299
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2024
299 points (96.9% liked)
News
23268 readers
1692 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
If given the choice, would you solve inequality if it made everyone 10k poorer?
I don’t think you could solve inequality by taking the same amount away from everybody.
Are you implying that a very fair, equal and supportive society that had a slightly lower total GDP would be inherently inferior to one with a higher GDP but realistic inequality?
I am asking, if you could make everyone equal but we are all poorer, would you do it?
I would not.
Okay, but that's a meaningless hypothetical that is not a consequence of reducing income inequality.
The U.S. had substantially lower income inequality during the 50s and 60s and it drove massive economic growth, the expansion of the middle class, opportunities for education and homeownership without a lifetime of debt, and so on.
The Scandinavian countries have much lower levels of income equality than we have today and their citizens report far higher levels of satisfaction with their lives in addition to having better health care outcomes and other effects of a more egalitarian society.
So you can ask whatever rhetorical question you want, but I'm not sure what the point is when your proposed scenario has nothing to do with reality.
I just think it's interesting some people would rather we all be poorer and worse off
No one besides you said that.
I asked you that question and your responses seemed like you would rather everyone is worse off as long as inequality is down.
No, you didn't ask me that question. You asked someone else that question, who didn't respond to you.
No, my response did not suggest I would prefer everyone be worse off. Quite the opposite, I gave multiple concrete examples of real-world scenarios where lower inequality has made people better off.
Clearly the only person you're talking to is yourself, so this is pointless.
I think the reply notification system in Lemmy is not very good. I thought your reply is was the OP. Still your response made me think you feel that way.
Would you like to answer the question?
Sure. No, I would not support making everyone worse off. That would be a net loss for everyone, which would be a clearly negative outcome.
But my point is that decreasing income inequality historically has not had the effect of making everyone worse off. So as I said previously, your hypothetical is not a reasonable portrayal of what would happen in a more equal society.
Meanwhile, as inequality increases, you can see the damage right in front of you. Much of an entire generation is unable to afford homes or education without going into massive debt, when their parents could attain these things because economic gains reached more people in the society of that era.