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Comment by andrenth | Hacker News Reader

If inequality goes down because the rich become less rich, is that a win?

In my view, the answer could be yes, not by itself but only depending on the side effects. Some possibilities:

1. Redistribution of wealth carries a corresponding redistribution of political power.

2. The quality of life for the bottom quartile (or choose your threshold) is increased by more than the corresponding decrease for the rich.

3. Redistribution increases consumer spending, which stimulates growth, if for instance the economy is in a state of poor demand.

Needless to say, these are all speculative on my part.

I would say by now you have a pretty good idea of what people around here think but... yeah, if the rich get a little less rich things are a lot better for everyone. It's the unbalance, not the total that makes life hell for the less well off.

How?

The people that answer yes to you might not even realize they are actually part of the richest group, particularly since software engineers are in the top 10% of income in the US.

Except that income distribution is skewed so much that top 1% top 0.1% it is really what matters in terms of inequality.

Every single person can claim there is someone richer than them, up until you get to the richest 10 people. If you have 100k in your bank account, the difference between you and someone living on 2 dollars a day is a vast enough inequality.

Sounds like perfect argument for ultra rich to make middle class to pick up the bill.

https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/nov/14/worlds-ri...

Maybe we just see the overall trend and its global impacts, and we don’t think buying a luxury fallout shelter is the same response.

The very top of the bracket (0.1%) is the one paying proportionally far less than the rest of the upper class, given their access to all sorts of accounting tricks and exemptions that you have when you are making money from capital gains or when you have tons of active assets to shuffle money around.

Do you have data to back that up? From what I've seen, the top 0.1% pay a far larger share of taxes than the rest.

Based on federal gov't data on total taxes paid, the top 0.01% (even higher income than you 0.1%) pay over 20% of all taxes with an average rate of over 49%.[1]

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15573269

If you're asking seriously, the answer is: absolutely. The countries with the highest levels of quality of level and most socioeconomic mobility have very high levels of taxation for the wealthiest. And they are doing just fine.

that includes the US, where taxation still is mostly borne by the rich

Nope, US phases out social security taxes and has vastly lower rates for capital gains etc. If you look at total earnings vs. total taxes paid including non income taxes the rich pay a lower share than the middle class.

Remember gas taxes are just as much a tax as income or property tax.

GP said nothing about wealth distribution, which is what you're describing.

By definition rich is relative, more inequity means more rich, and yes, lower inequality means less rich.

Depends of the definition. If every piece of food in the world were burnt, there would be no relative poverty, but there would be famine and death immediately.

Both relative and absolute poverty matter and have different causes and solutions.

If no other changes occur then yes because it reduces the concentration of power.

Yes

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