Hacker News Reader

Comment by jrflowers | Hacker News Reader

The poster you’re responding to is pretty laser focused on inserting a statement about the overwhelming might of their intellect into the comments on this article. This isn’t so much a discussion about compensation but more a deft display of nth dimensional chess that can only be engaged in by neigh and other titanic geniuses that agree with them.

View on HN

Believe it or not, but no.

There’s simply no problem with people having more money, and once people realize this we can move on.

Housing issues are supply issues exacerbated by zoning and local nimby governments. It can be resolved without income ceilings.

Health care issues can be solved with single payer healthcare or other schemes. Again no income neutering required.

And sure you can fund these things and more with taxes, but no realistic taxation scheme will result in there not being extreme disparities.

Funny enough young Americans waste time complaining about rich people instead of just voting, which would solve most of their issues.

I stand corrected. Your musings about how to solve housing in the health care CEO compensation thread have convinced me that you are not just posting online to sound smart

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/08/07/for-most-...

https://archive.nytimes.com/krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/1...

https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2019/

Even with more conservative approaches, wage growth of lower earners is far outpaced by top earners.

https://www.aei.org/articles/have-wages-stagnated-for-decade....

There is absolutely no reason to expect equal wage growth to begin with.

That's not the argument. Morby said, and I quote;

> to an unreasonable extent then that is a problem....fairly compensatory to those who contribute

There is a reason to expect reasonably equal growth, as all wage classes are contributing.

Also if you are going to say something like;

> There is absolutely no reason to expect equal wage growth to begin with.

Then what's your argument?

> Funny enough young Americans waste time complaining about rich people instead of just voting, which would solve most of their issues.

This is hopelessly naive. Whoever you vote for, your vote only matters one day a year. The other 364.25 days are for the lobbyists.

This sort of defeatist thinking is a plague in America. Consider local city councils who decide on approving special permits for housing. You might opt out from voting and some nimby joins and whoops there is another huge development that doesn’t happen, meanwhile rent continues to increase.

I vote. I participate in local politics. And yet, decade after decade, my voice is overridden by the desires of the ultra-wealthy. Where I live, developers run the city, with many council members literally working for development firms for their day jobs, and yet rent continues to increase. The developers are making a killing out there, they aren't struggling to afford their tenth condo building like the individuals and families struggling to find a rental within their price range.

I’m confused by this comment - are you suggesting rent wouldn’t increase if there were fewer developer associated people around?

>> You might opt out from voting and some nimby joins and whoops there is another huge development that doesn’t happen, meanwhile rent continues to increase.

I was directly replying to this accusation that I'm to blame for idly standing by whilst nimbys oppress the developers. I respond that none of that lines up with my local situation, and yet your boogeyman of rent increase is ever-present.

By your own admission it seems there are few nimbys and plenty of development. Voting alone will not stop rent increasing. My point was there is a very particular class of issue that can be prevented.

The phrase I responded to was

> ... [complaining] instead of just voting, which would solve most of their issues.

You presented "just voting" as a panacaea. You've retreated to the "[single] very particular class of issue" while sounding very triumphant that I'm the fool. Classic motte&bailey.

I don't know about where you live, but I've never had more than one to three opportunities to "just vote" per year. I spend the rest of the time "complaining."

Or you can vote, and the people who win are corrupt [1]. I have been voting every year since I got the right to. Things have only gotten worse [2-3].

[1]: https://effectivegov.uchicago.edu/news/power-begets-corrupti... [2]: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadian-health-care-system... [3]: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/crea-housing-data-1.6843592

You think we can solve problems otherwise but you never explain what is wrong with income ceilings. Why can't we build more houses and our a ceiling on income.

Here's a dirty secret in case you say all the billionaires will run away with their wealth. They aren't worth much.

Bezos isn't Amazon and if he was never born those people would work somewhere and the online store market would be divided somehow.

Billionaires harness labor and capture demand they create little of it then most of the benefits accrue to people who buy things not build things.

The version of it's a wonderful life starring Bezos has him stumbling around Bedford falls marveling that virtually nothing has changed and terminates with him begging Clarence to put him back because he misses his yacht.

> the online store market would be divided somehow.

There is online shopping other than Amazon.

Literally the point

There are hosts of measurable problems with massive wealth inequality. You paint is as one person “just having more”, but that’s a ridiculous reduction.

It’s actually one person having more than literally a billion other people combined, and THATS a problem

I wonder who's spending the PR and lobbying money to prevent all these wonderful solutions from being enacted, and when people "just vote" for these solutions anyway, buying politicians who stop good bills, make voting harder or just ignore the voters.

Taxing the rich is less about the money, and more about the power it buys.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com