[csallen]

Why do you care so much about the divide between rich and poor, as opposed to say, just the quality of life of the poor?

If rich people got 10x poorer, would that make you equally as happy as if poor people got 10x richer?

If rich people got 10x richer and poor people got 5x richer, would you be upset?

Genuine questions.

[uxcolumbo]

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously said in 1933: “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.”

That's why. Historically, when wealth concentrates at the top, it tends to stay there unless there’s strong counterpressure.

Wealth brings political influence and that influence is often used to preserve the status quo and not change the system so the poor would get 5x or 10x richer.

If everyone were genuinely getting better off, i.e. the necessities of life not getting more expensive or wages rising in accordance to things getting more expensive, then the rich and poor divide wouldn't matter as much.

The problem is that’s not what we’re seeing. What we get is:

Wages for many people haven’t kept up with key costs. Housing, healthcare and education have surged. Meanwhile, gains at the top have massively accelerated.

So it’s not “rich up 10x, poor up 5x.” It’s closer to gains being concentrated while a lot of people struggle to keep up.

Your previous statement that the middle class is shrinking because people are moving up is not 100% correct. Some move up, but most decline.

That’s why inequality matters. It’s not about envy. It's about preserving democracy, rule of law and not falling into a pit of corruption.

See what's happening with Mr Doge, he's happily using his platforms to meddle in foreign elections. Recently supporting Le Pen (another criminal, found guilty of embezzling European Union funds) and also supporting AFD and other extreme right wing parties. You have to ask yourself why.

[csallen]

I think this argument is jumbled, or at least way too complex to have such strong and simple conclusions. There are at least four issues at work, all of which are complex to measure and understand: wealth concentration, the conversion of wealth into meaningful political power, the health of democracy, and there's quality of life across income brackets.

My thoughts:

1. Wealth is indeed super duper concentrated. IMO we need a more effective tax system with fewer loopholes. But there's limited specific popular support for these measures, as they typically are getting co-opted by much vaguer messaging like "eat the rich" and "there are no ethical billionaires" and things like that, which politicians can easily shrug off.

2. Wealth is indeed converted into political power in very powerful ways. To me, I think this is a bigger problem than #1. Although yes, they are related. But it's also largely a cultural problem, as half the country has been happily VOTING for this to happen for decades.

3. Democracy, imo, is quite healthy. Despite the increasing political power of wealthy individuals, there are other shifts happening as well. 70, 60, 50, 40, and even 30 years ago, a very small number of wealthy and powerful gatekeepers controlled almost all public messaging. There was less chaos as a result, but also an extreme limitation in the diversity of viewpoints. Fewer independent organizations. Less investigating reporting. Worse suffrage, in general. It was harder for citizens to organize and communicate cheaply. Etc.

4. I highly disagree that the quality of life across income brackets has gotten significantly worse for people at the bottom. I think this is based on misinformation and cherry-picking data that supports that case

So let's just look at #4.

Housing, healthcare, child care, and education are indeed way too expensive, especially in certain regions. But it's also the case that real wages have risen for almost everyone, and in post-pandemic years that's even more true for lower-wage workers. Also, not everything is getting more expensive. Lots of things have gotten cheaper and more accessible: consumer electronics, communications, clothing, appliances, lots of manufactured goods. And then there's quality and variety, too: we have bigger houses than ever, safer cars, more effective medical treatments, far more affordable and varied entertainment options, better phones and computers and connectivity. Technology in general is vastly better, and it's an extremely democratizing force that tends to improve quality of life at the lower ends more intensely than at the upper ends.

So it's not super duper clear to me things are so much worse.

If you went back to the 50s and 60s, sure, rich people weren't making as much money. But were lower-income people suffering less financially? I don't think so. Based on all the data I can find, there was much more widespread deprivation. People without enough food, with inadequate housing, with no plumbing, with very low consumption, or living in abject poverty. The US is far better off today. But at the same time, yeah, there's less security around housing, healthcare, and affordable education.

So ultimately I don't subscribe to any messaging similar to "the sky is falling" and "things are worse than ever" and stuff like that. To me this is misinformation, and an extreme oversimplification of what's actually going on today.

When you actually look at the data and you look at the information and you actually compare a broad perspective of today to the past, it's not at all so clear that things are worse for the lower income brackets, and in fact I think there's a much stronger and easier to make case that things are better.

> Your previous statement that the middle class is shrinking because people are moving up is not 100% correct. Some move up, but most decline.

This is false. "Most decline" is not true.

Yes, people move out of the middle class in both directions. But all the data I could find concludes that more people have moved up than down. The reason the middle class has shrunk is much more to do with people graduating into the upper income brackets than falling into lower income brackets.

But of course this never gets talked about. Because it contradicts the narrative that things are getting so much worse, and that narrative is Sacred and Unquestionable.

So in fact, the exact opposite gets said, "The middle class is shrinking," and then it's just left at that, in order to imply something negative. But it's just a straightforward lie, it's total misinformation. Yet it spreads, because people like to repeat things like this.

And that's kinda how I feel about this "things are getting worse." The actual facts and complexity of the situation are taking a backseat to the fact that people just like to spread this narrative.

[uxcolumbo]

Just gave you an upvote. It's a much more considered reply and you probably should have led with that instead of your original (now flagged to death) comment.

But I don't think it's about screaming the sky is falling down... anyway, more thoughts on this later.

[uxcolumbo]

Some quick follow up thoughts:

> But all the data I could find concludes that more people have moved up than down.

I based my comment on research done by Pew, OECD, and economists like Saez/Zucman. The middle class is shrinking both upward and downward, but a significant share is moving down or stagnating, not up!

Even billionaires themselves comment on this: https://fortune.com/2026/07/17/palantir-ceo-alex-karp-artifi...

So you're right, we made great progress since WW2 and no the sky isn't falling down.

But my point is we're now going down a dangerous path that leads to authoritarianism. If the convicted felon and his gang aren't being kicked out then corruption will increase, more surveillance (i.e. Flock and Palantir), more austerity and more loss of our freedoms.

> 3. Democracy, imo, is quite healthy.

It's not though. Listen to historians like Snyder or Heather Cox Richardson. Or listen to financiers like Anthony Scaramucci and his guests. Our democracy is being dismantled and if we don't stop them, then we'll end up with a sham democracy like in Russia.