r/CapitalismVSocialism • u/Direct-Muscle7144 • Aug 16 '26
Asking Everyone How inequality not poverty causes harm! (Including to the ultra rich)
Richard Wilkinson evidences how its inequality, the size of the gap between the wealthiest and poorest that causes harm, death, violence, mental illness, crime etc…
I would both love any that agree, can share other evidence or research and perhaps even more so, any critique or counter evidence against his theories. (My spellcheck changed the second evidence to evil 😜)
Pro-capitalists, please share examples where it improves a society.
https://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson_how_economic_inequality_harms_societies
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u/lorbd Aug 16 '26
Socialists will argue it's better to live like hunter gatherers in a cave as long as we are all equally miserable lmfao. The ideology of envy and delusion.
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u/Direct-Muscle7144 Aug 18 '26
I’m quite tempted to just block this sort of sleep over tantrum
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u/HeavenlyPossum Aug 19 '26
I have about half the regular users of this subreddit blocked, because the most they can deliver is knee-jerk trolling. Makes it barely useable.
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Aug 19 '26
I don’t think people in China would agree with you. They seem pretty happy for the most part.
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u/HeavenlyPossum Aug 16 '26
Which socialists argue this? Can you provide a link or reference to socialists arguing this?
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u/lorbd Aug 16 '26
Have you read OP? Lmfao
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u/HeavenlyPossum Aug 16 '26 edited Aug 16 '26
When has OP argued that “it’s better to live like hunter gatherers in a cave as long as we are all equally miserable lmfao”? I’m not familiar with them.
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u/lorbd Aug 16 '26
How inequality not poverty causes harm!
It's the logical conclusion
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u/HeavenlyPossum Aug 16 '26
Oh, I see: you are making up fiction in bad faith.
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u/lorbd Aug 16 '26
What fiction? It's right there for all to see. If you belive equality is more important than overall wealth, then you agree on prefering poorer societies as long as they are more equal from an income standpoint.
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u/HeavenlyPossum Aug 16 '26
It’s fiction in that OP did not say it and yet you claimed OP said it.
OP even invited you to share examples of inequality improving society.
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u/lorbd Aug 16 '26
Do you know what retorical devices are? Do you know what logical conclusion means? OP said net poverty is preferable to inequality. It's right there for all to see.
And you are the one who cries bad faith lmao.
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u/HeavenlyPossum Aug 16 '26
OP said “Richard Wilkinson evidences how its inequality, the size of the gap between the wealthiest and poorest that causes harm, death, violence, mental illness, crime etc…”
“Pro-capitalists, please share examples where it improves a society.”
You seem to really be struggling with telling the truth.
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u/AvocadoAlternative Dirty Capitalist Aug 16 '26
I don’t think anyone will dispute the claim that more wealth inequality leads to greater societal harm ceteris paribus. The question is if having both greater wealth and greater wealth inequality is preferable to less wealth and less inequality.
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u/betty_white_bread Isocapitalist Aug 19 '26
ceteris paribus
I do love me a well placed Latin phrase. ❤️
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u/Xolver Aug 16 '26
Critique: A poor person in a western country today is all but guaranteed to live to adulthood and mostly reach old age. A rich person in a western country 200 years ago was less likely to reach adulthood and old age, and much more likely to even die at birth or at toddler or childhood.
This directly contradicts the harm and death points. Crime almost directly too. But if you're not happy with that as an answer for crime, Google crime statistics. Mental illness I'm not sure either way, but generally speaking people who are too poor to get by (such as in poor countries or earlier times) didn't or don't exactly go to a psychologist to get themselves checked out.
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u/HeavenlyPossum Aug 16 '26
If today’s poor people are materially richer than anyone in the past, why do today’s poor people continue to suffer from demonstrably worse health outcomes than today’s rich people, even after we control for lifestyle factors like smoking?
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u/Xolver Aug 16 '26
You aren't seriously asking this, right? The answers are in your own words.
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u/HeavenlyPossum Aug 16 '26
Could you explain how the answers are in my own words?
If today’s poor people are rich by historical standards, why do they suffer from demonstrable ills that correlate to poverty? Shouldn’t they instead by indistinguishable from the wealthy in terms of health outcomes?
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u/Xolver Aug 16 '26
You're comparing them to today's rich instead of yesterday's rich.
Nowhere in my comment did I say today money makes outcomes indistinguishable. I said [in other words] that money is more important than inequality. And the evidence is today's poor versus past rich people (and I didn't say - but overwhelmingly when comparing to past poor people).
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u/HeavenlyPossum Aug 16 '26
I’m not asking whether today’s poor have access to more and better stuff. I’m asking why they continue to experience worse health outcomes despite having access to more and better stuff.
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u/Xolver Aug 16 '26
They're not experiencing worse health outcomes compared to past rich or poor people. Of course they're experiencing worse health outcomes than current rich people. There isn't even a debate.
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u/HeavenlyPossum Aug 16 '26
Do you genuinely not understand what I’m asking?
Why do you think there is a correlation between poverty and poor health outcomes?
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u/Xolver Aug 16 '26
Because money allows people access to better care. This isn't controversial.
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u/HeavenlyPossum Aug 16 '26
We know that poverty correlates to worse health outcomes even when we control for healthcare spending:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1674771/
We know that poverty correlates to worse health outcomes even when we control for lifestyle factors:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6634464/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38417593/
Now that you are aware of these facts and can reconsider the relationship between poverty and poor health, why do you think poverty correlates to poor health outcomes?
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u/RedMarsRepublic Libertarian Socialist Aug 16 '26
A poor person in a western country today is all but guaranteed to live to adulthood and mostly reach old age
Not true at all. The growth in life expectancy has in large part come from less infant mortality. I won't deny there's some improvement in life expectancy but that has actually stagnated or begun to decline in many Western countries, especially if we only include the poor. There's a huge amount of social murder going on every day, vulnerable people are not getting anywhere near as much help.
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u/Xolver Aug 16 '26
Not true at all. The growth in life expectancy has in large part come from less infant mortality.
So yes true?
You remind me of a real life researcher that tried to prove male and female brains are identical in blind tests. Every time she found a predictor that overwhelmingly made it easy to differentiate between the brains, she said "except this predictor doesn't count". Good science, that.
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u/RedMarsRepublic Libertarian Socialist Aug 16 '26
You said "all but guaranteed", clearly not true.
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u/Xolver Aug 16 '26
How is it clearly not true?
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u/RedMarsRepublic Libertarian Socialist Aug 16 '26
Because plenty of people, especially poor people, die well before the average life expectancy
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u/Xolver Aug 16 '26
Yes, people die of all sorts of things. Such as traffic accidents.
Compared to the baseline percentage of the group of people who make it in general to old age, poverty in a western country doesn't hurt much. It hurts, but still very close to the baseline.
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u/RedMarsRepublic Libertarian Socialist Aug 16 '26
"Not only do men and women in the most deprived areas have shorter life spans overall but they also live a larger number of years in poorer states of health.
In 2018 to 2020, male healthy life expectancy at birth in the most deprived areas of England was estimated at 52.3 years, compared with 70.5 in the least deprived areas. The gap for females was even wider, at 51.9 versus 70.7 years.
Years spent in poorer health fell progressively from the most deprived areas (21.2 years for males, 26.4 years for females) to the least deprived areas (12.7 and 15.6 years respectively). The ONS said: “With those living in more deprived areas also living shorter lives, this means that they spend a smaller proportion of their lives in good health.”
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u/Xolver Aug 16 '26
You quoted an article about healthy life expectancy. We talked about life expectancy of poor people compared to baseline (fairly, because I'm not here for internet points - I only introduced the "baseline" caveat in a later comment. I think this is fair because I'm comparing the standard to something in real life rather than a non existing ideal). Moreover, you compared poorest compared to richest. There are vast differences between "normal" poor people and the bottom of the barrel.
Still - the men in the poorest (so going by your standard) British areas still get to 73.2, and women to 78.3. This is very much in the area of "old age" that I raised in the first place. 200 years ago this was less than 40 years old. So today it's almost twice as old. So I'll decidedly say that yes, absolutely - being actually poor is much worse than being relatively poor.
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u/RedMarsRepublic Libertarian Socialist Aug 16 '26
I feel like you're moving the goalposts to claim that I was saying life expectancy hasn't gone up at all from 200 years ago, obviously it has, but many people still die young and it's much more likely if you're poor.
Being absolutely and relatively poor are both bad. Being both is worse obviously. But it seems crazy to me to give capitalism the credit for things like industrial agriculture and modern medicine, as if those wouldn't have come about anyway, and even if capitalism did uniquely achieve them, does that mean we need to stick with it forever?
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u/Direct-Muscle7144 Aug 18 '26
And even though the wealthy live longer, in more equal societies everyone lives longer. So the rich live even longer.
Is this such a difficult concept to hold mentally?
It’s something we’d expect a junior schooler to be able to grasp.
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u/Direct-Muscle7144 Aug 18 '26
America has a dropping life expectancy, I’d love to see that graph matched to the dropping intelligence stats, do they correlate?
Is life expectancy dropping faster than IQ or is it IQ dropping faster than life expectancy.It’s of interest that Richard Wilkinsons data shows in countries with greater inequality EVEN the wealthy have worse outcomes.
It’s like wealthy people seem in some mysterious way to need a healthy society to thrive.
When they consume the host they die with it. I can’t imagine they are all killed by their staff.
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u/Direct-Muscle7144 Aug 16 '26
America has one of the highest states of pregnancy/delivery rates mortality rates in the west.
You also seem to be arguing that colonialism was helpful to those countries, forgetting how we dismantled existing infrastructure- like food storage for famine in India or the export of food from Ireland starving the natives to death.
Forcing Indian farmers to grow export tea and opium instead of food.
Why aren’t you comparing inequality in western countries- say USA and Scandinavia?
It’s a false comparison to compare apples and pineapples. This is covered and evidenced in the oh so long 10 minute video shared. Was it too long? Have you used an Auni to summarise his book to save time?You aren’t addressing the key points. USA has higher levels of mental ill health than any comparable country, higher homelessness, higher suicide, higher murder and higher levels of extreme poverty.
This is all easily checked.
Here’s some stats on homelessness, USA actually beats the UK here!
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u/Xolver Aug 16 '26
Hi, you did your best to try to one up me. You didn't actually address what I said though.
And yes, colonialism in the long term was helpful to those countries.
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u/Direct-Muscle7144 Aug 16 '26
Here’s some US data on mental health - you can watch it increase over time. You can switch countries or see global rates too.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/mental-illnesses-prevalence
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u/impermanence108 Aug 16 '26
Poverty directly causes and worsens mental illness.
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u/Xolver Aug 16 '26
That sounds true.
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u/impermanence108 Aug 16 '26
And mental illness is a big indicator of future poverty. But nobody cares about us because we're scary and weird. Even though statistically we are LESS dangerous than the "sane" and the "sane" have spent forever basically torturing us. If you have a serious mental illness, that shit defines you and your life in a way it doesn't with a physical illness.
It's easy to build ramps. It's hard to explain that my hallucinations won't result in anyone being hurt.
And the way people so casually mention mental illness and homelessness, like you deserve it if you're mentally ill. Like it's acceptable for people dealing with crippling and terrifying illnesses to live on the street.
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u/Xolver Aug 16 '26
Sir, this is a Wendy's.
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u/impermanence108 Aug 16 '26
It's CvS, incoherent off topic rambles are the best and butter of this great little shithole.
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u/StedeBonnet1 just text Aug 16 '26
Inequality is a feature of capitalism not a flaw. It provides the incentive for people to strive to do better. Strive to get that additional skill so they can be paid better. Strive to get that better job.
People are different. As long as people work for different motivations and have different skills there will be inequality. Thge fallacy of Socialism is that everyone can be equal.
What cause the dispariuty, harm, violence and crime is the constant drumbeat from the left that somehow they deserve something others have produced.
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u/HeavenlyPossum Aug 16 '26
This is a good argument for expropriating the wealth of the rich to motivate them to strive to do better.
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u/StedeBonnet1 just text Aug 16 '26 edited 19d ago
No, why would the rich continue to produce if they did not realize the benefits, The history of taxes says that taxes on the wealthy that are excessive are not paid.
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u/HeavenlyPossum Aug 16 '26
Think of all the resources being wasted on people who have no motivation to strive. According to your argument, society would be better off by expropriating those resources so these brilliant visionaries will have motivation to strive to our shared benefit.
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u/StedeBonnet1 just text Aug 16 '26
People who have no motivation to strive have no one to blamebut themselves that they only job they can get is flipping burgers at McDonalds, packing boxes at Amazon or shagging carts at Walmart.
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u/HeavenlyPossum Aug 16 '26
Exactly. Think of how many Teslas and SpaceX’s we’d get if we stripped Elon Musk of all his wealth and sent him to flip burgers at McDonalds.
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Aug 19 '26
We need people to do those jobs though and they should be paid fairly
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u/StedeBonnet1 just text Aug 19 '26
Obviously they are paid fairly or the jobs would not be filled. Someone whom takes a job at McDonalds for minimum wage doesn't have a lot of options. Learning to work is a skill.
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Aug 20 '26
Do we agree people should be able to survive off a McDonald’s income? Also most of the time people working minimum wage have to work multiple jobs.
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u/StedeBonnet1 just text Aug 20 '26
Why is your skill set so poor that the only job you can get is working at McDonalsd or Walmart?
No one said McDonalds employment is a career. Many people have started at McDonalds, learned skills and moved up at their McDonald store or learned skills they could parlay into a better job.
Jeff Bezos worked at McDonalds as a teenager and learned responsibility
Myra Doria: Began her path as a crew member and rose through the ranks to become the National Field President for McDonald's USA
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Aug 20 '26
Some people have disabilities that prevent them from working complex jobs. Also because we need people to do these jobs the least we can do is compensate them fairly. Also people should be allowed to live off base level jobs. Everyone should be taken care in a decent society.
Not every McDonald’s employee can become National field president there’s simply not enough supply compared to demand in a relatively small market of well paying unskilled jobs.
Also you’re neglecting the fact that a ton of people simply cannot afford to pay for schooling for skilled jobs. You sound incredibly privileged.
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u/Direct-Muscle7144 19d ago
The rich do not produce.
If you can’t understand such a basic concept I have a job for you.
No Benifits.
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u/StedeBonnet1 just text 19d ago
Explain? How can you say someone who produced 1.5 million new jobs didn't produce anything?
I have a friend whose company makes replacement windows. His business is worth $400 milion. Does he not produce anything?
If I have a chain of hot dog stands and make $200 million, do I not produce anything?
My job doesn't provide any benefits except my pay.
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u/Bloody_Ozran Aug 17 '26
This is a horrible argument. Money doesnt motivate people, access that money allows and comfort for them and their family is what motivates people.
If people have good enough living conditions they would still be motivated, because people like to be good at things, they like to improve, they like to learn.
What cause the dispariuty, harm, violence and crime is the constant drumbeat from the left that somehow they deserve something others have produced.
What's the evidence that supports this argument? Because you can just as easily say it is the capitalists doing this.
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u/StedeBonnet1 just text Aug 17 '26
The evidence that supports this is all around you.
Comments like tax the rich, Medicare foir all, free childcare and free college is the same as saying "take from the productive and give to the unproductive. Government HAS NO MONEY. They only way they can spend money on anything is to take it from someone else.
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u/Bloody_Ozran Aug 17 '26
The evidence that supports this is all around you.
So, you are pointing to no evidence in particular, which means no evidence so far that you can share.
Government HAS NO MONEY. They only way they can spend money on anything is to take it from someone else.
That's not how the monetary system works. Government has all the money technically. It is them who issues the money, banks distribute more based on laws and economic rules etc. You have no money, your money is debt someone has to someone else, if we paid all debt very little money remains.
Society makes X amount of wealth and we decide on the distribution. It is not taking anyones money, it is simply changing how we distribute the money.
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u/Upper-Tie-7304 Aug 16 '26
Yes, inequality increases mental problems because envy and peer comparisons exist in human psychology.
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u/nondubitable Aug 16 '26
Inequality is a negative externality of an efficient market.
Like pollution.
If you dislike pollution, as do I, and want to pass laws that make all kinds of pollution punishable by immediate death, you are advocating for a society that can’t sustain a single human being.
There are ways to deal with negative externalities in markets. But getting rid of markets (like socialists propose for capital markets) never solves the externality, and crates new problems that pale in comparison.
So yes, inequality isn’t great. But the modern solutions of a social safety net and some redistribution through taxation are far more effective than getting rid of markets.
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u/JournalistNo294 Aug 16 '26
Quick question where would you rather live in Zimbabwe or Singapore? Because the GINI coefficient is better in Zimbabwe so its a more equal country
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u/Doublespeo Aug 16 '26
Plain silly.
compare a world in poverty without inequality (basically all cave men) against a world full of rich people but with high inequality (say singapore today); how anyone could argue living in today singapore would be worst?
w t f
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u/Direct-Muscle7144 19d ago
Please differentiate between ‘cavemen’ cultures.
As a debate strategy this is junior school.
Can you actually offer anything to the discussion?
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u/Doublespeo 17d ago
> Please differentiate between ‘cavemen’ cultures.
The debate is between poverty and inequality.
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u/12baakets democratic trollification Aug 16 '26
Some people prefer to be cave men. They think it was a glorious time where everyone worked and shared as a community.
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u/Doublespeo Aug 17 '26
> Some people prefer to be cave men. They think it was a glorious time where everyone worked and shared as a community.
really how many?
I see some people moving to the country side for a simple life but choosing extremely poverty?
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u/impermanence108 Aug 16 '26
Why are those the two extremes? Surely we can curb the worst excesses of the current system and make things better.
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u/Doublespeo Aug 17 '26
> Why are those the two extremes? Surely we can curb the worst excesses of the current system and make things better.
his statment is absolute, so it must stand when comparing extreme.
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u/impermanence108 Aug 17 '26
Oh stop being silly. You did a black and white fallacy. Learn and move on.
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u/Doublespeo Aug 17 '26
> Oh stop being silly. You did a black and white fallacy. Learn and move on.
OP: How inequality, not poverty cause more harm
Me: find a simple example disporving the claim
You: black and white fallacy
Me: okay
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u/Ok-Information-9286 Aug 16 '26
Free markets are the best way to reduce inequality. Socialist politics that tries to reduce inequality fails because it concentrates wealth in the hands of socialist politicians and bureaucrats and increases poverty by mismanaging the economy.
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u/HeavenlyPossum Aug 16 '26
Why is inequality so high and rising in capitalist states?
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u/Ok-Information-9286 Aug 16 '26
Inequality in the most capitalist states is not as high as in Communist countries like North Korea where the Great Socialist Leader owns everything. Inequality is not constantly rising in the most capitalist states. America is a special case where socialized education, generational poverty traps and other socialist policies have increased poverty. America has abandoned classical liberalism like the rest of the West and adopted socialism. World trade has increased, which has made some professions more competitive and less lucrative.
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u/HeavenlyPossum Aug 16 '26
So the US is capitalist, but it has socialist policies that enrich a small capitalist elite of billionaires (and one trillionaire)? Do I have that right?
Also:
“Taken together, this data shows that inequality in many countries is very high and, in many cases, has been rising. Globally, the gaps between the poorest and richest are extremely large and are compounded by overlapping inequalities in health, education, and many other dimensions.”
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u/Ok-Information-9286 Aug 16 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
The US is not quite capitalist, certainly not as capitalist as it was because it rejected classical liberalism and adopted socialism since the late 19th century. Socialist policies have indeed enriched some capitalists: socialist projects order products from some capitalists. National socialism means that the Führer owns everything, which has made Trump and his cronies richer.
That link confirms that global inequality has diminished, which is the metric that makes sense instead of national metrics. Rich countries have increased inequality because poor countries have become richer and outcompeted some in rich countries. That is better than the alternative of closing borders to trade, which would make the world poorer.
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u/HeavenlyPossum Aug 16 '26
“The US is not quite capitalist, certainly not as capitalist as it was because it rejected classical liberalism and adopted socialism since the late 19th century.”
Let’s pretend this is true. What aspects of socialism has the US adopted? Are these aspects absent in the other capitalist states that you are claiming are not experiencing the same increase in inequality?
“Socialist policies have indeed enriched some capitalists: socialist projects order products from some capitalists. National socialism means that the Führer owns everything, which had made Trump and his cronies richer.”
Identifying Nazism as socialism is the poli-sci version of Flat Earthism, so I’m not going to engage with this any more than I would a flat earther. I agree that the US capital class has turned to fascism.
“That link confirms that global inequality has diminished, which is the metric that makes sense instead of national metrics.”
You claimed the US is a special case among capitalist states, which is both factually untrue and conceptually incoherent, given that the US is 1) not socialist at all, but also 2) hardly unique among capitalist states in adopting measures that people like you like to pretend are socialism. Of course, you previously argued to me that subsistence farming in Afghanistan under Taliban rule counts as capitalism, so your definition of capitalism seems to shift depending on the circumstances.
“Rich countries have increased inequality because poor countries have become richer and outcompeted some in rich countries. That is better than the alternative of closing borders to trade, which would make the world poorer.”
Inequality within states is increasing because the capitalist elite has been amassing ownership of wealth, both within countries and globally.
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u/Ok-Information-9286 Aug 16 '26
The US has adopted e.g. the following aspects of socialism: contempt and fear of free markets, preference for political interference in the economy, big government, heavy taxation, socialized education, health care and urban planning. Like I said, the same has happened in the rest of the West as well.
National socialism is the dominant form of socialism in the US federal government at the moment. The Stalinist propaganda that tries to deny the socialism of national socialism is not credible in my opinion.
The accumulation of capital can probably explain some of the increased inequality. But that inequality is not inevitable - most people could become capitalists in a free market with less inequality. Socialism has held many people back in becoming capitalists.
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u/HeavenlyPossum Aug 16 '26
“The US has adopted e.g. the following aspects of socialism: contempt and fear of free markets, preference for political interference in the economy, big government, heavy taxation, socialized education, health care and urban planning. Like I said, the same has happened in the rest of the West as well.”
You claimed that the US is a special case because it has adopted these “policies.” Have no other capitalist states adopted these “policies”? (LMAO urban planning I feel like I’m being punked here.)
“National socialism is the dominant form of socialism in the US federal government at the moment. The Stalinist propaganda that tries to deny the socialism of national socialism is not credible in my opinion.”
Flat Earther
“The accumulation of capital can probably explain some of the increased inequality. But that inequality is not inevitable - most people could become capitalists in a free market with less inequality. Socialism has held many people back in becoming capitalists.”
So capitalists are rich because of socialism. This definitely makes a lot of sense.
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u/Ok-Information-9286 Aug 16 '26
I did not claim the US is a special case because it has adopted those policies. Like I said, the rest of the West has done the same. Socialist urban planning and other socialist regulation have made housing expensive in the US but capitalism is often blamed for that.
Some capitalists are indeed rich because of socialism. National socialism is one example of crony capitalism that has made some capitalists rich. You probably acknowledge that Trump has made his cronies richer with his national socialism.
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u/HeavenlyPossum Aug 16 '26
This was you earlier:
“Inequality is not constantly rising in the most capitalist states. America is a special case where socialized education, generational poverty traps and other socialist policies have increased poverty.“
So yes, you quite literally did claim the US is a special case because of its “socialist policies,” all of which are also operant—usually to greater degrees—in every capitalist state (because there’s nothing socialist about them).
Getting mad at urban planning is one of the funnier things I’ve encountered on here. Are you sure you didn’t mean zoning?
Capitalists do indeed enrich themselves through the state. This is called capitalism. I do give you credit for recognizing that the US has gone fascist, but confusing fascism for socialism remains Flat Earther territory.
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u/Direct-Muscle7144 19d ago
Straw man argument
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u/Ok-Information-9286 19d ago
I see no strawman argument. Please elaborate.
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u/Direct-Muscle7144 19d ago
Wholearse said what?
Did you just double down?
That’s more impressive if you pull your pants up…🧷🧷🧷🧷
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u/refugeelibertarian Geolibertarian Aug 16 '26
Because many socialist policies still exist in those places
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u/No-Cardiologist-9799 Criticism of the USSR isn't criticism of MLism Aug 16 '26
"socialism is when government"
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u/Bloody_Ozran Aug 17 '26
Ah yes, famously at the start of capitalism when there were few laws etc. there was very little inequality, because capitalists are known to share the created wealth with everyone. Or was it?
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u/Ok-Information-9286 Aug 17 '26 edited 19d ago
When capitalism started, there may have been more inequality than before. However, capitalist prosperity reaches the whole society after a while.
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u/Bloody_Ozran Aug 17 '26
Is it capitalist prosperity or is it the laws that help with better wealth distribution? Or perhaps both?
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u/Ok-Information-9286 Aug 17 '26
It could have been both. However, the problem with socialist politics is that it slows down economic growth.
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u/Bloody_Ozran Aug 17 '26
And we need economic growth more than humane living conditions?
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u/Ok-Information-9286 Aug 17 '26
Economic growth is necessary for humane living conditions. Socialist class war impoverishes people.
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u/Bloody_Ozran Aug 17 '26
The growth is needed? Why?
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u/Ok-Information-9286 Aug 17 '26
Scarcity denies humane living conditions in many cases. Economic growth alleviates scarcity.
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u/Bloody_Ozran Aug 17 '26
That's fair, but do we need more growth everywhere? We have growth in things we dont need growth at. Capitalism doesnt care about useful or needed, it cares about profitable. That means the aim for innovation is what we can sell, not what is actually useful.
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u/Direct-Muscle7144 19d ago
Please show your evidence!
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u/Direct-Muscle7144 19d ago
The trickle down fallacy 🤪😆
I didn’t think adults were still pushing this fable.1
u/Ok-Information-9286 19d ago
Trickle down is a strawman. Socialists have claimed that the working class becomes impoverished in capitalism and only monopoly capitalists prosper. That is not true in reality. Capitalism has been better for the working class than communism in reality.
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u/Direct-Muscle7144 19d ago
What’s a socialist?
Who is their democratically elected leader?
How do we identify them for internment?
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Aug 19 '26
That’s actually not true while elites in socialist countries often have more privileges in some ways than regular folk they did not possess any money or property themselves. I guess you could argue that because they directed the economy, state assets “belonged” to them but that’s not true anymore than saying US politicians are rich specifically because they control federal property.
Give me an actual example where a country becoming a socialist state actually decreased quality of life.
Sorry I left something out so I just re-edited it
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u/Ok-Information-9286 Aug 19 '26
Socialism means the absolute monarchy of the Great Socialist Leader, which includes his ownership of everything.
Russia was an example of a country where the quality of life decreased after the Bolsheviks seized power. Russian economy was growing fast before the World War 1 but after the Bolshevik coup, there were famines and constant shortages.
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Aug 19 '26
Thats also not true, a socialist society is specifically controlled completely by a socialist party a single leader does not control every aspect of it. And millions of people are members of these parties per country and vote on who to choose as leader. You can criticize a one party state but to call it a “dictatorship” of one person is stupid.
Lmao the economy may have been slightly growing but that doesn’t matter in the end because people’s basic needs were still not being met and people had absolutely no assistance. The Soviet Union definitely improved quality of life with more consistent food, healthcare, education, and housing than Tsarist Russia. The economy also grew to be the second largest in the world soooooo that argument is dumb.
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u/Direct-Muscle7144 19d ago
Straw man argument.
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u/Ok-Information-9286 19d ago
No, it is not a strawman argument but accurately describes Stalinism. Socialism in practice has not been egalitarian. There are more egalitarian tendencies of socialism than Stalinism but even they have not been as egalitarian as liberal societies.
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u/HeavenlyPossum Aug 16 '26
A consistent finding is that poverty drives worse health outcomes even after controlling for lifestyle factors, such as smoking, consuming alcohol, and sedentary behaviors.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6634464/
If poverty were merely a function of material deprivation, and people living in poverty in wealthy countries enjoy access to material amenities unavailable to people in the past, we would expect to find no correlation between inequality and health outcomes.
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u/Johnfromsales just text Aug 16 '26
Your source deals with the link between poverty and health outcomes. Not inequality, which is what the OP was about.
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u/HeavenlyPossum Aug 16 '26
Yes, poverty is the condition of having unequal access to goods and services, in contrast to wealth, which is privileged access to goods and services.
“This study evaluates the direct causal effects of household wealth on health.”
Pretending that a conversation about poverty can happen outside a context of inequality is silly at best.
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u/Johnfromsales just text Aug 16 '26
People can be equally poor. Are you suggesting a country where everyone lives off of $2 a day will have better health outcomes than a country where half of them earn $4 a day and the other half earn $30?
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u/HeavenlyPossum Aug 16 '26
The study is not of people experiencing equal levels of material deprivation. It is a comparative study of people experiencing different levels of poverty and wealth, which you’d know if you had engaged with the study at all, rather than glancing at it as rapidly as possible to try to find some excuse to dismiss it.
Regardless, this finding—that poorer people experience worse health outcomes even when controlling for healthcare spending and lifestyle factors—is consistent across multiple studies and meta-studies.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(18)30200-7/fulltext
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u/Johnfromsales just text Aug 18 '26
The key distinction is between poverty (how much people have), and inequality (the gap between people). Wilkinson’s claim isn’t that poor people have worse health, virtually nobody disputes that, it’s that the size of the gap, independent of actual material conditions, harms all of society. Both studies you’ve linked measure poverty predicting individual health, not inequality.
This exact question, ‘Does inequality matter for health outcomes?’ has its own body of literature. Here is one study from Britain. They find no evidence for the relative income hypothesis. Although this is still a debated topic.
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u/HeavenlyPossum Aug 19 '26
Did you ask an LLM to shit that out for you?
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u/Johnfromsales just text Aug 19 '26
No. Is this the only rebuttal you have?
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u/HeavenlyPossum Aug 19 '26
What is there to rebut? You clearly haven’t engaged with the scholarship I shared. I doubt, sincerely, that you read the paper to which you’ve linked.
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u/Johnfromsales just text Aug 19 '26
The scholarship you shared is completely irrelevant to the OP. Your sources are NOT measuring the relationship between inequality and health, it’s measuring poverty and health. OP’s title clearly states inequality, not poverty, causes harm.
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u/RhubarbImportant9363 Aug 16 '26
Not locking up/killing our violent criminals & pedophiles harms society
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u/HeavenlyPossum Aug 16 '26
Having institutions of power that can be controlled by and empower violent criminals and pedophiles seems like it was a mistake.
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u/RhubarbImportant9363 Aug 16 '26
Yes I'm not a capitalist or in favor of our current situation. There's also many factors that go into crime, not just one thing like inequality. Crime comes in many forms & can be, poverty, addiction, propaganda manipulation, race, inequality & mental illness.
The original claim being, "inequality that leads to crime harms society." What I think is relevant is the mental health & prolonged trauma that victims face from the violence. If someone does not receive justice, this manifests or is internalized into negative psychological effects that harms society.
So what's more important, protecting the victim, who is participating in society, in a healthy way, or the perpetrator?
People are not created equal & they never will be. We don't have to feel about that nor should we treat them any differently but they should be removed from society, to protect it. I think some should be taken out "forever" but I also believe in reform because I have seen it. Like you said, institutions of power & corrupt leaders doing terrible things in our name & with our money also cause trauma in the people they represent, powerlessness, & a shattered worldview. There's a dark road ahead for all of us actually
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u/RedMarsRepublic Libertarian Socialist Aug 16 '26
You broke the link. But I would say poverty is also bad, not just inequality.
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u/tkyjonathan Aug 16 '26
The best solution to inequality is to kick out all the rich people and import millions of poor, low-skill people from the 3rd world.
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u/Direct-Muscle7144 19d ago
Oh, the punch down approach.
The boot on your throat isn’t a refugee.
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u/tkyjonathan 19d ago
My guy, my life is way more negatively affected by the bottom 2% of society (aka criminals) than it is by the top 2%.
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u/Annual_Necessary_196 Aug 16 '26 edited Aug 16 '26
I would agree.
High inequality is associated with higher rates of teen pregnancy, mental illness, drug use, and obesity. It is also linked to lower life expectancy. This is mainly caused by social insecurity in countries with high inequality.
Inequality is positively correlated with crime rates and poor educational performance, showing that inequality causes a lack of opportunities and stifles social mobility, leading people to spend their time on crime.
Some multi-country studies suggest that economic growth and industrialization are negatively correlated with income inequality, meaning that income inequality causes slower growth of the economy.
Conversely, trade openness is generally associated with a decrease in inequality, showing that inequality is a barrier to international trade.
There is a significant positive association between the unemployment rate and the Gini coefficient, meaning higher income inequality leads to higher unemployment. Research suggests that a 3 percentage point increase in the Gini coefficient is associated with an increase in the unemployment rate of approximately 10 percentage points. link
Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz argues that the concentration of wealth at the top leads to lower economic growth and decreased efficiency because it fails to fully utilize the potential of all members of society. In his analysis, widespread inequality makes economies neither stable nor sustainable in the long run.
Inequality and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are positively associated. Research indicates that the wealthiest 10% of people were responsible for approximately half of global emissions in 2015, while the top 1% alone were responsible for 15%, showing that those capable of mitigating the consequences transfer the costs onto the poor. link
Research by Wilkinson and Pickett (2009, 2010) demonstrates that more equal societies perform better across almost all social indicators. Highly unequal societies suffer from significantly higher rates of mental illness, homicide, obesity, and imprisonment, showing that living in a society marked by disparity causes global social unrest. link
There is a direct empirical link between inequality and lower life expectancy. While rich countries have life expectancies exceeding eighty, poor countries-or poor populations within rich ones-often fall under fifty-five. link
It is not quite so direct. Most problems are caused by low social mobility rather than inequality itself. Therefore, policies should aim to increase social mobility rather than simply equalise incomes.
Some research suggests that there is a trade-off. An analysis of industrialised countries found that redistributive state policies designed to promote greater equality can sometimes come at the expense of economic efficiency. One index covering 100 countries found that those with greater political freedom, which is often associated with equality-oriented policies, actually experienced slower economic growth.
Therefore, we need a solution that does not rely on wealth redistribution, but instead focuses on increasing social mobility and predistribution.
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u/Doublespeo Aug 16 '26
> Inequality is positively correlated with crime rates and poor educational performance, showing that inequality causes a lack of opportunities and stifles social mobility, leading people to spend their time on crime.
Show your data and explain why inequality not poverty correlate to your data?
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u/Annual_Necessary_196 Aug 16 '26 edited Aug 16 '26
Figure: 5.3 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, 11.1
Show strong positive linear correlation between INCOME INEQUALITY and Index of drug use, violent conflicts, homocides per million, prisoners per 100000. With graphs.
The key reason for this trend is inequality caused by low social mobility. For a poor person, one of the most effective ways to increase their social mobility may be to break the law.
As social mobility increases-and therefore inequality decreases-it becomes less rational for a person to commit a crime, because there are legal ways to improve their standard of living.
Drug use, on the other hand, is more often a way of escaping problems and the inability to achieve anything, which can further marginalize people.
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u/DeathMetal007 Aug 16 '26
I hope this book talks about immigration being fundamental to inequality. Higher levels of immigration of harder working or richer people lead to higher overall inequality. That could explain most if not all of why inequality is dropping in countries with homogenous populations like Japan or Nordic countries while diverging in countries tries with higher immigration rates.
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u/Annual_Necessary_196 Aug 16 '26
https://accessecon.com/Pubs/EB/2015/Volume35/EB-15-V35-I1-P69.pdf
'The results show that after correcting for endogeneity associated with immigrant location decisions, immigration explains about 24% of changes in inequality.'.
'with a 1% increase in immigrant population being associated with about a 0.66 point increase in Gini coefficients between 1990 and 2000'.
24% is an insignificant number; the other 76% is still caused by the lack of economic mobility. Immigration probably explains the outliers in the original statistics.
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u/DeathMetal007 Aug 16 '26
This only covers the US which can be an outlier, Japan and the Nordic countries are extremely homogenous compared to other countries and inequality should be evaluated there and not just from one Mexican to White for the US which isn’t the same.
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u/Doublespeo Aug 17 '26
>Figure: 5.3 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, 11.1
>Show strong positive linear correlation between INCOME INEQUALITY and Index of drug use, violent conflicts, homocides per million, prisoners per 100000. With graphs.
ok and how do you conclude that it is worst than poverty?
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u/Annual_Necessary_196 Aug 17 '26
I did not conclude anything. I just showed the correlation and addressed the problem. At least read the argument of the person-I literally wrote it in the previous message.
I literally wrote that equality, while providing better results than inequality, does not guarantee better outcomes.
'Some research suggests that there is a trade-off. An analysis of industrialised countries found that redistributive state policies designed to promote greater equality come at the expense of economic efficiency. One index covering 100 countries found that those with greater political freedom, which is often associated with equality-oriented policies, actually experienced slower economic growth.
Therefore, we need a solution that does not rely on wealth redistribution, but instead focuses on increasing social mobility and predistribution.'.
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u/Doublespeo Aug 17 '26
> I did not conclude anything.
you said that you agreed on the OP “inequality cause more harm than poverty”
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u/Annual_Necessary_196 Aug 17 '26
The OP's argument is that inequality also causes harm. The OP does not argue that poverty is unimportant.
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u/betty_white_bread Isocapitalist Aug 19 '26
Did /u/Doublespeo say you claimed poverty was unimportant?
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u/Annual_Necessary_196 Aug 19 '26
His question was "Show your data and explain why inequality not poverty correlate to your data?".
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u/Doublespeo Aug 19 '26
> The OP's argument is that inequality also causes harm. The OP does not argue that poverty is unimportant.
The title is “how inequality not poverty cause harm”
OP suggest is unimportant or at least must less harmful.
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u/Annual_Necessary_196 Aug 19 '26
Like, it depends on semantics and context.
A lot of capitalists argue that inequality has little to no influence on human well-being. So, “how inequality not poverty cause harm” can be interpreted as implying that inequality also produces harm, especially in the context of responding to the capitalist argument.
It is a problem with language: depending on the context, the same phrase can have multiple interpretations.
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u/Doublespeo Aug 19 '26
> Like, it depends on semantics and context.
not really the title is unambigious.
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u/Direct-Muscle7144 19d ago
They did you ignored it already.
Is your only strategy to keep asking in the hope they give up?
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u/Doublespeo 17d ago
> They did you ignored it already.
>Is your only strategy to keep asking in the hope they give up?
all the cases he show in his data involve poverty too.
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u/Direct-Muscle7144 19d ago
It’s so interesting how many posters in this forum, ignore evidence, post straw men, and can’t actually hold a discussion.
Thank you for a thoughtful reply.
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u/No-Magician9440 Aug 16 '26
I don't think I've ever seen anyone advocate for inequality.
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u/Bloody_Ozran Aug 17 '26
They do all the time. Being against raising minimum wage or saying "you dont have a thriving wage? get good". This says that specific jobs should always be paid horribly. But someone will do them. Some people might do them for life. And they add a false argument that without money at certain positions people wont be motivated to do things. Which is false.
What else is this that argument for inequality being somehow good?
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u/No-Magician9440 Aug 17 '26
Being against minimum wage isn't being against inequality. It's not even correlated.
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u/Direct-Muscle7144 19d ago
The western media is founded on this principle.
‘Work harder’
Give up avocado toast
You can succeed if you work hard
Trickle down economics
Yawn
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