Why relative inequality matters

[BCPVP]

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How do you plan to do that? Especially in such a way that there are still incentives to mass produce the new technology for the rest of the public?

[/ QUOTE ] I can think of a lot of different ways to decrease relative inequality without toppling incentives; most industrialized democracies have used some of them at one point in time. The reason that Japan, Germany, Sweden, Norway (et al) have less relative inequality than the U.S. is not a big mystery but a clear consequence of the rules of the game and government programs.

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So to answer the question....

[Propertarian]

Mostly with progressive taxation and universal social programs that tend to benefit the less advantaged the most, along with some more subtle things such as seperating school funding from property taxes. Their are also institutional/structural reasons why U.S. CEOS make close hundreds of times as much as the average worker, whereas German CEOs only make about 20 times the average worker's wage (and it isn't because the average employee makes less in Germany; they actually make more).

[BCPVP]

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Mostly with progressive taxation and universal social programs that tend to benefit the less advantaged the most, along with some more subtle things such as seperating school funding from property taxes.

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I think you're just using this as an excuse to try and shove this stuff down.

[Propertarian]

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Mostly with progressive taxation and universal social programs that tend to benefit the less advantaged the most, along with some more subtle things such as seperating school funding from property taxes.


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I think you're just using this as an excuse to try and shove this stuff down.

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[BCPVP]

More taxes and social programs just seem to be your answer for every perceived ailment of mankind.

[Nielsio]

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In the thread on inequality recently, a poster claimed that relative inequality is unimportant. This is so clearly fraudulent at the national level [..]

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What's a nation? What's inequality? What's relative in equality?

[bluesbassman]

Your link is broken (at least when I tried it), but the paragraph you quote and the stuff you claim reminds me rhetorically of YEC's who maintain the long discredited notion that the Earth is only 6000-10,000 years old. I find it almost quaint that people still cling to the leftist class warfare nonsense.

[Copernicus]

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I have a response to this. It sufficiently demonstrates why structuring the economy to meet the needs of irrational human heuristics is doomed. However, it is very long, and I doubt that anyone other than you will read it; accordingly I don't feel like writing it.

Know that it is good.

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Excellent post. It contains as much cogent thought as the full one would have, Im quite sure.

[Copernicus]

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Your link is broken (at least when I tried it), but the paragraph you quote and the stuff you claim reminds me rhetorically of YEC's who maintain the long discredited notion that the Earth is only 6000-10,000 years old. I find it almost quaint that people still cling to the leftist class warfare nonsense.

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You find it almost quaint, I alternatively find it absolutely hilarious or frightening.

[valtaherra]

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The reason that the quality of the government provided transportation declined was because of the invention of the car; if nobody had a car, then politicans would have to keep these means of transportation running effectively, or people who used this kind of transportation (everybody) would not vote for them.

And, if the "transportation infrastructure" was/is not state run but instead of market forces, than quantity and quality would still decrease. The market forces/gov't dichotomy here is a false one; market forces effect how and what the gov't does (therefore, to claim that because the gov't did something does not show that that action "has nothing to do with market forces"), and if the gov't didn't run all the other means of transportation (which it actually doesn't) then inequality in access would still have made the poor worse off.


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Well, as I sort of implied in my first post, this above explanation is a false one. The politicians basically screwed the public at the behest of General Motors and Standard Oil and a few other corporations.

The "market" was not clamoring for cars, nor were they clamoring for streets to drive these cars.

But, "What is good for General Motors is good for America."

Again, google "Taken For A Ride" and read up a little.

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Why Does America Have the Worst Public Transit in the Industrialized World, and the Most Freeways?
Taken for a Ride reveals the tragic and little known story of an auto and oil industry campaign, led by General Motors, to buy and dismantle streetcar lines. Across the nation, tracks were torn up, sometimes overnight, and diesel buses placed on city streets.

The highway lobby then pushed through Congress a vast network of urban freeways that doubled the cost of the Interstates, fueled suburban development, increased auto dependence, and elicited passionate opposition. Seventeen city freeways were stopped by citizens who would become the leading edge of a new environmental movement.

With investigative journalism, vintage archival footage and candid interviews, Taken for a Ride presents a revealing history of our cities in the 20th century that is also a meditation on corporate power, city form, citizen protest and the social and environmental implications of transportation.


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