Hacker News Reader

Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

In other words, regression to the mean. Of course the poorest people are more likely to gain in income -- when you start at the bottom, there's really only one direction you can go.

You can still have regression to the mean among individuals while society itself is becoming horrifyingly unequal.

View on HN

"Of course the poorest people are more likely to gain in income -- when you start at the bottom, there's really only one direction you can go."

But doesn't this claim in itself refute the thesis that all the income gains are going to the top? If we find people at the bottom gaining income far faster than people at the top, which is what my quote claims, isn't that evidence that we live in a just society, not an unjust one?

Firstly as pointed out in other comments they were measuring income. People at higher incomes in the 80s were probably more likely to retire early or "on time". A more representative number would be wealth which I would imagine is probably horrifying in the vein that the parent and grandparent meant. People living hand to mouth in the 80s were probably doing the same in 2014. People who could save probably weren't.

Even just from the numbers presented imagine the lower percentile person who was making say 10k in constant dollars in the 80s. They're making 20k (100% increase) in same dollars in 2014.

Imagining the person in top was making 1,000,000 dollars in constant dollars they dropped 29% so they're now "only" making 750kish.

I know which group I'd rather be in.

No, because what you’re measuring is rate of change vs volume. If you made $1 and now you make $2, that is 100% growth in income. If you made $1M and now make $1.2M that is 20% growth, but in absolute dollars you make way more.

Would you please elaborate on this:

> society itself is becoming horrifyingly unequal

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/19/income-inequality-continues-...

https://inequality.stanford.edu/publications/20-facts-about-...

https://www.businessinsider.com/inequality-is-deepening-us-e...

Will that do, or do you need more elaboration?

Thanks, I'll check these out. Inequality seems like a fact of life, so I'm wondering what's so horrifying about it.

Edit:

I was really hopeful for this Stanford resource, but I'm not even sure these "are facts that everyone should know".

> 10. Residential Segregation

tldr: Rich people and poor people don't live in the same areas.

> 13. Bad Jobs

tldr: Some people have bad jobs, and if you don't work full-time somewhere you're more likely to have a bad job.

This just seems like common sense. Was anyone surprised by this?

Certainly not horrified.

Inequality isn't a problem. Fairness is the problem when it comes to economic growth. People want to have a fair chance, not just one half taking all the benefits.

Not horrifying: When your refrigerator dies and you can go buy another without blinking.

Horrifying: When you misplace a $20 bill and now you can't pay your rent.

It's really simple to understand.

Okay, being poor can be horrifying. But I don't see what's horrifying about the fact that some people have more wealth than others.

The fact that inequality exists is not the problem, it's the severity of the inequality that is the problem.

Take an extreme example - out of a population of 1000 people you have 1 person owning 99% of the wealth, with the other 1% distributed to the other 999. Does that seem like an efficient, properly operating economy to you?

Obviously there is some balancing needs to happen, the trick is figuring out where the fulcrum should sit for the most efficiency.

Inequality is great really. It incentivizes people to give extra effort for a reward. But gone too far, the efficiency of humanity will drop. There needs to be (and there probably is) shifts in wealth to keep things moving. Let's get those moon bases going.

The fact that it's growing is a problem.

Why?

I don't think it's healthy for a society to split into haves and have-nots. At some point the have-nots will realize that something is not fair there.

Inequality is indeed inevitable, but inequality to this degree is relatively recent. You must have a short memory.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com