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The world is not falling apart: The trend lines

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Re: The world is not falling apart: The trend lines

#41

Post by matthewmacleod »

monkeypizza wrote: post #40
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The richest people should destroy productive resources No. Focusing on inequality would lead to the conclusion that the richest should hand over some of their capital resources to the middle classes and the poor, ie: to the working class.

Say there's someone who wants to reduce inequality, and we ask them whether they approve of various scenarios: Situation: "People living on a certain well-off island discover a way to farm more efficiently, which means they produce 10% more food, but that technology only works on their island. Is this good or bad?" Inequality reducer: "This is bad, because that island's average income will go up while the rest of the…

That's an absolute straw man - someone wanting to reduce inequality doesn't want to do it at the expense of all other considerations, which is the assumption you've made.

Complaining about an increasing wealth gap does not mean that the only other option is perfect equality of wealth. Have you seen the breakdown of wealth in America? The gap between, say, the top 1% and the rest of society is staggering. The top 0.1% have more wealth than the bottom 90%!

It's a broken system that results in some people having wealth so wildly out of proportion with the rest of society, and its hard to argue its proportional to the value of their contributions.

Re: The world is not falling apart: The trend lines

#42

Post by johnchristopher »

monkeypizza wrote: post #37
diafygi wrote: post #13

Great! We're better overall than we were! No reason to rest on our laurels, though. How can we be better than we are now? Here's some areas that aren't doing too well: 1. Climate Change - We're in store for a lot of trouble over the next few decades[1]. How will we manage? 2. Wealth Inequality - The gap is widening[2]. How do we reverse the trend? 3. Gerrymandering/voter suppression - The ones in power are the ones w…

Focusing solely on wealth inequality leads to strange conclusions: The richest people should destroy productive resources But destroying productive resources (efficient water purifiers, better solar panels, computers that do more computations using less energy) would have been wrong in almost all of history - so why would we adopt beliefs now which make it right? I think it makes more sense to focus on getting everyo…

>Focusing solely on wealth inequality leads to strange conclusions: > > The richest people should destroy productive resources

Where does that come from ? I can't find that quote in the linked articles.

Re: The world is not falling apart: The trend lines

#43

Post by mtew »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #38
monkeypizza wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Focusing solely on wealth inequality leads to strange conclusions: The richest people should destroy productive resources But destroying productive resources (efficient water purifiers, better solar panels, computers that do more computations using less energy) would have been wrong in almost all of history - so why would we adopt beliefs now which make it right? I think it makes more sense to focus on getting everyo…

> The richest people should destroy productive resources No. Focusing on inequality would lead to the conclusion that the richest should hand over some of their capital resources to the middle classes and the poor, ie: to the working class.

What if that capital disappeared as soon as you went to grab it?

Re: The world is not falling apart: The trend lines

#44

Post by Hermel »

diafygi wrote: post #13

Great! We're better overall than we were! No reason to rest on our laurels, though. How can we be better than we are now? Here's some areas that aren't doing too well: 1. Climate Change - We're in store for a lot of trouble over the next few decades[1]. How will we manage? 2. Wealth Inequality - The gap is widening[2]. How do we reverse the trend? 3. Gerrymandering/voter suppression - The ones in power are the ones w…

In the US, wealth inequality correlates strongly with median age over time. In a regression, raising median age can explain 89% of the raise in wealth inequality of the top 10% (my own calculation, using Picketty data, not online yet). The hypothesis behind this is that inequality tends to grow with age. Among 20 year olds, there is much less inequality than among 60 year olds. In fact, the richest even grow in wealth after retirement thanks to capital gains, widening the gap even more.

Maybe the system did not get less fair over the years, just the people older? I would guess that inequality within age groups did not change much over the past 50 years. But those age groups with lots of inequality grew larger.

Re: The world is not falling apart: The trend lines

#45

Post by sd8f9iu »

monkeypizza wrote: post #40
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The richest people should destroy productive resources No. Focusing on inequality would lead to the conclusion that the richest should hand over some of their capital resources to the middle classes and the poor, ie: to the working class.

Say there's someone who wants to reduce inequality, and we ask them whether they approve of various scenarios: Situation: "People living on a certain well-off island discover a way to farm more efficiently, which means they produce 10% more food, but that technology only works on their island. Is this good or bad?" Inequality reducer: "This is bad, because that island's average income will go up while the rest of the…

You make inequality out as the result of purely economic factors, when it is as much the result of political decisions. If congress passes a tax cut for the top 1%, that increases inequality, not because some group has suddenly "found a way to farm more efficiently" or discovered a cure to Alzheimer's, but because we decided it that way.

And as matthewmacleod has stated, you have constructed a complete straw man for someone against inequality. The inequality movement doesn't believe in destroying productive resources. The idea behind redistribution (e.g. taxing the rich and giving it – possibly through increased social spending – to the poor) is to make up for what is seen as an unfair rewarding of wealth and inequality of opportunity. And before you say that this results in the same thing as destroying resources because it drags the economy, I invite you to look into the research being done on the negative economic effects of inequality, not to mention its effect on society as a whole.

Re: The world is not falling apart: The trend lines

#46

Post by xorcist »

monkeypizza wrote: post #40
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The richest people should destroy productive resources No. Focusing on inequality would lead to the conclusion that the richest should hand over some of their capital resources to the middle classes and the poor, ie: to the working class.

Say there's someone who wants to reduce inequality, and we ask them whether they approve of various scenarios: Situation: "People living on a certain well-off island discover a way to farm more efficiently, which means they produce 10% more food, but that technology only works on their island. Is this good or bad?" Inequality reducer: "This is bad, because that island's average income will go up while the rest of the…

Could you at least try to get the basics right about what wealth inequality even means? Piketty popularized the subject last year, it is a great place to start.

Re: The world is not falling apart: The trend lines

#47

Post by tome »

aryehof wrote: post #24

> England, Canada, and most other industrialized countries... England isn't a country. Constantly referring to it as one, was a distraction from the contents for me.

Not sure why you were downvoted. England certainly isn't a country in the sense that's important in the article, i.e. a self-governing entity with control over its own economic system.

Re: The world is not falling apart: The trend lines

#48

Post by Fuxy »

diafygi wrote: post #13

Great! We're better overall than we were! No reason to rest on our laurels, though. How can we be better than we are now? Here's some areas that aren't doing too well: 1. Climate Change - We're in store for a lot of trouble over the next few decades[1]. How will we manage? 2. Wealth Inequality - The gap is widening[2]. How do we reverse the trend? 3. Gerrymandering/voter suppression - The ones in power are the ones w…

> Wealth Inequality - The gap is widening

The US currency and most other currencies are working against the people and in favor of the bankers.

Probably one of the best solutions that have presented themselves for this problem is bit-coin but since it is extremely volatile and still underused at the moment it is not ready yet.

Here's [1] a simple youtube animation that explains it better than anything i have seen.

[1]: http://youtu.be/mII9NZ8MMVM

Re: The world is not falling apart: The trend lines

#49

Post by kristiandupont »

I am increasingly worried about the state of the world each year.

However, I was discussing this with a friend recently and we were talking about how much of it was simple the result of more reports about the trouble in the world. I realized something: if there was, say, ten reports of really bad, violent crime in Denmark (where I am from -- population: 5 million people) per year, that would be very little. But even so, if I heard about each of them, it would be practically something really bad happening every month which would lead me to feel that things were going down the drain.

In other words, an unchanging constant violence rate would seem like a deterioration. And furthermore, if the type of violence was different every time, I would start to feel that all the different types of violence were on the rise.

So maybe my fear is not completely justified. But I still don't feel completely convinced.

Re: The world is not falling apart: The trend lines

#50

Post by girvo »

desireco42 wrote: post #28

This is a proof that there are lies, damn lies and statistics :). World is in terrible shape, from climate, to new conflicts emerging, richest people detachment from reality are some that come to mind.

Solid evidence you've given there. I'm even sympathetic to being convinced that things aren't as good as the datasets I've looked at personally seem to show, but I've not had much that shows me otherwise. Instant world-wide wide-band communication and mass media's adoption of it has had an interesting effect on society's perception of how "terrible" the shape the world is.
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