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by eeZah7Ux 2040 days ago
> What if you could increase low end incomes while simultaneously worsening inequality?

That it absurd. If you double the wealth and income of every person on the world, nothing changes. Same gini coefficient, same poverty.

The sum of all money and other financial objects might change in numerical value but still represents the current amount of goods and land that exist on the planet.

2 comments

I'd argue that you haven't really increased incomes at all if you simply double the monetary amount. To actually increase wealth/incomes you'd have increase the amount of material goods, services, and realise improvements to their quality of life.
And that exactly happend with globalization for US cititin.
> I'd argue that you haven't really increased incomes at all if you simply double the monetary amount

That's what I wrote.

> Same gini coefficient, same poverty.

That statement is obviously false. The US and Haiti have about the same gini coefficient.

> If you double the wealth and income of every person on the world, nothing changes.

The commenter surely meant doubling material wealth (as you put it, the "current amount of goods and land that exist on the planet"), not just some abstract numerical value.

>> Same gini coefficient, same poverty.

> That statement is obviously false. The US and Haiti have about the same gini coefficient.

I'm comparing before the doubling and after, not across different countries. facepalm

> The commenter surely meant doubling material wealth

That post clearly reads "What if you could increase low end incomes".

If you increase their income by giving them jobs where they can be more productive, poverty decreases even if the rich also get richer. Consider building factories in a poor country. People can both contribute and earn a lot more in factory jobs versus back on the farm.
This suggestion is literally colonialism.