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Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

thesaint.scot

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Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#71

Post by champagnois »

I thought this recent drive toward marxist / equity / wealth redistribution positions were the very source of all division and polarisation. I am an extreme skeptic of any such study if it found that appeasement through giving the radicals what they want will result in harmony. These universities today are somewhat infected with the marxist worldview and have been a major source of the polarisation.

As another example of justified skepticism, I wonder what their research departments have to say about student debt forgiveness programs? I am sure they will find such programs fantastic. There is no conflict of interest involved there.

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#72

Post by colechristensen »

rich_sasha wrote: post #44
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…

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, doubling property taxes for non-owner-occupied residential real estate and vacant real estate, and putting caps on mortgage vs income though some means or another. Have economists model how these things will actually effect the markets with the goal of turning residential housing into a bad investment and dropping prices. So much money and effort is sucked away from people into bank interest and "cost of capital" for people who already have lots of it. Maybe go to the extent of statutory redistribution of ownership of housing, 2% per year. If you rent a house for 50 years it's yours. This can't raise rents because rent pricing is based on maximizing what the market will pay.

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#74

Post by analog31 »

rich_sasha wrote: post #44
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…

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…

I'd simply start a progressive wealth tax at a high enough threshold so that a person could provide themselves with a reasonable nest egg. Pulling numbers out of the air, maybe 1%/year for the first $10 million, up to 10%/year for $100 million. (Note that if you live in a house, you're already paying some wealth tax). This would leave most people with both good and poor standing with enough to live comfortably, and the ones who got there by working will probably continue to make more to cover the tax.

Reducing inequality would hopefully have the benefit of aligning political goals with the interests of the population, in which case politicians would be more motivated to score things such as universal health care, workplace safety, education, a safety net, and so forth.

If the government were to be burdened by too much money, they could give some of it back to the poor. ;-)

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#75

Post by chroem- »

dwater wrote: post #58
chroem- wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Of the 700+ people charged for their participation in the January 6th Capitol riot, 11 have been charged with seditious conspiracy. 225 people were charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers or employees. More than 75 of those were charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon against police officers or causing serious bodily injury to an officer. 640 people were charged with entering a restricted fed…

I don't believe it's fair to characterize the actions of a larger group based on those of a minority. We were repeatedly told that the summer 2020 protests were 93% peaceful, and that the fires, pipebombs, and shootings shouldn't distract from the larger message.

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#76

Post by zaroth »

umvi wrote: post #35
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…

> There's no reason for my health to be harmed just because someone has more than me. You would think so, but I've read several articles that suggest this isn't the case. One example that comes to mind is that in some communities kids experience social stress/bullying if their SMS bubbles aren't blue (because it implies you are too poor to afford an iPhone and can only afford a "lesser" Android): https://www.wsj.com/…

That WSJ article is basically pompous trash, not science. Kids don’t even use SMS.

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#77

Post by rurp »

chroem- wrote: post #33
praxulus wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'.

Quoted post unavailable.

If Al Capone was a murderer why was he convicted of tax evasion?

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#78

Post by tlogan »

rich_sasha wrote: post #44
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…

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…

I think that we all agree with education part.

But that is very hard to implement.

Let’s take an example of San Francisco: public schools were closed all of 2021 and that really hurt low income families. Of course private schools were open.

And San Francisco is very left - so I don’t know.

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#79

Post by Hermitian909 »

rich_sasha wrote: post #44
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…

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…

> My personal answer, and seemingly not so popular, is education, at all stages.

Former educator here, the problem with this idea is that educational outcomes are dominated by three factors:

1. More individualized education (smaller classes or tutors)

2. Children having a safe, well resourced home life

3. Smarter, less stressed teachers

To get an idea of how strong (1) is it is useful to know of a result called Bloom's Two Sigma which roughly says that a student at the 50th percentile for their class is tutored, they will perform like students in the 95th percentile (the most recent literature I read pegged the effect slightly weaker than this, but not that much).

These results on inequality tell us several things: Increased inequality reduces the quality of home life for children by making parents stressed and unhappy. Increased inequality plus the fundamental economics of public education mean that smart and capable people are less likely to become teachers, and those who do will be more stressed Increased inequality means that richer people can afford to hire the services of tutors for their children, drastically improving outcomes.

As someone who sold my educational services to rich people, and gave it away to poorer students when I could afford to, I can personally testify to the massive difference this kind of resourcing makes. I don't think there's any way to get away from that aside from actually reducing inequality.

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#80

Post by hotpotamus »

Miner49er wrote: post #4
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…

Maybe this very thing is what is already causing polarization? Many people are already trying to reduce wealth inequality. Maybe the upper classes are fighting back in a way that causes polarization.

At what level of wealth inequality do you imagine the upper classes saying, "ok, I guess we've got enough, we can stop fighting back now"?
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