Inequality seems to be a completely pointless buzzword to me. The only thing that matters is if there are more or less poor people, and how poor are those people compared to similar percentiles in the past.
It shouldn't matter how rich the richest people on earth are. I really love seeing people on the Internet try to convince themselves that because Bezos or Musk are worth $100B, they must be stealing it from poor people.
>The only thing that matters is if there are more or less poor people, and how poor are those people compared to similar percentiles in the past.
People who are beating the drum about inequality are arguing this; isn't this what the elephant chart shows? For the American middle and working class they are as poor, if not poorer than their contemporaries in the 60s.
The plain argument is that productivity growth has exploded since the 70s, but wage growth has stagnated. People are producing more but being paid less; that might not be outright theft but I think people are beginning to understand that something isn't right.
Poverty is not the only metric we should care about when it comes to inequality. For instance there's also financial resilience, what percentage of people will be strongly affected if they suffer an adverse event i.e. a surprise medical bill or an appliance breaking. Another one is the distribution of wealth between people that spend most of their income vs income that is held in investment accounts or savings. Having sufficient spending is essential to a healthy economy.
A third, though this is much more an ideological standpoint and I don't expect everyone to agree with it, is the marginal value of money. If an increase in income has a greater marginal effect on the health/wellbeing/happiness of people who have less of it, isn't it better to prioritize growing their incomes rather than people who already have their entire hierarchy of needs met?
If Bezos continues paying people at minimum wage, hires union busting lawyers, and hires more lawyers to actively lobby to keep minimum wage low for 20+ years while he makes more money. Is he stealing from poor people or is that just people on the Internet trying to convince themselves he is stealing from poor people?
Oh good, a few years will rebalance everything. Honestly the point I was making was that the wealthy will continue to pursue ways to maintain a larger and larger wealth gap as a matter of self-interest.
If significantly raising the pay of Amazon's low-paid workers would negatively impact it's value then part of Bezo's wealth comes from keeping Amazon's cost of labor low.
Significantly raising the pay of Amazon workers would hurt Bezos because it translates to less reinvestment to the company. This would also hurt the million new employees that Amazon hired last year as well as the consumers who increasingly relied on Amazon for goods during quarantine.
I think this would be a valid argument if significant money wouldn't also come with significant power in the modern day and age. As soon as there is significant wealth inequality, there is also a significant power inequality, with a small number of people determining the fate of the rest of the world. Surely this isn't good?
Certainly not. We're semi-returning to fiefdom where the wealthy make the decisions for the masses, who they also happen to employ and market their goods to.
Sure, some good things can come of this, look at what Bill Gates has done for vaccines in the past decade or so, which is now making an actual difference when it comes to covid vaccination development and deployment.
You also have questionable things though, look at the Nevada bill would allow tech companies to create governments. We've seen company towns before, it generlaly didn't work out very well for the masses... I mean, look at the Battle of Blair Mountain where mining interests went as far as to hire private planes and drop bombs on miners in the United States in retalliatin to a labor uprising https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain
I love what extreme wealth can do for a given cause, but do I really want a handful of individuals making the decisions? Ehhhh probably not.
Gates has still not done the full 1 percent of what he would have been capable of if he was really dedicated and started philanthropy as soon as it was within reach.
And if he could have held Microsoft to making money through engineering more so than anti-recycling it would have been massively better for the environment rather than relatively destructive too.
> The only thing that matters is if there are more or less poor people
Up to a point I definitely agree with this, but the issue with some people being billionaires is not that they can drive around in Cadillacs made of gold, it's that they can and do control government policies, and use that power to the detriment of common people.
> Adjusted for inflation using the CPI, the numbers are even worse: half of all full-time workers (those at or below the median income of $50,000 a year) now earn less than half what they would have had incomes across the distribution continued to keep pace with economic growth.
Another aspect is the power that comes with money. People aren’t focusing on inequality in a pure “that’s unfair” view, there are also issues on how these ultra-rich people are completely outside of the reach of most rules and can sway whole economies basically at will.
Bezos’ fortune is equivalent to whole PIBs, that’s a lot of power concentrated in a single man.
> now earn less than half what they would have had incomes across the distribution continued to keep pace with economic growth.
but did those workers' productivity grew in line with the same economic growth? If said workers were _still_ doing the same jobs as they did before, and had the same output, does it make sense that their wage growth should keep pace with the economic growth?
Therein lies the rub - The United States seems happy that Bezos, spending capital on whatever he likes, is a better resource allocator than the government itself.
But isn't wealth to a large degree relative? Like, if I'm richer than I value my time higher, meaning it's more expensive to buy my time (human services). Same with other resources such as land, gold or bitcoin. There's only so much of it thus the value rises.
Of course the world can become more productive and thus make everyone (in average) more "wealthy", but only for certain things.
Yes it is, but a few hundred billionaires with mansions and yachts don't really matter in the context of the broader economy.
It's the upper middle class yuppies with substantial amounts of discretionary income driving up the prices on things that makes people poorer in the relative sense. There simply aren't enough billionaires to move the needle on the goods and services people living paycheck to paycheck spend on.
We didn't have a toilet paper shortage because Warren Buffet stocked up. The used car market isn't all jacked because of Bill Gate's insatiable desire for compact pickup trucks.
The gulf between the "I can afford to care about what school district a house is in" class and everyone below them is the important one.
>Yes it is, but a few hundred billionares don't really matter in the context of the broader economy.
Billionaires buying up "stores of wealth" housing in the city I live in has driven up the price of property inordinately and almost priced me out. What you are saying here is not "they don't matter" but "I don't matter".
Then they tell people who grew up in these cities to just leave if they can't afford it.
Political power is also zero sum and they're buying up that too. This is the most terrifying part. I don't particularly want my country to become like Ukraine with two sets of oligarchs battling it out with their propaganda arms. That is what is happening.
They are not buying up toilet paper but then again toilet paper shortages only happened for about a week, didnt it?
> Billionaires buying up "stores of wealth" housing in the city I live in has driven up the price of property inordinately and almost priced me out. What you are saying here is not "they don't matter" but "I don't matter".
Are you sure they are billionaires and not just millionaires? There are millions of people in USA with millions of wealth, they are what matters, and they can each buy up a large chunk of real estate in mid cost neighbourhoods.
It's a ripple effect. Billionaires end up pricing out hundred-millionaires, who price out millionaires and so on.
All of the above also buy up rental property. And wealthy foreign criminals andtax evaders get in on the act by buying up property sight unseen as a foreign bolthole.
This is how we end up with cleaners and baristas having to share a room and commute 1 hour each wayway and property prices that are, like, 17x the average wage.
It's weird how so many people are apparently in denial about this.
The USA has 630 billionaires and the world has 2,825. I think you are vastly overestimating the impact they have on any housing market. The poster above is 100% correct it is the millionaires that inflates prices of normal goods. There simply isn't enough people at the top end to matter.
I don't mind that at all. (Well OK I wish that rich people today would have more taste, and build Sistine Chapels instead of Mar-a-lagos) The problem is that when some people control more assets than entire countries, they will end up controlling government policies.
> Inequality seems to be a completely pointless buzzword to me.
It seems pointless right up to the moment that those on the losing side of the equation start baying for blood. High inequality is often correlated with violent revolution[1].
You are absolutely right! Everyone, from the most hardcore Marxist-Leninist leftists, to "don't tread on me"-style libertarians, would agree there is absolutely no difference how rich rich people are if there is less poverty.
This is precisely the reason why Dengist reforms happened in China -- to foster getting a billion people out of poverty by market reforms that yes, would make a few hundred billionaires.
The thing is, America is getting poorer. And as poor America gets poorer, rich America gets richer -- and, coincidentally, everywhere in the world, rising inequality means higher societal instability, less cohesion, less happiness and, absolutely, more poverty for poor people.
So the question we need to ask ourselves -- is it a coincidence that rich people getting richer and poor people getting poorer go hand in hand? Or is it a law of nature? I'm not sure either way. But you shouldn't so quickly dismiss people that actually do think these are correlated.
The poor in America are getting poorer. The poor in much of the world are getting richer. This seems to be the consequence of globalization. So, no, it's not a law of nature that rich people getting richer and poor people getting poorer go together.
"It shouldn't matter how rich the richest people on earth are."
It does. Bezos and Musk can influence Policy. They can influence for their own ends. Also, it depends on HOW they make their money too. Do they create things? or do they buy up everything such as Real Estate and then jack up the price. There's different kinds of "Capitalism". Rent-seeking is the worst kind. Producing goods that people can use is much better.
Why are most people using Windows computers? Is it because it was so much better than other operating systems?
Did Bill Gates make his $Billions because his operating system was so good? or did he use other "techniques?
Do Bezos and Musk have significant investments outside of Amazon/Muskinc?
If Amazon suddenly was nationalised with no compensation for shareholders, what would Bezos' assets be? I'm sure he wouldn't be destitute, but it's not like someone who's become wealthy by shuffling money around (like wall street billionaires).
The fact that "proles" even exists in the modern vocabulary should indicate something. Bin the population into wealth centiles and observe the curves. The Gini coefficient is not a magic arbiter of inequality. See the Great Gatsby curve for a better example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility#Housing
It shouldn't matter how rich the richest people on earth are. I really love seeing people on the Internet try to convince themselves that because Bezos or Musk are worth $100B, they must be stealing it from poor people.