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Comment by clairity | Hacker News Reader

> "[hyper-capitalism] is defined by unlimited international capital mobility to evade regulation and taxation at the national level, alongside definite limits on the ability of labor to act in the same autonomous way."

such inequities imbalance the power between labor and capital, which then destabilizes the social structures resting on these economic (and political) foundations. power is a highly dynamic, and as a result, a highly destabilizing force. no (static) socioeconomic idealogy (that we've come up with so far) can dominate it, not even capitalism.

and that means we can never truly rest in our vigilence to create and retain the properity, peace and stability that we enjoy only fleetingly.

the balance between labor and capital has tipped wildly and we need to enact measures--progressive and dynamic taxes/tariffs, both removing and enacting regulations, de-monopolizing markets, etc.--to bring it back into balance.

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I'd like all belligerants to pick a target Gini Coefficient number. Then we manage to that number. Whoever is in power will push the balance towards their number.

I'm just so exhausted by all the rhetoric, kabuki, ideology, dogma, propaganda. Arguing about the placement of the deck chairs as the Titanic sinks.

Gini coefficient is a very blunt measure of inequality. You could have two countries, one with more equality, but a lower standard of living for the middle class and one country with higher inequality, but a much better standard of living for the middle class.

The 2nd (with higher inequality) is obviously preferred.

> The 2nd (with higher inequality) is obviously preferred.

Is this really obvious to modern left?

No in fact the modern left doesn't care absolute realties but all about relative power.

This statement really challenged me. I had to consider if I agree.

My first response was that the lefties (catchall phrase for purpose of this reply) I know fret over fairness. To even frame discussions in terms of power is seen as distasteful and largely avoided.

Then I was reminded that many lefties, especially younger cohorts, talk about privilege. In Ezra Klein's interview with Will Wilkinson, they discuss "white privilege" in terms of power. And power is a topic Ezra Klein is far more comfortable discussing (compared to me).

In conclusion, I mosdef agree that we lefties have a more systems-based view, where the relative power of the belligerents are considered. Further, the themes of privilege, equality, bias, opportunity, fairness (as used by misc lefties sub-cohorts) as rhetoric are really talking about relative power.

Krugman agrees with you. What's a better measure?

That's a tough question. Like most things that are complex, there is probably no one measure that accurately captures inequality.

What would make sense to me would be measuring the wealth of the majority of the population (3 middle quintiles) and then bringing up the bottom quintile to an acceptable level with transfer payments.

That reminds me as well, a lot of the inequality measures that you see ignore government transfers. So yes, the Gini would measure employment income, but it's not an accurate picture of actual income at the end of the year.

FWIW, geek me would be ok with a basket of measures. Life expectancy, average weight & height, purchasing power, savings rate. I'm just hoping to find reasonably simple metrics which are least wrong proxies for larger concerns.

We probably should do that. It would be a great governance and political variable.

We have targets for inflation and employment already, writing a Gini coefficient into law (in my country such thing would go into the Constitution) and forcing the government to chase it would be great.

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