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Which, as it happens, nearly always is entwined with wealth and income inequality.
The ultra-rich get to have a megaphone for their agendas, ideologies and opinions, with a level of political influence none of us will likely ever come close to seeing.
Seeing these studies, someone comes along and proposes a regulation that limits the amount of arsenic this factory is allowed to dump into the public water supply, to keep it within safe levels.
A critic then comes along and says: "The amount of arsenic in the water is not the root problem -- the root problem is that arsenic makes people sick. We should focus on helping people not get sick when exposed to arsenic! That way, we wouldn't have to hurt this job-creating factory."
This feels like what PG is arguing for here. In an ideal world, where governmental systems were purely representative and incorruptible, and where markets were efficient and impossible to manipulate, sure, focusing on huge economic inequality wouldn't make sense. But we don't live in this world, just like we don't live in a world where we can easily make people immune to large amounts of arsenic.
I'm not sure I buy that claim outright. I'm not sure I like asking whether THING is good based on claims about the goodness of CAUSE OF THING. If hugs caused cancer, would that make cancer good? Not certain, but I do believe it would make hugs less common.
The problem with an argument like this is that it does nothing but preach to the proverbial choir. Either I buy into pg's worldview about where notional value is derived, or I don't. If a startup founder gets rich creating some new piece of technology, do they deserve the sudden windfall cash that they received? Did the VCs who provided the capital deserve that windfall? Do the workers who actually created a lot of the value in question through their labor get compensated proportionally to the value they built?
It's not an easy question to answer in the long run. Regardless of the goodness of income itself generated from VC processes, it continues to be worthwhile to question the economic engines that run off of global income inequality. When it makes economic sense to grow cotton on one continent, ship it to another for manufacture, and ship it to yet another for sale as a T-shirt, there's something fundamentally inequitable about how we pay people for their labor.
That isn't to say I've abandoned capitalism for outright marxism. But it is hard to really think about "attacking poverty" in any meaningful way that doesn't address the marked difference in wealth and potential to earn wealth between rich and poor, especially in a globalized, post-(and still)-colonial world.
So, sure generating any income in any way will cause income inequality by pg's formulation, whether it's billions from a lucky unicorn IPO or tens from a day's labor at a US minimum wage job, or far, far less making shirts in Bangladesh. The disparity is still something to remark on, especially because that disparity is really one of the major markers of power over one's own future opportunities.
Most people I know that are concerned about economic inequality aren't super bothered by self-made billionaires (Jobs, Zuck, and Gates to a lesser degree.) Mostly they are concerned about dynastic wealth (Waltons, Kochs) particularly when it's economic power intertwined with political power (Kennedys, Bushes, Clintons, Romneys). Outside of San Francisco, where many people feel real downward economic pressure from tec…
Then they should stop saying they are concerned about "inequality" and start saying they are concerned with "dynastic wealth". This sloppy rhetoric makes it easy for opponents to attack. See, e.g., https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=okHGCz6xxiw And she is absolutely right. Because if "inequality" is the problem then a solution is to shape society so that everyone has $1 rather than the rich having $3 and the poor having $…
Two of those results may be quite desirable actually.
I am kind of surprised that PG insist on confusing extreme economic inequality (which is the one most people are talking about when they say it's bad) with normal economic inequality (which most people are totally fine with.) Edited to clear up confusion
This comment doesn't make any sense without defining "extreme" vs "normal" income equality. That is far from obvious. Do you think that technology alone can't produce extreme income inequality? Why?
Determining an acceptable level of income inequality is a moving target requiring lots of analysis of data and whatever but there exists such a point at which you could say that income inequality is untenable, just the same as there exists a point at which inflation is untenable.
The "acceptable" level of inflation is around 3%, but even inflation in the low double digits isn't necessarily unworkable. It's somewhat arbitrary and a comoplex policy decision, but it's fair to say that such a level of income inequality exists at which it becomes untenable (even if we don't know what it is).
Most people I know that are concerned about economic inequality aren't super bothered by self-made billionaires (Jobs, Zuck, and Gates to a lesser degree.) Mostly they are concerned about dynastic wealth (Waltons, Kochs) particularly when it's economic power intertwined with political power (Kennedys, Bushes, Clintons, Romneys). Outside of San Francisco, where many people feel real downward economic pressure from tec…
> Over the past 30 years, the origin of the wealth of the richest people in the United States has shifted away from old, inherited money. Our new metric, the self-made scores developed for the Forbes 400, shows that increasingly we find self-made billionaires among the ranks of the richest people in the country. This has accompanied the incredible increase in wealth of the members of the Forbes 400, which has jumped 1,832% times since 1984, when the total net worth of our list was $125 billion, compared with $2.29 trillion today.[0]
[0] http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2014/10/03/there-a...
> But economic inequality per se is not bad. Both essays feel like they are built on a strawman argument. Nobody serious said inequality was bad or good, not even Piketty. The discussion is about degrees, and PG adds nothing to it by arguing categorically. That we are talking degrees of inequality is also the reason why economists argue with statistics and do not differentiate much between specific causes or mechanis…
Nobody serious said inequality was bad or good Lots of very serious people say that inequality is bad: http://digitalcommons.bard.edu/hm_archive/333/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ7LzE3u7Bw&mid=5328 http://www.economonitor.com/lrwray/2013/07/09/how-big-is-big... http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=11245 http://moslereconomics.com/2009/09/30/inequality-nothing-to-...
Let me try to explain it like this. It is a valid question to ask why, if one income bracket grew X% over 20 years, did a lower bracket only grow 1/2 X. It is not reasonable to simply dismiss this question as irrelevant by assumption. Because society should want income to grow in all brackets, if possible
Why do startups necessarily increase economic inequality? I agree that they do now, but is it impossible to have the good of startups without also increasing economic inequality? Out of the usual reasons people encourage you to either found or work for a startup, "get rich" is not the primary motivator, and "get richer than other people" certainly isn't. (To claim that "get rich" implies "get richer than other people…
Is it impossible to have the good of startups without also increasing economic inequality? Yes. This is discussed in detail in the original essay and in The Refragmentation essay here: http://paulgraham.com/re.html
Neither of these essays seems to discuss the good of startups in relation to economic inequality. All they discuss is the inevitability of startups, or really technology, increasing economic inequality. And "The Refragmentation" explicitly points out that a society can put a stop to this via high taxes.
(That said, it is late and maybe I didn't fully understand a sentence somewhere.)
Most people I know that are concerned about economic inequality aren't super bothered by self-made billionaires (Jobs, Zuck, and Gates to a lesser degree.) Mostly they are concerned about dynastic wealth (Waltons, Kochs) particularly when it's economic power intertwined with political power (Kennedys, Bushes, Clintons, Romneys). Outside of San Francisco, where many people feel real downward economic pressure from tec…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nobody serious said inequality was bad or good Lots of very serious people say that inequality is bad: http://digitalcommons.bard.edu/hm_archive/333/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ7LzE3u7Bw&mid=5328 http://www.economonitor.com/lrwray/2013/07/09/how-big-is-big... http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=11245 http://moslereconomics.com/2009/09/30/inequality-nothing-to-...
The issue is not static levels of inequality per se. The issue is why inequality should increase. If the 60%th percentile incomes grew 40%, then it is not clear why the bottom 20% percentile income also shouldn't grow 40%. The fact that it didn't is suboptimal and studying this phenomenon makes sense. That doesn't mean that every knee jerk attempt to fix this problem is good. Let me try to explain it like this. It is…