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Comment by bamboozled | Hacker News Reader

"To solve all this, it's pretty simple,"

I feel if it was simple it would be fixed?

Something can be very simple, and still be very hard to achieve because of resistance to it.

Which is why I don't think it's very simple, you have to convince a lot of powerful people they should pay more tax to achieve said goal, that's not easy.

Simple and easy are not antonyms here -- something can be simple but difficult to accomplish depending on the time and place at the same time. For example, "respect women" is a simple enough phrase but getting the Taliban to follow it is anything but simple.

"Simple" is the opposite of "complicated".

"Easy" is the opposite of "hard".

Reaching a high shelf is very simple. But if you're short, it may be hard.

Calculus is very complicated. But if you're a third-year grad student in mathematics, it may also be very easy for you.

The problem is that at the other end there is also dysfunction. With high taxes and regulations keeping companies and profits in line the result is also a combination of structural inflation and stagnation resulting from the high cost of almost any kind of investment or operations. This is what triggered the fundamental changes which occurred from the late 70s through the 80s with Thatcher and Reagan.

It might be helpful if we could construct metrics for social function that more clearly showed when we approach extremes that interfere with business or social functions.

Things can be simple to fix but actually getting people to implement the fix won't be there are incentives against it.

They are two different problems.

If your simple problem hinges on solving a harder problem to resolve it successfully , then it's not a simple problem.

Solving problems requires both the way and the will - those two things are not co-incident in many politicians.

It's because of who is in control, who has also brainwashed the poor into "someday this could be you living this lifestyle".

> brainwashed the poor

Yes, let the enlightened bureaucrats and their Ivy League-educated advisors make the decisions for the great unwashed masses who clearly cannot think for themselves.

The overly simplistic takes on wealth on this page and the 80%+ who don't bother to vote in the primaries when it counts makes a good case for that.

None of the proposed wealth distribution solutions on this page do anything to address the real problems of lack of housing, poor working conditions, and reducing poverty. Punishing the wealthy doesn't actually fix anything. Wealth redistribution could well be the result of implementing policies that make people's lives better. It could be they may become even wealthier. I don't care either way if the actual problems get addressed.

Nothing gets fixed by punishing the winners after the fact. The real solution is to make the conditions of winning dependent upon providing the solutions to poverty and scarcity in the first place. Which they already do a decent job of in many cases.

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