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Comment by anamax | Hacker News Reader

> Or do you believe economic inequality is a negative externality (like pollution) that needs to be remedied?

I'm pretty sure that you're not measuring inequality in a reasonable fashion.

Larry Ellison has a lot more resources than I do, but the net worth ratio is far greater than the opportunities ratio.

Yes, he could afford his own space program, but we both can afford to go diving. He can't drive his (much more expensive) car on 101 any faster than I can. And so on.

I'm actually running into this problem. I'm trying to get someone to help with a project. One of the sticking points is that the potential reward, while "huge" by some measures, won't significantly change what he can do. Since your model predicts otherwise, it's clearly wrong.

How about you figure out how to measure the actual "problem" before proposing solutions?

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The gap between what you can do and what Larry Ellison can do isn't as relevant as the gap between what you and Larry Ellison can do and what your average single mom living in welfare in Durham can do.

This is exactly the point that HN seems to be oblivious toward.

HN people live in a bubble and seemingly have never met anyone who is in real poverty -- they think because in college they had to eat Ramen they were poor. They are clueless.

Real poverty is being illiterate, being malnourished in the womb, being raised in a crime-zone, growing up without dental care.

This type of "Real Poverty" has massively increased since the government launched its "War on Poverty" in the 1960s. The dropout rate is higher, crime is higher, more families are broken.

The War on Poverty was launched in the 1930s, and before that it was the mission of various religious organizations.

The increase in the "Real Poverty" is due to economic factors like giving all the jobs to China, dumbing down education, and civil rights/feminist revolutions which led to social destabilization and people falling through cracks.

Sweden and Norway and France and Holland are not having issues with "Real Poverty." And they all have big welfare states.

The welfare state concept is sound. It lifts segments of the population in Real Poverty out of poverty. The problem in the USA is that for every social program helping a family out of poverty, there are 10 programs putting them back in their place.

> The gap between what you can do and what Larry Ellison can do isn't as relevant as the gap between what you and Larry Ellison can do and what your average single mom living in welfare in Durham can do.

Yes, but the income inequality measures under discussion say the opposite, which is my point. (Do the arithmetic. $10k to $200k, which is way more than I make, is 20x. Larry is way more than 200x past me in wealth.)

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