The world would be moving away from poverty a lot faster if there was less inequality.
A long term reduction in poverty and a more balanced relative income ratios has to come through self-sustainable economic development in the middle, and upward mobility from the bottom. Wealth transfer is just a temporary fix, an initial boost - but it is not an adequate endgame... as many pure socialist countries quickly learned after the glow of the early days wore off. Redistribution as a primary policy is also increasingly difficult to pull off via central policy, given global marketplace, technology's impact on finance, and the growth of countries which act as tax havens.
There is plenty of indifference in practice towards legitimately taxing the wealthy but it's been a hot topic globally for a while now and I fear this obsession has been a large distraction from figuring out how to help the middle/bottom develop their own jobs and businesses. To push up their wages and salaries as the primary goal, not just increasing the tax base for better government services and reduced tax burden on the middle.
When wealth generation is coming from rent collection on existing assets, redistributing wealth and redistributing wealth generation are equivalent.
> Georgism, also called geoism and single tax, is an economic philosophy holding that, while people should own the value they produce themselves, economic value derived from land (including natural resources and natural opportunities) should belong equally to all members of society.
> Any natural resource which is inherently limited in supply can generate economic rent, but the classical and most significant example of 'land monopoly' involves the extraction of common ground rent from valuable urban locations. Georgists argue that taxing economic rent is efficient, fair, and equitable. The main Georgist policy recommendation is a tax assessed on land value. Georgists argue that revenues from a land value tax (LVT) can be used to reduce or eliminate existing taxes (for example, on income, trade, or purchases) that are unfair and inefficient. Some Georgists also advocate for the return of surplus public revenue back to the people by means of a basic income or citizen's dividend.
For measuring the success of what, exactly? Economic success? Average incomes? Doesn't seem to be a very good metric for either.
Lowered inequality seems to me to be a good metric for measuring the success of attempts to lower inequality, and not much else.
But in this kid's day-to-day life after graduating, unless he becomes famous on his own, nobody will know who he is. They'll just see a dude that dresses well, lives in a well-off neighborhood, and got an education like everybody else. He won't have been raised in a violent neighborhood with poor access to education. And no employer will think twice about his application on account of his looks or the way he speaks.
Isn't that exactly the VC model?
The only loser here is the middle class of rich countries, not middle or poor class of poor countries.
100 years ago, they didn't have phase-change refrigeration, instead relying on ice. (That's why your grandmother might still call it an "ice box".)
50 years ago, they didn't have air conditioning.
25 years ago, they didn't have cars that would reliably run for 250K miles with airbags, anti-lock brakes, traction control, and which required very regular servicing to keep running.
10 years ago they probably didn't have a smart phone with the world's information in their back pocket.
All of those things are now readily affordable and very commonplace in the middle class.
And we have people complaining about housing and healthcare.... I know the solution to theses issues
If their only value prop was cheap labour then manufacturing could easily have flourished in plenty of other countries with cheap labour (eastern europe, latin america, africa?). And plenty are geographically closer and have more similar language/culture to the western markets than Asia. But there is more to it, Asian countries have a talent for it and have mastered manufacturing and related industries like steel production.
I doubt any American factories could legitimately compete with Asia, even if the wages were the same, without some heavy-duty automation. And Asia has many other advantages around vertical integration of factories, such as access to raw materials, from there and other countries they've developed relationships with.
Now it's possible these advantages are just a side-effect of the fact the industry residing in Asia in recent decades but I believe there's far more to it, even regardless of the wage advantages, they are very much deserving of that industry.
If you look holistically at what happened, you're more likely to find why so much moved to Asia. Geographically speaking there may have been closer low-wage countries, but distance alone does not determine where you can build appropriate facilities.
Geologically, China has access to large ports, allowing large amounts of tonnage to flow in and out. You have a generally easy path from China to California. Eastern Europe is out because you can't easily ship to and from. Similarly, jungles and mountains in Latin/South America and Africa keep large manufacturing bases from being built. Africa lacks sufficient ports - its largest ships 1/10 the tonnage that Shanghai does.
At a local political level, you have governments willing to subsidize manufacturing and tolerate certain working conditions that other governments wouldn't. From an international perspective, you have incentives to bring capitalism to the borders of previous socialist countries as a destabilization measure (large increases in US-China trade in the 80s).
Yes, people in other countries are people too, etc., but they also have their own governance, their own resources, their own economics systems to manage and oversee.
I can take no active part in any of that--only my own country's.
Until we have one world government, I'm always going to prioritize the places where I have at least some capacity to pull the levers in ways I think are better for people.
(This is why I dislike, in general, the specious globalist argument, "but the poors overseas deserve wealth too," sure they do, but they also live in sovereign nations and it's up to them to guide and shape their own.)
And that I find to be a shame -- that we find it so difficult to see the logic in a position we may disagree with.
The other thing is, I don't just apply this to international politics, I'm a firm believer in working to change your local politics as much as possible above all else.
How your city runs is both more accessible to the layperson and has a far bigger impact on your day-to-day experience than federal stuff, for example.
That's not to say I'd eschew federal level politics--I'm a huge proponent for socialized medicine, stringent environmental regulations, and a host of other stuff.
But when I go out and campaign, I do it for local folks.