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Comment by wernercd | Hacker News Reader

"stalin reduced inequality" There was still inequality... the ruling class lived like kings and everyone else lived in squalor.

"new deal reduced" and didn't remove. Inequality has grown steadily with a wider range of "all boats rise unequally".

"Why reduce" the goals aren't in question... simply the results. You can say you want to reduce inequality... but if the end result is more inequality and more suffering? then your stated goals don't match reality.

"inequality reduces social cohesion, promotes corruption, reduces democracy" all things that happen in the march towards "equality" and "equity".

"few wealthy" the problem is, again, the results... the harder the push for "equity" the more likely its everyone who suffers - not just the "few rich made poorer".

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> "new deal reduced" and didn't remove. Inequality has grown steadily with a wider range of "all boats rise unequally".

Here is the first line of the comment you are responding to:

> You can't eliminate inequality but you can reduce it. We can't eliminate disease but there is still medicine.

That was the important part. Making things better is desirable even if you can't make them perfect.

Inequality has indeed grown steadily. This is not because of FDR's programs, though, but because of measures taken since and other events: reducing marginal tax rates, reducing inheritance taxes, the weakening of the labor movement, globalization, and so forth. Also, incidentally, by asserting this you are contradicting your own previous assertion that nothing anyone has ever done has had an effect on inequality.

> contradicting

My main assertion is the stronger the push to end inequality, the more it does the opposite... the strongest pushes like Communism and Socialism are easily viewable through historical examples - or using present examples (IE: Venezuela). Yet pushes to use "Social Democracy" to enact the changes have the same, albeit slower, effect of not working or causing horrible effects (IE: growing inequality).

"here's the first line: can't eliminate disease"

likewise, if you want to walk that metaphore... we are approaching a time where diseases are increasing resistant to medicine and we are making things worse by creating worse diseases (IE: MRSA and antibiotic resistant "super" strains). We work to "cure diseases", have short term successes and, ultimately, make things worse.

you can look at countries like Sweden that are held up as examples of how it should be done... and see an increase in inequality across the board.

"make things better" I'm all for working towards better... but sweeping changes generally don't work because of unintended consequences (IE: Globalization and higher taxes closing small businesses and hurting competition and rising prices and etc)

Maybe I could be more clear... but I stand by my belief that the harder someone pushes for "equality" or "equity"... the more unequal and inequitable the results are.

> likewise, if you want to walk that metaphore... we are approaching a time where diseases are increasing resistant to medicine and we are making things worse by creating worse diseases (IE: MRSA and antibiotic resistant "super" strains). We work to "cure diseases", have short term successes and, ultimately, make things worse.

Antibiotic resistance is surely a problem but it doesn't indicate a general failure of medicine. On all other fronts medicine continues to improve, and even in the case of antibiotic resistance we aren't giving up. Phage therapy is a thing. New antibiotics continue to be found. We strive to prevent the mis-prescription of antibiotics in, for example, animal feed. And interestingly, the slowdown in antibiotic discovery is in part a market failure: it's hard to make back research costs with antibiotics, so the free market doesn't provide them even though we need them. It's not a good metaphor for free market fundamentalists.

> I stand by my belief that the harder someone pushes for "equality" or "equity"... the more unequal and inequitable the results are.

I won't argue with you further.

Do you think the US was more or less democratic after the New Deal?

More or less prosperous? More or less stable? More or less able to innovate and deliver?

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