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Okay, so I agree that money in the bank doesn't do nothing. However, ultimately one of the main reasons why we want a thriving economy is to raise the quality of life for the people. If you look at the trends over time, in real terms, the rich have been getting richer and the poor have been getting poorer. If you look at other countries around the world, this seems to be a thing that happens as income disparity increases. Basically, even if having a concentration of wealth doesn't make the economy bad (that point is debatable) the benefits of the economy are not fairly shared by the people. Which brings us to the next point, which is a bit of a mess, so I'm going to have to pick it apart in detail. Firstly, you are essentially saying that all people are not equal, and so it is not "fair" for wealth to be shared equally. This is true, but irrelevant. No-one has asked for wealth to be shared equally, we are asking for less of a concentration of wealth. We are saying "the system is not fair" you are replying "total egalitarianism is not fair" - irrelevant! Secondly you say that the only thing a society needs to do in order to be fair is make sure that everyone has the same rights in regard to the law. This is either obviously false or impossibly hard, depending on how you define the application of law. If you just think that the rules should be applied equally, then this is obviously not enough to ensure a fair society. For example, you could make it cost $100,000 to run for office. This is a rule that may be fairly applied to everyone, no matter their wealth. It just so happens that only rich people will be able to afford it. For another example, you could have entrenched media companies that act as gatekeepers into the political process (as we currently do). Now, nothing stops an individual with no connections to these entrenched interests from starting their own media empire - but even if they had a chance of succeeding, it still forms a massive barrier to entry that could hardly be called fair. If you expand your idea of what the law covers to include such things, then you're essentially saying is that the only thing society should do is have fair laws that are applied fairly, where a person of merit has an equal chance of success regardless of the circumstances of their birth. Which is great, but impossibly hard and definitely not what is happening right now. The third thing you say is that anything beyond the fair application of law is a race to make everyone the same. This is clearly not true. I don't want to live in a world where everyone is the same. I just don't think our current system is fair. Personally I think that everyone deserves to be fed, clothed, sheltered, educated and given access to healthcare just as a participation prize for being a human being. I think we can easily afford it (for proof, just look at countries with low income disparity). The set of standards I am describing is what people call human decency. It is not total egalitarianism. The last thing you say, almost in passing, is that making everyone the same in every aspect renders everyone poor by default. This is a strangely pessimistic view of matters. If you rendered everyone the same, then you'd render everyone average income by default, not poor. Unless you were talking about poverty in an objective rather than relative sense, which is either untrue or else you have very high standards. Even if we did descend into some kind of egalitarian nightmare where everyone was provided for equally (oh lord! the horror!) the quality of life would be fine. There's plenty of resources to go round, especially in the West where we have a lot of wealth. The real problem would be providing incentives for people to work, but I doubt that was the point you were making. (Incidentally we could, for example, create a currency that affords social status and narcotics rather than general material goods - which is, I suppose, just a streamlined version our current incentive system.) |
No, this is totally false. You can say that the gap between very rich people and poor people has been expanding, but both groups have been getting richer, and as a whole the world is clearly getting out of poverty. The poors are getting less poor from generation to generation. And it's fundamentally "normal" that the rich get richer faster than the poor because if you have 10% of asset increase every year for both groups (just a random number) anyway the larger assets will grow faster (in relative terms) and the gap will increase. This being said, the poor do get richer over time, there's numerous presentations on that subject on TEDtalks from different researchers. Don't deny the facts.