A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality • Hacker News Board

Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#171

Post by yummyfajitas » Sun, Jan 03, 2016, 1:00 AM UTC

makomk wrote: post #147

Pyxl101 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm simply presenting a thought experiment, not an actual choice. The thought experiment demonstrates that purchasing power has increased from 1970 to 2016 (at least, if you prefer 2016 wages and products to 1970 wages and products). If you'd like to argue that "purchasing power should have increased more if it wasn't for XYZ..." then that's fine, but it's separate from the point that I was debunking: > but the purch…

Sure, purchasing power has increased massively for fancy new 2016 products like cellphones, TVs and gadgets. Unfortunately it's also plummeted for old-fashioned 1970s-esque products like food, fuel to go to work, and a roof over your head and even though it's 2016 people still need those products. Having a 42" television for a price that would have seemed astonishing a few years ago is little help if you can't feed y…

Not true for food or energy, hard to find (imputed) rent vs income.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/03/02/389578089/you... https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=10891

Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#172

Post by CuriousSkeptic » Sun, Jan 03, 2016, 1:03 AM UTC

roymurdock wrote: post #78

ryandamm wrote: post #20

I think it's useful to draw a bright line around the 'value creation' that PG is referring to, also. It's not just creating chairs, it's aggregating great wealth by 'disrupting' traditional industries. Those traditional industries have workers and shareholders who lose out. What makes successful startups so profitable is they displace a large and less-efficient system with a small, efficient one. Efficient in terms o…

> Piketty's suggested policy response is simple: high taxes on aggregated wealth. You need to go one step further and outline where and how the federal government should put this new tax revenue to work. How much should we raise taxes? Which brackets? What form of wealth do we tax? Why taxation rather than issuing bonds? What percent of gov revenue should we allocate to the DoD? How much to Social Security and Medica…

Since it is inequality were talking about, the simplest thing to do would be pure redistribution. Put the money in the hands of everyone equally as a dividend.

Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#173

Post by marshray » Sun, Jan 03, 2016, 1:06 AM UTC

efaref wrote: post #166

marshray wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many countries in Western Europe have been destroyed and rebuilt multiple times since the 19th century when slavery was practiced.

I'm sorry to inform you that slavery is alive and well in Western Europe: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/16/lithuanian-guil...

No, you just linked to an article proving that it's illegal and prosecuted when it occurs.

Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#174

Post by maratd » Sun, Jan 03, 2016, 1:12 AM UTC

Umn44 wrote: post #154

"I find it astonishing that people compare modern-day income equality and the position of the poor in our time, in the Western world, to that of historical slavery" I'm sorry to tell you but you're a moron if you believe there isn't mass suffering when you are poor and low status. The amount of psychological abuse you take and feelings of self worth and being treated as subhuman by society and the business community…

> If you don't think that just as painful as slavery you're a grade A idiot.

If you have to resort to name-calling to make your point ... you're wrong. It's that simple.

When you're a slave, no matter how talented your are, no matter how hard you work ... you're still a slave and you will always be a slave, and your children too, will be slaves.

That situation is truly inhuman. Truly. So much so that the bible, the founding document of our civilization, had a built-in reset for precisely this. [1]

When you're free, your circumstances may suck ... but at least you have a chance to improve them, however remote that chance may be.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jubilee_(biblical)

Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#175

Post by stefantalpalaru » Sun, Jan 03, 2016, 1:30 AM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #12

This is spot on. I think it is important to evaluate PG's essay within context. He, like most people in Silicon Valley, is stuck in a bubble and views the rest of the world through a very distorted lens. That's where much of his rhetoric about wealth creation comes from: he's surrounded by people (founders) who create value in the form of software. When a portion of those founders become rich, he looks at himself as…

How can he miss this: http://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2015/03/opinion/ctl-child... ?

Maybe he sees the poor, but labels them as lazy and not driven. It makes it easier to explain how some people worry about how their car doors open, while others worry about their next meal.

Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#176

Post by paulddraper » Sun, Jan 03, 2016, 1:32 AM UTC

staunch wrote: post #115

paulddraper wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"lower class are basically slaves" You're going to compare working graveyards at 7-Eleven to slavery ? You should read a little bit about slavery and human trafficking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery I suspect most slaves would not agree with you.

> You're going to compare working graveyards at 7-Eleven to slavery? > I suspect most slaves would not agree with you. The abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass initially declared, "now I am my own master", upon taking a paying job. But later in life, he concluded to the contrary, "experience demonstrates that there may be a slavery of wages only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chatt…

It's true that post Civil War blacks weren't doing well. (Actually, a lot of whites weren't doing well either.)

But it's a real stretch of the imagination to say the current United States (especially post income tax and Social Security entitlements) is anywhere even close to post Civil War circumstances.

Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#177

Post by PaulHoule » Sun, Jan 03, 2016, 1:44 AM UTC

hobs wrote: post #39

PaulHoule wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PG is in a bubble and has a distorted view, but unlike a lot of rich people, he's a real producer. Y Combinator has made the world a better place in terms of new businesses, wealth created, people trained, etc. Also PG and Sam Altman are very responsive to critics, they understand that they live in a bubble and that other people have a valid point of view. Compare that to the essays written by the people at Andressen…

Yeah, I submitted this article not because I think pg needs to have vitriol heaped upon him as much as the article really missed the meat of the issue and this was a good response.

I agree with you. He's the right person to engage in a dialog.

Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#178

Post by hitekker » Sun, Jan 03, 2016, 1:45 AM UTC

paulddraper wrote: post #176

staunch wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're going to compare working graveyards at 7-Eleven to slavery? > I suspect most slaves would not agree with you. The abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass initially declared, "now I am my own master", upon taking a paying job. But later in life, he concluded to the contrary, "experience demonstrates that there may be a slavery of wages only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chatt…

It's true that post Civil War blacks weren't doing well. (Actually, a lot of whites weren't doing well either.) But it's a real stretch of the imagination to say the current United States (especially post income tax and Social Security entitlements) is anywhere even close to post Civil War circumstances.

His point was not about blacks, whites, or even the Civil War.

> Wage slavery refers to a situation where a person's livelihood depends on wages or a salary, especially when the dependence is total and immediate. It is a pejorative term used to draw an analogy between slavery and wage labor by focusing on similarities between owning and renting a person.

There is a difference between "slaves" in the popular sense (chains, beatings, whips, rape), and "slaves" in the economic sense, but both are premised upon the unjust abrogation of freedom at the hands of another.

This article describes the latter case quite well:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicagarrison/the-new-american-sla...

Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#179

Post by djur » Sun, Jan 03, 2016, 2:01 AM UTC

clarkmoody wrote: post #105

djur wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which "State" are you referring to? I'm not aware of an organization by that name. > Imagine perfectly egalitarian society, in terms of wealth. The "perfect egalitarianism" strawman is, at this point, barely recognizable as either man or straw for all the beatings it's suffered. It is as useless a hypothetical in discussing the appropriate distribution of resources as would be "imagine the entire universe was owned b…

> Which "State" are you referring to? I'm not aware of an organization by that name. The State is the entity within society that holds a monopoly on the use of force. It uses that power to coerce members of society to fund its exploits through legal theft called "taxation." You probably know it by a different name, depending on where you live :-)

There is no single entity that holds a monopoly on the use of force and effects taxation, so I don't see anything worth granting a proper noun. Part of the reason I am not an Austrian is because I prefer my political science and economics to deal with concrete actions and actual people and organizations, not Abstract Capitalized Entities.

The assertion that taxation is legalized theft enforced through the threat of force is a popular one in certain circles, but it isn't the self-evident fact you believe it to be, either.

Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#180

Post by chimeracoder » Sun, Jan 03, 2016, 2:12 AM UTC

amag wrote: post #139

chimeracoder wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many countries in Western Europe have been destroyed and rebuilt multiple times This doesn't change the fact that the current economic status of Denmark and Sweden today is directly linked to their status as colonial powers and slaveholders from the 17th-20th century. > since the 19th century when slavery was practiced. This entire subthread began with the claim that being "low-class" in the US is tantamount to sla…

Late 19th century, early 20th, Sweden was one of the poorest countries in Europe. The wealth of Sweden was accumulated post-WWII when the rest of Europe stood in ruins and needed to be rebuilt, not by being a colonial force to be reckoned with (it never was).

> Late 19th century, early 20th, Sweden was one of the poorest countries in Europe. not by being a colonial force to be reckoned with (it never was)

I mean, yes, if you compare Sweden only to the really lucrative colonizers, it'll look "poor" by comparison. But all you're really saying is that Sweden was less effective as a colonial power than its neighbors who were even "better" at it (England, France, etc.). That doesn't change the original point. If you look beyond simply Europe at where Sweden was with respect to the rest of the world, especially the regions that were colonized and enslaved, it's clear where they stood, and clear how much they benefited by being the ones who colonized, as opposed to the ones who were colonized.

The point is, you can't just look at "nice European socialism" in a vacuum and ignore the reasons why that philosophy has succeeded in Western Europe and why that exact same philosophy has been an empirical disaster in countries that were previously colonies of Western European powers and are still impoverished enough that they cannot export the working class down the economic chain any further (the way Western European powers - and the US as well - have).