If the rich get richer but the middle class has a better quality of life than what the rich had 200 years ago, is strict inequality still the only thing that matters?
My point is just that "quality of life" is more complex than just longer expected lifetime, or has access to faster internet, as nice as those things are.
Check out [1] and scroll down to Table A-7 (it's an Excel file). It's the real earnings data (in 2018 dollars), by gender, from 1960 to 2018 (though it's kind of spotty before 1967). What sticks out:
* For men (looking at Total Workers), real earnings are currently around 10% higher than they were in the 70s (moving from low-$40K's to recently just past mid-$40K's, with some peaks and valleys along the way). Doesn't sound like much, but...
* For women, earnings have roughly doubled in that timespan
* The number of men in the workforce has increased by almost 50%
* The number of women in the workforce has increased by almost 100%
From a certain perspective, it's kind of amazing that real earnings haven't gone down significantly.
In the last 20 years, median earnings, in real terms (adjusted for inflation), are up. Unemployment is at its lowest, and that's at the broadest definition of "unemployment" (U6) [2].
As for poverty, check out [3] from the US Census Bureau and scroll down to Table 6 (it’s an Excel file). It’s the percentage of people in America that are below 125% of the poverty line (I.e. near poor to absolutely poor) between 1959 and 2018. That percentage has gone down from 31% to 16%.
The median number of years to recoup the cost of a Bachelors degree in America, adjusted for inflation, has gone down since the 1980’s, from about 22 years to about 10 years. [4]
[1] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2019/demo/p60-26...
[2] https://twitter.com/jmhorp/status/1201903269095698432
[3] https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-p...
[4] https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2014/09/the-va...
We often forget that things are no actually so bad.
Wage Stagnation in Nine Charts:
https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/
The Pay of Corporate Executives and Financial Professionals as Evidence of Rents in Top 1 Percent Incomes:
https://www.epi.org/publication/pay-corporate-executives-fin...
So no changes are called for until quality of life is literally as bad as it was 200 years ago?
In more recent times, quality of life and economic metrics are flat or down in the USA, at least. Life expectancy has gone down multiple years in a row now, for example.
It's been established that the cause of this, in America, is opioids and obesity, none of which are the fault of billionaires, broadly.
Nobody is denying that the Sacklers are culpable for opioids, but what about Buffett, Bezos, Brin, Jay-Z, and Jerry Seinfeld? They’re all “billionaires” too, and it would be foolish to blame them m for obesity and opioids, and in turn, the falling average life expectancy.
This open letter is a good starting point: https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2019/2/3/pinker-and-global-...
>There is nothing worth celebrating about a world where inequality is so extreme that 58% of people are in poverty, while a few dozen billionaires have more than all of their wealth combined
I also think the point about changing goalposts to focusing on proportions (the absolute number of people in poverty is increasing) is interesting
1) The amount of wealth held by ultra-billionaires isn't nearly enough to solve our poverty problems. If you seized literally all of the wealth of the the entire Forbes 400, it would fund the US federal government for 8 months.
2) Wealth is illiquid, and if one were to seize it, you can only seize it once. It isn't an ongoing stream unlike, say, income. So to amend the last statement, if you seized literally all of the wealth of the entire Forbes 400, it would fund the US government for 8 months, one time.
3) Wealth is not zero-sum, it is created. The global inflation-adjusted GDP has gone up from ~$2T in the mid 20th century to ~$110T today. The ultra-wealthy have enjoyed most of that growth, but one can argue that it's because they created that wealth. I.e. Bill Gates' net worth is only as much as it is because he created Microsoft, which has added ~$1T (its market cap) to the US GDP.
Certainly Bill Gates and his endeavors have created immense value for many.
None of these points are being contested or purported in the "line of thinking" you mention (the letter I linked I assume?)
These points are being purported/contested here:
"There is nothing worth celebrating about a world where inequality is so extreme that 58% of people are in poverty, while a few dozen billionaires have more than all of their wealth combined"
“There is nothing worth celebrating about a world where 58% of people are in poverty”.
The “inequality” and the presence of billionaires is a distraction from the real problem: poverty.
The real issue lies when you look at the system in a more holistic, long term view, lets say another 200 years. In that time-frame the self propelling cycle of capital will make the accumulation of all wealth lie in a very small group.
In itself it is not a bad thing as long as advancements are still being made and the average quality of life is improved, however it leaves the system with a very centralized point of control.
This point of control could quickly deviate the system for purposes not entirely in the best interest of the species, put it as "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." It may be a possibility but not the great peril. The real issue lies in the central group having accumulated all resources, and then not being able to maintain said resources and leaving the whole system open to a single point of failure by a revolt of some sorts. (starting from scratch can take more energy that the energy required to topple the system, and sometimes there may not enough energy to build over...)
Do we really want to have a society were the integrity of it depends on a single point? Maybe we do, but it just might not end up being the most resilient system.