Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

thesaint.scot

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 223 posts

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#91

Post by canjobear »

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…

Such studies are either correlational, and therefore cannot establish causation, or experimental in settings that are so abstracted and scaled-down from real world experience that they have no relevance to societal questions.

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#92

Post by jl6 »

scrozart wrote: post #65
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…

Do you have research and data to back you stance, like OP provided?

I don’t think it’s reasonable to assume a study is correct just because a contradictory study or replication failure has not yet been published.

This particular study seems to be a case of extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence. If true, the implications are enormous: medical justification for a wealth cap! Something which has never been attempted anywhere in the world in all of history.

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#93

Post by dgfitz »

colechristensen wrote: post #72
rich_sasha wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, doublin…

> 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.

I imagine the costs would still get passed down to the tenants.

Ignoring that for a second, rental housing isn’t “an evil thing that needs to go away.” Rental housing is very much a fundamental need for a lot of people. Military members who move every 3 years, college students, city residents who don’t plan on buying in the city but want to live there for some years while in the workforce, separated spouses need 2 places to live, the list goes on.

This snap judgment of “down with landlords, let’s destroy the rental market” doesn’t seem like a great idea.

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#94

Post by sutuplesu »

wetpaws wrote: post #52
umvi wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/…

This is not inequality, this is tribalism

Are they not interlinked? It seems to me that inequality often begets tribalism, as people defensively form bands. Which then reinforces the spiral downwards.

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#95

Post by colechristensen »

civilized wrote: post #23
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…

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…

Many studies show chemical markers of these things, it's not just psychological behavioral studies (which are often quite dubious) but easily measurable outcomes. If you're thinking quite narrowly, your point seems reasonable, it's probably below significance to say your neighbor with the bigger house and nicer car is "healthier", but this is a lot different than them vs the family that sometimes skips meals because they can't afford to put food on the table with the knowledge that a lost job will mean homelessness.

Good arguments are resources by Robert Sapolsky https://www.amazon.com/Stress-and-Your-Body-audiobook/dp/B00... or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&list=PL848F2368C... or any of the books he has published (many have significantly overlapping content)

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#96

Post by pm90 »

civilized wrote: post #23
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…

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…

You either believe in science or you don’t. A lot of scientific findings don’t make intuitive sense (like relativity). So we rely on the scientific methods to guide us to the truth rather than our primitive ape minds.

Skepticism is part of the scientific method; but just saying “hmm it doesn’t feel right to me” isn’t really useful.

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#97

Post by meowkit »

civilized wrote: post #68
chongli wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not poverty though. If you can afford a car, an iPhone, laptop, plenty of food to eat, TV, refrigerator, washer and dryer, and all sorts of other toys and time saving appliances, you’re not in poverty by any global or historical standards. You may still be unable to afford to own a house in a clean, safe area with access to a decent school. That’s inequality, not poverty.

> You may still be unable to afford to own a house in a clean, safe area with access to a decent school. That’s inequality, not poverty. But this sentence contains no reference to how X having more than Y caused Y to suffer. It contains a description of how Y could be better off if Y had more. If inequality was eliminated by making it so no one had access to safe schools, it would not solve the problem at all. If you…

I assume you don't know who Robert Sapolsky is in the parent comment.

"how X having more than Y caused Y to suffer" is the observation of someone who is above you in the hierarchy of A (A is whatever measure you want, usually its financial wealth or social status). This involuntary comparison allows you to derive your relative position, and this is a biologically stressful activity when you are toward the bottom of the hierarchy. This constant reflexive update is not great for people in a highly unequal society because its a constant stress inducer and has direct physical and mental health implications that bleed over into things like the political sphere.

Both "pointy" hierarchies and flattened hierarchies are bad. Flattened hierarchies are when we are all equal, and thus society stagnates. Pointy hierarchies are the traditional kings at the top, serfs at the bottom. These inevitably collapse at some point for multitudes of reasons. There is probably a happy, more stable medium. Societies that are becoming unequal have a gradient trending toward the pointy hierarchy state.

Poverty is a specific threshold of material wealth, and is related, but ultimately orthogonal to the discussion.

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#98

Post by krisoft »

brewdad wrote: post #40
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…

One obvious example is housing. Those that have more than you can afford to live in safer neighborhoods. Those less well off but still able to afford to own a home will be forced to live in neighborhoods with higher crime, higher levels of pollution, "food deserts", or any other number of negative factors. Sure, you can opt to drive til you qualify and avoid some of those problems but now you spend an hour or more ea…

You are not arguing the question. An unsafe, polluted, food desert neighbourhood is less healthy not because there are safe, clean, well supplied neighbourhoods. It is less healthy because the lack of safety, pollution and lack of healthy food makes people unhealthy.

If you can make the whole country polluted, food deserty and unsafe you made everyone more equal, but nobody will get healthier.

If a multi-billonaire buys a palace at the edge of a safe, clean neighbourhood that increases the inequality tremendously but won't make the people in the neighbourhood sicker.

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#99

Post by civilized »

Frondo wrote: post #87
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…

Since you're asserting that you don't believe the results of this research because it's "woo" -- can you explain what type of evidence, or what degree of impact, or how deep or impeccable the link must be established for you to accept it? Is it even possible that you are, as you say, open to being proven wrong? (I ask this in good faith, because I've been arguing on the internet for 25+ years, and whenever someone sa…

I'm sure that envious people can impose suffering on themselves by obsessing over those who have more than them. But I don't see another causal pathway. I'd like to see the causal pathway. Otherwise it's on a scientific level with ESP.

Re: Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study

#100

Post by shkkmo »

colechristensen wrote: post #72
rich_sasha wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, doublin…

> 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.

I don't think we need to model that... we have plenty of examples of what happens when cities don't build enough housing.

Post reply on HN