[Veelox]

> it's clearly horrible for society.

Would you be willing to articulate why wealth inequality is bad for society? I am fairly certain that wealth inequality globally is higher than it was in 2000. At the same time, well the poorest globally are doing much much better on average.

In my mindset as long as the median is improving and the poorest are improving, the ratio of rich to poor isn't important and isn't clearing a bad thing if the inequality is increasing. You seem to think otherwise, why?

[morbicer]

Inequality is usually measured by Gini index and a quick search will indeed tell you that inequality rose since 2000 in USA.

Inequality gives rise to populism and extremism all the way up to civil unrest. If the middle class ignores the woes of poor it is swept by revolution aimed at rich.

[creer]

Is it inequality which gives rise to populism and extremism or is it the press, politicians and other agitators?

[Jochim]

Inequality is like an infection, weakening the immune system and allowing owners of the press, politicians, and agitators to spread populist ideas that would otherwise be laughed off.

Inequality makes possible our current situation, where the owning class encourage and exploit immigrant labour, only to disseminate "news" aimed at making the working class hate those immigrants.

[morbicer]

There's definitely a factor of diverting the anger from the class issue to race and cultural wars. But happy, well off people wouldn't be angry in the first place.

Same story as in plantation times: Make the white servants feel superior to black slaves by virtue of skin color; manipulate poor whites into believing that any perceived gains by blacks had come at their expense.

[Veelox]

Our material wealth in the US is way way higher than it was in 1900 but people aren't happier. I don't think I agree that well of people would stop being happy. Unless you want to define well off in relative instead of absolute terms.

[morbicer]

Look, you might start getting the inequality concept.

Although the absolute wealth of poor might have improved since 1900, people can still be angry that someone is extracting disproportionate amount from the system while their situation is stagnating. See flatlined real wages since 1970s

[robertlagrant]

The problem is also that people want class warfare. Not just that it sometimes sublimates into other tribalisms. And all of this is regularly taught in universities, so I don't think it just arises due to "inequality".

[antifa]

Class warfare is already here, what people don't like is being on the defense for decades of class warefar.

[creer]

My point was that this anger itself seems rooted in media and agitation / political movements. Anger (= news headlines) sells news subscriptions, anger sells votes (or something).

Like many pointed out here, this "43%" was nothing special this year if, for example, you are mid-career and have moderately aggressive stock market participation. It's an example of headline entirely cooked up for agitation.

[Jochim]

You're in your own bubble if you think 43% is close to normal for the majority of the population.

[creer]

> majority of the population

You are right, it's not the majority of the population. The fine article was trying to raise indignation at the wealth increase of "the 25 richest families in the world", using seemingly gross numbers that they militarized without even noticing that these numbers were completely unremarkable. Or perhaps in bad faith altogether.

[creer]

For another counterpoint, I'm certainly angry about things. You are welcome to count me as angry. But do NOT count me as angry because of inequality. Inequality is a distraction and cause celebre useful to distract people. Rather it's the gross inefficiency and ludicrous aims of the current system (= two parties and press and government) which make me angry. And that has nothing to do with inequalities.

[Veelox]

Your making a pretty broad claim with no evidence. Can you provide some evidence?

[webdood90]

This is pretty well accepted information.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/opinion/economic-inequali...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/02/06/how-r...

https://time.com/6267552/falling-american-inequality/

[Veelox]

Just because it's widely accepted doesn't mean it's correct.

Paywall link Paywall link Makes a slight case but mostly just assumes inequality is bad.

[morbicer]

I know US history education isn't greatest but you might have heard about French revolution, rise of Nazism or various communism uprisings, Mexican revolution in 1910s.

With better outcomes for society: labor movement at the turn of century and in 30s.

More recently: Arab spring, Chile 2019

[creer]

French revolution for one was not about income inequality per se. It doesn't seem the idea itself was in people's mind - and too many other issues instead.

[p3rls]

"Per se" is doing a lot of work there.

If the French revolution wasn't about income inequality then there has never been a conflict about inequality... Read the Rosseau and Voltaire of the period leading up to the crises. You can feel their passion when they talk about inequality.

Here's just one event from the time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_March_on_Versailles

"The rioters had already availed themselves of the stores of the Hôtel de Ville, but they remained unsatisfied: they wanted not just one meal but the assurance that bread would once again be plentiful and cheap. Famine was a real and ever-present dread for the lower strata of the Third Estate, and rumors of an "aristocrats' plot" to starve the poor were rampant and readily believed.[2]"

Not about income equality per se, but you know, not wanting to starve in the streets. Lol what the fuck.

[creer]

You negate your own critique: "assurance that bread would once again be plentiful and cheap".

So like I say "inequality" doesn't even enter the broad collective mind. And the intellectuals that try to run "what's next" do talk about "égalité" but again that's not what they mean.

This is not what anyone means by "inequality" now. Not killing the economy with random wars, yes. Welfare, yes. Price controls even, sure. Better planning (because we are talking about famines here in this specific case - not even taxes.) Even when "Egalité" and "Fraternité" make it into foundational texts, soon after, this is not what they are about.

[Veelox]

I think it's a big stretch to point to all of those and say wealth inequality is the main reason all of those happen. For example, people were starving around the French revolution. With Germany I believe it was just as much (if not more) general depression and national embarrassment rather than wealth inequality. With Arab Spring you can point to poor leadership as opposed to innate wealth inequality. I'm not convinced wealth inequality is the underlying reason.

[morbicer]

Just open Wikipedia man. It has citations to primary sources.

"Although the 18th century was a period of increasing prosperity, the benefits were distributed unevenly across regions and social groups. Those whose income derived from agriculture, rents, interest and trade in goods from France's slave colonies benefited most, while the living standards of wage labourers and farmers on rented land fell."

Same for Arab spring, it's like second sentence on the wiki. It's also heavily about corruption, but guess what, those two go hand in hand. Open maps for corruption and Gini index and you will see strong correlation.

Of course there are more reasons. Society is complex.

[AlecSchueler]

You're quite right that while the rich have gotten richer the poor have gotten richer too, just to a lesser extent. But it doesn't mean the poor are better off in every way. That's only true if we look purely at monetary wealth/purchasing power. But because we live in a society that gives a bigger voice to people with money, many people who are relatively poor can feel increasingly disconnected from a feeling of being an active participant in society.

The issues are broad and subtle with wealth inequality, too much for the scope of an HN comment, but I would posit that inequality issue are about more than access to goods.

[Veelox]

Thanks for taking the time to have a thoughtful reply.

I think pointing to wealth inequality as the reason there is increasing disconnection is a stretch. Yes it's a factor but I don't think it's the chief one.

Do you have a pointer to a resource that covers some of the more broad and subtle issues with wealth inequality?

[JKCalhoun]

> I think pointing to wealth inequality as the reason there is increasing disconnection is a stretch.

I think it is the chief one. Every time I have seen it suggested that it is some other thing — you don't have to peel but a few layers and find money in fact behind that other thing.

[Jochim]

> Would you be willing to articulate why wealth inequality is bad for society? I am fairly certain that wealth inequality globally is higher than it was in 2000. At the same time, well the poorest globally are doing much much better on average.

Wealth inequality is an issue largely borne out within a particular society.

In the UK we've seen rising poverty and food insecurity at the same time as a rapid increase in the wealth of those at the top. That global poverty has improved means little to someone who is now struggling to put food on their table, or stay on top of their mortgage.

> In my mindset as long as the median is improving and the poorest are improving, the ratio of rich to poor isn't important and isn't clearing a bad thing if the inequality is increasing. You seem to think otherwise, why?

Wealth buys power. Allowing it to concentrate into a small group of people leads to issues.

Social cohesion seems to suffer as inequality rises.

[kwhitefoot]

> Social cohesion seems to suffer as inequality rises.

I don't think there is any seems about it. I'm quite confident that social cohesion/solidarity is poorer in the UK now than it was fifty years ago and considerably worse than here in Norway where we have more compressed income and wealth ranges.

[Jochim]

FWIW I agree personally. I find that stating a position too strongly sometimes leads to a debate about semantics rather than the merit of the explanation/justification.

My opinion is that inequality destroys people's ability to relate to one another. My worries now are completely different to those I had growing up, and the people who have staff to run their lives increasingly show themselves to have no concept of what life is like for the rest of us.

It feels like there's a fairly dangerous game being played in the UK at the minute, with frustrations around inequality are being exploited and redirected as anger towards out-groups.

The issue is that leaving the EU and attacking immigrants doesn't actually solve the underlying issue. The people behind it still benefit in the meantime but eventually it's going to blow up in someone's face. My sincerest hope is that it's theirs.

[kwhitefoot]

Rising wealth inequality grants power disproportionately to the wealthy. Money is power, the means to make your view stick. And guess what, people with money want to hang on to it and the life it gives them so they promote ideas and behaviours that help them do that regardless of whether this is good or bad for everyone else.

[JKCalhoun]

I was just reading (from HN recently) about when, in the Nineteenth Century, I believe) England did away with trust perpetuity. It destroyed the dynastic family wealth but instead kicked off the greatest entrepreneurial expansion the country had ever seen.

Even if the poor fared a little better we cannot say if they would not have fared even better still had we less of a wealth divide.

[gottorf]

19th century England was the height of the Industrial Revolution. Trust perpetuity probably had no effect on entrepreneurial expansion, especially considering that the aristocrats who were the primary beneficiaries of these dynastic trusts weren't the people who were engaging in entrepreneurship to begin with.