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Comment by bitwize | Hacker News Reader

> It's fun to poke fun at the system we have in the US, but we're doing fairly well from a numbers standpoint. Our GDP is fantastic, our median income is quite good, and we still manufacture a bunch of stuff.

NONE of that matters because those metrics measure the winners. The key measure is, does our system have a lot of big losers? If the answer is yes, then that system has failed.

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No, those are your metrics. Your goals don't match those of the system. Ill defined terms like big losers don't really help.

I don't think anyone would argue the system is perfect. I'd conclude that it's not nearly as bad as you seem to think it is. By being a part of the system, you're already better off than some 40% of the globe, by default.

taking your argument to its logical extreme, the goals of the system are met so long as the median and averages look favorable relative to other countries... an ultra wealthy 1% can offset the relative lack of wealth in the rest of the 99% and the median can still look good - I think this is the point you may have been missing above

> an ultra wealthy 1% can offset the relative lack of wealth in the rest of the 99%

Citizens of western nations (the US in particular, median income there puts you among the .3% globally) and the rest of the globe have a similar dynamic yet I have seen no westerners who proclaim the evils of income inequality attempt to resolve that disparity, in fact they seem set to increase their own income making the problem worse. Thus I don't take that argument on it's face as a serious one.

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