A Relentless Widening of Disparity in Wealth | Hacker News Reader

A Relentless Widening of Disparity in Wealth

nytimes.com

We're all trapped in this prison of money. Reality is more absurd than anything we could think of. People forget they are fundamentally free. The prison is a mental construct. Even the rich are trapped.

Very true.

But, I think most would rather be trapped in a sprawling country estate than a crappy 1 bd apartment.

I mean there's something a tiny bit arrogant about people going around feeling sorry for other people they consider less fortunate. Are the more fortunate really so terrific? Do you want some much richer guy going around saying poor Tom Townsend, doesn't even have a winter coat, I can't go to anymore parties

Nick: "It’s a small thing, but symbolically important. Our parents’ generation was never interested in keeping up standards, they wanted to be happy. But of course, the last way to be happy is to make it your objective in life."

Tom: "I wonder if our generation is any better than our parents."

Nick: "Oh, it’s far worse. Our generation’s probably the worst since… the Protestant Reformation, it’s barbaric. But a barbarism even worse than the old-fashioned, straightforward kind. Now barbarism is cloaked with all sorts of self-righteousness and moral superiority."

> We're all trapped in this prison of money. People forget they are fundamentally free.

I often think along those lines too, but of course, our perspective is very skewed living in very rich countries, and earning a good wage, being programmers/engineers/etc.

This really hit home for me when I worked minimum wage jobs, and became good friends with people living that life. People working in those jobs MUST go to work 40+ hours merely to have food, shelter and transport to/from work. Nothing else. If you want to have medical coverage, savings or any kind of "pleasure" money, you'll need a second or third job to make that happen.

If you have not seen it already, I highly, highly recommend the first episode of Morgan Spurlock's series "30 Days" where he and his girlfriend attempt to live on minimum wage in a poorer part of the US [1]. tldr; They cry themselves to sleep and struggle horribly. Then Morgan meets a guy working the same jobs as him who has a wife and 3 kids to support. Shocking is not nearly a strong enough word.

For tens of millions of "working class poor" the prison you speak of is the only reality they have.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_30_Days_episodes

We're not free, except for those of us with enough money to buy freedoms. Take the US, the country of NYT and HN. Its imprisonment rate (and maybe still absolute numbers) eclipses every other nation.

In the lives of most people, power still requires violence. (Privileged people don't have to be aware of this.) Hence all the police and military. Otherwise we would have another system, and money (if it exists) would have a different meaning.

at this point i think it's worth reposting the citigroup memos from 2005. in which they were basically saying what the 1% has accomplished and what they want to improve.

http://cryptome.org/0005/rich-pander.pdf

i think there was an update on that paper

From reading the first few pages I'm pretty sure it's not "what the 1% has accomplished and what they want to improve". They are describing existing and emerging "plutonomies" and conclude with the formation of a basket of equities of luxury companies.

Wouldn't it be amazing if Karl Marx's theory that wealth will always concentrate into fewer hands was actually true, just interupted by WWI-WWII era? Marxism is discredited now, it would be funny if that part of his thinking turned out to be true.

0% interest rates and the carried interest tax loophole bear the brunt of the blame for this situation.

Paywall'd

Bizarre. It worked fine for me. I wonder how these paywall algorithms decide who to demand money from? Are you on mobile?

Last I checked, NYTimes.com was still using the "X free views every Y days" model. So chadwickthebold most likely reads the Times more than you do.

if you are using chrome, use

command+shift+N and then cut and paste the url into an incognito window :)

To cross the paywall google the title (http://google.com/search?q=A+Relentless+Widening+of+Disparit...)

Its amazing that Google doesn't nuke sites that do this into oblivion.

i was under the impression they nuke it for crawling purposes

Apparently not, nytimes still has pagerank 9 (out of 10)

Google explicitly endorses this. As long as clicking a link from Google gets you to what the Googlebot saw, it's OK to put a paywall up for everyone else. It maintains Google's SERP reliability and allows publishers to make money on content, so Google views this as a good arrangement. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/74536?hl=en

(Lest you think this is completely evil and self-serving, remember that the alternative is banning paywalls altogether — which means the sites would be forced to rely on ads, which would be even more in Google's interest as the biggest player in the ad game. So I think this might be what Google being selfless looks like.)

http://www.businessinsider.com/here-are-5-tips-you-can-try-t...

Little old, bu should help.

Take-away: Clear your cookies/use another browser.

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