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Is Inequality Inevitable?

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#381

Post by arcticbull »

jlawson wrote: post #357
emmelaich wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I found it helpful. In a world where a million distracting influences are promising cheats, shortcuts, and easy ways to get to the goal, a single true statement to focus attention and wipe away the bullshit is incredibly useful.

Sugar and insulin response are critical to weight loss. The more overweight, the more you're insulin resistant, the harder it is to actually lose weight. Once you hit metabolic syndrome you've got a big problem on your hands. The CI-CO model is not sufficient to model weight loss effectively. Especially since with caloric restriction your BMR slows down to match your reduced intake (which doesn't happen with fasting, FWIW).

tl;dr: The only time CI-CO is truly accurate is when CI=0.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#382

Post by was8309 »

solveit wrote: post #349
hector_vasquez wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you defining a "calorie"? The number printed on the package? Because that number is basically meaningless.

That number happens to be remarkably accurate. More accurate than required by law in fact. It also happens to accurately predict changes in a person's weight if you know everything they're eating.

Isn't the low carb argument that for proteins more is passed and don't need to be burnt off, but for carbs almost all calories must be burnt off? How many calories do I take in and therefore must burn off thru exercise if I swallow a penny?

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#383

Post by WalterBright »

ihm wrote: post #227
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 don't think your comment is a good faith engagement with leftist understandings of value. This is the starting point of Marx's whole theory of capitalism (it's in the first few chapters of Capital) which is the labor theory of value. Namely, his starting point is that labor is identified with value. Wealth is created when raw materials and the means of production are combined with labor. In the capitalist theory of…

> his starting point is that labor is identified with value

This is a large mistake. For example, spending an hour on an exercise bike is certainly a lot of labor input, but nothing of value, since nobody will pay you to cycle on an exercise bike.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#384

Post by Supermancho »

ameister14 wrote: post #197
Empact wrote: post #144

It should be self-evident that the accelerating inequality we’re witnessing is not the natural inequality of competition and the power law, easily explained by simple arithmetic. An accelerating and historically high broad societal effect is naturally a product of broad and unique properties of the current regime, rather than fundamentally consistent properties, which would naturally be seen across all time. What is…

>An accelerating and historically high broad societal effect is naturally a product of broad and unique properties of the current regime, rather than fundamentally consistent properties, which would naturally be seen across all time. You're completely correct here. Unfortunately, neither the current levels of income inequality nor the acceleration of said inequality is unique or historically high. It's not even uniqu…

> neither the current levels of income inequality nor the acceleration of said inequality is unique or historically high

I'm not sure what you're saying, as these statements are unqualified:

"current levels of income inequality"?

"acceleration of said inequality"?

"historically high"?

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#385

Post by pietrod »

tl;rd if you always bet x% on a fair coin you are going to lose in the long run, ex. 0.95*1.05 = 0.9974999999999999 so if world is a casino, where everything is a bet for utility with someone else, since the best strategy is not betting (or betting the less %) the richer is always in an advantageous position, and on the long run will have anything: this is intuitively true, but it has to be said that this passive force is way inferior compared to the active skill of a good better, that can completely override this force (that on a single life span would be like 1% of the force coming from skills). Basically the system is too chaotic to even notice this little force.

Interesting idea, but this one from margrit kennedy https://vimeo.com/71074210 is even better, here it's another passive force, but with way more impact than that, can be considered a real case of the general idea that "inequality" is a natural phenomena (that is a quite lazy concept cause it makes humans totally dumb and with no free will, like, sure, even war is natural, and murder, etc etc). honestly these ideas are so basic that shouldn't have names on them, and surely they are not the first people to have notice that.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#386

Post by rhacker »

Empact wrote: post #370
sachdevap wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "self-evident" is inappropriate because it presumes perspective of the reader I don't think that is the reason for it being inappropriate. In my opinion, such phrases are a result intellectual laziness, of which I am also guilty at times.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident” - intellectually lazy, or a claim whose verification or refutation is left to the reader?

Well, maybe not lazy in the case of the declaration of independence, but it's definitely filler words.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#387

Post by pietrod »

turc1656 wrote: post #203
ryeguy_24 wrote: post #150

> "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?

It's even more shocking than you may have realized. Not sure if you caught it because you may have been too surprised or just read quickly, but that was the 2010 number. The current number is estimated to be a mere 26 people that hold as much as the lower half!

yes, source: https://www.oxfam.org/en/5-shocking-facts-about-extreme-glob...

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#388

Post by pietrod »

sdfin wrote: post #334

I 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…

then let's compare us to monkeys, if we can decide a past point in time, in this case whatever we do it's always good and everybody will be happy! (this could not work XD)

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#389

Post by learc83 »

WalterBright wrote: post #327
learc83 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Income taxes are much less progressive than they were half a century ago.

I don't know what the statistic for this was 50 years ago, but today 38% of federal income tax revenues come from the 1%.

And the top 1% earn 2x as much of the income as they did 50 years ago, but don't pay 2x more of the share of income tax.

Meaning that income tax is less progressive now.

Also the 38% number that right wing groups like to throw around is very carefully crafted to avoid FICA taxes, which account for a much larger percentage of the tax burden for lower income earners. And the social security component goes away after the first $130k in income.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#390

Post by rhacker »

WalterBright wrote: post #327
learc83 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Income taxes are much less progressive than they were half a century ago.

I don't know what the statistic for this was 50 years ago, but today 38% of federal income tax revenues come from the 1%.

Maybe it should be more like 50% because doesn't the 1% have 50% of all assets?
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