[jfaucett]

What I think people like the author who are arguing about inequality are missing is that inequality is not the fundamental issue or put another way I think that tackling it is the wrong goal to have. For instance, if we are all rich, it doesn't matter if some even richer people can have flying cars and homes in the sky. In fact, I would prefer this scenario to a perfectly equal situation in which everyone lives in the same abject poverty or almost as bad, we have a crawling rate of innovation and don't get around to making market ready medical devices, human-AI biosembiotic interfaces, etc. for another century or so.

Our goal should be to increase wealth in general and ensure that the median wealth per capita increases or steadily increases for various segments of the population. Ideally, you would have faster median expansions in lower income segments of the population but in my mind, even if the top %1 had an increased wealth per annum of say 0.05% and the lowest had a lesser increase of 0.02%, I would still prefer that (assuming we've controlled for PPP, inflation, etc) than a system where the poorest increased at 2% a year, the richest dropped -2% and our overall economic productivity declined or stayed roughly the same year after year.

Overall, though I agree with the author in that too much emphasis (in the news at least), is put on GDP. Its still a useful indicator of productivity in an economy and from an investment perspective, but there are as he rightly mentions many qualitative properties left out of this one measurement. Which is kind of always the case is it not? Every time we measure something it measures a specific thing which we decide to interpret in a particular way, its funny how often we generalize that act to areas for which the original measurement was never designed.

[toasterlovin]

Inequality doesn't matter, in theory, but it does matter in practice. Like it or not (and I don't like it, FWIW), people measure themselves against other people. A large delta between the rich and the poor shouldn't matter, as long as the poor are doing well enough, but it does matter. We are social animals who evolved in small communities. There is a built in sense that many of us have that those doing better should share with those doing worse. And when things get too out of line, it undermines political instability.

[jfaucett]

> We are social animals who evolved in small communities

I agree with you. First, historically speaking, large disparities have led to revolutions and countless atrocities. Also our neural cortex isn't so highly evolved that it doesn't bow to the will of our chimp brain most of the time anyway, which is just to say we have a plethora of evolved intuitions and feelings. However, just because we have some innate biological sense of right or wrong or good or bad, that doesn't necessarily mean we should advocate for that in a normative way.

That was kind of my point. If we are going to build a better society I think it is important what normative values we strive for since we are not completely controlled by our impulses and those values will certainly have an effect on the systems we design and the relative effectiveness or lack thereof.

[cryoshon]

1. we aren't all rich. most are poor. 1/7 have trouble affording food. some people can't even get clean water. meanwhile, the rich enjoy unprecedented influence over politics, the market itself, and more luxury than they can even consume. they can afford to think long-term, whereas the poor cannot. inequality is an issue in and of itself.

2. wealth is expanding the fastest for the higher income brackets. the lower income brackets are barely holding ground.

3. i already hinted at this: relative wealth equals relative power. if everyone has $1 that they can disposably donate to a politician's election campaign, the guy with $2 has twice the influence of a person with $1. this means that the guy with $2 has a much higher chance to affect the rules of society such that their $2 becomes $3 at the expense of everyone else. this is the way things work. the higher the economic inequality, the higher the political inequality.

[jfaucett]

> 1. we aren't all rich ...

Its hard to discuss any of the things you mention since it all depends on what particular system you are looking at. If we constrain ourselves to the US system we're still going to have massive differences even within states and within counties within states. That doesn't mean many of the subjects you mention aren't issues, but you're confusing a state with a cause IMHO.

We could make ourselves all almost perfectly equal tomorrow by destroying all wealth and living as hunter-gatherers again. That wouldn't solve any of the problems you mention though. So clearly, inequality is not a fundamental issue underlying all these problems.

Personally, I think the major factors will vary depending on the context and problem domain. For access to healthy affordable foods, it could be something as complex as subsidizing or taxing various agricultural products, or as simple as removing all subsidies and tariffs and letting cheaper foreign made produce flood the markets.

With your third point, that certain people attempt to use power - which is a function of many factors not just wealth - to manipulate the laws and the system to their own advantage is something that is remarkably well documented in the political science and sociological literature. I'm not sure what the best approaches are towards mitigating this. Certainly, high degrees of transparency and accountability as well as a swift and well functioning judicial system would be my first guesses at the largest factors, based on my experiences with South American and European economic data. Personally I think the more checks and balances i.e. decentralization of the concentration of power mechanisms (i.e. ability to tax, ability to imprison, etc.) the system allows for is another key factor.

[TangoTrotFox]

But everybody is rich relative to practically any time in our entire species existence. Ready access to clothes, food, fresh water, indoor plumbing, and so many other things are things that we take completely for granted, but they aren't a given. I would much rather be an aristocrat in ancient Greece than a poor person in America due to the ability exert your ideas, but in terms of niceties a poor American has our ancient Greek aristocracy looking like they were living in some nicely decorated slums. Ignore non-material components, and I'd take the poor American in a heartbeat.

People sometimes look to Star Trek as an example of a utopia, but think about what would really happen. Have you ever thought about the rank and file that spend their life merely taking orders from the captains and admirals, unable to ever make their way up to ever being able to be anything more than redshirts? And we're already talking about the elite there! Imagine the people that couldn't manage to get through Star Fleet! A tiny minority of elite individuals get to spend their days seeking out strange new civilizations and boldly going where noone has gone before, while the rest of society tries to provide some meaning to an empty life in a fake reality in the holodeck before going home to consume fake food from their replicator. There would be huge movements against the inequity and against the privilege of these elite. Star Trek did briefly hit on this issue, once, in the episode Tapestry. A brief clip of it. [1] A longer cut of the ending scene there. [2]

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHoPLhpw2g4

[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGvUDvZ7KyU

[cryoshon]

... between the greek aristocracy and a poor person in america, who has more political influence? who can make political efforts that could better their position in the world more?

more importantly: who would be the one going to war if the political situation called for it?

inequality isn't something to be brushed off, it's the primary issue assuming we're a democracy. absolute wealth doesn't grant you influence.

[mdorazio]

I'm confused by how your desired situation is compatible with a capitalist market. If everyone is rich, prices just rise to the point where everyone isn't rich anymore. Unless we're talking about a post-scarcity or post-labor economy, which isn't really useful to guiding economic policy today.

[jfaucett]

> If everyone is rich, prices just rise to the point where everyone isn't rich anymore.

Rich and poor are always tied to purchasing power which itself is tied to productivity, efficiency and innovation within an economy. (as well as the traditional price theory, demand/supply, etc.) I used rich/poor because those are simple terms everyone can understand more easily than PPP or Genuine Savings, etc. (however, wealth is a better term I should have probably used in its stead)

For instance, the phone you can buy and hold in your hand today for $200 is vastly more powerful than the most expensive IBM mainframes of just 20 years ago - A CEO of those times could not even afford the simple phone many refuges have in their Rucksacks these days. Are they rich because of this? It depends on what particular measurement for "rich" you are using.

To answer your question. Yes, ceteris peribus if everyone gets more money instantly (i.e. money supply increases) all prices will rise accordingly and there is a net null effect, however, and this is key, if that increase is in wealth i.e. capital assets, productivity, everyone is better off and prices will increase according to traditional demand-pull.

[mdorazio]

Great, wealth is a much better term to be using here, but you're still hand-waving away the method by which increasing capital assets, productivity, etc. would happen under a capitalist free market. The traditional way you increase these things for everyone is by collective bargaining (unions) or collective ownership of businesses (employee-owned companies). These two things are pretty much directly at odds with American-style capitalism.

Do you think we should be aiming for something more akin to the labor situation in Europe, or do you think there's a different method by which we could create wealth for everyone more equally than today?

[bluGill]

Even the poorest people in the US have electric lights that are brighter than anything even the richest of 200 years ago could have. The cost to run those lights is also significantly less as well. That is just one example of the types of things that improve life for everybody.

So long as everybody is improving their life, and can see things improving (or say they are not interested in the improvements - like the Amish)

[chongli]

Poor/working class today have electric lights, yes, but they also have automated scheduling systems telling them when to work, night shifts and multiple jobs, obesity and malnutrition (instead of starvation and malnutrition), dental cavities, alcoholism, opioid addiction...

The poor today have different problems than medieval peasants. Their lives are better in a lot of ways but not all ways. Medieval peasants had a much better idea of their place in the world, their relationships to their friends, family, community, and church. Today so many people are isolated and dying of depression.