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Comment by padobson | Hacker News Reader

Whenever I see these inequality articles, I feel the need to mention a few things:

- The "1%" is ever changing, the mobility in and out of that group has only increased over time [0]

- Most measures of inequality are local or national. The same markets that have enriched the 1% have also brought a billion people out of poverty globally in the last 30 years. [1] Globally, workers are doing better than ever.

- The practicality of inequality changes over time. Most people in the middle 50% in developed nations live better than the .1% of a hundred years ago.

Inequality may be a problem, but it's not an existential threat or even a primary concern to developed countries.

[0]https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/04/mo...

[1]https://www.economist.com/news/international/21719790-going-...

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I agree with a lot of points but... just want to note that you are referring to 1% income levels in your article, not wealth levels. Those are wildly different things. It's quite possible to earn a lot at some point in your life, temporarily being a top-earner in the country. Winning a lottery, cashing out capital gains on home equity or a business sale can do that. Or even having a really good year in a good job. The threshold is $390k of income in a year.

But that's an entirely different notion from becoming part of the top 1% richest people in the country.

Here's a graph on how wealth inequality is far worse than income inequality: http://inequality.comm.ccsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/I...

Now, income inequality tends not to matter too much beyond a certain figure. At some point, which is far below the 1% level, you get marginal returns to your income in terms of quality of life.

However, wealth is different in that it affords so much power, which isn't compatible with democratic ideals where everyone's voice or vote is approximately equal. When 1% of the population holds 40% of the ownership and shareholder votes of all companies, land, factories etc, that can be problematic. And it is worsening.

Again, I'm not terribly concerned and I don't see wealth inequality as inherently dangerous, but it is a problem and it isn't getting any better.

Your critique of my post is valid and I agree with it, but I'm not sure my ultimate point is diminished. From what I've read, wealth and income mobility are correlated, if over longer timelines. Finding good statistics on wealth mobility over time on a global scale is hard, but I've yet to see any reason to believe they don't correlate with income mobility.

And it makes sense if you look at the tippy top of the wealthy as an illustration: In nominal dollars, Bezos is less wealthy than Walton was less wealthy than Rockefeller, and Bezos is a major beneficiary of globalization.

Rockefeller had an outsized influence on American politics because his wealth was chiefly American.

Bezos, on the other hand, to hold his wealth incumbency needs to influence politics in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, the UK, the EU, Japan and China.

Globalization definitely allows the rich to reach newer heights, but it also diffuses their influence and spreads their power thin.

>Inequality may be a problem, but it's not an existential threat or even a primary concern to developed countries

If a single person's net worth is more than a medium sized country's GDP, we DO have a problem.

If you have $70B you can buy votes/governments (through "lobbying").

It is no longer a democracy, because a very rich person has many many votes, rather than one.

>>Inequality may be a problem, but it's not an existential threat or even a primary concern to developed countries

>If a single person's net worth is more than a medium sized country's GDP, we DO have a problem.

I added italics to parts of our respective posts. They seem to indicate we agree.

We might disagree on the size of the problem or how to fix it, but that would be covering new ground.

For very similar reasons, socialism worked well in Czechoslovakia:

- The general secretary of the ruling party changed every couple years.

- Unemployment and hunger was comparatively lower than during the pre-WWII period.

- Most people lived better lives in the late 80s than in the early 50s.

Do you get my point? Whether you like it or not, comparative wealth (AKA fairness) does matter to people. (Also it's funny that when talking about economic results of communist regimes, suddenly, comparative, not absolute metrics are used as an argument.)

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