Equality or prosperity?

[andrewducker]

[Poll #737627]

Yes, I know it's a simplification, but if these were the two options, where would you stand - should we allow massive inequality if it means that overall wealth also rises, or is inequality inherently wrong?

Comments

[ahsirakh.livejournal.com]

I chose the latter option, because I think that removing the option of selling out is a good way for the works of man to become more substantial.

[andrewducker]

Which works, and what do you mean by "more substantial"?

[ahsirakh.livejournal.com]

I've changed my mind after nuttyxander's succinct clarification below: "Should we fight poverty or should we fight wealth?" I believe the former, but initially I thought we were discussing idealised situations in which it was naturally possible (e.g. through market forces) to cap how much a person could own. That way, artists could spend more time to make their creations more moving and meaningful, instead of being pressured by time or the prospect of marketing to majority of the population.

[0olong.livejournal.com]

I have to say I agree somewhat - I'd like to find way of doing that, but I've not found any system that seems to work that way so far.

Well, we get a certain amount of that in the UK, because of arts council funding and suchlike. But not vast amounts of it.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Don't the people who want B want it because it because they think it ensures A?

[andrewducker]

Not necessarily. Some people just abhor the idea that there might be differences in how much people have.

[drplokta]

Mu. The question is unanswerable, and pretty well meaningless, as stated. Pounds are an abstraction whose significance will change drastically under either of your two options, and so one cannot answer the question in terms of what pounds signify today (other than as lumps of metal and pieces of paper, which is probably not what you had in mind). And one can't begin to extrapolate the economic effects, and what a pound might mean in your proposed futures, without a good deal more information about just how you're going to achieve option A or option B.

[andrewducker]

Hmmm - would it have changed if I'd said "stuff" rather than pounds?

There's a general question of "Should we try to increase the amount of resources people have even if this allows for increased inequality, or should we be striving for more equality even if this reduces the actual resources people have access to." which comes up time and time in economics discussions (and in an article in the most recent Economist, which I was reading on the way home and inspired the poll). It was this I was trying to get at, on a simplistic emotional level.

[drplokta]

But you can't have equality of stuff, because there aren't enough Georgian town houses in Chelsea or original Rembrandts for them to be parcelled out equally among the population. So your option A becomes the only possible one.

[andrewducker]

And this doesn't stop some people from thinking that Rembrandts should be owned by the state, and Georgian town houses divided into small flats so that everyone has access to an equal sized place to live.

And no, this isn't _my_ view - but I know people that do feel this way, and reading a some socialist literature will show similar attitudes. I've heard at least one member of a leftwing party say that nobody should be able to earn more than double the median wage - that earning more than that should be illegal/impossible. I don't think this is a good idea, but I know some people do.

[drplokta]

Rembrandts are merely the extreme. There is a vast class of property where we can't make twice as much by putting twice as much resource into it -- land, antiques (including art), natural resources, intellectual property of all kinds, etc., etc. Unless you're going to take the view that everything in any of these categories should be owned by the state, then inequality in their distribution is inevitable.

[andrewducker]

And indeed, there are people who go that far.

[andrewducker]

For instance:
http://andrewducker.livejournal.com/1090151.html?thread=5757543#t5757543

[nuttyxander.livejournal.com]

My prefered simplifciation: "Should we fight poverty or should we fight wealth?".

Equality of opportunity is a good thing but rewards must differ.

[xquiq.livejournal.com]

Very well put.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

That's definitely also my take on the issue. I don't see wealth as being at all bad, as long as everyone had their basic needs well taken care of. However, if people are hungry, homeless, or deprived of good medical care, education or similar necessities, then the only fair and humane thing to do is take money from the wealthy and use it to provide for those in need. Sadly, in the US at least, being fair and especially humane are rarely concerns of either the government or much of the populace. Of course, in the US, wealth is essentially a shell game, where almost half of the population thinks they are or can become members of the top 1% of income earners. Cultural delusions like this are the reason taxing the wealthy is so unpopular here - far too many people have been duped into thinking that taking money from the ultra-wealthy will in some bizarre fashion take money from them.

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

I think it depends on what X is, though. Right now our society's basically at the #1 option, the difference being that x is somewhere around 50 cents.

[andrewducker]

I am lucky enough to live in a society where X is better than that, thankfully. It's very hard to starve to death over here, and while the options to help you aren't perfect a way can usually be found to get money to people who need it.

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

erm, problem being, not difference.

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

Leaving aside the right and wrong, the first is a recipe for an unstable society (must find the refs, but it's apparently the case that, no matter whether the mean income is high or low, a big standard deviation causes social unrest). So I'd prefer the second. Particualrly because then we might be able to shut up about money for a minute, and notice that there are other things in the world.

This is providing that X is a liveable amount, or that it's over and above subsistence.

[darkoshi]

I'm not sure of the meaning of the question. If X in both options is the same amount (and if it refers to the same amount of well-off-ness in both cases), then the first option seems better to me. I don't mind there being massively rich people, as long as there aren't massively poor people.

[sterlingspider.livejournal.com]

I'm an American with earning potential, big mystery which box I ticked.

Having relatively recently left the academic world I am well too used to a system which smooshes everyone down to the same level in order to make things simpler.

I simply can't see how supressing ability can be functional in the name of the greater good.

[jccw.livejournal.com]

Do you mean X pounds income per year? Or do you mean keeping everyone's bank balance pinned to a certain amount?

If one were to redistribute the wealth evenly right now (that is shift from option A to option B), but otherwise keep the economic system the same, then it would re-stabilize (after the riots) to a similar configuration (possibly with different haves/have nots, see lotteries and reality tv). Otherwise, to maintain B, you'd have to keep redistributing every year, which would probably mean that the riots would never stop.

[wychwood]

Ideally, I think it would be better for us as a society if the range between rich and poor was not as huge as it is in most Western countries at the moment - but I can cope with that range, if everyone has enough. And I think that allowing a range of wealth is still important - rewards for effort and good money management, opportunities for all sorts of social mobility, all those things. But it might be nice to be able to say, well, everyone must earn at least, say, £15k p.a. and no one should be earning more than (say) £150k p.a. - that's a good range, and allows people to be wealthy without getting the insanely large wages at the top that we have at the moment... I have no idea how one would implement such a system, however.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

option A, of course.

People are not equal in talent, ability, intelligence, beauty, social nous, inventiveness, ability to sell etc. etc. why pretend. Why deny the competent/talented/gifted their rewards? (understanding that not everyone wants/needs monetary reward - but a lot do).

It's sensible not to let the less able people starve/have to live in squalor just to try to ensure they don't cause as much trouble... plus you know, it's a luxury any civilised nation should be able to afford.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

The biggest problem I have with the poll is its inherent assumption that extreme levels of wealth for a few raises the overall wealth of everybody. There's plenty of examples of countries with a few very rich and a very large percentage of dirt-poor people.

What would the results of the poll have been if the options were...

* Everyone has at least X pounds, but some people have massively more than that

* Everyone has twice X pounds, but nobody has any more money than anyone else

?

[andrewducker]

Actually, I don't think that extreme levels of wealth for a few raises the overall wealth for everyone. I _do_ think that a free(or partially free) market provides incentives for people to be more productive, and thus raises the overall level of wealth in a country - with the side-effect that some people end up worth a vast amount.

The countries which have some extremely rich people and everyone else very poor tend to be dictatorships with very little freedom, which I hadn't included at all.