Comment by jrock08 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jrock08 | Hacker News Reader

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And I'm not going to point-by-point refute arguments that aren't particularly convincing, but here's some thoughts.

> Closely related to poverty is lack of social mobility.

It's not just closely related, when considering income inequality the two converge. It's simple arithmetic really. When poverty wages are a lesser multiplier (i.e. income inequality were less) of wealth wages (let's say 2), then it's obvious how to lift oneself out of poverty, split a home with another person earning an income.

> you don't have to grow up rich or even upper middle class to get rich as a startup founder, but few successful founders grew up desperately poor

Sure, but a rich founder has a clear advantage, in the same way that a founder at Harvard has a clear advantage. It's a lot easier to ask a friend/colleague/parent for money than a stranger.

> For example, let's attack poverty, and if necessary damage wealth in the process.

Yes. The way we attack poverty is to spend money to improve schools, spend money to improve transit, spend money to provide food for low cost. Where does that money come from, taxes. If we just talk about fixing poverty, we run the risk of not actually spending money and fixing the problem. Ignoring the greater context of politics, and the almost 100% sign on of republicans to the Grover no new taxes pledge, in order to actually get a mandate to fix anything, the alternative has to be upfront and direct about taxes.

If you'd like me to address arguments directly feel free to respond with something less dickish than telling me to read an article that I've already read.

>Sure, but a rich founder has a clear advantage, in the same way that a founder at Harvard has a clear advantage.

PG didn't suggest otherwise. He didn't say that wealth doesn't beget wealth. He said the absence of it does not prevent one from generating wealth.

He's not arguing against the idea that entrepreneurship contributes to income inequality. He is saying that the manner in which it produce income inequality is not harmful to society, because incomes are becoming more unequal by individuals generating wealth, and not by siphoning existing wealth that others have.

This is just example of how you misinterpret his arguments in a mad rush to defend economic orthodoxy.

Could you please respond to my whole comment rather than cherry picking one thing I said.

> wealth doesn't beget wealth

The return on an investment in the S&P 500 over the past 50 years undermines this.

> absence of it does not prevent one from generating wealth.

Prevent is such a strong word. I'm not technically prevented from breaking the longest free-fall record. However, I do not have 1000s of skydives under my belt or connections in the community of record breaking skydiving. While I'm not technically prevented from getting those things, I'm behind the curve compared to someone that has those things.

> the manner in which it produce income inequality is not harmful

But he doesn't really present any real evidence that this is the case. Now, I agree, that some startups produce new wealth as some percentage of the wealth that their founders, investors, and employees reap. But it's obviously always more complicated than that. Take, for example, the Microsoft office suite, which by almost any measure created an immense amount of wealth. However, it also made a large number of jobs obsolete, and thus "redistributed" the wealth from people working typist style jobs. Take for example, smartphones, which again, have created an immense amount of wealth. However, they also allow smaller independent contractors who would otherwise have rented an office space, and hired a secretary, to simply use their smartphone to manage their day, thus "redistributing" some amount of wealth from a lower-middle class job to an upper-middle class job. Now, obviously, I've ignored that maybe, the loss of these jobs created new jobs that the workers who were displaced could do, but given that PGs argument was basically just "We make the pie bigger" with almost no evidence, my argument of "It's really not that simple" with some examples should be at least equally convincing to you.

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