What you describe about really winning/loosing is inequality. I generally think that inequality is bad for populations (you may disagree, but usually, those in favor of inequality are those on the right side of it)
Though weirdly in modern American politics, there's some degree of inversion there, with the "coastal liberal elites" voting for "socialist" healthcare and the unemployed coal miner with black lung disease voting against it.
"Though weirdly in modern American politics, there's some degree of inversion there, with the "coastal liberal elites" voting for "socialist" healthcare and the unemployed coal miner with black lung disease voting against it."
This is not the paradox that people think it is.
If you're a coastal, progressive elite, you've already gone "all in" on an urban, socialized, statist (for good or for bad) social arrangement. You've shifted towards a pole and you might as well keep doubling down on those strategies/policies.
But if you're rural (or, as is the case with most of red-state US, sort-of-semi-rural), you're not down that path at all.
There are costs as well as benefits to social benefits and welfare programs. Many of those costs may be intangible, but they are costs nonetheless. Consider: what if a very large portion of your self esteem and "face" was tied to being self-sufficient in certain realms ?
And so therefore, if you're not already at the urban-progressive-socialized pole of attraction, it makes sense that people resist the costs (and the benefits) of going down that road.
I suspect the two party system is responsible there. Lots of political viewpoints are all lumbered into one party, meaning that people with fiscally liberal/conservative preferences are lumped in with those with socially liberal/conservative preferences even if they're not the same crowd.
People aren't voting 'against their own interests' in the sense that they're stupid. They're voting for their own interests in a party which also has interests they're against because it's the only practical option. For example, someone who wanted less immigration and pro globalism rules (aka US protectionism) but then also thought things like equal rights for trans people and gay marriage and allowing abortion were the right would be up a creek without a paddle. Either option (with a decent chance of getting elected) is against their interests in some way.
Why do they want less immigration though? Is it because they believe that all the jobs were given away to other countries, even though US manufacturing and coal output are at or near historic highs?
Similarly do they want Obamacare repealed because it's a "disaster" and they've been promised better cheaper insurance by someone who doesn't actually have any kind of plan to deliver on that promise?
Is there only a debate about gay marriage at all because it's been turned into "an attack on traditional marriage"?
Are the liberals intentionally ruining the economy because they've joined the global warming religion that is basically an excuse for communism?
Some of this is ignorance and being conned, but some of it is stupidity as well. It's probably not wise to ignore that reality.
Not necessarily true. There is a HUGE contingent of very poor, rural white Republicans. (e.g. the ones who voted for Dear Leader Trump). Just like there ARE wealthy African-Americans out there. African American does not necessarily equal poor in America.
This is overly generalizing a complex issue. In America, we have a two party system that has basically been taken over by lobbying and gerrymandering. Both sides are different socially, but identical fiscally. Propaganda has been spread massively, amplifying everyone's natural us-vs-them mentality. Plus the populist politician on the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders, was suppressed and basically not allowed to be the candidate. Our problems are a lot worse than "but poor people vote for the Bad Guys!"
What matters is what the two sides accomplish, not what they say they're going to do. In the US, when the Republicans are in charge, Democrats hem and haw about how they need to do all this stuff differently from the Repubs, but when they're in charge, it doesn't happen. See Obama and friends in '08. Then with the presidential candidate, they chose the one with the $250,000 speaking fees at all the major banks instead of choosing the one who spoke of inequality in the country.
It doesn't sound like even you believe they are both the same, certainly you've provided no evidence that is the case in your response.
You'd just prefer if the Democrats were even more towards your preference on fiscal matters. I can agree with that, whether it would fly with the American voters sufficiently to overcome the rural/republican tilt is another matter entirely.
In my opinion, the Democrats and Republicans are two sides of the same coin, focusing on divisive social issues and not on actually helping the country. What I would truly like is voter reform allowing for more than a two-party system. I feel that the current system leads naturally to corruption and favoring corporate needs.
I believe that all systems eventually lead to corruption. All rules can be gamed somehow, the quality of the ruleset is how long it takes for people to discover the necessary manipulations. Given the age, the US had a pretty good run.
Maybe occasional rewrites could be a solution, but if they happen without the customary devastating violence, I'm afraid that the rewrite would only further entrench existing corruption (and even devastating violence is far from a guarantee that this won't happen, quite the opposite actually).
Maybe have a dozen or so mixed teams create separate drafts in isolation, vote out the worst half and then select one of the remaining by chance? Something along these lines might greatly help rewriters to forget about their own personal or group interests for a while and focus on what would be good for society as a whole. It's most likely just a theoretical design, right?
Inequality is something I see as necessary for two reasons, but something which should only be allowed to a given extent.
First, inequality is needed so that there is a reward for working harder, doing more. The one who coasts through their education doing only the minimal needed before getting a job doing the same should be rewarded less than the one who gives it their best. BUT, inequality should never be so great that the kid who coasts can come from such a privileged position that they are forever in a better position than someone who works hard. For a lot of American's, working hard doesn't really get rewards, so you could say we have exceeded the optimal amount of inequality and thus need more equality. But if we envision a fully equal system where everyone is equally rewarded, there is far less incentive to do more than the bare minimum. Even supporters of basic income think that those who go above and beyond should be rewarded with extra income above the level of basic income. I've never heard of anyone supporting a basic income plan where all income beyond the basic income level is taxed at a 100% rate. Even a 50% or 75% tax rate indicates those who do more should have more, with the difference being how much more.
For this, we need to make sure the inequality is high enough that effort is rewarded, but keep it low enough that birth does not convey special privileges.
Second, equality will never exist in all areas of life. Even if we had total financial equality, some people are more sociable, better looking, etc. As such, what people have access to in our society is still unequal. In a financially equal society, the one with vastly superior social skills, or who is attractive (look up the Halo Effect), has access to more resources and thus inequality still exists. Allowing some level of financial inequality allows people a way to do better when they lack the above skills.
Consider some modern day developer who is slightly autistic but highly functioning enough to hold a good job. Their ability to earn more can, to some extent, help offset the lowered levels of social skills in the extent it allows them to achieve their life goals.
The only way to have full equality beyond just financial equality would be to implement a tax on anything that can be considered a good or service in the most abstract of methods, and I think we would find that even the most ardent communist are all out libertarians in regards to these social goods and services.
Inequality is the result of people earning different amounts, such being compensated in proportion to the value they generate - rather than everyone earning the same irrespective of that.
Inequality is the result of reaping the rewards of your own work: someone is more effective, so they earn more. Why is it bad? How can any market economy even function without it?
If an author writes a really good book, then it will sell and they'll make a lot of money. They earn a lot more than the author who writes bad, unpopular books. That's an example of income inequality.
A great comedian will draw large crowds and his shows will fetch a high price. That's an example of inequality too. What's wrong with that? How will anything work if it were otherwise?
Inequality is arguably not the right economic easure to care about for social issues. Imagine every human in year 7000 is rich enough to own entire planets, but the super wealthy own 100 planets. Who cares? Why is that a problem? If your concern is about a particular class, then you should look at their standard of living and progress in it over time, not compare against how much someone else has.
I used to buy into PG’s “inequality is not a problem” argument.
More recently I’ve come around to embracing the notion that peoples’ emotional state regarding their relative place in society and their future prospects is as important as their absolute standard of living.
Sure, as it's been argued by PG and many others, in material terms even the poorest in modern western societies are far better off than wealthy people of hundreds of years ago.
But everyone still has some degree of need to better themselves, improve their circumstances, and aspire to live more comfortably and prosperously. And crucially, the ability of young people to find a partner and have a family is strongly influenced by their prospects for upward mobility.
So if societal inequality is such that a young person trying to make their way in the world sees no opportunity for meaningful improvement of their circumstances, and therefore no real prospects for finding a good partner, raising a healthy family and achieving a good level of status in society, then the motivation to remain part of mainstream, productive society can easily be lost. This is what leads to people "dropping out" and ending up in a life of unemployment, depression, substance abuse, crime, violence, etc.
So, sure, some level of inequality is inevitable and healthy, to the extent that it rewards people for effort and ingenuity and gives people something to aspire to. But too much inequality becomes more of a de-motivator and a source of resentment, and can cause societal breakdown, and I think this is what is happening to some degree across the western world.
This idea is based on the fantasy that people are compensated purely for what they do, and not also for their starting point, who they are, who they know, and so on.
The reality is that if you were born somewhere poor, odds are overwhelmingly that you would earn a tiny fraction of what someone born somewhere where they are provided proper education and an environment where better alternatives are available.
So maybe you are compensated in proportion to the value you generate, but the problem with this is that this is only superficially connected to the effort you put in and how effective you are.
Some people who do well do so in part because they put in exceptional effort, but the biggest predictor of your earnings and success in life is how where you live and how wealthy your parents are.
This is the problem we have with inequality: It has very little to do with effort or skills, and a lot to do with pure chance.
> The reality is that if you were born somewhere poor, odds are overwhelmingly that you would earn a tiny fraction of what someone born somewhere where they are provided proper education and an environment where better alternatives are available.
This is one of those things that is worse in Europe than in the US. Inequality is perhaps less in absolute value, but it's more sticky. The upper class of the US has plenty of immigrants and people who were born poor. Yes, being born rich still provides advantage, but it's clearly not impossible.
In the EU, the upper class has
zero immigrants
very few people born poor (upper middle class minimum) (out of the top10 riches Frenchmen, one was born to a family with less than 100 million francs at the time they were born. One. And he wasn't poor by a reasonable definition at all)
Social mobility in the US is lower than in most OECD countries [1].
Of all OECD countries, only in Slovenia, Chile, Italy and the UK are the intergenerational correlations between the earnings of fathers and sons stronger, for example.
The rest of the OECD, including most of Europe, does far better in that respect.
Representation of immigrants is something I haven't looked at, and it may very well be that the US does well there, but there are a number of confounding factors, and it in any case doesn't change the fact that social mobility is poor in the US.
I'm French. My grandparents were farmers/carpenters/etc who didn't attend school past 12 years old for the most educated one because they had to work to support themselves. My maternal grandparents had only one child, and my paternal grandparents had children 10 years apart, such that they could give the best to their progeny.
My uncle became a surgeon, and my parents become engineers, through the means of a free public university, which propelled them to upper middle class.
There is still much to achieve in French social mobility, but these kind of stories are plenty. Having spent some time in the US now, and seeing the stories of people who go on to go to engineering/medical/etc schools, I can't say that I see comparable things happening. Everyone I know who went to med school comes from upper middle class family AND had to take on tons of debt.
You shouldn't be looking at the top 0.001%, but the top 10%, perhaps even 20-30%, and how they live/what kind of social protections they benefit from.
> Inequality is the result of reaping the rewards of your own work: someone is more effective, so they earn more. Why is it bad? How can any market economy even function without it?
Let us make an experiment and drop Paul Graham in a rainforest to see how much value he manages to extract.
Then, once he has starved to death or died from some random infection, let's think again what makes IT jobs more valuable than garbage collector jobs.
We can't have a debate from the position of exceptions.
The point he and Mr Graham are trying to make is simple. People are not same, and by that definition are not equal.
The fact is that this inequality manifests itself in far more different ways before it appears as income/wealth inequality.
Far before some one is rich and poor, they are good and bad at playing the piano, writing a book, programming or anything for that matter. Wealth inequality comes far later.
> Far before some one is rich and poor, they are good and bad at playing the piano, writing a book, programming or anything for that matter. Wealth inequality comes far later.
If you are poor enough, chances are fairly good you will never get to touch a piano to even find out if you can be good or bad at it.
So no, it does not come far before someone is rich and poor. If you are poor, a whole lot of avenues close off to you early regardless of skill, and the odds of you remaining poor is overwhelmingly higher than that you will be able to overcome it, irrespective of how hard you work or how smart you are.
> Bill Gates is good at a lot of other things including programming. And I'm not talking about skill. Its also work, persistence and variety of other things that add up.
According to the metrics our society uses to reward him, he's quite litterally the 85.000.000.000x dev.
>>People are not same, and by that definition are not equal.
>It's hard to argue with this, but I don't see it coming up much in the gender or race discussions. I wonder why.
Because in "modern" society it's not politically correct to recognize, let alone discuss, any differences whatsoever between age, race, sex, education, skill, etc. If you have the gall to try, you'll immediately be torn apart by the howling "progressive" masses.
> The point he and Mr Graham are trying to make is simple. People are not same, and by that definition are not equal.
What I'm questioning is not whether people's merits are unequal, but the tool used to measure them. My point is that a measure is inherently relative.
The thought experiment I offer is another way of measuring someone's utility. It is inherenthy flawed and unfit to the needs of our society. But again, the person I responded to didn't establish that his measuring tool is an optimization function for our society either.
Also this is not related to whether two people are compared on their job, but to whether two people good at different jobs are compared.
Most people commenting on economic inequality are referring to inequity, i.e. that there are people who receive benefits disproportionate to the value to the work they contribute or the output they create.
Few people object to higher rewards for those more talented or harder working.
