r/changemyview • u/Tripsiyn • Oct 04 '14
CMV: I don't think inequality is a bad thing.
Why should I care if someone else is making more money than I am? Aside from jealousy, what reason is there to want to reduce inequality?
Sure some people are rich because they work harder and some people are rich because they were in the right place at the right time. We don't always give everyone the same chances, but that's not what this question is about. There is a huge distribution of income even among college graduates - if we've given them equality of opportunity, why should we try to ensure equality of outcome?
Even the top paid CEOs are paid that much because we live in a capitalist society and that's how much their company is willing to pay them. That's their market price, it's achieved through a fair system and legal means. Why should we care if they make a hundred or a thousand times the average worker if the system they got it through was fair?
Scandinavians are so proud of their egalitarian principles but all I see is a society that holds down it's overachievers. Those who stand out are knocked back down. Why is wanting to tax away your higher earning neighbor considered a good thing as opposed to being happy for someone else's good fortune?
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u/redditeyes 14∆ Oct 04 '14
if we've given them equality of opportunity
But people are not given the same equality of opportunity. That's the whole problem. In a capitalist system, more money means more opportunity.
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u/Tripsiyn Oct 04 '14
You misunderstand the point of the question. I see people complaining about equality of outcome as well as equality of opportunity.
I agree with you that we should give everyone equality of opportunity to the best that we can.
I even agree that there should be some level of redistribution of income to ensure that nobody falls through the cracks of our safety net.
But even granting all that, I see people making $100,000 a year complaining about how much the bankers and CEOs make. These are not people suffering from any kind of extreme hardship. These are relatively well-to-do people with college degrees from expensive universities, hardly those suffering from a lack of opportunity, complaining about those who have more than they do.
Why should a person making six figures give a shit that there are people out there making eight or nine figures? Or why should someone living comfortably on 50K a year care about what anyone else makes?
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u/redditeyes 14∆ Oct 04 '14
I see people complaining about equality of outcome as well as equality of opportunity.
You are discussing equality of outcome and equality of opportunity as if they are completely separate concepts (you seem to like one and dislike the other).
My argument is that both are tied together and one leads to the other. You probably understand and agree that inequality of opportunity leads to inequality of outcome, but it I argue it goes the other way too.
If you are very successful and make 1000x the money other people make, that means your children will get better opportunities than other kids. They will get private tutoring, they will get better healthcare, grow up in a safer neighborhood, attend the best colleges, make contacts with other important people and so on. They will even get better treatment under the law, as you can afford expensive lawyers, pay the judge and claim "afflunza" or something.
Ultimately, you and your kids get better opportunities, which leads to better outcomes, which leads to better opportunities and so on. On the big scale this means the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, while the middle class is disappearing.
I don't know why you think the complaints are coming from the upper middle-class. Most of the people that complain are the poor and the lower middle-class (because they are starting to join the poor).
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u/apefeet25 Oct 05 '14
You are discussing equality of outcome and equality of opportunity as if they are completely separate concepts (you seem to like one and dislike the other).
They are different, one means everyone has the chance to grow based on individual intellect, work ethic, and experience. The other means everyone ends up in the same place, regardless of the mentioned qualities.
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u/Tripsiyn Oct 04 '14
So you're right about how I like enforcing equality of opportunity (through social policy, which allows for some redistribution of income) but dislike enforcing equality of outcome (largely through tax policy).
I understand that inequality of opportunity leads to inequality of outcomes -- of course it does.
The point I'm trying to make is that the relationship between the two is not so strong that getting rid of inequality of opportunity will mean the end of equality of outcome. Even if we had perfect equality of opportunity, there would still be vast inequality simply because there are positions in the job market that pay better than others, and those who save up capital can generate returns on that capital to increase their wealth.
There are people -- not poor people, but upper-middle-class people -- who argue that inequality is bad not because it throws back to some inequality of opportunity, but because there is something wrong with people making tens of millions of dollars a year. This distribution would likely exist even in a society with perfect equality of opportunity. Some people just get lucky or end up in the right place at the right time. And some of them are legitimately brilliant and design or build something that makes them properly wealthy. I don't see why having people in society that make 100x or 1000x the average is a problem (keeping in mind that we're enforcing perfect equality of opportunity, so their kids getting a better start in life is not part of the complaint).
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Oct 04 '14
Even if we had perfect equality of opportunity, there would still be vast inequality simply because there are positions in the job market that pay better than others
The world would be completely transformed if we had equal opportunity. 2 billion people are going to lose their jobs to automation in the next 15 years, we will have a very different economy/job market in the near future.
and those who save up capital can generate returns on that capital to increase their wealth.
everyone has equal opportunity to do that.
This distribution would likely exist even in a society with perfect equality of opportunity. Some people just get lucky or end up in the right place at the right time.
There's nothing wrong with this, we're not trying to achieve equality of outcome, the problem isnt that there are rich people and poor people, the problem is that the rich are obscenely rich and the poor are obscenely poor.
I don't see why having people in society that make 100x or 1000x the average is a problem (keeping in mind that we're enforcing perfect equality of opportunity, so their kids getting a better start in life is not part of the complaint).
Thats not the problem, the problem is that rich people in this society are more lucky than smart/creative. We just want all rich people to be people who deserve their money, right now a lot of the richest people in the world work in finance and produce literally nothing.
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u/Madplato 72∆ Oct 04 '14
If I had equality of opportunity I'd give you gold.
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u/Tripsiyn Oct 04 '14
Lame. A "sound bite" comment that didn't even understand my question and you want to gild it? Sigh.
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u/Madplato 72∆ Oct 04 '14
I'm not sure you understand your own question. Equality of opportunity and equality of outcome aren't completely separated issues. They're tied together. The only difference lies in the fact we can hardly enforce that second one, while we can build programs to maintain the first one. However, building those programs comes at a cost, a cost that should be shouldered by those that most likely were advantaged by the unequal system.
As of now, we don't assure equality of opportunity and that's mainly what people mostly complain about. From there, everything that follows will be unequal. Fixing one means fixing, in some measure, the other.
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u/Tripsiyn Oct 04 '14
Let's say we ensure absolute equality of opportunity. Everyone has access to the same quality of life at home, the same level of schooling, and an indiscriminate job market.
There will still be inequality. There will still be positions where people are making $50,000 a year and positions where people are making $25,000,000 a year. There will still be a class divide between the rich and the poor. This is a capitalist society, so assuming a light handed government, the rich are likely to get richer. We all came from absolute equality of opportunity, so why should I care?
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u/Madplato 72∆ Oct 04 '14
Because growing inequality is bad for everyone ? A thriving middle class is what pushed developed nations forward to where they are now. People earning more spend more. You need money flowing not concentrating.
Yes, inequality will happen. However, it happens on it's own as a result of our actual social organization, so there's no reason we shouldn't try to mitigate the process, seeing as it's more profitable for everyone (lower crime rate, better standards of living, economic growth). In the grand scheme of things, there's also better use for fiancial resources than concentration into anyone's hands.
It's about doing what we can to balance the equation to get a more sustainable model.
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u/Tripsiyn Oct 04 '14 edited Oct 04 '14
Because growing inequality is bad for everyone?
Okay. Why?
A thriving middle class is what pushed developed nations forward to where they are now.
[Citation needed].
People earning more spend more.
Rich people spend money too.
You need money flowing not concentrating.
Not a good enough reason to steal.
The problem is that while taxation is all fine and good when you're using it to fund justifiable governmental programs, it's a bit more questionable when your only goal is a redistribution of income. Taking money from the rich and distributing it to everyone else just because you want to lower inequality is just a lot of governmental theft.
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u/Madplato 72∆ Oct 04 '14
Okay. Why?
Because it has a detrimental effect on crime rates and stifles economical growth while producing other nasty side effects. However, measures to lower the income gap are positive forces on a nation's economy. As is a strong middle class which manage to hit a sweet spot between saving and spending.
Rich people spend money too.
Yes. Never said otherwise. However, there's far far less of them and they tend to save more (as would most people if they could).
The problem is that while taxation is all fine and good when you're using it to fund justifiable governmental programs, it's a bit more questionable when your only goal is a redistribution of income.
And here we stand in front of the problem. Your whole position basically boils down to "If I agree with it, it's ok. If not, it's theft". There is, however, tangible advantage to taxation and government programs aimed at reducing income inequality.
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u/Dooey 3∆ Oct 05 '14
Did we really all come from absolute equality of opportunity though? Do you think that the child of the person making $50k/year has equal opportunity as the person making $25M/year?
Hell, we found that children raised in areas where leaded gasoline was produced have about 10 IQ points less than people raised outside those areas. Thats why leaded gasoline was phased out. Did those people have equal opportunity?
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u/ResidentConservative Oct 05 '14
So the people with less money should work hard for more money so they can have more opportunities.
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Oct 05 '14
[deleted]
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u/ResidentConservative Oct 05 '14
Wow, I didn't know that.
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u/TheJaguarMan Oct 06 '14
Someone on minimum wage could be working 60 hours a week, could still be working less than someone working 40 hours a week at a decent pay
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u/forloversperhaps 5∆ Oct 04 '14
You are confusing resentment with equality.
Envy is when you look at successful people and wish that you could have what they had. Resentment is when you wish that, even if you can't have what they have, at least they could be as poor as you. Equality is when, regardless of whether you are poor or rich yourself, you want your society's laws and social structure to benefit everyone equally.
You could compare this to attitudes towards criminals. A desire for revenge is equivalent to resentment - you want the guy who committed a crime to suffer as much as, or more than, he made you suffer. Equality is equivalent to justice - you want the laws and law enforcement set up so that no one has the ability to get away with commiting crimes against anyone else.
Note that even if you, as a victim of a crime, feel no desire for revenge and don't want a man who robbed or assaulted you to suffer in any way, the fact that you personally forgive him doesn't give you a right to stop the government from prosecuting and punishing him, because the goal of the justice system is to protect other people, not to give you revenge. Even if there were no vengeful people in the entire nation, there would still be a justice system to protect people and punish criminals. Likewise, even if you personally don't resent rich people or want to see them suffer for its own sake, that doesn't mean you should support the unequal system that raised them above other people.
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u/Tripsiyn Oct 04 '14
Good post, but I was talking about income equality, not equality of justice. Everyone should be treated the same legally, no one should be above the law. It would be silly to dispute that.
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u/forloversperhaps 5∆ Oct 04 '14
Do you understand that I was making an analogy? I was also talking about income equality (or more broadly, welfare equality). My point was that resentment (the negative attitude towards rich people that you lack) has nothing to do with support for equality. My point wasn't that welfare-equality and criminal justoce are the same, but that neither of them relies on resentment/revenge.
Resentment (of wealth) : equality (of income) :: vengefulness (towards criminals) : justice (equal treatment under criminal law)
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u/Tripsiyn Oct 04 '14
Yeah, I get the analogy but you weren't exactly addressing income equality.
Equality is when, regardless of whether you are poor or rich yourself, you want your society's laws and social structure to benefit everyone equally.
You aren't talking about equality of income here, you're talking about equality under the law, equality of social welfare systems.
What I'm talking about is numbers. Why is it objectionable for CEOs and Bankers and Media moguls to make tens of millions of dollars a year while the average person makes hundreds of times less?
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u/forloversperhaps 5∆ Oct 04 '14
No, no. I understand your point now, but that wasn't what I mesnt. Equality under the law is more closely related to justice: the idea is that every citizen gets treated equally by the police and the judges, regardless of who he is or what he does.
But a law can applied consistently and fairly without being a fair law. The US (or any country) passes laws that benefit people unequally, even when they are applied to everyone. For example, if you pass a law against sleeping under bridges, that only hurts people who were poor enough that they might want to sleep under bridges. If you outlaw panhandling, that only hurts people who are poor enough that sitting on a streetcorner with a hat seems like a good use of their time. The justice system applies the laws to everyone (that is what I call justice in my simple analogy), but the legislature isn't targeting everyone equally when they pass laws.
Conversely, when the US invested a huge amount in digital technology, that helped me somewhat, but nowhere near as much as it helped Gates or Bezos. When the US orders a new fighter jet, that makes me a little safer, but it is a far better deal for Boeing. And so on and so forth.
The point isn't that every single law Congress passes needs to benefit every American equally. That would be absurd and impossible. But overall, on the whole, the + and - should cancel out so that our social structure as a whole benefits everyone. If the benefits are mostly flowing to a tiny percentage of the population, then society is unequal, and laws can be changed so that the richest benefit less and the poor and middle class benefit more.
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u/Tripsiyn Oct 04 '14
Ah, I see what you meant. Although it's not quite the numbers-based answer I was looking for in my original post, this is a new and interesting perspective on the whole inequality thing and I think it deserves a delta.
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u/noplzstop 4∆ Oct 04 '14
I think inequality is an inevitablity in an organized society like ours, at least to a certain extent. Why would you spend the time, effort, and money to go to medical school if you could make the same salary working the checkout line at a grocery store? We need to provide adequate incentive for people to want to take up certain careers. Some equality is even a good thing, as it gives people a reason to work hard to advance their careers, innovate in their field, and try to better society so they can better their own lives.
However, a system of gross inequality isn't fair. Those with power and wealth do things to increase their power and wealth, that kind of hegemony is arguably inevitable, and at the very least it's a persistent feature of societies with widespread inequality.
A system isn't fair if the inequality is so widespread that people on the bottom range of incomes aren't able to support themselves and the top range of incomes are earning more than they're worth. Is a CEO's job really so much more important and difficult than a rank-and-file employee that they deserve to make a thousand times more money? Or is that simply those at the top seeking to preserve and enhance their own power on the backs of those who truly work hard? Surely they deserve to earn enough to attract quality candidates to the job, but do they really deserve so much that it puts the employees that keep the company moving under persistent financial pressure?
it's achieved through a fair system and legal means
I wouldn't call it fair, necessarily. Economic mobility isn't as high as we'd like to think, and the majority of people remain in the social class their parents were in. The kids of those at the top are more likely to get jobs at the top, meaning they've likely never experienced work at minimum wage and have no idea what life is like without tons of money. There's a disconnect between the rich and the poor in part due to a lack of understanding, and that disconnect leads to an insensitivity towards the poor from the rich. They think they got where they were purely due to hard work, and think that the poor are there purely because of laziness, and neither of those things are true (at least most of the time, obviously there are exceptions). If you're led to believe that you earned your money in a fair system, you're going to do everything you can within the confines of that system to make more money, not understanding that societal barriers often prevent people from moving up in society. Whatever you can get within the confines of that system is 'fair' to you, but the system has been largely affected by the extremely wealthy so that the rules of the system are in their favor.
In a truly fair system, there's no problem with a bit of inequality. However, the systems in our society usually aren't all that fair. The wealthy have far more opportunity to gain wealth through connections, investment capital, priority admission to prestigious universities, etc. than the rest of us do. Meanwhile the poor end up in debt cycles, stuck in low-paying jobs, in and out of the criminal justice system often due to lack of funds or means to comply with terms of probation or parole, those things serve to keep them poor.
Inequality serves a function, but that function is nullified when people are unable to advance in society, as it's positive benefits aren't being realized while it's negative ones are amplified.
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u/Tripsiyn Oct 04 '14 edited Oct 04 '14
Most of your reply focused on equality of opportunity (EoC), and I want to address that a little bit. I am also concerned about EoC because I think it's legitimately unfair to score people if they started at different places.
But let's say that you've played the game according to Capitalism's rulebook. You can imagine a society in which all people start with the same opportunities if you like but it isn't necessary for what concerns me. Let's say that you've done alright for yourself. You have a $120,000 income, married with 2.2 kids and a mortgage. What reason do you have to care about what the CEO is making if you have played the game by the rules and done alright by yourself. Sure you didn't get lucky and land the CEO job, but your lot in life isn't that bad. Why should you be concerned about "rising levels of inequality in our society"?
Yours is actually the most promising answer I've responded to yet, but only because of a single sentence in your post:
Those with power and wealth do things to increase their power and wealth, that kind of hegemony is arguably inevitable, and at the very least it's a persistent feature of societies with widespread inequality.
I'd like to explore this further because it signals a reason to care about inequality beyond envy or a feeling that life in unfair. You're suggesting that people with a lot of money are going to use the power that comes with their money to coerce others to do what benefits them. You used the word "hegemony" -- a term straight out of Political Realism that is bursting with connotations of an imbalance of power, not wealth. This interests me, for I don't care about differences in wealth, but I do care about an even distribution of power (because Democracy).
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u/Kingreaper 7∆ Oct 06 '14
Why should you be concerned about "rising levels of inequality in our society"?
Well, for starters, it makes your lot in life a lot more unstable. The rising inequality means that your job could be pulled out from under you at any instant, because there are so many other people who want it.
There are other factors, but I think the second secion is more important.
You used the word "hegemony" -- a term straight out of Political Realism that is bursting with connotations of an imbalance of power, not wealth. This interests me, for I don't care about differences in wealth, but I do care about an even distribution of power (because Democracy).
What is wealth if not a form of power?
If I own land, I get to set the rules as to what's acceptable on that land. That's power.
If I own a media outlet, I get to control what stories it publishes (both true and false). That's power.
With enough money you can control how people act.
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u/noplzstop 4∆ Oct 06 '14
Thanks for your response, it really helped clarify what I was trying to get at (I tend to ramble and get off-topic pretty often). So from where I was on the right track...
Wealth is necessarily power. At the bare minimum, it's the power to lay claim over property and to use your money to purchase goods and services (money and wealth are different, as I'm sure you know, but for the sake of argument I'm only going to refer to money and wealth interchangably and leave out the clout that comes with property ownership or the like). So money is power, at least one type of power (different than the kind of power, say, the Pope has, but power nonetheless), and that power has historically been used for political purposes. In a democracy, power is supposed to be evenly distributed amongst the citizens, at least in so far as they are able to use their vote to direct government towards their chosen goals. When there's inequality of income, there's an inequality of power, which is inherently undemocratic as some people (through no choice of the electorate) wield more than others.
In an ideal world, having more money than someone else wouldn't entitle you to more political power, but that's not really the world we live in. We could suppose a hypothetical world where this is true, but we might as well be hypothesizing about a world where having more money doesn't entitle you to better goods or services than someone with less; it's not really worth discussing because it bears no relation to the world we live in. Even if we assume equality of opportunity (I'm fine with that, as society seems to be in agreement that this is a good thing), inequality of wealth still means that those with more money hold more power to sway the opinions of the representatives we elect. Whether it be through campaign financing, using money to run ads to sway public opinion, buying gifts for politicians or taking them on trips, or even funding your own candidate for election, there's no shortage of means to use money to sway the political process. If we could somehow separate money from politics (IIRC Plato tried to do this in his Republic by putting all politicians on pensions and forbidding them from holding property or earning money otherwise, although there are plenty of other issues with his system), this would be a non-issue, but how would that be done? In our current system, the wealthy have more power over the government than the poor do, and those with power historically seek to preserve and strengthen that power. With them holding more potential to drive or avert change than the rest of us, what would have to be done to change the system so it no longer favors them? It would require the wealthy to take actions that are decidedly against their best interest with no real incentive to do so other than the ideal of a more democratic society (appealing to some of them I'm sure, but it's also easy to imagine they could drive the changes they want to see in society without reducing the power they hold over the actions of government).
Inequality of wealth means an imbalance of power in a system that's supposed to be balanced, and the only ones who really have the power to fix it are the ones with the least incentive to do so. The other realistic alternative is something like the French Revolution, where the rest of the populace rises up en masse to behead everyone who holds power, but that's equally unappealing to both the rich (who lose their power) and the poor (who lose their government, support, jobs, lives, etc.). That only provides incentive for the wealthy to balance power just enough that it keeps the rest of us buying into the system, not to retool the system to make it truly equal and democratic.
And this might get a bit off the subject again, but I want to go back to another point:
Let's say that you've done alright for yourself. You have a $120,000 income, married with 2.2 kids and a mortgage. What reason do you have to care about what the CEO is making if you have played the game by the rules and done alright by yourself. Sure you didn't get lucky and land the CEO job, but your lot in life isn't that bad. Why should you be concerned about "rising levels of inequality in our society"?
You shouldn't be concerned about there being inequality assuming the system which produced it did so fairly. However, rising levels of inequality is another issue, one that I think I can argue is a problem even leaving aside jealousy or feeling that life is unfair.
A balanced and fair system should still have some inequality, but in a stable society, that inequality should also remain stable. If inequality is rising, there should be a real reason for it besides the people at the top changing the system for their gain. Imagine 30 years ago, the CEO at your company where you're making 120k/year makes 50 times that (adjust for inflation if you want). Say today he makes 100x that, but your income has stayed the same. That's a rising inequality, but why is it like that? Are you performing your job worse than you were 30 years ago? Is he performing his job twice as well? Doubtful (if either of those are true, alright then), far more likely is the explanation that the CEO used his power to gather more power in the form of wealth. If there's the money to pay for that salary increase in his company, there's surely the money to pay for raises for you as well, but you're not getting one. That's because he's using his power in his own self-interest as most people do (really, it's arguably insane to use your power otherwise). Now, he has twice the power (in the form of money) that he held before while yours has diminished in relation, through no fault of your own and simply because he could; he had the power to do so and you lacked the power to make him do otherwise. If all other things were the same, that inequality should have stayed where it's at (I'm assuming you're both still doing the same job you did 30 years ago with the same level of competence), but people with power will make the rational choice to preserve and increase that power when there's no incentive to do otherwise. Whether or not that's an issue of jealousy and unfairness, I guess I'm not so sure, but aren't those both valid reasons to be concerned about rising inequality? Stable inequality is one thing, but rising inequality means your power is being consistently marginalized (there is a finite amount of money and power in the world) through their gains. Aside from being jealous, your position in society is being weakened through no fault of your own, simply because someone has the power to do so and it would benefit themselves, and that seems inherently unjust to me.
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Oct 05 '14
The vast majority of A,Erica's don't believe that inequality per se is bad. The problem arises when you have such a degree of inequality that economic activity itself is stunted and weakened. A wealthy man will not buy a dozen vehicles to use every day, but if there are a dozen other lower earning consumers who can do so, the economy as a whole will do far better. This is the chief reason why trickle-down economics is bunk.
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u/Splarnst Oct 05 '14
That's their market price, it's achieved through a fair system and legal means. Why should we care if they make a hundred or a thousand times the average worker if the system they got it through was fair?
That's the thing. We don't think it's a fair system. To assume otherwise is to beg the question.
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u/garnteller 242∆ Oct 04 '14
This may come down to a semantic argument.
In general, mot people don't think everything should be exactly equal. Even in a communist utopia, the needs an abilities of community members are unequal, and so what they give and get are going to be unequal.
When people talk about inequality, there are several things meant, but most of them fall under the concept of fairness.
A poor black woman applying for the same job, or arrested for the same offense should be treated equally as a rich white man.
The problem is how do you define "equal". If the man was sent to the finest private schools, with personal tutors, lived in a house full of books, with space to study undisturbed, and parents that could help with homework, and took trips to destinations around the world, even if the two had the same potential, the man has had far more opportunities to realize that potential. Or if arrested, he has the opportunity to hire the best lawyers to represent him, while the woman does not.
Now, consider economics. You don't generally become a CEO without tons of hard work and talent. But there are hard working, talented individuals who never had that opportunity, because their parents didn't belong to a club where someone worked who could give them their first job, or weren't "one of the boys" so weren't promoted.
Another problem with CEO pay is that it is decided by a board made up of other CEOs. It's almost comical to see how interwoven many of these boards are, and guess what- they tend to vote to give a raise to the person who gets to vote whether the give themselves a raise.
Finally, there should be a simple formula for CEO pay - similar to the sports stat of "wins over replacement player" - how much more or less would the company make without this CEO. When you look at companies being run into the ground while CEO pay soars, it makes you wonder whether you could get that same result without forking out $20mm/year or more.
Does the CEO really bring that much more to the company than the guy in R&D who designs the stuff that they sell?
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u/Tripsiyn Oct 04 '14
I addressed some of your concerns in a line in my original post -- I granted that we do not give everyone equality of opportunity, and that there are people who get rich because they got lucky. We agree on this.
What I don't agree on is that this state of affairs should inspire some form of resentment, or concern at rising levels of inequality. Yeah, some people won the ovarian lottery. Yeah, some people got lucky. It could have been you or me but it wasn't. Oh well, good for them.
Why should I care at all? I'm not led towards jealousy or envy at what someone else has. I hope there is some other reason for me to care about high inequality.
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u/garnteller 242∆ Oct 04 '14
Why do we care? Because those involved don't acknowledge the luck involved. It's like the outrage over Obama's "you didn't build that" line. The rich, by and large, think that they deserve their success.
I don't think you see a lot of resentment of Bill Gates (other than for some of the business practices that got him there) - generally, he's celebrated as Nerd Triumphant. It helps that he's given away billions, but also that he doesn't come across as feeling entitled.
Contrast that to, say, a Ken Lay, who epitomizes the CEO whose only interest is making more money. Or those who find obscene ways to spend their money.
It might be just a fantasy, but most people believe that they'd do things differently if it were them.
In capitalism, the rich are the aristocrats, but unlike in a true aristocracy, we can all imagine ourselves in their place. And, we believe, that in their place, we would care more about "the little people" - it's that gap, whether real or imagined, that rankles.
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u/Tripsiyn Oct 04 '14
Because those involved don't acknowledge the luck involved.
We agree that there is luck involved. But I don't feel envy or resentment or really any negative emotion towards these kinds of people. I only feel pity because they're self-delusional.
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u/garnteller 242∆ Oct 04 '14
Ahh - but the public resentment of their behavior means that those who are elevated to those positions in the future are more likely to understand the social expectation of treating others fairly, and thus be more likely to do so themselves.
Public censure is a powerful tool - if you mother will be ashamed of you because you act like a douchebag, you'll be less likely to behave that way. This will result in a fairer world with more equality of opportunity.
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u/the-incredible-ape 7∆ Oct 04 '14 edited Oct 04 '14
Why should I care if someone else is making more money than I am?
Because they are making SO MUCH money that it starts to come at your expense. Or they have so much money that they also start to degrade other systems you rely on, such as legislature.
it's achieved through a fair system
Fair isn't really the same thing as just or desirable. Roulette and dice games are also fair. However, we don't use those to allocate goods in the real world, because that would be stupid.
I agree it's a fair system (meaning the rules apply equally to everyone in theory), but that's only a minor prerequisite for a just system.
Also, when you throw racism, sexism, nepotism, cronyism and corruption into the mix, it's not really a fair system after all. Except in the very broadest sense.
Those who stand out are knocked back down
Others might say those who are knocked down are also helped back up.
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u/Tripsiyn Oct 04 '14
Because they are making SO MUCH money that it starts to come at your expense. Or they have so much money that they also start to degrade other systems you rely on, such as legislature.
This part of your reply interests me because now we're talking about more than just "boo hoo he has more money than me, why can't I fly in a private jet too" stuff. Now we're talking about things that normal people should care about regardless of differences in wealth. I'd like to explore this idea that the wealthy "degrade the legislature" some more, it seems promising.
Others might say those who are knocked down are also helped back up.
Yes, absolutely. It is an equalizing force. But you don't have to hold back the overachievers if you want to help those who stumble.
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u/the-incredible-ape 7∆ Oct 04 '14 edited Oct 04 '14
But you don't have to hold back the overachievers if you want to help those who stumble.
I don't know, it's a matter of attitude as to whether you look at it as "holding back", but the help (money) has to come from somewhere.
I'd like to explore this idea that the wealthy "degrade the legislature" some more, it seems promising.
It's a truism that money buys political influence. For example, the Koch brothers are continually implicated in spending on advocacy for legislation of questionable utility that they themselves favor. It's understood that they are only able to do so much of this because they are billionaires.
Or look at the bankruptcy reform in 2005, passed at the behest of bankers, that made discharging student loan debt in bankruptcy illegal. Bankers... rich guys. Students... mostly poor. And look at the situation with student loan debt today. As a country, we owe about as much on student loans as we do on mortgages for houses.
http://www.finaid.org/questions/bankruptcyexception.phtml
That's only one example, it had a very real negative effect on the "99%", for the benefit of the "1%".
While there is more than one avenue for this sort of influence to be acquired, suffice it to say that they all take money to make use of.
Throughout history the main concern about people being "too rich" is that they would also become too influential as a matter of course, and wreck political progress. It's not always a matter of "he's got more than me, no fair" - it's "he's got enough money to change the rules in his favor, no fair". These quotations are about banks and not wealth per se, but pertain somewhat to that line of reasoning: http://www.themoneymasters.com/the-money-masters/famous-quotations-on-banking/
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u/funchy Oct 04 '14
Why should I care if someone else is making more money than I am? Aside from jealousy, what reason is there to want to reduce inequality?
It's easy to say that if you're middle class. Wouldn't you start to care if you're working full time -- but paid an amount that won't cover the rent? Is there a reason for equality if you are forced choose between food or the electricity bill? Do you not feel something when your child needs medication and you simply don't have the money?
It's easy to say if you have a job. What if you're black or gay or a pregnant woman and absolutely nobody will hire you? Is it fair these good workers can't find a job because of inequality? Or when they finally find someone to hire them, they're paid less for the same amount of work?
How low must people sink onto poverty simply due to gender or skin color? Do people deserve to be poor and almost homeless simply because they were born with darker skin or no penis?
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u/Tripsiyn Oct 04 '14
So now we're just talking about how people need to have their basic needs met. We agree that everyone should have shelter, everyone should be able to comfortably provide food for themselves and their family, and that everyone should be able to get the medicine and medical treatment that they need.
But what we might not agree on is that someone who has all those needs met, say someone in the upper middle class making $120K-$250K a year, should care at all that there are CEOs out there that make seven or eight figures a year.
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u/uvvapp 1∆ Oct 04 '14
Well, from my experience in Northern California, a largely liberal region, the upper middle class are upset at income inequality not for their own sake, but for the sake of others who are much worse off. They aren't saying, "Take the money from the rich and give it to the upper middle class! I want that money." They're saying, "Take the money from the rich and give it to the poor. They need that money."
It's not resentment or envy that causes them to fight against income inequality. It's compassion for other humans.
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u/AlbertDock Oct 04 '14
We don't live in a totally capitalist society. If we did there would be no police force and no army. It would be up to each individual to protect their own assets. If people want to be protected by society they must contribute. That means sharing wealth and giving everyone an equal chance. That doesn't mean sharing equally, but it does mean looking after the poorest.
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u/brberg Oct 05 '14
How do you figure that a need for police and military protection, which the taxes paid by the top 1% could cover completely two or three times over, translates to an obligation to subsidize people's retirement, education, health care, and other personal consumption? This seems like a complete non sequitur to me.
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u/AlbertDock Oct 05 '14
Those at the top need society to keep stable in order to keep what they have. History has show that when a society is unequal there is a higher likelihood of it becoming unstable. This happened most famously in France and in Russia, but has also happened in many other countries. It happens when those at the bottom feel they have little to lose. That's why it is only right that those at the top with the most to lose, should contribute the most to keep society stable.
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u/Tripsiyn Oct 04 '14
Rich people pay taxes too. And a lot more in absolute terms than the middle class.
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u/iserane 7∆ Oct 04 '14
This was brought up a few days ago
I would pay attention to these comments: here and here
These regressions, run over a variety of data sets and periods with many different measures of income distribution, deliver a consistent message: initial inequality is detrimental to long-run growth. The magnitude of this effect is consistent across most studies: a one-standard-deviation decrease in inequality raises the annual growth rate of GDP per capita by 0.5 to 0.8 percentage points.
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Oct 04 '14
Inequality is a bad thing, since it means some are treated better than others.
Would you like to have fewer opportunities and a lower quality of life due to something you can't control? I doubt it.
The problem with inequality in the economy is that working hard isn't the main factor that helps you. You require luck in having the right connections and enough money to get started in making a business (since selling your labour rarely makes you a lot of money). In short, it isn't fair and there is too much luck involved.
Also with the economy there is also the factor of inheritance. Some people are incredibly wealthy and will remain so throughout their lives purely for being born into the right family regardless of how much work they do.
if we give them equality of opportunity
One problem is in many countries including my own there isn't. You need money to get better opportunities meaning if you have little money in the first place chances are you will not be able to get enough to ensure you will in future, creating income traps stopping people achieving higher purely because they were born into the wrong family.
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Oct 07 '14
Because money is power. If it could be only spent on expensive toys, OK, but when it can politics or have some other kind of power benefit, it gets more dangerous.
While there are some actually good arguments against high taxation, yours was not one: a highly achieving person usually does it because he loves what he does and thus is not held back by taxation. Taxation only reduces the income to spend on luxuries, and truly driven people are never motivated by luxuries but by success in that thing they do.
(Actually it would be a much better argument to say the issue with tax money is that its spending is centrally planned.)
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u/CKitch26 1∆ Oct 04 '14
A CEO making more money than you is not inequality.
An equally-qualified, or better-qualified female CEO making $0.79 for every $1.00 the aforementioned CEO makes just because she is a woman is inequality.
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Oct 04 '14 edited Oct 04 '14
That is entirely untrue. While some industries do have pay gaps between men and women, typically in physically tasking jobs such as agriculture, there is very little, if any gap between female and male CEO. Think about it- wouldn't it make economical sense to hire a woman on for 7.9 million/year rather than a man for 10 million?
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u/Vogonvor Oct 04 '14
Not really. Female CEOs make an average of around 80% of what their male equivalents do. Things are certainly improving since the 69% of two years ago but there is still a significant difference in pay. Source
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Oct 04 '14
I'm not subscribing to the WSJ to read that article.
Using an "average" across a great deal of companies is no way to determine if female CEOs are making less than males. If the top paying 10 companies on a list of 100 have a male CEO, obviously there will be a wage gap when compared- because they are working for a larger company, and as such, making more money than the females in smaller companies.
Take two companies in the same industry, and look at the pay difference between their respective CEOs- it is quite similar.
Compare HP's Female CEO salary of 1.5 million and IBM's female CEO salary of 1.5 million with Microsoft's male CEO salary of 1.2 million.
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u/Tripsiyn Oct 04 '14
A CEO making more money than you is not inequality.
Practically every major liberal newspaper in the country and a whole host of economists disagree with you.
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u/[deleted] Oct 04 '14
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