It looks like the efforts to promote entrepreneurship have been successful.
In a truly egalitarian society wealth would be distributed by contribution to society. And one should expect unequal distribution of wealth according to the unequal contributions to that society. These studies presuppose that income should be divided equally, it shouldn't, it should be divided fairly and that's something that's very difficult to measure. There's nothing egalitarian about taking money from people who've earned it and giving it to those who haven't.
We could equalize income tomorrow by gov't decree but the real question is whether that makes for a better society.
I saw this article and thought, I bet it won't be long before someone gets on and says something utterly specious about how this is all entirely to do with entrepreneurship. And behold!
This is the standard boneheaded 'I'm on Hacker News and banging on about entrepreneurship and how we're all headed to a beautiful meritocracy, so I will interpret everything that occurs through this lens'. US manufacturing collapses? Entrepreneurship. Estate tax weakened? Entrepreneurship. Growth of low-end service jobs? Entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship.
Yes, I would. I'm happy to use fairly mild words like 'specious' or 'bonehead' to describe a person who has decided to _celebrate_ the rise of income inequality by reinterpreting several decades of complex social and economic changes as having to do with 'entrepreneurship'.
It's hard to tell whether the guy is being actively intellectually dishonest (ie. is aware of what the major factors are in increasing inequality but is choosing to ignore them) or simply naive to the point of dimness.
Even TFA - an extremely brief treatment of inequality without a definitive focus on the US - offers enough illumination to make it obvious that simply chanting 'yay, this must mean entrepreneurship' in response to this isn't so smart.
Occam's razor. You are likely more educated than he is. But why be a douchebag about it? If your goal is to convince people of your point of view, then pissing them off is directly contrary to that.
On the other hand, if your goal is to make fun of the dimwits that surround you...
It's a fact that the world consists mostly of dimwits. I'm a dimwit about virtually everything, except programming. But it would be much more satisfying for me to teach you something programming-related, rather than to point out how stupid you are for [X programming mistake due to lack of knowledge], don't you think?
Perhaps you make a good point, but cheesy Internet libertarianism gets on my nerves, and politely correcting people that are actively celebrating increasing inequality is beyond me.
Sometimes, as the old USENET saying goes, we must retract the foreskin of ignorance and apply the wirebrush of enlightenment.
I will instead ponder the strange default assumption of everyone on Hacker News that they have Much To Teach Me about Programming. Maybe the screenname "Onan the Barbarian" fails to convey gravitas...
It's hard to tell whether the guy is being actively intellectually dishonest (ie. is aware of what the major factors are in increasing inequality but is choosing to ignore them) or simply naive to the point of dimness.
Pointing out these major factors instead of merely asserting they exist might be a more productive way of addressing the OP's comment. I, for one, would be very interested to know what factors you believe contribute to income disparity.
Collapse of US manufacturing industry and unions, reduction in minimum wages and move towards lesser job security, changes in the tax code to reduce effective progressiveness would all spring to mind as a bit more important than HN style "entrepreneurship". The list goes on and on, not always negatively - after all inequality isn't always the only issue.
One is also inclined to raise an eyebrow at the Rise of the Bankers (and the fortunes made that way), though that is entrepreneurship - and very creative - in its way.
Don't try to turn this into a strawman communism versus capitalism discussion.
I think most would agree that some inequality is good. After all, people are not equal. However, a too high degree of inequality will fuel social unrest.
It leads to a society in which the rich have to build higher and higher walls to keep out the poor. Not my idea of a fun place to live.
I agree, it must be a mix, where you have the opportunity for growth at the same time you don't get a free ride. However there is always and always will be a bottom 20 percent that needs to be taken care of.
Er. Why should the bottom 20% of society be "taken care of"? Is it because we're afraid they'll turn into criminals if we don't? Because that would be equivalent to paying off the mob.
My brain's not yet running this morning and I can't think of the term for this point, but as it's now in my brain I'll come back and link to more details as soon as I think of it.
The rough concept is that, when it comes to society/politics/law, you should think as if you are yet to be born and don't know where in society you will end up. So, you might become the richest man in the world, or you might live a life in poverty and unemployment.
As to why it matters, should people dying of hunger in the third world be ignored? Should we not care about homeless people who are sleeping in the cold and wet and will have crazily low life expectancy and a terrible standard of living?
I'm not sure where the 20% comes from or how accurate an estimate that is, but the more fortunate should always do their part, whether through legislation (such as taxation) or charity, to help the less fortunate. While different people will have different views on many areas of this, such as to what extent they should be helped, how badly off you have to be to deserve it, and so on and so on, I think very few would say that the bottom end of society deserves no help at all.
Every human deserves to live in dignity. If someone is unable to earn enough money to live a dignified live, society has to provide the means, wealth has to be redistributed.
What exactly living in dignity means and how exactly wealth should be redistributed is certainly always up for debate but this is the basic outline of a pretty standard argument. I would, for example, be very surprised if less than a large majority of people in my native Germany agreed with the basic argument.
Those who agree with the argument have compared the immorality of taking away someone’s money with the immorality of not enabling someone to live a dignified life and concluded that the second violation of rights weighs heavier.
>Those who agree with the argument have compared the immorality of taking away someone’s money with the immorality of not enabling someone to live a dignified life and concluded that the second violation of rights weighs heavier."
This is the crux of the issue right here.
Another key point is that the usefulness (to the holder) of a given unit of wealth is inversely proportional to how much total wealth they have.
$100 is worth a lot more to someone who has $3 than it is to someone who has $3,000,000. Therefore there is a certain utilitarian argument in favor of putting the wealth where it will have the most benefit. And yes, I know utilitarianism is horribly flawed when you force it to its logical conclusion, that isn't the point here.
Think of it a bit like spreading fertilizer on a field. If you want a good harvest, it doesn't really make any sense to distribute it in any way except according to its need.
As the parent said: this is just one argument. I'm not saying that it is conclusive, nor do I expect you to agree with it.
Problem is, that argument doesn't apply to inequality. You can be perfecty dignified on the bottom of a highly inequal society (and most poor americans are), and those that aren't very often have a non-financial reason (such as drugs).
If you couldn't afford to pay your bills, couldn't afford a place to live, couldn't afford health insurance, couldn't afford to buy clothes for your children, would you still have that view? Or would you be rather glad that there's a system (even if not a great one) that helps balance society out a little bit?
And frankly you shouldn't need to have to imagine being in that position, how can you not feel that we should all care about those worse off than ourselves?
Oh, and there are plenty of selfish reasons as well. Society would fall apart if only the rich were able to live and we left the poor to, eventually, either become rich or die out. Who would make your cars, clothes, food, serve you a coffee, sell you your ticket to a sports game, etc etc.
I've been in between jobs for several months. I have less than $1k in the bank.
I had a confirmed job offer from nVidia. Then yesterday, I was notified they just went into a "hiring freeze" due to their stock being down. So even though they have 2 billion dollars in the bank, they can't hire me. Poof, I just went from "decent living" to "likely impoverished". (I've been in the process of getting a job there since January. Everything went very positively at every step of the way, so I didn't try to pursue anything else.)
My wife is displaying signs of schizophrenia, which has become acutely evident to both of us within the last several months (and slowly evident over the last 5 years). We're both freaked about it, especially because there is literally nothing we can do. She was just hired at a coffee shop, so there aren't any health benefits. And since we're married, she can't use her father's insurance.
I personally suffer from either hemorrhoids or rectal cancer or stomach ulcers --- I can't go ask a doctor because, again, no job = no health insurance. So I try to ignore the blood and quietly hope it's nothing serious, even though there's a possibility it might be.
Where's my charity? I don't get any. And I don't want any, unless it's to help my wife.
Because people are supposed to deal with their own problems.
It's not easy. In fact, it blows. But that's why they're called "problems". You just deal with them. You have to.
If you want to be charitable, then email me an offer to let me work for you remotely. I have a decade of experience and can solve virtually any software task. There's just nothing in St Louis MO, which is where we happen to be stuck at.
I don't need to hire anyone and don't hire people based on charity. I do however make monthly donations to registered charities (in the UK), and I pay my taxes, while asking politicians to raise my taxes.
Honestly, in 90% of cases it's purely a choice. Most people in North America can't pay rent because they need to live downtown and work a min wage job. Let me tell you that there are plenty of starbucks in places with lower rent. If you can't pay rent in North America have 2 arms 2 legs and an IQ of 100 it's because you're spending your money stupidly and/or lazy.
My ex wife (IQ of 140-150) phoned me the other day complaining about how she can't pay rent. Note that she lives in social housing despite making in excess of 68K per year. She works for the gov't and could go to any number of places with cheap rent, yet she insists on living in some of the most expensive areas of Canada.
Two weeks ago she was raving about how much fun the new Green Day edition of Rock Band was and next week she is going on vacation.
Think there might be a connection as to why she can't pay subsidized rent let alone market rent?
When I was with her, I bought my own place at 22 while working a crap tech support job.
There's plenty of problems with the system, including people who are able to get far more than they should out of it, and people who don't get enough from it. That doesn't mean we should scrap it entirely.
A counterpoint example (although this is from the UK, but similar thing). When my sister was unemployed a couple of years ago, she signed up for unemployment benefits ("job seekers allowance"). That was something pretty low like maybe USD$100/week, but it was OK as she was living with parents and not paying rent. The purpose of job seekers allowance is, as the name suggests, to support people looking for work, and you stay on it you are meant to regularly prove that you are doing your best to find a job.
What she found was that, while she genuinely wanted a job, and wasn't picky (she wasn't thinking "I need to get a job suited to my skill set in a really specific industry", she would have been happy in a supermarket), the government staff that she had to see twice a month clearly didn't care about helping her find a job, and didn't even care about checking whether she was trying to find a job herself. To them it was all about ticking her off on a list and paying her the money.
That's really terrible, because it means that if you want to get benefits instead of working it's incredibly easy, and because, if they had bothered to help her find work sooner, she would have spent less time getting benefits, therefore taking less money out of the system.
So, was the system good in this example? No, it was terrible. But, at the same time, because she couldn't find a job, she did need the system, and she would have been much worse off if it didn't exist.
The term you're looking for is "veil of ignorance" (that's the thing you imagine being behind when formulating policy), and the biggest proponent of that way of thinking about policy is John Rawls. He wrote a book called "A theory of justice" that talks about this, and a later one called "Justice as fairness: a restatement".
Advance warning: I find his writing pretty heavy going; I don't know whether that's a quirk of my brain or just means that he doesn't write as clearly as he might.
First eight and last four notes are quavers, C(0) and Db are crotchets. Plus I used (0) to notate down an octave.
It could be from one of the cello suites... but looking through them I can't for the life of me find it. Definitely it's played by a cello, pretty sure at the start of the piece, might be for solo cello or might be something close to the brandenburgs..
Would be immensely grateful if you could place it, I've been feeling so dumb for not knowing it for about a week now, I know I really ought to.
edit: I think there's a good chance it is in F minor as with my above notation, but it's quite possible I'm wrong about that.
I can't find quite that anywhere either, and in particular no movement from the cello suites starts with it or anything that sounds close to me.
The beginning of the first movement of BWV1023 (it's a violin sonata) isn't a million miles off, but it certainly isn't quite it and it's a violin rather than a cello.
(Are you absolutely sure it's Bach? Not that I have anyone else in mind.)
Nah, it's not BWV1023. I could be wrong about it being Bach, but I definitely feel like it is, and when I asked my mother if she had any ideas she immediately went to "I think it's a Bach cello suite", so even if she was wrong about it being one of the cello suites, it's still looking fairly good for being Bach. Plus it's definitely Bach-esque.
And I can't bare it, I've heard it so many times, have definitely heard it in concert if not even played it myself when I was younger, just can't quite remember.
Don't suppose you could ask your wife if it rings any bells for her if you didn't already? (I saw she's a rather good viola player on your site.)
Thanks for the honest question Palish. I have noticed from teaching that if you take a large enough sample the bottom 20 percent always struggle more. These could the issues udutu society or some kind of intelligence or disability. I am not going to pretend that I know the answer but there is always the bottom 20 percent that needs, extra help so I think on the grounds of compassion they shall be given extra assistance. I understand your point on meritocracy , however we cannot assume that everybody starts at the same starting line. So from my point of view it is based on the grounds of compassion. Again, thank you for the question.
Another answer: give me the choice of how my [tax] money is spent. I have no option but to pay you (taxes), and no say in how you spend it. Maybe its because I will never check the 'war' box and they need my money for it, I'd rather help pay for public education, social services for the elderly, disabled etc., and green energy research. If I had say on how my money is spent, we would not be having this conversation (I live in California and pay a gang load of taxes, majority of which goes towards things I don't support - naturally I'm not happy about the liberty taken on my behalf :-).
Are there any examples of inequality fueling social unrest in otherwise free countries? The US is frequenty touted as the least equal free country, but social unrest is pretty absent. The unrest there has been (the LA riots and the fight for civil rights) was fueled by pretty blatant cases of non-financial inequality.
And are walls to keep out the "poor" really a consequence of inequality?
To me it's about egalitarian distribution of wealth, there are many ways to distribute it, perhaps there are systems that distribute wealth in a more egalitarian manner than capitalism and it would be great to hear some of those ideas. It's well known to most economists that there are definite cases where the free market system does not work well.
I didn't even mention free market / communism, let alone construct a straw man. If you think I have please point it out and add to the conversation.
If you don't agree with the idea that wealth should be distributed according to contribution then please let us know why. (Seriously, the idea is 300 years old, surely in that time we've found something better)
I agree with most people that those unfortunate enough to not be able to provide for themselves due to sickness or disability should be taken care of but I think that's a relatively small amount of money and everyone would agree that that sort of thing should be done.
If you don't agree with the idea that wealth should be distributed according to contribution -- I never said that. Wealth should indeed be distributed according to contribution, but contribution is not that easily measurable.
There are a lot of things that affect your contribution to society that are not measured by how much money you can take from others.
I just don't agree that some people contribute more than 1000 times as much as others. Everyone is human. We all simply play our part. So in my eyes, distributing according to contribution will not result in a that large inequality.
> If you don't agree with the idea that wealth should be distributed according to contribution then please let us know why.
an individuals contribution is largely a matter of their innate dispositions coinciding with their innate aptitudes coinciding with the particular labor demands at the time in which one is alive.
society perpetuates bring people into this world without any guarantee that they will be able to contribute at a certain level. yet you expect that only the individual should carry the burden of that throw of the dice?
i put A LOT of effort into training myself as a software developer and now make a reasonable living from that, but i also simply found myself at a young age with a passion for understanding computers and a reasonable aptitude for the kind of thinking involved.
other kids found themselves with a disposition for sports, or painting, or french literature, etc., but maybe their aptitude doesn't make the cut in those winner-take-all fields.
tragically, other kids simply never find any disposition or aptitude.
they don't deserve to be in that position any more than i deserve to be in mine.
so yes, there ought to be systems for redistributing wealth from those who are lucky enough to find themselves with financially remunerable dispositions and aptitudes. there ought to be guarantees for certain standards of living, and those standards ought to be damn high given that no one asks to be born, no one asks to be afflicted with attachment to being alive.
This argument cuts both ways. All OECD countries have some degree of inequality and, as you said, we don't really know what the right amount of inequality is. On the basis of inequality numbers alone, it is not possible to say whether they are good or bad.
Where, by the way, do 'these studies' assume that income should be divided equally? That seems like an odd position and I honestly haven't heard very many people except for extremists express it. I think a solid majority accepts (some degree of) income inequality.
Jumping on the socialism badwagon in response to concerns over income inequality is not a well-considered view. The American economy is predicated upon consumerism, which requires a strong middle class. Nobody is saying we should take from the rich and give to the poor, rather we are saying that those [productive] members of society who find themselves marginalized by the increasing polarity of capital are the primary drivers of the economy that produces that capital in the first place. It's not about taxing the rich and giving to the poor, it's about ensuring that the burden if taxation is shared equally and that the benefits thereof are invested in education and other programs that ensure continued competitiveness.
In a truly egalitarian society wealth would be distributed by contribution to society. And one should expect unequal distribution of wealth according to the unequal contributions to that society. These studies presuppose that income should be divided equally, it shouldn't, it should be divided fairly and that's something that's very difficult to measure. There's nothing egalitarian about taking money from people who've earned it and giving it to those who haven't.
We could equalize income tomorrow by gov't decree but the real question is whether that makes for a better society.