Is Inequality Good? New concept says "Very much so"

[Salandriagado]

Regardless, pointing out that this is essentially neo-feudal trash isn't exactly a worthless complaint. The premise is that essentially all of the wealth should be given to the wealthy so we can go back to something akin to 17th century France and boy does that not end well for 18th century France.

One can argue that such system gave lead to the Industrial Revolution. Manufacturing has an exorbitantly high barrier of entry for societies where the average income is just about enough to get by without starving -- therefore allowing for the wealthy to pile up capital will eventually kickstart industrial development, which leads to generalized economic improvements for people.

Notice that the improvements came later, when the money stopped being ridiculously concentrated at the top. The early stages of the industrial revolution, where the money was heavily concentrated at the top, were unmitigatedly shite for everybody except the people at the top.

[Torrocca]

I'm addressing your idea for what it is. It's that simple. You can whine about it and call me bourgeoisie in a petty attempt to delegitimatize my argument like you've done elsewhere, if you want. It doesn't make the ideology you're peddling any less of the NeoFeudalism that it is.

Mind transforming your low-effort puddle into an argument worth answering? Thanks in advance.

Maybe peddle something that's worth the time to argue against, instead of this dogmatic NeoFeudalist bullshittery you're currently trying to peddle to embolden the pockets of the bourgeoisie.

Your constant appeal to ideological labels rather than considering the essence of the argument is amusing, to say the least.

That's becuase your... "argument" has no essence to consider. It consists entirely of saying "giving the rich more money will help the poor, because reasons!", and entirely ignoring all evidence to the contrary.

The only evidence that exists in his reality is poorly-constructed data that suggests that making rich people richer is good for everybody.

[Former Citizens of the Nimbus System]

The success of the wealthy aristocrats is far higher than the success of ordinary, poor people though. As a result, its a net societal gain to subsidize the rich -- think of it as giving money to the best managers you know of.

That doesn't follow logically, though. Their success proves that they are very skilled at getting a large share of pie for themselves. That doesn't necessarily mean that giving them more will help grow the pie. It just means they are good at getting a lot for themselves. The ability to stake out a large share is not necessarily the same as the ability to grow the pie.

There are people who manage investment funds professionally, and it is possible for middle class people to hire someone like that to help them manage their investments. That's the closest thing I can think of to an existing system that would test your hypothesis experimentally -- but in practice, those services are mostly just a convenience to save you the trouble of thinking about it, not a money-making miracle.

To add to this point, even if we do accept that the richest in society are good at growing the pie, that doesn't mean that they're naturally the best or even naturally good at growing the pie compared to other people, merely that they currently have the skills (or luck, though that's a whole other rabbit hole) to grow the pie. The cycle of poverty also applies in reverse; wealth provides more stable and healthier living conditions, better education and access to social connections and technology, which in turn all make wealth creation easier. If a government invests in improving those and other, similar factors for all of its citizens, it unlocks potential for wealth creation across the board, not just in the highest echelons of society. Though it undoubtedly has problems, Singapore remains a pretty good example of this.

[The World Capitalist Confederation]

Social Darwinism at its finest

It's not even Social Darwinism at this point. It's fascism and capital doing a dance together.

[Spindle]

But seriously tho, the starting framework does seem a little off - after all, if you draw your opinion from a single source you are going to run into a few issues. For example, here's a 2015 paper from the IMF saying that we should do the exact opposite.

That was addressed in the start of the OP. Most of the gains from reduced inequality would be basically for the sake of increasing GDP via consumerism. I think both of us can agree that's bad.

I mean, a lot of it is about making sure everyone's producing at the highest level possible and making everything more efficient. Things like allowing poorer families to stay healthy so that they can work for longer and pushing people into higher skilled jobs so they can be more productive. Dismissing it on the basis that it's just consumerism seems a touch reductive, to be entirely honest.

And don't get me wrong, I understand the base logic at play but I feel it's chasing after an impossible goal - it relies on the existence of a network of John Galts at the very top of the economic dogpile and in reality you don't get Randian supermen there. You find people who managed to extract as much value as possible from everyone around them, or else people who have families so rich they can't help but succeed under capitalism.

Being rich doesn't give you automatic bonuses on returns over capital. For instance, a vast majority of the lottery winners (70% iirc?) go bankrupt after a few years, likely due to mismanagement of finances. If you get to have an excellent management skill of money -- which is precisely the endpoint of the proposal -- then your rate of return over capital will be extremely high.[/quote]

Lottery winners is a true point but it is also a deflection. For subsidisation of the rich to create actual trickle-down effects they'd need to be spending generously and not trying to extract all the value physically possible from the people who work for them, which is the exact opposite set of behaviours to the ones which got them into wealth. It would generate more wealth total but it wouldn't reach the people at the bottom - a more workable method might be to make personal economics a compulsory part of school curriculums? Who knows.

That's why the productivity-wage graph is fucked. Trickle-down theory looks nice on paper, but it honestly ends up just increasing the concentration of wealth at the expense of everyone else.

The EPI calculations are pretty much skewed on price adjustments, compensation factored and what not. I'd better use BEA's calculated labor share which factors in other types of compensation and eliminates the aberrant use of price indexes in EPI's paper. When using it you can notice a mild decline from 1947 to 2002 (which might be to blame on interpolation of proprietors' income) and a major decline ever since, which is coincident with the historical increase in the slack of the job market.[/quote]

True, but even that graph isn't particularly great for showing workers not get progressively more and more fucked. It's still quite happily trending downwards even if you stop it at the 2002 peak, and if you include the 2002 crash it looks like we'll be reaching a nice 50% skimmed off. That's just the way capitalism is - if you can minimise costs by paying people less you do, and if you let the wealthy concentrate that wealth further they will use it as leverage to fuck everyone else over. It isn't a nice truth, but that's just the way it do be when the system has to encourage and fetishise competition the way capitalism does.

[Salandriagado]

If you get to have an excellent management skill of money -- which is precisely the endpoint of the proposal -- then your rate of return over capital will be extremely high.

But still vastly inferior to a computer. If not today for your particular variety of money-management, then certainly within the next couple of decades.


So, given that, why should we funnel all of the money to people who are going to be entirely outmoded in the mid-to-near future?

[Salandriagado]

This does seem like a good concept but that is in a Utopian world and I am absolutely certain the world isn't that so this policy will never work at least not how it is intended too.

While it'll probably not work in middle income levels, it'd mathematically work in very poor countries and first world nations as explicited in the spoiler.

You clearly have precisely no knowledge of mathematics. Kindly stop name-dropping it in a vain attempt to make your bullshit sound more legitimate.

[The World Capitalist Confederation]

One can argue that such system gave lead to the Industrial Revolution. Manufacturing has an exorbitantly high barrier of entry for societies where the average income is just about enough to get by without starving -- therefore allowing for the wealthy to pile up capital will eventually kickstart industrial development, which leads to generalized economic improvements for people.

Notice that the improvements came later, when the money stopped being ridiculously concentrated at the top. The early stages of the industrial revolution, where the money was heavily concentrated at the top, were unmitigatedly shite for everybody except the people at the top.

Or you know, when workers went on strike despite hoses and bullets being used on them, suicide and mail bombers, the formation of the unions, several tragedies (Peterloo, Haymarket) and literal town-sized riots. The only reason it became better is because of the workers' struggle, not because of industrial revolution nor the 'later' part of it (The "Modern" Era people call it, you know, c. 1900-1945) in which workers were given money in order to allow them to buy goods and increase revenue.

[Olthar]

I didn't know Charles zi Britannia frequented this forum.

[Salandriagado]

Towards the latter stages of the Scientific Revolution, you started to get inventors funded by the state apparatus, but that was less to do with doing it for fun and more to do gaining an upper hand in terms of prestige, industry, or arms.

And the government is arguably one of (if not the) largest capital holders in the modern society.

You realised that you just started advocating state-led socialism, right?

[Korasta]

As a person from a working class British family in a snobby, rich-farmer county, "the rich" can jolly well go fuck themselves.

[The World Capitalist Confederation]

And the government is arguably one of (if not the) largest capital holders in the modern society.

You realised that you just started advocating communism, right?

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Communism is not when the government does stuff or holds wealth. Furthermore, stop using 'you're a communist' as a slur against capitalists please. I'm not dealing with any of this in my lifetime.

[Salandriagado]

You realised that you just started advocating communism, right?

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Communism is not when the government does stuff or holds wealth. Furthermore, stop using 'you're a communist' as a slur against capitalists please. I'm not dealing with any of this in my lifetime.

No, what he's advocating is actually communism. And I'm not using it as a slur. Kindly stop jumping into conversations without first both reading them and understanding them.

[Kowani]

Let’s go ask the DRC what happens when the rich are given money by the state.

[The World Capitalist Confederation]

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Communism is not when the government does stuff or holds wealth. Furthermore, stop using 'you're a communist' as a slur against capitalists please. I'm not dealing with any of this in my lifetime.

No, what he's advocating is actually communism. And I'm not using it as a slur. Kindly stop jumping into conversations without first both reading them and understanding them.

Whilst I may have gotten the wrong impression from "the government is the largest holder of capital" you seem to be using the fact that they're advocating communism as almost saying "You don't like communism, but you support it!" or something along those lines. Please stop that type of argument. It's annoying.

[LiberNovusAmericae]

Yes, it would be my tax money, so strongly opposed.

Doesnt need to be coercive, short term incentives to subsidize the rich would do the trick. Needless to say, you would be benefited in the long run -- not much different from the income bonuses granted by further education in one's life.

I hope it's not coercive, because I won't pay for it. Also, just because one is rich does not make he or she a good manager. There are people who are born rich, mismanage their company and fall, and I see no reason to potentially give mismanaged companies like that a safety net. The free market can distribute wealth effectively without subsidization.

[The Galactic Liberal Democracy]

Forgive me if someone already said this, but extreme inequality causes lots of unhappiness among the workers. If they see that the already privileged are given money by the government for existing, it would be reasonable to believe that the government should be stopped. The more this happens, the angrier they get. Avoiding working class revolutions shouldn’t be that low on our list of priorities. Redistribution of wealth to appease the poor is a better idea than having political violence.

[Valrifell]

Actually the Industrial Revolution was kickstarted by minor nobility and the merchant class, not extravagant aristocrats.

Minor nobility and the merchant class had significant capital ownership to that time. Aristocrats (such as kings) likely didn't lead the movement because of their unwillingness to invest.

Towards the latter stages of the Scientific Revolution, you started to get inventors funded by the state apparatus, but that was less to do with doing it for fun and more to do gaining an upper hand in terms of prestige, industry, or arms.

And the government is arguably one of (if not the) largest capital holders in the modern society.

Note that I'm not exactly denying the existence of the necessity of capital in such systems (well, not now anyway) but rather pointing out that the funding for such projects didn't come from the aristrocracy who would be the upper echeleons of the stratified elite (like you seem to advocate giving our capital to) but instead a more fluid professional/merchant/banking class which started rising at the end of the Medieval Period and the start of the Renaissance.

Giving money to the wealthiest of the wealthy does nothing because they already benefit from the way things are set up. Merchants and professionals instigated the Industrial Revolution to put themselves towards the top of the food chain, people at the top have no reason to want to rise any further and unrestricted capitalism lets them maintain their dominance indefinitely.

[Valrifell]

Forgive me if someone already said this, but extreme inequality causes lots of unhappiness among the workers. If they see that the already privileged are given money by the government for existing, it would be reasonable to believe that the government should be stopped. The more this happens, the angrier they get. Avoiding working class revolutions shouldn’t be that low on our list of priorities. Redistribution of wealth to appease the poor is a better idea than having political violence.

For you, maybe

*laughs in revolutionary left-wing*

[The Galactic Liberal Democracy]

For you, maybe

*laughs in revolutionary left-wing*

For the record, I seem to be the only one trying to stop this stuff while the conservatives call liberals communists and the communists call liberal conservatives. I’m going against these left and right wing radicals while everyone destroys each other over trivial differences between their equally terrible systems.

[Torrocca]

Forgive me if someone already said this, but extreme inequality causes lots of unhappiness among the workers. If they see that the already privileged are given money by the government for existing, it would be reasonable to believe that the government should be stopped. The more this happens, the angrier they get. Avoiding working class revolutions shouldn’t be that low on our list of priorities. Redistribution of wealth to appease the poor is a better idea than having political violence.

Redistribution of wealth to appease the poor is a better idea than having political violence.

Redistribution of wealth to appease the poor

Redistribution of wealth

Ah, I see somebody's getting on-board the Socialist train of thought. :3

[New New New Land]

New concept can of course get fucked

[Uinted Communist of Africa]

Anyone who says yes obviously never was poor....

[Valrifell]

Forgive me if someone already said this, but extreme inequality causes lots of unhappiness among the workers. If they see that the already privileged are given money by the government for existing, it would be reasonable to believe that the government should be stopped. The more this happens, the angrier they get. Avoiding working class revolutions shouldn’t be that low on our list of priorities. Redistribution of wealth to appease the poor is a better idea than having political violence.

Redistribution of wealth to appease the poor is a better idea than having political violence.

Redistribution of wealth to appease the poor

Redistribution of wealth

Ah, I see somebody's getting on-board the Socialist train of thought. :3

Deep down, everyone's a socialist.

People who deny this just don't like the color red.

[LiberNovusAmericae]

GM is a classical liberal LARPing as a RIght-Libertarian, pay no mind to him.

Seems to me that he's more of a literal feudalist pretending to be any kind of Libertarian at all.

This strikes me more of kleptocracy than feudalism.