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Comment by ekianjo | Hacker News Reader

> However the question is who benefits from this increase in efficiency?

Who benefited from Ford making cars more efficiently ? Their employees as well, since they could buy cars on their own at cheaper prices than the then available cars.

Productivity gains improve life for EVERYONE, even the poorer ones. There's so many examples I don't even know what kind of point you are trying to make here.

Improvements in agriculture make food cheaper as well, which makes it possible for even modest household to have 3 smartphones on top of food of the table, and go on vacation more than 0 times a year.

Sometimes when I read comments here, I get the bizarre impression that nobody has noticed the massive increase of purchasing power that society got in the past 100 years. I must be living in a bubble.

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That is textbook trickle down economics which we have had for several decades, and look where it got us. We have some of the worst income inequality in the world, if not the worst.

http://fortune.com/2014/10/31/inequality-wealth-income-us/

Inequality is bullshit. Inequality even starts at birth, what are you going to do about that? the only remedy to inequality as a whole is a Communist Paradise, and God we know that people do not like the idea of everyone being as equally poor as everyone else.

Inequality, again, does not matter as long as everyone gets richer, including the poorer ones. Which has been the case. Mass starvations have stopped around the world for like 30 years if you have not noticed, and the only remaining ones are usually due to political or conflict issues. The whole world is getting richer, and that is a Greater Good than worrying about the 1% getting richer faster.

There are a multitude of things you can do to reduce inequality at birth, from prenatal care to childcare. Statistics show that inequality certainly matters when correlated among other first world countries with social problems such as crime, teenage pregnancy, illiteracy, health, etc etc. If you're open to new ideas, I suggest you watch this TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson?language=en

> There are a multitude of things you can do to reduce inequality at birth

The most egalitarian folks actually dream of a society where it would be forbidden to have your own children (since it's actually VERY unfair to pass your genes down to the next generation... Smart people get smart kids, that's furthering the gap of inequalities) and let the sacrosanct government take care of human race reproduction and ensure it's genetically fair.

I'm not too excited by the idea.

Well, the whole inequality issue only matters because we're all locked in a fierce, eat-or-be-eaten competition with each other, where if you fail you end up being miserable and die of hunger or bad health. Hence basic income.

Was your comment a joke based on my previous one? People dying from starvation are very much a thing of the past. and good medical care has never been as widespread as it is nowadays. 100 years ago you could die from a benign infection, nowadays, not so much.

History has shown time and time again that societies can only survive if the difference between the rich and poor stays within certain bounds. The French revolution didn't happen because people were thrilled by the prospects of a democratic system. It happened because the difference between the aristocracy and the peasants grew so large that a few years with a poor harvest were reason enough to topple the whole state. And there are countless other examples in history. If a society wants to survive and remain stable some of the benefits rich people have must also be accessible to the general public (for example health care and education), otherwise social unrest is inevitable (remember occupy wall street?). This does not equate to communism. Neither does it mean that everything is ok just because nobody is starving anymore.

> It happened because the difference between the aristocracy and the peasants grew so large that a few years with a poor harvest were reason enough to topple the whole state.

Pff, looks like you have no idea what you are talking about. Disclaimer, I'm French and what happened is nowhere as simple as you make it sound like. '

> If a society wants to survive and remain stable some of the benefits rich people have must also be accessible to the general public (for example health care and education)

The poor people have never had as MUCH opportunity as NOW to get education and health care compared to the previous centuries before us. Wake up, seriously.

> otherwise social unrest is inevitable (remember occupy wall street?).

Yeah looks like OWS changed a lot of things : a bunch of hipsters camping in NY with no real agenda, big deal.

Expectations went up too. In proportion to the increase in efficiency. So people's perceptions of their own lives decrease in value. That's just how people work. You can say whatever you want about these absolutes. No one cares and you noted it yourself.

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