"We set the bar at half of what a typical American household earns. "
Yeah, relative income isn't really a good measure. You want to raise the floor for people, not (necessarily) narrow the gap between rich and poor.
Yeah, relative income isn't really a good measure. You want to raise the floor for people, not (necessarily) narrow the gap between rich and poor.
I generally agree that if it was true that the inequality would lead to consistent floor raising it would be fine, but it doesn't.
But the reply to that is that it is orthogonal to the discussion. Power should be distributed in a way that increases efficiency and not just for the virtue of doing so.
Removing it and weakening sociopathic predators is correct. They will cauase less damage when they are not constantly given advantages.
yes, "destroy hierarchies" is utopian. But that's a complete straw man version of "reduce very high levels of inequality that have highly visible political impacts".
really? Have you ever met anyone like this?
Cool story, but also another straw man - not relevant to the article and to "We should absolutely aim to lower this gap".
The only agency it reduces is the agency for people to make decisions about what should be done with other people's wealth. Which is not a productive agency for them to have as they've got an incredible conflict of interest to just waste it on themselves.
Medial and pre-medieval times, debt cancellation was also broadly necessary and done. Why?
Yes!
> But the reply to that is that it is orthogonal to the discussion.
Bafflegab.
> Power should be distributed in a way that increases efficiency
Sophistry. Why is "efficiency" a goal and how would you even define it?
Look at the current pollical great power of Oligarchs. Does this strike you as "efficient"? I see it as producing poor outcomes, and that's all.
[1] 1.99 % if we want to be precise.
No, it really is the wealth inequality.
Why is this better factually, not ideologically.
Also narrowing the gap is a way to raise the floor including in absence of growth while raising the floor without narrowing the gap depends on growth. But I think this is not too relevant in practice because taking a lot of money from a few wealthy people will often result in rather small changes as the money has to be spread among a lot of people.
But that still isn't a convincing reason (I want to be convinced)
1) Raise the floor for everyone
2) Work to make sure that the path for talented (however you define that) people to go from low earners to high earners is as simple as possible.