EPTOn June 24 2020 20:18 Zambrah wrote:
How do you make the average person wealthier without reducing wealth inequality though?
How do you make the average person wealthier without reducing wealth inequality though?
By creating more wealth.
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Sr18
Netherlands1141 Posts
By creating more wealth. | ||
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Sbrubbles
Brazil5776 Posts
No, that is insufficient. If you want constant relative wealth inequality you have to create wealth for everyone in proportion to their current wealth. | ||
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Zambrah
United States7243 Posts
I guess just generating 50% more wealth and giving 99% of it to the top 3 earners counts as a win in a technical sense? | ||
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Sbrubbles
Brazil5776 Posts
On June 24 2020 20:52 Zambrah wrote: I mean, increasing wealth inequality wasn’t something mentioned that’s a problem for this, so I guess just generating 50% more wealth and giving 99% of it to the top 3 earners counts as a win in a technical sense? Math checks out. | ||
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Sr18
Netherlands1141 Posts
On June 24 2020 20:49 Sbrubbles wrote: No, that is insufficient. If you want constant relative wealth inequality you have to create wealth for everyone in proportion to their current wealth. Constant relative wealth inequality isn't the goal. Maximum wealth increase for the vast majority of the population is. Whether this increases or decreases wealth equality is irrelevant. To put it bluntly, my happiness is much more influenced by my own wealth than it is by someone elses. I don't care much about how much money Bill Gates has. Wealth is not a zero sum game. Gates winning doesn't equate me losing. I propose we focus more on everyone winning and less on preventing some people from winning more than others. | ||
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farvacola
United States18821 Posts
On June 24 2020 21:05 Sr18 wrote: Constant relative wealth inequality isn't the goal. Maximum wealth increase for the vast majority of the population is. Whether this increases or decreases wealth equality is irrelevant. To put it bluntly, my happiness is much more influenced by my own wealth than it is by someone elses. I don't care much about how much money Bill Gates has. Wealth is not a zero sum game. Gates winning doesn't equate me losing. I propose we focus more on everyone winning and less on preventing some people from winning more than others. Your own wealth is irreducibly tied to the wealth of other people, so you've created a sort of tautology here that is strikingly lacking in use aside from attacking one dimensional notions of wealth redistribution. You're going to have to account for the impact of other's people's wealth on the value of your wealth and what we do with wealth in society in order to actually say something substantive about whether inequality is or is not a problem. | ||
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Sbrubbles
Brazil5776 Posts
On June 24 2020 21:05 Sr18 wrote: Constant relative wealth inequality isn't the goal. Maximum wealth increase for the vast majority of the population is. Whether this increases or decreases wealth equality is irrelevant. To put it bluntly, my happiness is much more influenced by my own wealth than it is by someone elses. I don't care much about how much money Bill Gates has. Wealth is not a zero sum game. Gates winning doesn't equate me losing. I propose we focus more on everyone winning and less on preventing some people from winning more than others. My goal was answering the question "How do you make the average person wealthier without reducing wealth inequality though?". Your answer to said question was insufficient and I pointed out how. If you want to answer a different question, maybe one that wasn't asked, like "how do you maximize welfare?", you should make that clearer. | ||
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Zambrah
United States7243 Posts
On June 24 2020 21:05 Sr18 wrote: Constant relative wealth inequality isn't the goal. Maximum wealth increase for the vast majority of the population is. Whether this increases or decreases wealth equality is irrelevant. To put it bluntly, my happiness is much more influenced by my own wealth than it is by someone elses. I don't care much about how much money Bill Gates has. Wealth is not a zero sum game. Gates winning doesn't equate me losing. I propose we focus more on everyone winning and less on preventing some people from winning more than others. Would you care how much Bill Gates had if he was withdrawing money from your checking account once in a while? | ||
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Sr18
Netherlands1141 Posts
On June 24 2020 21:22 Sbrubbles wrote: My goal was answering the question "How do you make the average person wealthier without reducing wealth inequality though?". Your answer to said question was insufficient and I pointed out how. If you want to answer a different question, maybe one that wasn't asked, like "how do you maximize welfare?", you should make that clearer. I think there is a misunderstanding. I'm not saying that we must preserve wealth inequality. I'm just saying that we should focus on making the average person wealthier. Zambrah's question implies that you can only achieve this goal by reducing wealth inequality. Which is wrong. If you increase the overall wealth, you can increase the wealth of the average person without neccessarily decreasing wealth inequality. My point is that wealth inequality is only very loosely related to the wealth of the average person. Reducing wealth inequality should never be more than a means to increase the wealth of the average person. And if that goal can be better achieved without reducing (or maybe even increasing) wealth inequality, than that has my preference. So the focus should be on the goal (increasing wealth of the average person) and not on one loosely related means to get it (wealth redistribution). On June 24 2020 21:09 farvacola wrote: Your own wealth is irreducibly tied to the wealth of other people, so you've created a sort of tautology here that is strikingly lacking in use aside from attacking one dimensional notions of wealth redistribution. You're going to have to account for the impact of other's people's wealth on the value of your wealth and what we do with wealth in society in order to actually say something substantive about whether inequality is or is not a problem. I don't agree with this. Let's distribute 10 marbles. You get 7, I get 3. If I can improve my situation to having 5 marbles, I'd be happy. Because 5 is more than 3. How many marbles you have in the new situation is irrelevant to me. You can have 5 as well, or 30. Either way, I'd have 2 more marbles than I had before. And I'm not talking about money by the way, in which case my wealth is obviously tied to yours. I'm talking actual wealth: goods, services etc. You having many nice houses in no way devalues the worth of my house to me. On June 24 2020 21:23 Zambrah wrote: Would you care how much Bill Gates had if he was withdrawing money from your checking account once in a while? No? I would care about him withdrawing my money, not about how much money he already has. How are these things related? | ||
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farvacola
United States18821 Posts
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LegalLord
United Kingdom13775 Posts
On June 24 2020 16:47 GreenHorizons wrote: Just like all the laws and concentration camps aren't there to actually stop immigrants doing farm/manual labor, neither is suspension of H1-Bs meant to stop the more educated immigrants from working. It's used as leverage/looming threat over the workers and individual businesses to further drive down wages and conditions. Instead of "losing job slots to immigrants" or them accepting lesser wages and conditions at the workplaces you share, they'll be put into corrupt channels where they'll be exploited further and the job will disappear from your workplace and the workload outsourced to those less reputable enterprises. This is actually one of Trump's specialties (to the degree he has any). That is true - take away one tool of the wealthy, they have plenty more. That's one they've used plenty in the past. But let's take this in a somewhat different direction. You've made the argument that it's not very left-wing, not very "correct" in a cosmic sort of way, what have you. Alright, so what if we move past the notion of "this is inconsistent with my meta-analysis of the situation" and ask, what's the policy alternative? Assert that there is no problem? The guillotine approach? Some other plan that has yet to be enumerated? None of the above, but "wise, vague philosopher" is a fun game to play? I'm interested in knowing what happens when you bring your entire line of argument back into the realm of the concrete and specific. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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GreenHorizons
United States23086 Posts
On June 24 2020 22:31 LegalLord wrote: That is true - take away one tool of the wealthy, they have plenty more. That's one they've used plenty in the past. But let's take this in a somewhat different direction. You've made the argument that it's not very left-wing, not very "correct" in a cosmic sort of way, what have you. Alright, so what if we move past the notion of "this is inconsistent with my meta-analysis of the situation" and ask, what's the policy alternative? Assert that there is no problem? The guillotine approach? Some other plan that has yet to be enumerated? None of the above, but "wise, vague philosopher" is a fun game to play? I'm interested in knowing what happens when you bring your entire line of argument back into the realm of the concrete and specific. Ideally before we arrive back at the realm of the concrete and specific we've agreed on the meta-analysis which carries with it the implication that the "policy alternative" is one we have to construct together, not something I can prescribe (even if I could manifest a perfect policy in my head and articulate it perfectly). That's not how we become "more fully human" in Freireian sense. With that in mind, the question is imo: what are some of our ideas to begin to address this in a substantial way. Many people have considered this kind of quandary, I agree with a popular consensus that there must be a thoughtful plan capable of being amended according to conditions. That to achieve this plan it must be borne from the ether by the people for which the ensuing policy is intended to govern. I have preferences but the notion that we could take one or more of them and dissect it with the intent of proving the exercise in changing policy fruitless misses the entire conceptual framework for what it is. If the entirety of left thought could be summarized in a post concisely articulating a bulletproof plan to achieve a just society these people, many of which exponentially more knowledgeable than myself wouldn't have bothered turning it into countless pages of books, and countless hours of speaking/organizing actions. Which is mostly to say if we are to explore potential avenues toward remedies we must have expectations based in our material conditions. EDIT: To say this another way: Whatever ideas I have are just that, my (at least my interpretations) of ideas. Even if they were all totally trash, it would tell us virtually nothing about the potential for the process to yield our desired results. | ||
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Acrofales
Spain17956 Posts
On June 24 2020 21:49 Sr18 wrote: I think there is a misunderstanding. I'm not saying that we must preserve wealth inequality. I'm just saying that we should focus on making the average person wealthier. Zambrah's question implies that you can only achieve this goal by reducing wealth inequality. Which is wrong. If you increase the overall wealth, you can increase the wealth of the average person without neccessarily decreasing wealth inequality. My point is that wealth inequality is only very loosely related to the wealth of the average person. Reducing wealth inequality should never be more than a means to increase the wealth of the average person. And if that goal can be better achieved without reducing (or maybe even increasing) wealth inequality, than that has my preference. So the focus should be on the goal (increasing wealth of the average person) and not on one loosely related means to get it (wealth redistribution). I don't agree with this. Let's distribute 10 marbles. You get 7, I get 3. If I can improve my situation to having 5 marbles, I'd be happy. Because 5 is more than 3. How many marbles you have in the new situation is irrelevant to me. You can have 5 as well, or 30. Either way, I'd have 2 more marbles than I had before. And I'm not talking about money by the way, in which case my wealth is obviously tied to yours. I'm talking actual wealth: goods, services etc. You having many nice houses in no way devalues the worth of my house to me. No? I would care about him withdrawing my money, not about how much money he already has. How are these things related? Okay, but if everybody has 5 marbles on average all of a sudden, rather than 3, then initially they can use that to buy some nice stuff, which creates a scarcity, and the price of the nice stuff goes up accordingly. And suddenly they can all buy with their 5 marbles what they could before buy with 3 marbles. Meanwhile the rich guy has gone from 7 to 15 marbles... he used to be able to buy 2 1/3 times the nice stuff you could, but now he can buy 3x that, which further increases scarcity of that nice stuff, so the price actually goes up even further. Moreover, the people selling you food and other basic necessities also want nice stuff, and to pay for that, they now need to sell the food at a higher price, so you actually have *less* marbles left over to buy nice stuff as compared to when you had 3 marbles. GG. You just got wrecked by inflation. | ||
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thePunGun
598 Posts
On June 24 2020 22:49 JimmiC wrote: The Trump spin machine has made there choice and it is that the Tulsa rally was the most watched saturday night show ever and that the scary protesters not the virus kept people away. This article goes into it all in much more detail for those interested. https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/trump-tries-to-recast-tulsa-rally-no-shows/ar-BB15TNJL?li=AAggNb9 Well, we humans are weird creatures.. We always have and always will believe whatever suits us best. The earth is flat, the moon landing didn't happen, 911 was an inside job, Columbus was a good guy and the first who discovered the new world are just some of the highlights.. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland24877 Posts
of this visa restriction when weighing it with the positions of others. Is this particular type of visa ripe with abuse or something I’m not getting or is it supplanting qualified graduates and rendering degrees less valuable or what? Not being from the States I feel I’m missing some angle on this one. | ||
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Sr18
Netherlands1141 Posts
On June 24 2020 23:16 Acrofales wrote: Okay, but if everybody has 5 marbles on average all of a sudden, rather than 3, then initially they can use that to buy some nice stuff, which creates a scarcity, and the price of the nice stuff goes up accordingly. And suddenly they can all buy with their 5 marbles what they could before buy with 3 marbles. Meanwhile the rich guy has gone from 7 to 15 marbles... he used to be able to buy 2 1/3 times the nice stuff you could, but now he can buy 3x that, which further increases scarcity of that nice stuff, so the price actually goes up even further. Moreover, the people selling you food and other basic necessities also want nice stuff, and to pay for that, they now need to sell the food at a higher price, so you actually have *less* marbles left over to buy nice stuff as compared to when you had 3 marbles. GG. You just got wrecked by inflation. Like I said, the marbles do not represent money, they represent actual wealth. So it's not using the marbles to buy some nice stuff, the marbles are the nice stuff. There is simply more nice stuff to go around. It might not be distributed evenly, but everyone has more nice stuff than they had before. That's what increasing wealth is all about. On June 24 2020 22:20 farvacola wrote: Money and assets aren't sterilized variables qua marbles, so that's a poor comparison, and wealth does not exist in this world in a vacuum divorced from the means with which we account for it, so you're basically talking about a thing that doesn't exist in the real world, which is fine so long as you're only making a point about this imaginary world you've constructed. Assets don't have magically separable intrinsic properties of owner-adjudged value that can be used to attack indictments of wealth inequality. In other words, "value to me" is irreducibly connected with the societal and transactional notions of what value means as a general concept, and pretending otherwise doesn't change anything. It's not a point about an imaginary world. It's a point about our world. This increase in wealth has happened throughout human history. We are wealthier than our cavemen ancesters, eventhough the wealth inequality is much larger than it was then. It's also a point about our more recent history. The average westerner is wealthier than his equivalent was in the 1950s, while at the same time the wealth inequality has increased. So I'm not sure what exactly you are disagreeing with. | ||
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Salazarz
Korea (South)2591 Posts
On June 24 2020 21:05 Sr18 wrote: Constant relative wealth inequality isn't the goal. Maximum wealth increase for the vast majority of the population is. Whether this increases or decreases wealth equality is irrelevant. To put it bluntly, my happiness is much more influenced by my own wealth than it is by someone elses. I don't care much about how much money Bill Gates has. Wealth is not a zero sum game. Gates winning doesn't equate me losing. I propose we focus more on everyone winning and less on preventing some people from winning more than others. You have a very poor understanding of economics if you think that's how it works. Wealth is a zero sum game, because resources aren't infinite and inflation is a thing. | ||
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Salazarz
Korea (South)2591 Posts
On June 24 2020 23:33 Salazarz wrote: You have a very poor understanding of economics if you think that's how it works. Wealth is a zero sum game, because resources aren't infinite and inflation is a thing. It's not a point about an imaginary world. It's a point about our world. This increase in wealth has happened throughout human history. We are wealthier than our cavemen ancesters, eventhough the wealth inequality is much larger than it was then. It's also a point about our more recent history. The average westerner is wealthier than his equivalent was in the 1950s, while at the same time the wealth inequality has increased. So I'm not sure what exactly you are disagreeing with. See, this is a nice sentiment, except that the average westerner's productivity has increased significantly more than the average westerner's standard of living. In fact, over the last few decades income adjusted for inflation & cost of living has been stagnant or declining in most of the developed world. You're trying to say that the wealthy elites 'deserve' to benefit more from the productivity and technological innovation than the rest of the plebs, because that's how it always has been -- but that's a pretty hollow argument to make. | ||
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Acrofales
Spain17956 Posts
On June 24 2020 23:32 Sr18 wrote: Like I said, the marbles do not represent money, they represent actual wealth. So it's not using the marbles to buy some nice stuff, the marbles are the nice stuff. There is simply more nice stuff to go around. It might not be distributed evenly, but everyone has more nice stuff than they had before. That's what increasing wealth is all about. It's not a point about an imaginary world. It's a point about our world. This increase in wealth has happened throughout human history. We are wealthier than our cavemen ancesters, eventhough the wealth inequality is much larger than it was then. It's also a point about our more recent history. The average westerner is wealthier than his equivalent was in the 1950s, while at the same time the wealth inequality has increased. So I'm not sure what exactly you are disagreeing with. Depends a lot on how you measure wealth. I don't think you can compare wealth over time at all, because technology progresses, and with it productivity, but also what we consider essential to a comfortable life. In the middle ages, that would have been food on the table, a roof over your head, protection from highway men and a lord who doesn't rape your wife and daughters and take your sons off to fight in a pointless war against his neighbours (or worse yet, on a crusade). Getting sick was just part of the deal, and education was not something anybody really thought of at all. Nowadays a "bare minimum" is all of the above (except that instead of gruel and vegetables, we want strawberries in the winter, mangos and avocados, and a good cut of meat every day), 6 years of primary school, a decent healthcare system, a car, broadband internet, and the capability to travel to a nice holiday destination once or twice a year. Oh, and instead of darning socks and having a washing day, we buy new socks and have a washing machine. So yes, wealth has quite obviously increased, but so has what we expect as the bare minimum for a life with dignity. Now the smaller the margin is between "average wealth" and that minimum expectation is a far more valuable measure of where we are as a society than whether we are wealthier than 50, 100 or 5000 years ago. Moreover, we have realized that the wealth growth throughout history has actually come at a cost of destroying our planet. We are reducing biodiversity, pumping noxious gases into our air, turning the whole climate upside down and consuming all manner of minerals at an alarming rate. Blindly increasing wealth *overall* by pushing productivity increasingly upwards is not a long-term plan anymore. If you add "a pleasant living environment" to your minimum requirements, then turning our planet into a toxic hellhole for the sake of a few marbles is no longer an option. | ||
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