete for stuff. The kind of inequality that is perceived as problematic is something different though. It's the rent collection that transfers wealth from the poor to the rich.

Can you give some examples of that? Most of the poor have no wealth in the first place.

"Can you give some examples of that? Most of the poor have no wealth in the first place"

They don't have wealth arguably because it's taken by those with considerably greater leverage.

Asymmetric parameters like avoiding regulations regarding 'full time employment' (i.e. Uber) is one very common way that employers keep workers down.

It's not always obvious either - just as H1Bs can create a lot of value, in many cases, they are point blank just used to suppress wages.

Consider many wealthy folks pay a lesser net tax rate than others due to income from capital gains - of course there is some rhyme and reason behind the fact capital is taxed at a lower rate than income, but one might argue that on the whole, this isn't really fair at all and is one of the primary drivers of inequality.

I don't think inequality is inherently a bad thing, but too much of it is bad, and we should always be looking for ways to get people 'empowered' into positions wherein they can create real value and grab a fair/share piece of the pie. And we have to remember there are always people who won't be able to do that, and that we have a responsibility towards them as well.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#216

Post by throwaway2048 » Wed, Nov 06, 2019, 10:14 PM UTC

__max__ wrote: post #204

notahacker wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A _lot_ of US public policy changes and economic structural changes which favour the rich have happened since 1971. The problem with trying to pin everything on inflation is that inflation has been more stable and lower in recent years than much of the Bretton Woods era...

> inflation has been more stable and lower in recent years than much of the Bretton Woods era... That depends how you measure inflation. The government-published inflation rates use all kinds of creative accounting to make the number seem artificially low. It's in the government's interest to make it seem like that's the case. The reality is that housing prices (and rents) are increasing at a very high rate, and this…

Also healthcare and education, which are also not measured

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#217

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Nov 06, 2019, 10:14 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #175

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have found that inflation (1) worsens income distribution This is an interesting question, but that's [1] a terrible study. It compares "data averaged over 5-year periods" across different countries. It's effectively a scatter plot of income inequality versus inflation. The study's findings are better stated as "countries with high inflation have worse income distributions." Which makes sense. High-inflation cou…

If someone were interested in the link between inequality and inflation a scatter plot would be a perfectly reasonable place to start. The issue is that the scatter plot shows there are something like 30 countries with an inflation rate of 0-15% and no correlation between inflation+gini/inflation+growth and then 8 countries where there is.

[deleted]

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#218

Post by jodrellblank » Wed, Nov 06, 2019, 10:15 PM UTC

billions wrote: post #104

mikepurvis wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, but the point is that most of that is stuff he had no control over. The Econ 101 fantasy of "work hard, get ahead" doesn't apply if being a straight white male born into a middle class western family means you're starting 80% of the way to the finish line.

Please keep your prejudices out of this. How did hunter-gatherers get ahead?

I can suggest that fishermen don’t get ahead through working harder, but more through being near a livelier bigger body of water with plants more suitable for fashioning into fishing lines.

Hunter gatherers - by being the son of the chief and getting chosen for the most instruction and preferable kills? By not having raids of people stealing everything you gather? By hoarding a secret fund of very desirable plants which they guard jealously to retain status? By being more attractive?

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#219

Post by taneq » Wed, Nov 06, 2019, 10:16 PM UTC

SiVal wrote: post #193

There is a popular political perspective that rules on campus these days that treats wealth as something that just magically exists and is simply "redistributed" by one means or another like, say, a phase change in physics where no magnetism/charge/energy/etc. is ever created or consumed. I waited for a point in their model where people actually produced wealth and consumed it, made something or ate it, in addition t…

> I waited for a point in their model where people actually produced wealth and consumed it, made something or ate it, in addition to redistributing it. Not part of the model.

That’s because the people making the models don’t create wealth and don’t really understand where it comes from.

It’s like the way you see Marxists saying “seize the means of production” but never “build the means of production”.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#220

Post by tw04 » Wed, Nov 06, 2019, 10:18 PM UTC

cryptonector wrote: post #76

lmilcin wrote: post #66

A lot of it misses the point. Equality is unavoidable as long as people are allowed to compete for stuff. If people are allowed to compete for property then those that are better at competing will have more property. It might be possible to have property equality when people have access to same things but compete for different things, for example status, choice of partners, etc. And the most important point people se…

You make it sound as though the economic pie is fixed and economics zero-sum. But that's clearly not the case, otherwise we'd still be living with stone age per-capita GDP (i.e., ~0). And it's not just that "those that are better at competing will have more property". Every person is free to make a variety of choices for themselves, including how much they prioritize wealth creation. Since each one of us has only one…

It absolutely IS fixed. We may not have reached its peak, but until we managed to start settling other planets we have a finite amount of:

Clean Water

Land

Natural resources

You can take your pick about which one runs out first/be consumed by a small group of ultra-wealthy, but one of them WILL run out first.