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Comment by unclebucknasty | Hacker News Reader

Several years ago, I saw a replay of a news show from the 60s on which the guest was MLK Jr. The interviewer suggested that King's success, as well as that of a few other "colored" people was proof that nothing was wrong with the status quo.

Segregation and all the other ills of the day had nothing to do with the challenges faced by "colored" people. They just needed to be smarter and work harder.

Putting aside that there are various degrees of poverty, I will just congratulate you and your friends. But, studies show that economic mobility is far more difficult than in the past and more difficult in the U.S. than in many western European nations.

The severe and worsening income and wealth stratification of the past few decades is no accident. There are structural problems with our economy. That a relative few can overcome this to some degree neither disproves nor mitigates that fact.

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You state two discrete events and in the next sentence talk as though they are causally related. Maybe economic mobility is harder in the US now than before. Could economic strangulation by regulation be the cause of it? Maybe the wealth transfer induced by central banking is? There are many unknown variables that could cause that. But people only cling to what fashionable prescription makes them looks good. The evidence of >500 million people lifting themselves out of poverty since liberalization of china's and India's economy proves that it is possible beyond a measure of doubt if economic freedom is increased. But that is not a fashionable opinion is it? Any flavor of marxism/socialism/redistributionism is good except what works. Funny

Well, yes, because the tens of millions of people working 3 minimum wage jobs aren't being "strangled by regulation".

It isn't a "lack of economic freedom" that makes the poor get screwed by shitty jobs and all the fees tacked onto poor-people services, it's the cottage industry that's sprung up around screwing the poor. The poor have little to no political power (and they wouldn't have time to exercise it, juggling their three part-time minimum wage jobs), so there's very few people actually looking out for them.

It's funny, when we do peel back regulations, and the poor get screwed further, these myth-of-overregulation people never reflect on that. They never stop to think that maybe, just maybe, the poor are getting screwed even further because it isn't regulations that are hurting them in the first place.

The liberalization of China's and India's economies proves beyond doubt what's possible when "economic freedom is increased", yet there are many unknown variables that could be suppressing economic mobility in the U.S.? Interesting that you find one so easy to explain, but not the other. But, then you seem to have figured it all out mid-comment! It's that dastardly regulation! Or is it? What, exactly, are you saying?

Whatever it is, you seem to suggest that the success of India and China has nothing to do with trade agrements. Nothing to do with currency manipulation. Nothing to do with technology. Nothing to do with the outsourcing of manufacturing and other jobs to these low wage countries. Just increase "economic freedom" (what does that even mean exactly) and voila!

And, why is it that even with regulation and suppressed "economic freedom", U.S. corporations realized record profits, while unemployment remained high, and wages low? Exactly whose "economic freedom" is being decreased here? How is it that we can pay CEOs so many times the average worker's salary even while that CEO is driving the company over a cliff? Meanwhile, full-time workers find themselves below the poverty line? No problems there, right? It's the workers' fault. Or perhaps it's the regulations, but which regulation(s)?

I'm just not following your argument. Are you saying there are no structural problems with our economy that cause the poor to be disenfranchised? And, what redistribution have I advocated, to which you are taking exception?

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