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by SideburnsOfDoom 3913 days ago
> The mounting criticism of mounting inequality is a political position. It's not an objective statement of fact.

The mounting inequality itself is however not just an opinion.

> They are free to ignore the mounting criticism

But they're not ignoring it as such, and IMHO it's gotten to the point where it would be foolish to do so. So now they're supplying an alternative political position on what to do - i.e. don't worry, markets will sort everything out.
2 comments
icebraining 3913 days ago
The mounting inequality itself is however not just an opinion.

But how much inequality is a problem is an opinion, I'm afraid.

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RobertoG 3913 days ago
How much inequality is a problem can be an opinion, but what we have is a trend to growing inequality.

At least that you are OK with total inequality (or with a systemic collapse) we should start to look at this carefully.

And this is what the article deal with, what is saying is: "the trend is going to reverse because it was born from demographics, nothing to do with the Washington Consensus, the dismantling of worker protections and other small details."

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gadders 3913 days ago
For mounting inequality, it depends who you ask and where. It's not increased in the UK for instance: http://blogs.new.spectator.co.uk/2015/09/stiglitz-piketty-je...

Of course, this is from a right-wing magazine, so they could just be making it up to appease their owners or something.

And it also depends on the definition of poverty. Is it absolute or relative? As soon as you start talking about relative poverty, you are effectively arguing for wealth redistribution.

//EDIT: swapped poverty in for inequality above//

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RobertoG 3913 days ago
I don't want to be negative but the article in the spectator dismiss the Gini index (that I'm sure has its problems) using a tweet as its source.

Just to weight in with an alternative view: http://mainlymacro.blogspot.fr/2014/11/redistribution-under-...

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gadders 3913 days ago
To be fair, it was a tweet by Nassim Taleb.
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SideburnsOfDoom 3913 days ago
> To be fair, it was a tweet by Nassim Taleb.

Do you think that's a positive recommendation? Because it's not clear and I don't.

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gadders 3912 days ago
I think "a tweet from Nassim Taleb" carries more weight than a tweet from some random person off the internet. He does at least understand finance and economics.
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SideburnsOfDoom 3911 days ago
> I think "a tweet from Nassim Taleb" carries more weight than a tweet from some random person off the internet.

I used to follow him on twitter for a while, and I'm not convinced of that.

His first book was a well-thought out contrarian polemic. His tweets struck me as off-the-cuff random contrarian outbursts.

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