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Economic Inequality Is Worse Than We Think (2015)

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Re: Economic Inequality Is Worse Than We Think (2015)

#31

Post by wolfgke »

oblio wrote: post #21
wolfgke wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, quarantine the further spread of poverty.

You're either a wonderful troll, and then: kudos! or you have a very misguided idea of poverty. Poverty is not a disease, as Quarrelsome pointed out. Poverty isn't even a constant, it's dynamic. People go in and out of poverty all the time. We also don't know the correlation and the causation between poverty and various indicators such as IQ, achievements, etc. (are you poor because you have a low IQ or do you have a…

> Poverty isn't even a constant, it's dynamic. People go in and out of poverty all the time.

There exist lots of diseases known to medicine that can be cured, but people can still get reinfected even after a treatment.

Re: Economic Inequality Is Worse Than We Think (2015)

#32

Post by ptaipale »

oblio wrote: post #21
wolfgke wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, quarantine the further spread of poverty.

You're either a wonderful troll, and then: kudos! or you have a very misguided idea of poverty. Poverty is not a disease, as Quarrelsome pointed out. Poverty isn't even a constant, it's dynamic. People go in and out of poverty all the time. We also don't know the correlation and the causation between poverty and various indicators such as IQ, achievements, etc. (are you poor because you have a low IQ or do you have a…

Your comment however leads me to ponder the rhetoric: poverty is indeed not a disease, but like diseases, in modern societies it is contagious. Patterns and behaviours that make poverty deeper and more destructive are spreading from person to person and family to family, in neighbourhoods and communities.

Here I mean things like appreciation of education, work, stability of families, etc.

What could we do to change these patterns? (Apart from the usual recipes like making schools better. FWIW I'm from a country which has one of the most equal distributions of both income and wealth, but even this does leave a lot of people quite unhappy.)

Re: Economic Inequality Is Worse Than We Think (2015)

#33

Post by majewsky »

oblio wrote: post #18
ygaf wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point to the word "kill" in his post?

Preventing some arbitrary part of the population from having children is basically eradicating that population, long term. I just used "kill", for simplicity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics

I find that equation of terms troubling. If I take that argument to its logical conclusion, we are all killers because we don't get as much children as previous generations. We're effectively killing our unborn offspring by refusing to procreate.

Re: Economic Inequality Is Worse Than We Think (2015)

#34

Post by huyt77 »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #8
wolfgke wrote: post #3

To me the worse problem is: While I can understand that it is an inconvenient situation to be poor (and I have some kind of compassion for them), I really cannot understand how one could even come to the idea to give rise to children if one is not in a high quantile of earning. If people applied this reproduction strategy consequently, poverty would simply die out.

jesus. Pick from: alcohol, depression, boredom, dynasty building, genetic programming. I apologise for being rude but it sounds like you have limited compassion if you haven't been able to think this one through. What do you want to do, sterilise the poor? I would remind you that despite a poor background children can and do still excel and even if they don't these children are often the backbone of our industry. You…

Empathy doesn't come into play when we make ppl take a drivers test before we allow them to drive. Why? Cause we don't want them hurting other ppl or themselves. Same rule should apply to parenthood imho. As more data roles in like so https://m.medicalxpress.com/news/2017-06-mother-personality-...

Re: Economic Inequality Is Worse Than We Think (2015)

#35

Post by wolfgke »

ptaipale wrote: post #32
oblio wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're either a wonderful troll, and then: kudos! or you have a very misguided idea of poverty. Poverty is not a disease, as Quarrelsome pointed out. Poverty isn't even a constant, it's dynamic. People go in and out of poverty all the time. We also don't know the correlation and the causation between poverty and various indicators such as IQ, achievements, etc. (are you poor because you have a low IQ or do you have a…

Your comment however leads me to ponder the rhetoric: poverty is indeed not a disease, but like diseases, in modern societies it is contagious. Patterns and behaviours that make poverty deeper and more destructive are spreading from person to person and family to family, in neighbourhoods and communities. Here I mean things like appreciation of education, work, stability of families, etc. What could we do to change t…

Exactly my kind of reasoning. To add a point: Since we don't know the exact kind of pathogen(s) leading to poverty, but we know that poverty of parents is a strong predictor of poverty of children, this delivers a way to at least partly quarantine the poverty disease.

Re: Economic Inequality Is Worse Than We Think (2015)

#36

Post by eeZah7Ux »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #8
wolfgke wrote: post #3

To me the worse problem is: While I can understand that it is an inconvenient situation to be poor (and I have some kind of compassion for them), I really cannot understand how one could even come to the idea to give rise to children if one is not in a high quantile of earning. If people applied this reproduction strategy consequently, poverty would simply die out.

jesus. Pick from: alcohol, depression, boredom, dynasty building, genetic programming. I apologise for being rude but it sounds like you have limited compassion if you haven't been able to think this one through. What do you want to do, sterilise the poor? I would remind you that despite a poor background children can and do still excel and even if they don't these children are often the backbone of our industry. You…

> despite a poor background children can and do still excel

Only occasionally. And that does not justify raising children in a difficult environment!

> What do you want to do, sterilise the poor?

I agree that the parent phrased that post very poorly.

However many countries did a lot of effective work to prevent unplanned parenthood, including education and access to contraceptives and abortion rather than sterilization or punishment.

> even if they don't these children are often the backbone of our industry

This sounds like the world need enough desperate people to accept exploitative jobs or go to war and so on? I hope humanity can do better than that.

Re: Economic Inequality Is Worse Than We Think (2015)

#37

Post by oblio »

ptaipale wrote: post #32
oblio wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're either a wonderful troll, and then: kudos! or you have a very misguided idea of poverty. Poverty is not a disease, as Quarrelsome pointed out. Poverty isn't even a constant, it's dynamic. People go in and out of poverty all the time. We also don't know the correlation and the causation between poverty and various indicators such as IQ, achievements, etc. (are you poor because you have a low IQ or do you have a…

Your comment however leads me to ponder the rhetoric: poverty is indeed not a disease, but like diseases, in modern societies it is contagious. Patterns and behaviours that make poverty deeper and more destructive are spreading from person to person and family to family, in neighbourhoods and communities. Here I mean things like appreciation of education, work, stability of families, etc. What could we do to change t…

My guess is that the best investments are in education and social welfare. Basically try to get people who are down up and keep people who are up from falling down during their worst moments (temporary loss of income, depression due to loss of loved ones, etc.).

Besides this, I guess the next best investment is in refining democracy and its safeguards, as well as the actual government, so that:

a) lobbying by corporations and very rich and powerful individuals doesn't corrupt the system

b) the system is as efficient as possible (there's always going to be inefficiencies but you'd want most of the tax money to actually be used for what they're meant instead of administrative overhead)

More than that, there's not much we can do. After all, at some point we have to rely on free will :)

Re: Economic Inequality Is Worse Than We Think (2015)

#38

Post by CalRobert »

wolfgke wrote: post #3

To me the worse problem is: While I can understand that it is an inconvenient situation to be poor (and I have some kind of compassion for them), I really cannot understand how one could even come to the idea to give rise to children if one is not in a high quantile of earning. If people applied this reproduction strategy consequently, poverty would simply die out.

One could say the same for being in a high quintile of leisure time, but that doesn't stop all stressed-out rich people from having kids.

Most of humanity was born to parents with no monetary income at all, and volatile access to resources and shelter. Imagine that!

Re: Economic Inequality Is Worse Than We Think (2015)

#39

Post by morsch »

trentnix wrote: post #5

I've never understood using income inequality as a measure of the health of a society. As Milton Friedman said, the only place where people are equal is in a prison and in the grave. Milton Friedman on greed and income inequality: https://youtu.be/RWsx1X8PV_A

Evidently Milton Friedman is not an expert on prisons.

Re: Economic Inequality Is Worse Than We Think (2015)

#40

Post by ryanbrunner »

awptimus wrote: post #10
geoka9 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Context matters. If we're talking about a first world country, income inequality is a meaningful metric.

Because...

It all depends on what you want to optimize for. But for me, and I suspect a lot of people, the happiness of society seems like a decent starting point (let's assume for the moment that most Americans / 1st world citizens are at the point where base survival is not in question)

The current rate of inequality is massively inefficient if you're trying to optimize happiness. The bottom 2 quintiles of Americans control so little wealth that keeping food on the table is their primary concern. Meanwhile, an extremely small and shrinking proportion of the population control an outsized amount of wealth, to the point where it's not reasonably usable in an efficient way by those people.

It's like saying that the proper way to divide 100 loaves of bread between 100 people is to give 1 person 95 loaves and every other person a slice of bread. No one is starving, but you're making 1 person very happy at the expense of 99 others.

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