That's silly - compared to cavemen, even workers in third world countries are "rich", being able to trade things for goods and services and not being required to hunt and gather. Inequality solved?
yes, exactly; to have equality, you'll have to reduce everyone to the lower common denominator, which will be rather low
Also, I don't see why exactly inequality is inherently bad. I'm poorer than Bezos, _and that is a good thing_. Pretty much like Steph Curry is better than me at basketball and so he should have a lot more ball possesion should we be playing on the same team, Bezos is much better than me in allocating resources, so he should have a lot more resources to play with.
to have equality, you'll have to reduce everyone to the lower common denominator, which will be rather low
Why must everyone go down to the lower common denominator? Wouldn't moving everyone to the average also be equality? For most middle-class Westerners that would be a reduction, but for most people on Earth that would very likely be a small improvement, and in some cases a significant improvement.
The real problem is that it's logistically impossible. Someone living in the middle of a desert just can't have access to the sort of food wealth and stable energy supply we have because the technologies to get those things to where they are don't really exist yet. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to move everyone towards the average a bit though.
California has ports and airports and... roads. People stay in the same places for a long time. Try delivering fresh produce to nomadic Bedouin tribes in the Eastern Sahara and you might find it a little trickier.
A huge number of people work very hard for much less than middle class Westerners have. They would all get more than they have now. I suspect that would lead to better global productivity even with the loss of your input.
It's a bit of a strawman to take arguments of the general form "we should enact policies to reduce inequality" and implicitly restate them as "we should enact policies that force perfect equality," then argue against that restatement, don't you think?
I think the concept of "inequality" itself is a type of straw man. It's basically a problem that will perputually exist. Arguments (straw man or not) pointing out the lack of a concrete, absolute (non-relative), morally justified goal is appropriate as long as "inequality" itself is the stated "problem."
If we were talking about a fixed, concrete goal, then I'd agree with you. Reducing poverty, reducing world hunger, increasing standards of living, etc are things that can be accomplished by setting some absolute, concrete moral goals, which moving towards by any measure might be considered morally good. But "inequality" on its own is, prima facia, a term that requires comparison to the point of "perfect equality".
Doing good things might result in less inequality, but reducing inequality for the sake of itself is just justification of envy. There's nothing inherently "evil" or even negative about it.
On a side note: "Reducing inequality" is an activists dream. They can sell political solutions forever for a problem that will always exist, by some form of the definition.
(Unless we were to oversimplify it and set some standard deviation type hard-target for income distribution, but I've not heard anyone suggest this, let alone an appropriate "fair" target distribution. I'm not for it, but it's at least a measurable goal.)
> Bezos is much better than me in allocating resources, so he should have a lot more resources to play with.
How do you know that, though? Have you had the opportunity to be in the exact same place he was for the exact same time? Do you sincerely believe there aren't, in the billions of people on earth, someone with better resource allocation skills than Bezos? Having more money is not proof of ability.
Bezos also had parents that gave him a several 100 thousand dollar loan that they never expected to be paid back. He's a product of Montessori and Ivy League education. Definitely not a rags to riches story
The problem I think is that people attribute all of success to the sheer iron will and willingness to suffer of the individual, when that just isn't the case. Are you attributing all of Amazon's success to Bezos solely? If he left do you assume Amazon would immediately start to fail? Was it Bill Gates alone who kept Microsoft afloat?
You have to consider luck, there's a ton of people in the world who put in the work and didn't get anything, and it's not just because they didn't work hard enough.
Why exactly is inequality a problem? Because people suffer from their envy?
People starving, having no health care, low life expectancy, that sort of thing, are problems. Their neighbor having more money in the bank is not really a problem.
There are also actually differences in skills, performance, diligence, and so on. It would be very unfair if some people weren't allowed to earn more money than others.
Whether it should be possible to be arbitrarily rich is another question.
> People starving, having no health care, low life expectancy, that sort of thing, are problems. Their neighbor having more money in the bank is not really a problem.
Most people, when they critique wealth inequality, aren't critiquing their neighbors because most people in the same zip code are going to be at similar levels. When people critique wealth inequality, they're talking about the Koch brothers, or other parties who leverage capital to gain unfair advantage and political powers and then work against the first half of your statement.
> Whether it should be possible to be arbitrarily rich is another question.
I, too, am in favor of a 100% wealth tax upon death. No more freeloading failsons.
Well, again, start accumulating capital, if it is such an unfair advantage.
"I, too, am in favor of a 100% wealth tax upon death. No more freeloading failsons."
I am absolute against such a thing, in fact I consider it an insane proposal.
It seems one of the fundamental human rights should be people being allowed to provide for their children.
People work to have successful children. It is absolutely incorrect that all children should have the same starting positions for a fair world. If a couple works hard to earn money, and others don't work and instead pop out 10 children, why on earth would it be fair to take money from the hard working parents to distribute it to all? I know many people who would like to have more children, but feel they can't afford them. Why should they be punished for being responsible.
It even starts before people have children. They work hard to be attractive and find a good mate, to improve the odds for their children. That is basic human nature.
The acts of their parents are not the children's fault, of course, and everybody should be given a fair chance to make it in life. But there are limits. Both strategies can be valid (have few children and try to give them a good head start in live vs having as many children as possible and leaving them to their own devices), but it would be unfair to politically punish one strategy over the other. At the very least, if you take away money from the responsible parents, you should have to limit the behavior of the irresponsible parents.
The only way to make things completely equal for everyone is to disallow people to have children, and instead rise future children in clone factories. Why should that be considered desirable?
And even more basic than that: people should be allowed to do with their money as they please. Including giving it to their children.
> I am absolute against such a thing, in fact I consider it an insane proposal.
44 minutes ago
> Whether it should be possible to be arbitrarily rich is another question.
You were so close to getting it, what happened to you?
> Well, again, start accumulating capital, if it is such an unfair advantage.
Hey, person who can barely make it to get by and spends all of their income on subsistence-level living, why don't you just get more capital?
> The acts of their parents are not the children's fault, of course, and everybody should be given a fair chance to make it in life. But there are limits.
You continually try and straddle the line with these declarations, but just draw completely arbitrary distinctions: everyone should be given a fair chance to make it--but what is fair, how is this decided, who enforces it? What are these limits and why are they decided? There's no rhyme or reason to what you're saying, just whatever sounds the best to you.
> And even more basic than that: people should be allowed to do with their money as they please.
So it's perfectly acceptable when Coca Cola sends death squads to kill labor organizers. The ancap fever dream is terrifying.
"> Whether it should be possible to be arbitrarily rich is another question.
You were so close to getting it, what happened to you?"
There is a difference between limiting how rich anybody can get, and taking everything away from families if the head of family dies.
"Hey, person who can barely make it to get by and spends all of their income on subsistence-level living, why don't you just get more capital?"
How many such people even exist? If you barely make it, you should aim to improve your situation. Try to find a better job, try to learn skills that enable you to get a better job, and so on. Few people are really doomed to such a situation forever. And those who are, usually because of illness, need charitable help or insurance. It's a separate problem.
"everyone should be given a fair chance to make it--but what is fair, how is this decided, who enforces it?"
Well who do you want to decide what is fair?
I think markets are the best mechanism to establish fair prices. Other than that, you can establish some baseline - access to housing, food and education, so that people can try to make something out of their lives. It can be discussed. But certainly it doesn't mean fair has to be everybody has to have the exact same starting positions. It is not even possible, because not all parents are the same. If your parent is Paul Graham and he teaches you programming, you already have an advantage against other kids, even without economic resources.
"So it's perfectly acceptable when Coca Cola sends death squads to kill labor organizers."
Obviously not. I think you are being silly here. Basic laws still apply.
> I, too, am in favor of a 100% wealth tax upon death. No more freeloading failsons.
I am very far from an economic leftist, but the elimination of inheritance seems to me the fastest, fairest, path to equality of opportunity (the disposition of the confiscated assets is a separate argument). Tax the dead guy.
That's one of the top defining characteristics of "economic leftist" type systems.
Either you don't fully grasp the implications of such a policy, or you may want to re-evaluate your economic self-identity.
I'll add- it's not just the rich that this hits. This means taking a family's home when parents die, unless they pay for it again.
Which means it's basically an incentive for people to rent everything and own nothing. A Subscription based economy for everything. And companies will love it, since they'll provide the subscriptions and corporations never die, so it won't affect corporate wealth.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, but it's not difficult to see a floodgate of unintended consequences. And only the rich will be able to afford the accountants and lawyers to double-Irish/ Dutch-sandwich loopholes.
1. The government must be funded, taxes are inescapable
2. Financial/material inheritance is inherently cosmically unfair (Paris Hilton and orphan street dweller have equal merit claim to the Hilton fortune)
3. Your children's "inheritance" is their genetic endowment, the benefits of being raised by you, and whatever material help you can provide during your lifetime
4. The details (and loopholes) of the implementation are an exercise for the student (I'm not super concerned whether a "family farm" must be liquidated, or how every last penny of Warren Buffett's fortune is confiscated)
> Which means it's basically an incentive for people to rent everything and own nothing.
This may be true toward the end of one's life, and I'm not sure this is a bad thing. Your children's inheritance is a distant concern for most your time on earth; your savings is almost entirely a prudent hedge against a lean harvest.
FWIW, I am strongly against (national) Government expansion, and would be fine with just setting all the confiscated funds on fire.
Then the dead guy will give all his money to his kids before dying.
At the very least the dead guy will pay for them to go to Harvard, arrange the appropriate internships, etc.
It’s very possible to preserve a class system without actually transferring wealth to your children upon death.
Just use your wealth and money to make sure they’re set before you die.
Easy-peasy.
Just look at the many children of still-Alice billionaires. They’re not hurting.
For example, Warren Buffet announced he was giving away all his wealth, created a foundation that possesses most of his wealth, and named his son as director.
Not rocket science.
And that doesn’t include the affects of private tutors, nanny’s, quality education, etc.
> Then the dead guy will give all his money to his kids before dying.
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of good enough. Inequality is a fundamental part of human existence, but I'd prefer that inequality to be as much as possible an expression of individual merit rather than a financial windfall as a result of parental success.
As I mention in another reply, your "inheritance" is what you get while your parents are alive.
It’s not so much the perfect being the enemy of the good, as the fundamental point being missed.
The goal is to prevent persistent, cross-generational inequality. High inheritance taxes simply won’t accomplish this. Or even come close.
The only policy that had ever achieved the sort of field-evening you want is a very strong public sector.
Providing quality education, job, opportunities to everyone (or at least lots of people).
A good example is Sweden. Sweden had massive asset-inequality. A handful of families are massively wealthy, and the successfully pass that wealth down generations.
Yet Sweden had little income inequality, because of their strong public services.
You're just incentivizing rich people to put all their assets in holdings companies and then giving their children ownership before they die. I wouldn't be surprised if this is how its done today.
Also, I don't see why exactly inequality is inherently bad. I'm poorer than Bezos, _and that is a good thing_. Pretty much like Steph Curry is better than me at basketball and so he should have a lot more ball possesion should we be playing on the same team, Bezos is much better than me in allocating resources, so he should have a lot more resources to play with.