Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

thesaint.scot

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 223 posts

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#101

Post by tlogan »

colechristensen wrote: post #72
rich_sasha wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is going to do the redistribution and how? It sounds nice, these people have too much and these have too little, let’s optimise. But redistribution via taxes imho leads to politicians having larger budgets for scoring political goals. And anyway how is it meant to work? If you equalise assets, you’ll find wealth drifting away from it again, as some eat through their assets and some invest/save. It’s a known effec…

You don't directly redistribute. You set taxes and economic policies to target free-market wealth redistribution. That is, find instances where there is significant distribution of money from the poor to the rich and find ways to add friction to those markets. Like landowners renting out housing. Suck large amounts of money out of the housing market by taxing commercial loans used for residential real estate, doublin…

The problem with “just raise taxes solution” is that there is no guarantee that money from taxes is going to be evenly and correctly distributed and spent.

This might work for relatively small and single-nationality countries.

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#102

Post by jl6 »

civilized wrote: post #83
jl6 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no reason for my health to be harmed just because someone has more than me. Being angry all the time can harm your health. Maybe being envious all the time can too.

Then envious people can work on themselves, as we've always understood envy to be a moral problem.

Quite. I’m just proposing a mechanism. The solution could quite well be psychotherapy rather than communism.

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#103

Post by glerk »

pm90 wrote: post #96
civilized wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe it. I think it's woo. There's no reason for my health to be harmed just because someone has more than me. I'm open to being proven wrong, but I think this is another social science fad, another victim of academia's ideological blinkers and confirmation bias avalanche. It'll be in and out, just like how eggs and wine and chocolate are good for you on Tuesday and bad for you again by Thursday. EDIT: Yes…

You either believe in science or you don’t. A lot of scientific findings don’t make intuitive sense (like relativity). So we rely on the scientific methods to guide us to the truth rather than our primitive ape minds. Skepticism is part of the scientific method; but just saying “hmm it doesn’t feel right to me” isn’t really useful.

There is a difference between physics and economics/social “science”.

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#104

Post by civilized »

pm90 wrote: post #96
civilized wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe it. I think it's woo. There's no reason for my health to be harmed just because someone has more than me. I'm open to being proven wrong, but I think this is another social science fad, another victim of academia's ideological blinkers and confirmation bias avalanche. It'll be in and out, just like how eggs and wine and chocolate are good for you on Tuesday and bad for you again by Thursday. EDIT: Yes…

You either believe in science or you don’t. A lot of scientific findings don’t make intuitive sense (like relativity). So we rely on the scientific methods to guide us to the truth rather than our primitive ape minds. Skepticism is part of the scientific method; but just saying “hmm it doesn’t feel right to me” isn’t really useful.

> Skepticism is part of the scientific method; but just saying “hmm it doesn’t feel right to me” isn’t really useful.

Have you ever been a scientist? Scientists react this way to published research all the time, especially in fields like psychology where epistemic and empirical methods are weak.

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#105

Post by [deleted] »

rich_sasha wrote: post #44
Barrin92 wrote: post #20

Worth reading Robert Sapolsky on the topic of inequality here[1]. Inequality itself (not poverty, and accounted for the material disadvantages ), causes about half of the difference in health and life expectancy outcomes in developed nations, makes people at a neurological level opportunistic and causes biological stress in populations which results in violence, crime, isolation, mental illness, and so forth. That's…

Who is going to do the redistribution and how? It sounds nice, these people have too much and these have too little, let’s optimise. But redistribution via taxes imho leads to politicians having larger budgets for scoring political goals. And anyway how is it meant to work? If you equalise assets, you’ll find wealth drifting away from it again, as some eat through their assets and some invest/save. It’s a known effec…

[deleted]

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#106

Post by colechristensen »

dgfitz wrote: post #93
colechristensen wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't directly redistribute. You set taxes and economic policies to target free-market wealth redistribution. That is, find instances where there is significant distribution of money from the poor to the rich and find ways to add friction to those markets. Like landowners renting out housing. Suck large amounts of money out of the housing market by taxing commercial loans used for residential real estate, doublin…

> Have economists model how these things will actually effect the markets with the goal of turning residential housing into a bad investment and dropping prices. I imagine the costs would still get passed down to the tenants. Ignoring that for a second, rental housing isn’t “an evil thing that needs to go away.” Rental housing is very much a fundamental need for a lot of people. Military members who move every 3 year…

It's not "no more landlords", but removing many of them from the market, reducing competition. Many people want to own but are priced out of the market, and many people who do own end up leaving very large chunks of their incomes as bank profits. I'm focusing on the middle of the market where people would buy if prices were more affordable, not edges of the market where people would only buy if housing was basically given away.

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#107

Post by tcgv »

rich_sasha wrote: post #44
Barrin92 wrote: post #20

Worth reading Robert Sapolsky on the topic of inequality here[1]. Inequality itself (not poverty, and accounted for the material disadvantages ), causes about half of the difference in health and life expectancy outcomes in developed nations, makes people at a neurological level opportunistic and causes biological stress in populations which results in violence, crime, isolation, mental illness, and so forth. That's…

Who is going to do the redistribution and how? It sounds nice, these people have too much and these have too little, let’s optimise. But redistribution via taxes imho leads to politicians having larger budgets for scoring political goals. And anyway how is it meant to work? If you equalise assets, you’ll find wealth drifting away from it again, as some eat through their assets and some invest/save. It’s a known effec…

Why stop at education? Basic health coverage and housing when not accessible add up to the overall stress level of a low income family and affect their life quality and capacity to dedicate to a profession.

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#108

Post by kansface »

rich_sasha wrote: post #44
Barrin92 wrote: post #20

Worth reading Robert Sapolsky on the topic of inequality here[1]. Inequality itself (not poverty, and accounted for the material disadvantages ), causes about half of the difference in health and life expectancy outcomes in developed nations, makes people at a neurological level opportunistic and causes biological stress in populations which results in violence, crime, isolation, mental illness, and so forth. That's…

Who is going to do the redistribution and how? It sounds nice, these people have too much and these have too little, let’s optimise. But redistribution via taxes imho leads to politicians having larger budgets for scoring political goals. And anyway how is it meant to work? If you equalise assets, you’ll find wealth drifting away from it again, as some eat through their assets and some invest/save. It’s a known effec…

There is no or next to no empirical correlation between school funding and outcome in the US. I’d go so far as to suggest this proposal has cause and effect reversed. The push to send everyone to college at literally any cost has been a generational disaster. The value of a college degree has steadily declined while the cost has increased faster than any other sector of our economy. It’s very hard for me to imagine more education is the solution.

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#109

Post by ashtonkem »

rich_sasha wrote: post #44
Barrin92 wrote: post #20

Worth reading Robert Sapolsky on the topic of inequality here[1]. Inequality itself (not poverty, and accounted for the material disadvantages ), causes about half of the difference in health and life expectancy outcomes in developed nations, makes people at a neurological level opportunistic and causes biological stress in populations which results in violence, crime, isolation, mental illness, and so forth. That's…

Who is going to do the redistribution and how? It sounds nice, these people have too much and these have too little, let’s optimise. But redistribution via taxes imho leads to politicians having larger budgets for scoring political goals. And anyway how is it meant to work? If you equalise assets, you’ll find wealth drifting away from it again, as some eat through their assets and some invest/save. It’s a known effec…

It’s kind of incredible that we now treat income inequality as this impossible to tackle problem with insurmountable difficulties, as if we don’t have over a century of experience of how policies can increase and decrease inequality in this country, let alone in other countries. We’ve literally done this before.

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#110

Post by azinman2 »

rich_sasha wrote: post #44
Barrin92 wrote: post #20

Worth reading Robert Sapolsky on the topic of inequality here[1]. Inequality itself (not poverty, and accounted for the material disadvantages ), causes about half of the difference in health and life expectancy outcomes in developed nations, makes people at a neurological level opportunistic and causes biological stress in populations which results in violence, crime, isolation, mental illness, and so forth. That's…

Who is going to do the redistribution and how? It sounds nice, these people have too much and these have too little, let’s optimise. But redistribution via taxes imho leads to politicians having larger budgets for scoring political goals. And anyway how is it meant to work? If you equalise assets, you’ll find wealth drifting away from it again, as some eat through their assets and some invest/save. It’s a known effec…

> Poor people send their kids to poor schools that don’t give their kids enough skills to make it in life. Fund these schools, through taxes, so that every child gets a stab at a good education.

That’s a very American attitude - that money will solve everything. The school itself with great teachers (assuming money buys great teachers) cannot be enough. There needs to be parental involvement and a culture of advancement to push these kids to their actual capabilities. That’s in addition to everything else in their environment. If parents are stressed or there’s food insecurity, no one is attempting to get to grad school. If gangs are all around and violence is everywhere, few will make it to college.

Culture is the most powerful force, and that has to come as a collective set of ideals. It also doesn’t have to cost anything.

Post reply on HN