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Commentary: The Inequality Delusion

Posted: Fri Oct 22, 2010 11:18 pm
by Zute
Bloomberg Businessweek Article

Interesting. People grossly underestimate the inequality but they don't mind the inequality, until they know just exactly how enormous it is.
The United States, according to this study, is a nation of people who would like to spread the wealth around. They just don't know it.
. The U.S. now has the world's second-lowest level of income mobility between generations, after England, according to research by economist Miles Corak at the University of Ottawa. Yet studies have also shown that voters have an impressive ability to absorb information that contradicts their beliefs without letting it change their minds. People support the abstract goal of equality, it seems, while staunchly opposing specific government measures—whether increasing tax rates or limiting executive pay—designed to impose it. Getting there, in other words, is what starts the political arguments, even at a moment of widespread bipartisan anger at Wall Street.

Re: Commentary: The Inequality Delusion

Posted: Sat Oct 23, 2010 4:28 pm
by Tudamorf
Zute wrote:People support the abstract goal of equality, it seems, while staunchly opposing specific government measures—whether increasing tax rates or limiting executive pay—designed to impose it.
Psychologists are so obtuse.

Just because people SAY they want equality on some survey doesn't mean they really want it.

They're just saying it because they think it's what other people would like them to say.

As to those Communists who convince themselves that everyone should be equal, I'd like to see their views after I slash their standard of living to that of a poor third world country -- which is exactly what it would be without all the rich people funding their military, their infrastructure, and their public services.

Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.

Re: Commentary: The Inequality Delusion

Posted: Sun Oct 24, 2010 6:51 pm
by Fyyr
You were equal in the opportunity to become an executive.

You had the same equal opportunity as everyone else to found EBay, Google, Yahoo, or Amazon.

Why didnt you take that opportunity?

Re: Commentary: The Inequality Delusion

Posted: Sun Oct 24, 2010 9:27 pm
by Tudamorf
Fyyr wrote:You were equal in the opportunity to become an executive.

You had the same equal opportunity as everyone else to found EBay, Google, Yahoo, or Amazon.
Well, that's clearly false.

People do NOT have equal opportunities. Not even close.

The question is whether they should.

Re: Commentary: The Inequality Delusion

Posted: Mon Oct 25, 2010 1:11 pm
by Fyyr
Of course you had(and have) the same opportunity.

You could have started any if those websites Tudamorf.
Made billions of dollars.
You just did not think of them. Or think them up.
Or chose not to do what was required to do it.
Or you did not know how to do what was required.

But you had the exact same opportunity.
We all did.

IMDB started out on a college student's shared server space on the schools servers(MSU iirc)
It was just a simple database with HTML front end.
You could have. I could have. Pan could have.
All three of us could have started Amazon.
Or EBay. Or Yahoo. That wasn't even really a search engine in the beginning, it was just a listing and directory service like craigslist. Any three of us could have started craigslist. Any of the dating sites. They are just an HTML front end that accesses a database, all three of us know how to do those.
None of us knew it would be successful, didn't have the drive to start them, or make them successful.
We did not take the risk of our time or our money to start them.
But we could have. We didn't. We don't right now, there is some new website that has not been thought up yet that can make any three of us billionaires, millionaires at least, we have all the tools and opportunity.

Like I said in the other post, you can make simvastatin right now. You can make it. You can sell it. Nothing is preventing you. You have the same opportunity to make it as anyone else right now. Why aren't you?

Re: Commentary: The Inequality Delusion

Posted: Mon Oct 25, 2010 4:43 pm
by Tudamorf
Fyyr wrote:Of course you had(and have) the same opportunity.
So wrong.

To make it work, you need to have the right idea, at the right place, at the right time, a lot of luck, and often plenty of money.

The mere suggestion that everyone has equal opportunities is stupid.

That's like saying you have the same opportunity as Michael Phelps does to win a medal in swimming. Yeah technically, you both have the same opportunity to jump in the pool, but you are not similarly situated, even remotely.