it's really simple. the world is exponential, not linear. wealth grows (or decays) exponentially. that's it. too bad very few understand exponentiation.
Is Inequality Inevitable?
331–340 of 628 posts
Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?
#332There 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…
The Earth has finite resources: finite land, finite minerals, finite water, finite energy. When people accumulate vast amounts of wealth, they place a large portion of these finite resources under their own control. If we allow people and families to accumulate wealth indefinitely, it’s not hard to imagine a future whereby a very small elite control a vast majority of the resources. In this future, people can still c…
Economic growth is the art of producing more value using the same amount of finite resources.
Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?
#333> "388 individuals possessed as much household wealth as the lower half of the world's population combined" My goodness! This completely shocked me. I wonder if we are all complicit in allowing this to happen. I know wealth buys power and vice versa, so it likely would be hard to change but aren't we all indirectly allowing this to happen?
Be cautious about these statistics looking at wealth only. A lot of people have high incomes, but effectively zero or negative wealth, because they spend it all.
Some of the shifts in wealth inequality are changes in how much money people are saving/investing.
Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?
#334I don't get why lately the trend it to focus in inequality instead of focusing in poverty.
I mean, if the % of poverty decreases, then economy is moving in a good direction, in spite of inequality, right? Suppose you had one million, and somebody else has one thousand millions, there would be a large gap, but I wouldn't consider it as negative.
If there are arguments against what I wrote I would gladly read them and consider them.
Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
The subtitle of the article is "Wealth naturally trickles up in free-market economies, model suggests." "Free-market economies" might not mean exactly the same thing as "capitalism," but it's pretty close, and it's pretty clear that the article is discussing the current world as it is.
This is a very good place to pay attention to the difference between free markets and capitalism though. Compound interest scales exponentially because people can buy stock that gives them a stake in a company's profits in perpetuity, or rental properties that do the same. It's possible to imagine making it illegal to own private property (illegal to own things that are primarily for other people to use), while still…
Yes, there’s an interesting conversation to be had there, but it’s pretty clear that the article is not concerned with that discussion and is instead talking about the outcomes of our current economic systems.
Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?
#336There 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…
It seems like a huge distraction to claim that this study is somehow an exemplar of problems on "campuses." There are apparently 1.6 million faculty on campuses and 76 million students [hastily-googled statistics], so to claim that they have uniform beliefs about the nature of the economy seems like an extraordinary claim to make, which I'd like to see substantiated more than this.
Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?
#337I don't get why lately the trend it to focus in inequality instead of focusing in poverty. I mean, if the % of poverty decreases, then economy is moving in a good direction, in spite of inequality, right? Suppose you had one million, and somebody else has one thousand millions, there would be a large gap, but I wouldn't consider it as negative. If there are arguments against what I wrote I would gladly read them and…
> I don't get why lately the trend it to focus in inequality instead of focusing in poverty.
Because outside of extreme poverty that is rare in the West, relative deprivation seems to be a more significant source of experienced disutility and other social dysfunction than absolute deprivation.
Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?
#338Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?
#339According to Dave Ramsey, 79% of millionaires inherited $0.
Globally, poverty is on the decline.
What's the problem with wealth distribution, exactly? Besides jealousy.
Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?
#340Earlier quoted context omitted.
I received a Ph.D. in physics in 2010, throughout my training, my anecdotal experience was that of an echo chamber. I didn't fully realize it until I left academia. Although, it was slowly becoming apparent as the years passed. My experience was of a relatively small and closed group of physicists who reaffirmed each other's assumption that they were at the absolute peak of intellectual thought. Most of the professor…
It's analogous to weight-loss arguments. It is true that calories = calories-in - calories-out. It cannot not be true. It just isn't helpful.
That phrase is usually used to remind people that eating less is as if not more important than exercising to lose weight. It takes a lot of effort to burn a Calorie and next to no effort to consume one.