[endisneigh]

Irrelevant and ultimately arbitrary distinction. Is it bad for certain people to have too much money or not?

Consider that Americans waste more energy and generate more greenhouse gasses that citizens in other, lower emitting countries pay for - we are all on the same planet.

Ultimately these discussions devolve to people just being bitter others having more than them.

[morby]

What’s arbitrary is your choice of argument. You completely reject my point with a hand wave and make this a comparison between developed and under developed/developing nations Your point of saying the question is between if someone makes too much is obtuse and, honestly, naiive because the concern is does someone make too much in light of the environment they exist in. If the money they make in their market outpaces and outstrips those of others involved in the same market to an unreasonable extent then that is a problem. It means the market is not being fairly compensatory to those who contribute. This is seen in stagnant wage growth across sectors. This is seen in younger generations inability to purchase homes But let’s make this about how people on America make more than people in Africa as though such a reductive and myopic straw man addresses the real issue at hand here. No one here. No one. Is saying people in Africa should be poor or not earning a wage that is compensatory to wha they contribute to the world economy. Blood diamonds, cocoa, fishing, etc etc. but your pretending this isn’t a well discussed issue is neglectful of reality

[jrflowers]

The poster you’re responding to is pretty laser focused on inserting a statement about the overwhelming might of their intellect into the comments on this article. This isn’t so much a discussion about compensation but more a deft display of nth dimensional chess that can only be engaged in by neigh and other titanic geniuses that agree with them.

[endisneigh]

Believe it or not, but no.

There’s simply no problem with people having more money, and once people realize this we can move on.

Housing issues are supply issues exacerbated by zoning and local nimby governments. It can be resolved without income ceilings.

Health care issues can be solved with single payer healthcare or other schemes. Again no income neutering required.

And sure you can fund these things and more with taxes, but no realistic taxation scheme will result in there not being extreme disparities.

Funny enough young Americans waste time complaining about rich people instead of just voting, which would solve most of their issues.

[morby]

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/08/07/for-most-...

https://archive.nytimes.com/krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/1...

https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2019/

Even with more conservative approaches, wage growth of lower earners is far outpaced by top earners.

https://www.aei.org/articles/have-wages-stagnated-for-decade....

[endisneigh]

There is absolutely no reason to expect equal wage growth to begin with.

[ColoursofOSINT]

That's not the argument. Morby said, and I quote;

> to an unreasonable extent then that is a problem....fairly compensatory to those who contribute

There is a reason to expect reasonably equal growth, as all wage classes are contributing.

Also if you are going to say something like;

> There is absolutely no reason to expect equal wage growth to begin with.

Then what's your argument?

[jrflowers]

I stand corrected. Your musings about how to solve housing in the health care CEO compensation thread have convinced me that you are not just posting online to sound smart

[jkestner]

I wonder who's spending the PR and lobbying money to prevent all these wonderful solutions from being enacted, and when people "just vote" for these solutions anyway, buying politicians who stop good bills, make voting harder or just ignore the voters.

Taxing the rich is less about the money, and more about the power it buys.

[klyrs]

> Funny enough young Americans waste time complaining about rich people instead of just voting, which would solve most of their issues.

This is hopelessly naive. Whoever you vote for, your vote only matters one day a year. The other 364.25 days are for the lobbyists.

[endisneigh]

This sort of defeatist thinking is a plague in America. Consider local city councils who decide on approving special permits for housing. You might opt out from voting and some nimby joins and whoops there is another huge development that doesn’t happen, meanwhile rent continues to increase.

[ColoursofOSINT]

Or you can vote, and the people who win are corrupt [1]. I have been voting every year since I got the right to. Things have only gotten worse [2-3].

[1]: https://effectivegov.uchicago.edu/news/power-begets-corrupti... [2]: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadian-health-care-system... [3]: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/crea-housing-data-1.6843592

[klyrs]

I vote. I participate in local politics. And yet, decade after decade, my voice is overridden by the desires of the ultra-wealthy. Where I live, developers run the city, with many council members literally working for development firms for their day jobs, and yet rent continues to increase. The developers are making a killing out there, they aren't struggling to afford their tenth condo building like the individuals and families struggling to find a rental within their price range.

[wredue]

There are hosts of measurable problems with massive wealth inequality. You paint is as one person “just having more”, but that’s a ridiculous reduction.

It’s actually one person having more than literally a billion other people combined, and THATS a problem

[michaelmrose]

You think we can solve problems otherwise but you never explain what is wrong with income ceilings. Why can't we build more houses and our a ceiling on income.

Here's a dirty secret in case you say all the billionaires will run away with their wealth. They aren't worth much.

Bezos isn't Amazon and if he was never born those people would work somewhere and the online store market would be divided somehow.

Billionaires harness labor and capture demand they create little of it then most of the benefits accrue to people who buy things not build things.

The version of it's a wonderful life starring Bezos has him stumbling around Bedford falls marveling that virtually nothing has changed and terminates with him begging Clarence to put him back because he misses his yacht.

[andsoitis]

> the online store market would be divided somehow.

There is online shopping other than Amazon.

[michaelmrose]

Literally the point

[endisneigh]

Your distinction is again meaningless. You say it’s a different market, I could say you should compare the class of worker.

Are health care CEOs unusually paid compared to CEOs? (They are not). As I said ultimately your selection in criteria is arbitrary.

The matter at hand here is some believe the income inequality is a problem. What ratio is acceptable to you?

[morby]

Regards your edit. I don’t have magical numbers to give you. I’m curious if you think that makes me wrong. But what I would like to see is a ratio where workers can buy a home, have a family, have some level of leisure, and be able to afford healthy food. That is not a reality today for people directly participating in the worlds largest market.

And also one that confers some sense of fairness. Tell me how this is at all fair to workers?

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/08/07/for-most-...

[andsoitis]

> workers can buy a home

Home ownership in the US is higher than in:

- New Zealand

- Sweden

- France

- Japan

- Austria

- Germany

- Switzerland

Home ownership in the US is lower than in:

- Kosovo

- Russia

- Norway

- Spain

- Italy

https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/home-ownership-rat...

[morby]

I’m not entirely sure your point here maybe you can explain

[andsoitis]

Happy to.

My point is that home ownership isn't something that workers in even some of the most enlightened countries have. In contrast, there's incredibly high home ownership in some places that have dubious quality of life.

And so it begs the question why home ownership is voiced as such an important need of workers? I would argue that the incentive structures should be more aligned around good shelter.

Home ownership has been advertised and indoctrinated in the psyche as The American Dream, but I would question that dream...

[morby]

So now we’ve moved to comparing CEOs in different industries? Your own post compares executives to workers and workers to African workers. The post here talks about CEOs making vast additional sums while workers are getting pinched. Why are we suddenly comparing CEOs in healthcare to CEOs in other markets?

[morby]

In fact it’s incredibly ironic considering the same people being addressed here, I.e. executives are major contributors to the exploitation of workers in the developing world. It’s the general population that has to learn about then address these issues and nothing would change if executives were left to their devices.

[malloci]

That's an interesting attempt to deflect from the income disparity between those in executive positions to those that work for them. Even in tech, while the salaries of tech workers is high it's nothing compared to the execs.

But let's follow the deflection. Instead of monetary disparity, lets look at energy waste disparity. It was recently shown that the top 10% wealthiest Americans contribute to 40% of the greenhouse gas emissions in the country. As you said, we are all on the same planet. just because they have managed to grab a bigger piece of the pie shouldn't mean that they get to pollute the planet more than anyone else. In both cases the mindset needs to change and those at the top maybe need to be a little less greedy overall.

source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/08/230817163849.h...

[andsoitis]

> That's an interesting attempt to deflect from the income disparity between those in executive positions to those that work for them. Even in tech, while the salaries of tech workers is high it's nothing compared to the execs.

That's quite the arbitrary line to draw. Different roles have different labor markets. If you're a software engineer you are probably getting paid 10 times more than an EA.

> It was recently shown that the top 10% wealthiest Americans contribute to 40% of the greenhouse gas emissions in the country.

To be in the top 10% in America in terms of wealth, your net worth needs to be ~$850k. To be in the top 10% in America in terms of wages, your annual comp needs to be ~$175.

That means probably most senior software engineers are in that bracket - https://www.levels.fyi/

[wddkcs]

When wealth inequality within a society is often a contributing factor to revolution and societal collapse, it's not an irrelevant factor.

Your stance is fine and logical, but most people don't feel the same. The difference between your wealth vs a poor African, vs your lack vs a rich American, is that you have the ability to collectivize and reach that rich American physically (not advocating violence, but pointing out that revolutions are violent).

I agree that Americans should also keep this in mind, when we as a country deal with the global poor. We're richer, but they have numbers. Not wise for us to fly too high above them, without using that wealth to benefit them too.

[s1artibartfast]

I would argue that it is making wealth inequality a political issue and outrage around it is often a contributing factor for revolution.

It is also worth noting that the results of those revolutions are often worse for both the rich and the poor. There's a long list of countries that have destroyed productive but unequal economies and replace them with those that are worse, and usually unequal but on a different axis.

People like to talk about the French Revolution with Eat the Rich slogans, and forget that it left everyone worse off, led to dictatorship, and eventually everyone coming back around to realizing the old system wasn't so bad.

[wddkcs]

Wealth inequality affects the people, the polis, how could it not be political? I am not arguing for revolution, I am saying severe wealth inequality is a contributing factor to something I would rather avoid. No American should want our poor so desperate they resort to revolution. No American should want our government to unequally oppress the global poor. Revolution is a product of unequal systems, and I agree it is crushing.

[jrflowers]

> Irrelevant and ultimately arbitrary distinction.

This is a good point. America and Africa are the same because they’re both on earth. Few people have the good sense to dilute a point to absolutely meaningless terms, all of that muckety-muck about “relevance” and “the topic at hand” distracts from the truly important work: handwaving in such a way to shut down discussion at light speed

[skyyler]

I'm actually incredibly concerned that the people that make sandwiches for me can't afford rent.

I can't speak for everyone, but I"m pretty sure most people do care about those with less than them.

[YeBanKo]

I am incredibly concerned that people that make sandwiches for me can’t afford basic healthcare or stay home if they home a stomach flu.

[robswc]

Why do people take such low pay for making sandwiches? Genuine question, because doesn't that just lower wages for everyone and sorta peg the value of a sandwich maker to being $X/hr?

[skyyler]

Work or starve.

Plenty of desperate people willing to do whatever jobs they can right now.

Not a lot of time to train for more lucrative work, let alone find it.

[johnnyworker]

> Ultimately these discussions devolve to people just being bitter others have more than them.

No, just like complaining abou theft doesn't betray the secret wish to be the thief, but for there to be no theft. Same for wages not matching productivity, not even inflation, while inequality keeps rising. If you can't understand that, that says solely something about you.

[the_only_law]

This has been the HN playbook for a while now. In order to shut down a conversation, just accuse the other side of jealousy. Particularly before Musk fell out of the general graces of the user base, it was incredibly common to see comments like this in regard to any criticism.

[seattle_spring]

Fits well into the category of "thought terminating cliche" [1]. Sadly I've noticed a steep increase in them being employed here and other similar sites lately, often with the intent of "winning" arguments.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3....

[endisneigh]

The illusion you seem to still be under is that wages have to match productivity. This is not a natural law of the universe.

[johnnyworker]

.... okay? There is also none saying they shouldn't, you know.

[mjlawson]

> Is it bad for [...] people to have too much money or not?

Yes, by definition. The question is, how much is too much money? And in what context?

Put another way, in a given economy, how much do the wages between the top and bottom earners need to differ in order for there to be not only a perceived inequity, but a genuine ethical imbalance?

[YeBanKo]

We are all on the same planet, but we are not all under the same jurisdiction. My vote matters for healthcare in the US, but bears no direct influence on the healthcare in countries in Africa. If I believe that healthcare CEOs don’t create as much value as they are paid, then I may gravitate towards a single payer system and vote for a candidate pushing for it.

This stats is relevant, if you vote based on data of how shared infrastructure is used.

[michaelmrose]

Nonsensical argument. Equality isn't all or nothing it's better if we have less of it even if we don't have none of it. Furthermore people have obvious interests in decreasing inequality directly effecting them more than inequality between their home nation and another.

Rich people having almost all the money means in practice they have almost all the power and our society consistently acts in a fashion so as to serve the interests in virtually all matters right up until something is so important that it solely makes or breaks elections.

Billionaires don't just hoard all the toys they are outright poison for democracy.

If you aren't a temporarily embarrassed millionaire you are yourself benefiting from inequality and value your own interests over the rest of us.

It's ok if you think greed is good just admit it and don't pretend more ethical people are just jealous.

[newZWhoDis]

>Consider that Americans waste more energy and generate more greenhouse gasses that citizens in other, lower emitting countries

I have considered it, and it’s why I support ending all immigration (legal or otherwise), even enforcing reverse-migration if necessary.

Every person we bring here 10/20/30x’es their lifetime carbon output. Pro-immigration leftists are some of the biggest polluters on the planet for this reason.