Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study • Hacker News Board

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#131

Post by ahoho » Sun, Jan 30, 2022, 8:49 PM UTC

civilized wrote: post #23

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…

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…

Ironically, I think you're letting your view of academia distort your own thinking here.

The mechanism isn't that complex. Anywhere resources are limited can lead to outcomes where an unequal society is worse off than an equal one. If I have a finite supply of doctors, for example, then the wealthy will be the ones who receive care while the poor go without.

The wealthy also tend to set up systematic barriers to ensure that the resources they fund serve them alone [1]. In the US, this is probably best exemplified by public education: schools are funded by property taxes, so rich districts have better schools, which in turn further increases home values (a process exacerbated by policies that prevent construction of cheaper, higher-density housing---policies supported by, naturally, the wealthy). Schools in poorer districts are therefore worse off than they would be if wealth weren't as concentrated.

Even if you take the perspective that, net, an equal amount of dollars is going toward education (or healthcare, etc.), it's fairly obvious the marginal benefits are different. A second violin teacher isn't as meaningful as adding a calculus class; elective cosmetic surgery isn't equivalent to treating diabetes.

[1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-bir...

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#132

Post by rich_sasha » Sun, Jan 30, 2022, 8:50 PM UTC

azinman2 wrote: post #110

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…

> 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 advancem…

I’m not in any way American. And I’m not talking about buying iPads for students.

Too hungry to study? Fund school meals. Are free school meals stigmatising? Fund them for all students.

Teachers not good enough? Pay more for better ones.

Gang violence competes for mindshare? Fund proper, attractive activities for kids in the age group so they can do something better.

You can’t solve problems by burning money but you can spend money to solve problems.

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#133

Post by kiba » Sun, Jan 30, 2022, 8:50 PM UTC

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…

You could institute Land Value Tax. Don't need to double property taxes and disincentivize construction, but the tax on land will be much higher.

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#134

Post by WalterBright » Sun, Jan 30, 2022, 8:50 PM UTC

praxulus wrote: post #22

HideousKojima wrote: post #12

The study sounds like a crock of horseshit: "In this model, we assume that a large population of individuals comprises two distinct identity groups. These identities are assumed fixed, and thus correspond to a fixed feature of identity such as race, religious heritage, or socioeconomic background. Although such identities are fixed in the model, the salience of the identity, and therefore its impact on behavior, vari…

Not to defend their methodology, but your attempt to equate the GOP baseball shooting with an attempted coup says a lot more about your biases than the study authors'.

There was the CHAZ (Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone) established in Seattle where they explicitly seceded from the United States. In doing so, they pushed out all the police and set fire to the police station while barricading the doors with the remaining police inside (fortunately, the police escaped). The CHAZ rioters also occupied and vandalized City Hall.

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#135

Post by civilized » Sun, Jan 30, 2022, 8:51 PM UTC

js8 wrote: post #120

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…

See also the book The Spirit Level, which shows that inequality also negatively affects those who are well-off - they become stressed about their social standing too. This is why naive explanations of inequality that blame the poor or the envious are false.

I don't think it proves envy false as a cause. It just means envy is of a piece with status anxiety more broadly. I doubt that anyone of any historical period would be shocked by this.

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#136

Post by WalterBright » Sun, Jan 30, 2022, 8:53 PM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #18

HideousKojima wrote: post #12

The study sounds like a crock of horseshit: "In this model, we assume that a large population of individuals comprises two distinct identity groups. These identities are assumed fixed, and thus correspond to a fixed feature of identity such as race, religious heritage, or socioeconomic background. Although such identities are fixed in the model, the salience of the identity, and therefore its impact on behavior, vari…

You say "wanted to do for over a century" yet "the left" has been reducing inequality for several centuries now, abolishing monarchy, aristocrary, slavery and such, introducing voting and democracy and human rights and all that kind of thing. People seem to generally like it.

I didn't know the Founding Fathers were communists. Learn something every day!

(Actual communists used slave labor on a mass scale, that was the true purpose behind the gulags.)

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#137

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jan 30, 2022, 8:54 PM UTC

ahoho wrote: post #131

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…

Ironically, I think you're letting your view of academia distort your own thinking here. The mechanism isn't that complex. Anywhere resources are limited can lead to outcomes where an unequal society is worse off than an equal one. If I have a finite supply of doctors, for example, then the wealthy will be the ones who receive care while the poor go without. The wealthy also tend to set up systematic barriers to ensu…

[deleted]

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#138

Post by dnautics » Sun, Jan 30, 2022, 8:54 PM UTC

ashtonkem wrote: post #123

dnautics wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we? When was the last time a country decreased its Gini coefficient?

The period between 1945 and 1970 in the United States really stands out. Improving wages, narrowing gap of health outcomes across racial groups. It wasn’t a perfect time, but clearly metrics were getting better. Conversely, we can observe the effects of policy since the 1970s and declare it to be a failure. Despite long periods of economic growth, income inequality continues to grow.

there's also a similar period between 1850 and 1920, and 1850 and 1900 in sweden. IIRC (i could be wrong on this) even the nordics with their progressive redistibution policies aren't actually decreasing their gini coefficients, it's just static.

Also IIRC the US improved it's gini coefficient for the one year 2009? 2008?; a lot of rich people suddenly got less rich until they got bailed out.

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#139

Post by Maarten88 » Sun, Jan 30, 2022, 8:56 PM UTC

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #38

umvi wrote: post #3

> The study says, “We see that sufficient redistribution can reduce both inequality and polarisation, although a high degree of redistribution is required to prevent polarisation.” Have they factored in the act of wealth redistribution itself being polarizing? From a statistical/theoretical perspective it checks out, but I bet practically speaking if you actually tried "a high degree of [wealth] distribution", the mi…

I don't know about the UK (where this study is based), but wealth distribution in the US is extremely top-heavy [1], and there are a bunch of surveys showing that most people drastically underestimate the inequality [2]. I think it's hard to predict the political effect because a lot of people have these unrealistic ideas of how income and wealth are distributed, and it's not obvious how durable those misconceptions…

This is the genius of what the top 1% in the US have accomplished: they have convinced almost half of the population to take their side, against their own interest, by making them feel they are part of the upper class when they are actually not, or think they will somehow get rich shortly ("temporarily embarrassed millionaires") or that redistribution is for the weak, who do not deserve it and should work harder.

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#140

Post by civilized » Sun, Jan 30, 2022, 8:59 PM UTC

ahoho wrote: post #131

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…

Ironically, I think you're letting your view of academia distort your own thinking here. The mechanism isn't that complex. Anywhere resources are limited can lead to outcomes where an unequal society is worse off than an equal one. If I have a finite supply of doctors, for example, then the wealthy will be the ones who receive care while the poor go without. The wealthy also tend to set up systematic barriers to ensu…

This is just your speculation. A bunch of other people in this comment tree say it's not about outcomes in an unequal society being worse than outcomes in a (hypothetical, possibly unachievable) equal society with the same resources. Instead it's about a hardwired biological stress response that people lower in the social hierarchy have when they observe people higher up.

So before we go lecturing about how it "isn't that complex" let's make sure we understand what this thing is that's supposedly not that complex.