Neoliberalism has resulted in preference for greater income inequality

https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2022/may/neoliberal-policies--institutions-have-prompted-preference-for-g.html

by geox • 4 years ago

110 314 4 years ago

nyu.edu

emteycz2• 4 years ago

Neoliberalism calls for elimination of social services? I know it as the exact opposite! Who defines these terms? Who defines what is canonical?

baisq3• 4 years ago

Liberalism and neoliberalism have always been about the rights of the individual above everything else. But the concept of "liberal" has been perverted in America.

usrn3• 4 years ago

The idea of a "political compass" helps. The left has two groups: authoritarians who want to replace culture with something secular and have strong social services and government regulation, and the liberals who want to reject culture and let people do what they want. The right also has two groups: the conservatives who want the government to enforce our culture and the libertarians who want to be left alone.

For the past ~100 years we've found consensus between the liberals and libertarians but everyone is radicalizing away from that. So we still think of liberals as being the leftward movement and libertarians as being the rightward one.

vanderZwan• 4 years ago

Social/political scientists who actually have intentions of ensuring they communicate in clear terms with each other. I'd go with their definitions, they're a lot more reliable than politicians and their double-speak when it comes to these topics.

mordae8• 4 years ago

You are probably the only one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism

hkt2• 4 years ago

Conventionally, neoliberalism is described as a doctrine that commodities and commercialises everything it can. It is the growth of markets into areas traditionally without them, the belief that choice is more important than standards, and so on. That's the basics, anyway.

What you might be thinking of is the tendency for American liberals to advocate for things like the welfare state, universal healthcare etc. That isn't neoliberalism, it is an ideology rather than a process.

robertlagrant13• 4 years ago

the belief that choice is more important than standards

More like that on average, competition creates the highest standards.

jrsj11• 4 years ago

“Neoliberalism” generally refers to the policy shifts under Reagan, Thatcher, etc. the “liberal” part of the word coming from the original sense of it and not the modern American version just meaning “left”.

pessimizer• 4 years ago

the modern American version just meaning “left”.

To add to this.

"Classical liberal" in the US means laissez faire as a form of government, and is an Americanism for liberal. "Liberal" in the US means closely associated with the Democratic Party, which is also "classically" liberal, but believes that preventing irrational discrimination against the societally disadvantaged trumps freedom of contract. "Neoliberal" also started as an Americanism for liberal but was retconned into referring to the philosophy that liberalism trumps democracy, so societies need to be rigged to support liberalism by any means necessary.

"Liberal" really just means "hands-off." If you're the Republican kind of liberal, you think that the only important thing is that the federal government keeps their hands off of things. If you're the Democratic kind of liberal, you also think that smaller institutions such as churches, Chambers of Commerce, Klan groups and state governments should also keep their hands off things, and that the federal government should be hands-on enforcing that. If you're a neoliberal, you think that the federal government, churches, Chambers of Commerce, Klan groups and state governments should be hands-on enforcing a hands-off policy when it comes to regulating finance or labor.

Both parties will veer from these principles when appealing to their illiberal bases (the religious right and the labor left), but feebly. turning those aberrations into what we call "wedge issues."

throwaway7875446• 4 years ago

The Wikipedia page addresses the meaning shift https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism

barry-cotter• 4 years ago

Neoliberalism holds that a society’s political and economic institutions should be robustly liberal and capitalist, but supplemented by a constitutionally limited democracy and a modest welfare state. Neoliberals endorse liberal rights and the free-market economy to protect freedom and promote economic prosperity. Neoliberals are broadly democratic, but stress the limitations of democracy as much as its necessity. And while neoliberals typically think government should provide social insurance and public goods, they are skeptical of the regulatory state, extensive government spending, and government-led countercyclical policy.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neoliberalism/index.html

lordnacho• 4 years ago

Especially in North America, classical liberalism, liberalism, and neoliberalism are different things. Reading something like the Economist, which is British, can cause some confusion.

The short story is that freedom can mean you should be free from the strictures of the state, or it can mean the state gives you more freedom by supplying certain things to you. The long story is really long.

throwaway7875446• 4 years ago

When you suggest that reducing taxes and eliminating regulations might hurt the most vulnerable, they have two responses: 1) no way, it would only help them because the market is perfect!, 2) who cares? the poor need to get a job!

People like neoliberalism for the same reason they like fascism: people want to believe in a utopia that mirrors their values. Belief is a hell of a drug.

baisq3• 4 years ago

Lower taxes is not a utopia, it's perfectly feasible, unless you think that you owe something to the poor just for existing.

ubercore2• 4 years ago

I don't think I owe the poor anything for existing, I think they should be taken care of as fellow humans. We live in a society, we should take care of each other.

throwaway7875446• 4 years ago

So you're a #2 :)

stuaxo• 4 years ago

Taxes aren't just about "the poor".

Decent infrastructure benefits everyone.

People that aren't poor participate in the economy and help business.

I shouldn't have to explain it only money terms, but in that way it makes sense.

Why should society pay more to keep people poor, the numbers don't add up.

Unless it's not about the money at all but about punishing people?

it_citizen• 4 years ago

I don't think you owe the poor directly. But you probably owe a fair chunk of your success to society (fundamental research, education, health, infrastructure). Then society decide how to spend that money. I might not like how that money will be spend but the game seems fair.

axiomsEnd• 4 years ago

If Amazon workers collect food stamps, it means Jeff Bezos "just existing" owe them quite a lot of money. Also, bussiness and innovation requieres good infrastructure. For some reason most tech startups do not start in tax heavens like Somalia, but in highly developed countries.

nicoburns5• 4 years ago

Why should poor people not come into your house and simply take your things? If you don't care about them, then why should they care about you?

jhgb4• 4 years ago

Well of course they're feasible. The Soviet Union was feasible. Ancient Mesopotamian societies were feasible. The Aztec Empire was feasible. Feasibility is the lowest bar for picking a solution. All it means is that it's not physically impossible to implement it.

tayistay2• 4 years ago

You do owe them to some extent, because if you deprive them enough, they will revolt, which will be much more disruptive to your life than higher taxes.

mdpye• 4 years ago

It's not "for existing". Taken collectively, their work underpins the conditions for the lives of those better off.

Remove "the poor" from the equation, and it's likely your quality of life would collapse. The market as operating doesn't recognise that in their remuneration because negatives are easy to externalise, and then roll down hill.

mcv• 4 years ago

Your taxes could go to help the poor, or to police them. Both cost money.

mordae8• 4 years ago

Most people don't really think about the world they live in. They listen to the radio, watch TV and don't see any hidden agenda. They just simply learn to parrot what they hear.

Then ask them, framing the question in a familiar way, and they just parrot back.

LOL. Sounds like GPT. :-)

throwaway0a5e• 4 years ago

It's amazing how such a large proportion of our society becomes incapable of thinking critically about policy and incentives when the policy in question is the product of a legislature.

Regulations just stupid rules made up by stupid humans. They're not special. They're no more likely to be a net good or bad for the groups they apply to than some random policy that comes down from corporate.

Every regulation that removes a rung from the ladder and increases inequality sails under the flag of some noble goal. And useful idiots take that shit hook line and sinker.

If prosperity was as simple as playing regulatory whack-a-mole on every bad thing we see we'd be a hell of a lot more prosperous.

LAC-Tech3• 4 years ago

Who likes fascism?!

Fascism must be the least popular extremist ideology in 2022. I have never heard anyone in my life talk about how it might be a good idea, or how "real fascism hasn't been tried yet". Hell I have barely even seen it on the internet.

As far as I can tell it exists today only as an epithet, but happy to be proved wrong.

jrsj11• 4 years ago

There’s definitely a sizable fringe community of fascists with outsized cultural influence online, but their line is more “fascism was good actually” than “real fascism hasn’t been tried yet”.

ClumsyPilot5• 4 years ago

Surely if no-one liked fashism, there wouod be no fashism?

throwaway7875446• 4 years ago

"Today, few political parties openly describe themselves as fascist, and no openly fascist parties are currently in power as of 2022. However, fascism is far from extinct. France's fascist "Front National" won more than 25% of the country's vote in 2014, as did the Danish People's Party in Denmark. Moreover, the ongoing prominence of groups such as the Patriot Front in the United States, Greece's Golden Dawn party, and Hungary's Jobbik testify to the ideology's continued appeal to some individuals. Additionally, smaller-scale fascist movements exist in dozens of countries to this day.

What's more, many modern-day political parties and governments avoid the fascist label but still incorporate fascist ideas into their platforms and strategies. Rhetoric that recalls a time when a country was a great empire but was brought down by certain people enjoying undeserved benefits, or that rejects social programs on the basis that not all citizens deserve them, or that endorses the suppression of certain people's individual rights or civil liberties—violently if necessary—is often rooted in fascist philosophy.

Fascism can be difficult to define and identify. This is partly because it is often modified to meet a specific fascist party's political goals and partly because it has many variations, many of which overlap with and arguably fit better into related ideologies such as socialism. Because of this vague categorization, considerable differences of opinion exist as to which governments qualify as truly fascist and which are instead some other system, such as right-wing dictatorships or authoritarian regimes—which are similar but do not follow fascist ideology."

- https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/fascist-c...

pydry5• 4 years ago

It's an attractive ideology for, well, society's humiliated losers, essentially.

It typically calls itself anything else other than fascism when it reemerges but it shares all the same features.

In the US e.g. use of the term "cuckservative" would probably signal that you align yourself with most of the tenets of a fascistic ideology even if you dont explicitly call yourself a fascist.

If anything it's become a lot more popular over the last 15-20 years than ever before. No tiki torch marches in the 90s.

tayistay2• 4 years ago

Fascism is authoritarian ultra-nationalism. Putin’s Russia fits easily. Various European leaders and parties fit to differing extents. Trump fits.

Just like dictators call themselves presidents, fascists call themselves other things.

raverbashing• 4 years ago

The debate about "lower/higher taxes" is a such a loaded discussion from both sides it's not even funny

Those more on the left treat it as a holy grail as if government spending wasn't historically very inefficient and prone to corruption.

Those more on the right think all the society that was built around them was free and came out of nothing.

I certainly don't like paying taxes but they're needed. I don't like goverment "intervention" but no free market is going to build a road in front of my house, establish a government with fiscal/monetary policy (and a currency - and no, no cryptocrap will solve this) and build relations with other countries.

And in fact old capitalists seemed much more society focused: they built railways, universities, etc. Instead of yet another web app

throwaway7875446• 4 years ago

It's because we're a society of plenty now. Nobody thinks they need taxes if they already have a road. And a lot of people are just ignorant and don't comprehend the compounding effects of societal inequality.

alfor• 4 years ago

We know there are problem on both sides: Too big and powerful government = corruption and inefficiencies Too big and powerful corporation = corruption and inefficiencies I prefer going more toward the free market as corporation are in competition and that force some accountability that we don’t see in the government. Keep the government small and nimble, mostly as a control mechanism for corporation that become corrupt and monopolistic.

Read Atlas Shrugged if you want to see the opposite of your point of view.

throwaway7875446• 4 years ago

Corporations are accountable to their bank statements and Governments are accountable to people. Except when the opposite is true. The real world is complicated and generalizations don't pan out. Neither do philosophies rooted on generalizations.

christophilus2• 4 years ago

Institutions can promote well-being and solidarity, or they can encourage competition, individualism, and hierarchy.

Why is this presented as an either / or?

endisneigh2• 4 years ago

How do you reconcile solidarity, aka consensus with individuality?

jrsj11• 4 years ago

By accepting a compromise between the two, which seems like the only sane way to do it to me. Otherwise if you go too far in terms of solidarity you end up with totalitarianism (everything is the state & the state is everything)

jokethrowaway• 4 years ago

Individuals can very well voluntarily donate to charities without having government goons force to give half of their profits

mordae8• 4 years ago

Are you asking how to make sure that the society is accommodating to those who are not willing to be accomodating to others?

You don't. If the group is too strict, you find another one. Having no borders would sure help.

But yeah, global issues need a global consensus. Can't let someone kill the planet for all of us.

AstralStorm7• 4 years ago

Pretty easily in fact, with old liberal non-aggression principle.

Non-interference unless what an individual is doing obstructs good of others. Includes the expenses if they are high enough. This cannot be defined individually.

BlackFly• 4 years ago

I think there are too many people that cannot do this reconciliation.

This reconciliation is embodied in phrases like, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Solidarity is not conformity. You can be different. There is likely no person on this planet with which you truly have no shared interest, no shared objective, no shared sympathy. Even if you find you identify strongly with your difference with another, the ability to see more fundamental shared interests, objectives and sympathies are the underpinning of things like secularism, freedom of speech, and liberalism in general.

CyanBird• 4 years ago

Through: liberte egalite fraternite

People have been doing it since "at least" the French Revolution, I am sure that you could chuck some Pericles speeches in there too

jrsj11• 4 years ago

It reads to me that the true intent is more in restriction competition and individualism more than it is promoting well-being and solidarity. I’m no fan of what they’re criticizing but you do have to consider what the alternative would be and who would be implementing it, and given the current political power structure that doesn’t seem like an attractive option either.

mordae8• 4 years ago

Because they are mutually exclusive. Competition, individualism and hierarchy will make sure that the ruthless will end up on top of the hierarchy, caring only about their individual needs, squashing attempts at solidarity and squandering opportunities to have any kind of well-being for others.

nine_k2• 4 years ago

This sounds as if all actors are completely independent, and there is no long-term strategy in their actions.

Henry Ford famously cared for his workers to be well-paid, so that they could afford the cars his company produced.

jrsj11• 4 years ago

This can’t be true imo because neither absolute could actually ever exist. There’s always elements of all of these things at play in various aspects of society. Despite being grouped & framed as polar opposites they can’t be mutually exclusive if they’re always intertwined with one another.

lawrenceyan2• 4 years ago

As long as 2/3 of all individual actors are honest, consensus can always be reached.

Capitalism acts as a consensus mechanism that solves for efficiency and productivity. To your point, though your take is cynical, it's meaningful to consider the adversarial condition.

In my opinion, what we need is to figure out a mechanism that solves for distribution, which as a byproduct also will solve for well-being (key point: and will be robust even under adversarial conditions).

jdthedisciple3• 4 years ago

They are just as mutually exclusive as saving money and staying alive: You can't save 100% of your money as you need to spend some on shelter and food among other things.

The obvious notion here being that there has to - and CAN be - a balance of the two.

christophilus2• 4 years ago

Competition is like eating. It’s an important part of everything that life touches. Whether or not it’s healthy is entirely contextual. A study which puts competition into the category “bad” is starting off with a highly questionable assumption. Same for individualism. I’m not a fan of hierarchy, and tend to see it as more bad than good, but even hierarchy isn’t one or the other. It’s contextual.

andi999• 4 years ago

Why do you think ruthless end up on top? I do not see that follows.

phoehne2• 4 years ago

First off, you can have competition and cooperation. Take a look at any sports team. It's a highly competitive environment that's also highly cooperative. You can't win unless you play as a team. I don't believe the strongest players on whatever football team you follow are squashing or squandering anything. You can't get to good graduates schools, even in garbage dump of politics the social sciences have become, without being more clever, interesting, and intelligent than your peers. It's laughable that people who make it to the more prestigious institutions, because of slavishly hard work for most of their lives, then turn around and say that merit based systems are inherently flawed. Should the Columbia just accept students at random? Even if they did, it wouldn't matter. The irony, in a world that isn't competitive, no one would pay more attention to their paper than a paper from Crappy Backwater University on why peanut consumption makes people more sedentary.

Their result isn't surprising. When you value and reward competition - you get more inequality. However, societies that don't favor competition often have completely rigged and sham economies. I'm racking my brain to think of one economy outside the US, UK, Germany, France, the Netherlands, etc, that isn't based on competition that isn't a morass of local bribes to the dictator's cousin's uncle or whatever. In China, for example, "common prosperity" is the cudgel wielded against any perceived alternate power center. It has little to do with actual prosperity.

What I think is right to criticize, is how do we deal with the impact of inequality. It's fine to have inequality as long as certain needs are met. Access to medical care, housing, food security, and education are all things that should be available to everyone. It's okay to have inequality and competition as long as we mitigate the emotional and physical impact of inequality. But the thing that will allow us to pay for that is a highly competitive and effective economy.

go13• 4 years ago

As if 'competition, individualism, and hierarchy' is bad. Well, somebody has to work hard, compete and provide to those who want to enjoy well-being and solidarity. In the meantime, the left wants to use this as a selling point to abuse the power and be the one in control without paying the hard price of working hard and taking risk.

ixtli6• 4 years ago

They are mutually exclusive. Solidarity is the opposite of individualism.

lr4444lr• 4 years ago

People throw around that word "Neoliberalism" as if its meaning is self-evidently clear. The author cites three elements of it, only one of which (free market capitalism) I've seen consistently used, but that isn't even something that began in the era most commonly ascribed to the ascendency of this doctrine. Just what preceded "Neoliberalism" so that we can distinguish its full defining feature set?

luciusdomitius• 4 years ago

Before that was Classical Liberalism. At least in US and Western Europe. In Eastern Europe it was something officially called "Unimplemented Communism/Developed Socialism".

umanwizard• 4 years ago

What is the main difference between classical liberalism and neoliberalism?

pydry5• 4 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Consensus

The 10 rules of the washington consensus essentially define the feature set of neoliberalism.

Theres a little fuzziness on some items but it's crystal clear on 95%. E.g. Q: would a neoliberal advocate privatization of state enterprises? A: yes.

ClumsyPilot5• 4 years ago

It is a defined economic term and has scientific papers detailing its inadequacy

goatlover8• 4 years ago

As opposed to some alternative economics which doesn't have inadequacies?

noelsusman• 4 years ago

Such as? There are half a dozen definitions being used in this thread already, none of which really overlap with each other.

ramblerman2• 4 years ago

The question on the survey was

"We need larger income differences as incentives for individual effort" vs “Incomes should be made more equal.”

But the ridiculously biased title pretends that people who picked the first option just want income inequality for no good reason, and are somehow brainwashed by neoliberal institutions.

ClumsyPilot5• 4 years ago

Headline: nazis want to kill minorities

Comment: the actual question was: 'We need to kill minorities to make more living space for our people'

But the ridicilously biased title pretends thay people who picked the first option just want death for no good reason, and are somehow brainwashed by nazi institutions!

Every action ever has some reasoning behind it, from you buying coffee to Russia's invasion to Hitler's genocide - Lebensraum. The propaganda succeeds when false reasoning has been accepted without questioning it

ramblerman2• 4 years ago

Straight to Nazis huh...

Context matters. People might support a free market where they can excel and see their hard work rewarded. That isn't quite the same as wanting income equality. It's a 2nd order effect of the first desire.

goatlover8• 4 years ago

Godwin would be proud.

yyy888sss3• 4 years ago

Liberalism means freedom in all spheres (including economically and socially), no need to add the neo- prefix. When you have freedom in a global economy there will be massive income inequality (think about Lebron James or Elon Musk vs the average person) but everyone is better off. Technology allows the best athletes to entertain millions, and the best entrepreneurs to serve billions.

orta• 4 years ago

"Neoliberalism" is a specific term for the conceptual forms of capitalism the west has been under since the 70-80s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism

yyy888sss3• 4 years ago

But the 'neo' refers to the resurgence of basic ideas of freedom, not a big change in philosophy over the original liberal ideas.

noworld• 4 years ago

Interesting, freedom to do what?

yyy888sss3• 4 years ago

Freedom to do whatever you want as long as it does not infringe the rights/freedoms of anyone else.

belter• 4 years ago

Fortunately, this Atlas Shrugged variation of Liberalism, and it's tragic results are quite visible for all to see in societies like the United States.

Meanwhile...., In other places, in societies with a lesser number of Elon Musk's or Lebron Jame's, countries like the Nordics or even France, Germany and others, those millions of normal persons, enjoy 30 days of holidays per year, state sponsored retirement benefits, free or almost free healthcare and free or almost university level education.

usrn3• 4 years ago

Those countries are more demographically/culturally uniform and are higher trust societies. Even Bernie Sanders admits this is necessary for large social programs.

prox• 4 years ago

That’s not true. “The best” here is simply an effect of amongst other : first mover advantage, already secured liquidity to be a first mover, the network effect, and the money to push massive campaigns to influence a topic. So we are not seeing the “best” in the context where everyone is better off.

I would argue that Europe who have more social economies the everyday person is better off. Less student costs, less medical costs, lots of utilities provided for the people. It took ages to get an infrastructure bill in the US.

imapeopleperson2• 4 years ago

Free markets will always remain the most fair system of resource allocation.

Any other system requires an uninvolved power, likely a govt, to decide.

Who gets to live in the 56 Leonard PH?

zwirbl5• 4 years ago

Free markets are not a fair system of resource allocation and were never intended to be such, they are about efficient resource allocation. Having eg. a government involved might lead to a fairer outcome but efficiency will take a hit

G3rn0ti• 4 years ago

a government involved might lead to a fairer outcome

Fairer for the supporters of a government that is. Even in a modern democracy a government is really just supported by a small majority ruling over a large minority. That does not mean that democracy has failed but it heavily implies the government power needs to be limited to a minimum in order for a free society to thrive. _That's why_ the lesson learned and applied by "neoliberalism" has always been meddling with economic forces is a sure road to serfdom (to quote the young F.A. Hayek which Thatcher's politics was always inspired by). It's never been about suppressing the poor. To the contrary. (Even Hayek argued in favor of small social security net.)

ixtli6• 4 years ago

I would go further and define “efficient.” They are, in western society, efficient at accumulating private capital in the hands of capitalists. No claim is made by anyone to the contrary.

imapeopleperson2• 4 years ago

Free markets have always been innately fair.

If you own something, how would it be fair for the government to have any direct say on what you should do with it?

newsclues2• 4 years ago

I don’t know of many free markets (regulations effect everything).

kuschku• 4 years ago

A free market necessarily requires government involvement.

A free market is industry-specific. For it to work, a company in one industry may not influence the market in a different industry, or that market won’t be free anymore.

To prevent this, government involvement is required to ensure fair start conditions for all companies within of the free market

cameronh905• 4 years ago

While a free market economy requires government involvement, one must admit it requires less than an economy that tries to ensure equality. I also suspect the more you leave an economy to its own devices, the more unequal it becomes.

maxerickson• 4 years ago

This is incoherent, industrial categories are a convenience, not a natural component of economic activity.

Is automation an industry? Because an automation innovator might be built on the assumption that it can influence another industry.

Can a manufacturer of one thing decide that they have the internal capacity to manufacture something at a lower cost than the existing competitors and then not share that methodology with the existing competitors?

konschubert• 4 years ago

Is it fair when somebody has rich parents and just inherits so much money they never have to work?

Is it fair when a disabled person starves because they cannot earn money?

I think that there are ways to improve fairness beyond a total free market.

Though I agree that if you push it too hard, you remove incentives that are good.

It's a tough problem and I don't think the optimum is in the extremes.

moolcool7• 4 years ago

It's "fair" only in a very tautological sense of the word, and in the sense that literally any wealth distribution system is "fair". Like yes, a hedonistic trust fund baby who spends their life buying luxury goods and going on vacations may "create value" merely through allocating wealth to goods and services which bring him pleasure. I think that's an extremely stupid way to look at the concept of value though.

yodsanklai• 4 years ago

Free markets will always remain the most fair system of resource allocation.

Based on what? Theoretical models are full of assumptions that doesn't hold in practice. Empirical evidence is limited too since free markets don't even exist in the real world. If anything, evidence show that they fail for a wide range of applications where there are inefficient and not fair.

Any other system requires an uninvolved power, likely a govt, to decide.

Free markets also required a government. They need to be regulated and can't work in a vacuum.

ixtli6• 4 years ago

This is the neoliberal ideology they are talking about, yes :)

moolcool7• 4 years ago

Free markets will always remain the most fair system of resource allocation.

First, I think there's a lot of different angles from which you can challenge that claim. In a truly "free market", things like nepotism, bribery, and inherited wealth still exist (and by definition they'd exist in higher levels than in regulated markets). Does some random millionaire trust fund kid in a free market really create value? Is it fair that Bezos is a billionaire when low-paid workers are the ones actually creating value at Amazon? I would argue that without some restriction, free markets almost guarantee _unfair_ resource allocation. Like without antitrust regulation, for example, it would become a winner-take-all game where a single megacorporation could absorb all competitors and value labour however the hell they want.

That is all besides the point though. I would argue that the "most fair system of resource allocation" is not a desirable outcome at all. If a true meritocracy were possible, swaths of people would just starve to death.

orwin3• 4 years ago

You cannot have free markets without a government, sadly. It is either an utopia or a dystopia, depending on your point of view of private militia and consolidation of corporate power.

Also, free market ideology come from the idea that natural ressources are infinite (JB Say explained that clearly, JS Mill implied it). Later on, other free market economists corrected him (to make Say's law still relevant) and added that even if not infinite, ressources can be substitued easily once one is over-exploited.

2007-2008 put a question mark on the "easily", as the disruption from a conventional oil peak lasted until 2012 in Italy (and probably Greece, Spain and Portugal, the four EU countries that depend the most on oil to make their electricity). This year will put a bigger question mark on how well agricultural ressources substitution work.

mypastself2• 4 years ago

The conclusion seems to be that citizens of economically free countries tend to value income increase as incentive for making a greater individual effort, which makes sense. The rest of the article seems to pass judgment on this view, and implies the alternative is preferable.

jrsj11• 4 years ago

Very hard for me not to have this opinion now after working in a few different companies where half my coworkers seem to not be doing much more than jerking off all day and at best accomplishing a days worth of work in a week. How could anyone who has had this experience NOT want greater variation in pay that’s at least somewhat correlated to effort/performance?

This stands out more to me in an office environment but the dynamic existed even when I worked at McDonald’s. Nobody wants to have to carry dead weight.

goatlover8• 4 years ago

Reminds me of the old Soviet saying, "We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us". But there seems to be a rise in popularity of the idea that meritocracy and competition is bad and everyone should be paid the same. Killing incentive seems like a bad economic policy to me that's already been tried.

ThalesX• 4 years ago

I don't know. I also feel that I work more than let's say half my colleagues at whichever company. Mostly because I really really really enjoy what I'm doing. That being said, I'm not really sure how their salary impacts my life. I negociate to what I want for what I do and that's that.

hotpotamus• 4 years ago

How much harder than you did the CEO work for how much more pay than you got at any of these companies?

BlargMcLarg6• 4 years ago

Obviously, but your examples are too obvious.

Should a subpopulation of entrepreneurs be able to coast by on brand recognition and first mover advantage after an initial burst of effort?

Should manual laborers be paid jack for doing a job which puts them at high risk of being stuck socioeconomically, despite putting in loads of effort?

People want harder work to be more rewarded, but the saying is "work smarter, not harder" for a reason.

AnIdiotOnTheNet3• 4 years ago

If compensation was all about hard work then coal miners would be billionaires. The arguments about income inequality largely come down to the fact that there is very little correlation between hard work and compensation. Instead the large difference in income are correlated with factors generally considered beyond people's control. I would have a hard time becoming a real estate tycoon because I don't have a father who can grant me a small loan of a million dollars, for instance.

lkxijlewlf• 4 years ago

I get you. I've had that opinion as well. But anymore, I realize that's not my problem. What I want is my share. When a company says, "Best year ever!" and my share is a 2% raise, fuck that.

moolcool7• 4 years ago

I'd argue that the dynamic you're talking about is a part of a free market though. Like you could use your McDonald's example to make the opposite point that you're using it for. You could say "A lack of pay, recognition of effort, and career growth opportunity at McDonald's means that workers are unmotivated and do not give 100%. More ambitious workers who want to give more effort and be recognized for said effort move on to higher paying opportunities elsewhere".

andrepd6• 4 years ago

Very nice sentiment, but unfortunately that's not how reality works. Do you honestly look at the world and see that incomes are correlated to merit/effort/performance/work?

odiroot• 4 years ago

Nobody wants to have to carry dead weight.

But there's a lot of "dead weight" to carry. And it has a voice and a vote.

Cthulhu_2• 4 years ago

It makes sense... in an idealized version of neoliberalism, but the reality is that people are kept poor and indentured despite the "individual effort" they put in. There's eugenics happening, from people unable to pay for health care because one, health care is too expensive, two, wages are too low, and three, there is not enough assistance for people to be able to pay for health care. This has led to loss of life and limb, where people had to, for example, ration their insulin, or they couldn't afford to keep a fridge running to store said insulin. It is literally killing people for being sick and not rich enough.

moolcool7• 4 years ago

This is the system working as designed. This profound unfairness exists and propagates, and those who benefit most from it have a mental framework to justify it to themselves as "fair".

mypastself2• 4 years ago

What I meant is, it makes sense that people in free market economies would value free markets.

Of course effort isn’t always positively correlated with income.

The question is whether or not the prosperity resulting from innovation and risk-taking in such a system is worth the trade-off of unevenly distributed wealth. I think a good argument could be made in the affirmative, but it’s not exactly a settled economic question.

tootie• 4 years ago

I think it's not clearly spelled out in the summary, but it strongly implies that it has created a disconnect between preferences and outcomes. People's preference for increased inequality leads to increased inequality which is taken prima facie as a bad thing.

incomingpain4• 4 years ago

The phase of politics we have entered is the post-culture wars. It's no longer red vs blue. It's wealth redistribution vs not. "Pay my college tuition loans!" or "give me $ for a new ev car"

But break down what that means? The predominantly rich are who get into those ivy league schools and rack up giant student loans. You're planning to pay off rich kids loans?

Anyone who already paid off the loans gets nothing? People who didn't go to university gets nothing? Also how's that money printing going? 8.5% inflation and still rising... You want more of that?

Lets go further. Let's just imagine we decide to reset. They print a million $ per person and everyone gets it. Everyone is back to equality.

Inflation will obviously blow up and find some equilibrium eventually. We eliminate all debt. What happens? The poor will burn that million so fast. It's the mentality of the psyche, no different than a dog who eats their food as fast as possible fearing they might lose it.

The rich take the million and buy as much investments as possible right away.

In a couple years we go check on how things are doing... the rich are rich. the poor are poor. Nothing changes. People need to understand that money doesn't work this way. Want to eliminate inequality? Teach people to not be poor, teach them to bust their butt doing something useful to society.

hamter2• 4 years ago

The predominantly rich are who get into those ivy league schools and rack up giant student loans. You're planning to pay off rich kids loans?

that one's gonna need a citation lol.

Also how's that money printing going? 8.5% inflation and still rising... You want more of that?

ask the corporations that are posting record profits in spite of this inflation

The poor will burn that million so fast. It's the mentality of the psyche, no different than a dog who eats their food as fast as possible fearing they might lose it.

break out the calipers boys

The rich take the million and buy as much investments as possible right away.

wait i thought we were getting inflation that makes the million meaningless

In a couple years we go check on how things are doing... the rich are rich. the poor are poor. Nothing changes. People need to understand that money doesn't work this way. Want to eliminate inequality? Teach people to not be poor, teach them to bust their butt doing something useful to society.

real rich dad / poor dad hours here

robertlagrant13• 4 years ago

wait i thought we were getting inflation that makes the million meaningless

Hence the investments, as the companies selling the things with inflated prices... will have inflated their prices :)

incomingpain4• 4 years ago

that one's gonna need a citation lol.

The whole point of education is that getting it will make you rich. the point I was making though is that statistically the people who get post-secondary educations are from rich families.

https://www.ajc.com/blog/get-schooled/college-admissions-the...

This is a leading reason why the rich get richer and the poor stay poor. The big question is if single-payer post-secondary makes sense and while Germany for example does have this... they vastly restrict what you can take. Liberal arts is basically not something you can take in germany.

ask the corporations that are posting record profits in spite of this inflation

In a high inflation environment, the corporations will always post good profits. It's not the other way around where corporations create inflation, quite the opposite.

wait i thought we were getting inflation that makes the million meaningless

Oh ya, print that much money and inflation would be insane; it would ultimately be meaningless but the point being illustrated is that even if we equaled the playing field, inequality would come right back.

robertlagrant13• 4 years ago

Well, the only thing that really changes is technology. We don't need 30% of the population doing agricultural labour as we've automated most of it. We can transport goods long distances, giving us access to things no dreamed of 100 years ago. We can communicate instantly across the globe. These are all incredible achievements.

What is the case is that inequality may not go away, but if one's own standard of living is increasing with relatively little effort, then that's the main thing.

incomingpain4• 4 years ago

Well, the only thing that really changes is technology. We don't need 30% of the population doing agricultural labour as we've automated most of it. We can transport goods long distances, giving us access to things no dreamed of 100 years ago. We can communicate instantly across the globe. These are all incredible achievements.

The world is a much better place to be sure. Capitalism has dramatically dropped poverty world-wide. It's great.

What is the case is that inequality may not go away, but if one's own standard of living is increasing with relatively little effort, then that's the main thing.

Inequality starts before high school but is established at high school. Not everyone is equal, there are kids who are barely passing and there are kids who put the work in and earn top marks. This difference in personality will produce a different outcome.

The barely passing person who ends up in a mcjob earning minimum wage should not get the same benefits from society as the top marks kid who becomes a neuroscientist.

The neuroscientist should be driving his Tesla plaid edition while the mcjob is driving the 10 year old beater.

Inequality is not going away until some seismic shift in scarcity occurs; but even after we eliminate scarcity. There will still be inequality in different ways.

lta• 4 years ago

It's the poor's fault they are poor, is that it ? They should bet on the right numbers in the lottery, right ?

The non-stop growth of income and wealth inequality for a few decades is only fair, because if you weren't able to pay for tuition, you could still scrub toilets very very very fast and and become rich !

It's no secret to anyone who has been doing any kind of reading about economy and/or investment that money makes money. I'd like to contrast that by mentioning a quite interesting report by the french senate a few years ago which was titled "It's very expensive to be poor" [1]

I'm a entrepreneur and I'm not here to claim that we shouldn't have a free market, but I feel sick in my stomach when I feel like I'm reading that poor are meant to be poor or that it's only their fault. A lot of indicators tends to show the game is more and more biased.

As a sidenote, as i think quite a few readers are americans: I've been living in the US for a few years and I was really astonished by the lack / or malfunction of the social elevator in that country. The American Dream seemed long gone to me.

[1] https://www.senat.fr/rap/r13-388/r13-38818.html (french only, sorry)

incomingpain4• 4 years ago

It's the poor's fault they are poor, is that it ? They should bet on the right numbers in the lottery, right ?

Yes, if you have the poor mentality you will be poor. There's no rich people who bet on the lottery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krTo4W7Z2vk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31qfjBEyKds

The non-stop growth of income and wealth inequality for a few decades is only fair, because if you weren't able to pay for tuition, you could still scrub toilets very very very fast and and become rich !

I don't know you but I have a feeling those 2 videos are going to benefit you greatly.

It's no secret to anyone who has been doing any kind of reading about economy and/or investment that money makes money. I'd like to contrast that by mentioning a quite interesting report by the french senate a few years ago which was titled "It's very expensive to be poor" [1]

Income inequality at the top end derives heavily from credit score and the ability to take on debt yes. There's no better way to handle this. Nothing tried so far has produced a better outcome. If you have a solution to replacing credit score... I'm all ears.

Also note, we will NEVER EVER be repealing glass steagal or equivalent to fix inner city ghettos with subprime loans ever again. It'll be many decades before we try to fix inner city ghettos again. In fact, I expect no politicians talk about inner city ghettos ever again because of that 2009 financial crisis.

I'm a entrepreneur and I'm not here to claim that we shouldn't have a free market, but I feel sick in my stomach when I feel like I'm reading that poor are meant to be poor or that it's only their fault. A lot of indicators tends to show the game is more and more biased.

More and more biased? In what way? Yes regulations and higher taxes are making the situation worse on the poor. Rent control and minimum wage is doing tremendous harm to the USA.

As a sidenote, as i think quite a few readers are americans: I've been living in the US for a few years and I was really astonished by the lack / or malfunction of the social elevator in that country. The American Dream seemed long gone to me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility

What you are referring to is social mobility. Yes, something went very wrong in the USA. They were clearly #1 for a long time, but now they are in last place. Why? If you look at the options on that wiki page, you are basically forced to agree or come to the conclusion, culture/poormentality and housing are the USA's problem.

jdthedisciple3• 4 years ago

Neoliberalism has resulted in preference for greater income equality

is I think a misguided conclusion from what the survey actually asked.

Just because one of the side effects of having more freedom is that many people will choose not to use that freedom - while a few will totally successfully use it - doesn't mean that that is my preferred outcome. I could prefer to have freedom and also prefer to have everyone use that freedom to their best benefit so that everyone is better off. It's just that that isn't what usually happens (mostly due to human nature).

In other words I could just as well say this (don't even need a survey for that):

Socialism results in preference for less freedom.

mordae8• 4 years ago

mostly due to human nature

Citation needed.

Seriously, are you sure you are not mixing up free market conditioning with nature?

Check out Dawn of Everything.

jdthedisciple3• 4 years ago

Okay I didn't wanna go into that discussion: I don't think the true reasons are crucial for my argument here.

m000• 4 years ago

"Everyone": Go tell the homeless sleeping under the bridge to praise the Lord we don't have socialism, or they would end up in those nasty Khrushchyovkas.

mrep• 4 years ago

Didn't the soviets send people who didn't work to prison and then forced them to do hard labor?

nlangy• 4 years ago

Of course. Since at least Clinton the Democratic neoliberals have been the party of the 1% and the welfare recipients. The rest are screwed.

Most of the Covid "relief funds" ended up in the hands of cronies, enabling them to buy private airplanes (there is a severe shortage right now), drive up the stock markets to ridiculous heights and use the gains to buy up even more real estate.

(The Republicans are of course also doing all of this, but neoliberalism refers more to Democrats betraying their original interest groups.)

newsclues2• 4 years ago

If you understand that you realize why they fool everyone with the equality and diversity slogans.

Gotta convinces the fools you aren’t robbing them blind!

happythebob• 4 years ago

Both Sides is quite the global, age-old narrative that most people are vulnerable to. The two sides couldn't be more different than ever, if you'd care to see what Biden and Democrats have actually passed in the last 16 months.

There's been more fury over Pelosi buying shares of US companies than there was over Trump pumping stocks on national TV, or about the leadup to Roe vs Wade, or about the right's attack on democracy. Which is what both sides fallacies has always done, always, by default it serves the shittier of two sides and makes people disinterested or impractical. And now it's louder and more exploited than ever thanks to social media. Thanks to you.

If you are a proponent of the Both Sides Fallacy in the year 2022, you need a hard look at reality of the last 100+ years and the last 16+ months. You're helping the red wade and helping to move the Overton Window further right, learning nothing from the protest and non-voters of 2016, paying no attention to the reality of how many positive things have been done in the past 16 months, and things that have been 180 different from the previous four years, but you just see the Both Sides headlines.

Dracophoenix2• 4 years ago

If you are a proponent of the Both Sides Fallacy in the year 2022, you need a hard look at reality of the last 100+ years and the last 16+ months. You're helping the red wade and helping to move the Overton Window further right, learning nothing from the protest and non-voters of 2016, paying no attention to the reality of how many positive things have been done in the past 16 months, and things that have been 180 different from the previous four years, but you just see the Both Sides headlines.

If you're going to criticize over-simplistic narratives, consider the flaws of your own. "Both sides are the same" is not a fallacy when both parties have regularly voted to increase the power of the state, cater and pander to their chosen special interest groups at the expense of the average citizen, and continue to punch holes into enumerated rights of the constitution. If you are of the view that the ends justify the means so long as you get your favored party into power, then your methods are no better than those of the elephant men.

There is nothing remotely logical about voting for either of the parties, even as a buffer against the excesses of the other. If you can only conceive of politics in terms of binary spectra, you've already lost.

epistasis• 4 years ago

I appreciate that they defined neoliberalism. In Northern California over the last five to ten years, it has been so misused that people who are not very neoliberal, but have been called neoliberal a lot, started adopting the term to describe themselves. And these people would never agre with Thatcher or Reagan on much.

gadders• 4 years ago

>Neoliberalism, which calls for free-market capitalism, regressive taxation, and the elimination of social services,

That first sentence, where neoliberalism is described in a deliberatively pejorative way, doesn't do much for the credibility of the report. Margaret Thatcher (for instance) never called for the elimination of social services. She and the Conservative Party were always in favour of some form of social "safety net".

mindvirus3• 4 years ago

That may be, but the other side of this is that global poverty has never been lower [1]. I think both absolute and relative poverty are important to consider, but generally the direction the world is going with respect to poverty is good. The example questions they ask reflect a pretty superficial and biased view in my opinion:

“We need larger income differences as incentives for individual effort” and “Incomes should be made more equal."

Versus perhaps the neoliberal framing (also biased) of "we should incentive people to take risks" and "fewer people living in poverty is more important than income distribution".

1. https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty

next_xibalba2• 4 years ago

I think both absolute and relative poverty are important to consider

I would be interested to learn your (or others) thoughts on why relative poverty is important. I've thought frequently, but probably superficially, about this quite a bit over the years. Many people who are considered impoverished in the U.S. are: obese (AKA not hungry), housed, and have a smart phone and cable TV. It is very hard to wrap my mind around their "hardship" when we have real world examples of people in other places who lack all of these things. My mind, likely due to my own biases, tends to conclude that it is a function of a country that has become too wealthy and thus abstracted away from the resources and efforts that created and sustain that wealth–natural resources, rule of law and due process, hard work, training and experience, risk taking, innovation and creativity, etc etc.

Is relative poverty important simply as a system feature that elevates political risk? Or is there something more tangible in terms of human need that I miss?

Cthulhu_2• 4 years ago

That's really applying stereotypes to a huge swathe of people and I think you should seriously review your biases and stereotypes.

You are saying a lot of people are obese and not hungry; what about the ones that can only manage to afford shit like dry pasta?

Housed, what about the over half a million homeless? What about the ones that aren't technically homeless but live couch to couch, in a van, or with family even though they have a family of their own? And what about the ones that can hardly make rent every month, let alone never have a chance at home ownership?

The smartphone thing is moot; they can be cheap, and they cost a fraction of, say, a month of rent. The "you have a smartphone so you can't be poor" line is just dumb.

There's a lot of whataboutism as well, i.e. "what about these other people who have it worse"; it's not like it's one or the other. There's wealth inequality, and there's poverty in many forms - poverty that seems intentional and avoidable.

The solution? It's not easy, but raise the minimum wage, tackle the housing crisis; fix the health care system and make it affordable for everyone; tax the rich and do a Robin Hood, or at least fix the infrastructure, reduce the decades long exorbitant spending on the army in favor of health care, public health and education.

And I think all of these can be made to work together with this neoliberalism thing. It just requires some people to give up some of their privileges.

mindvirus3• 4 years ago

Yes, I think both are important.

On fixing absolute poverty - it means children and adults don't starve to death or die of treatable diseases. Hopefully it's self evident why it's important to solve.

On relative poverty - it means equal opportunity. The gap in life expectancy between the richest and the poorest is like 10 years. The lowest quartile has the least income mobility, and still struggles to have more access to quality food, health care, education. And that lack of mobility concentrates wealth and reduces generating wealth which leaves society as a whole poorer.

ricardobeat3• 4 years ago

Are global averages meaningful to look at, though? You could have millions lifted out of poverty in countries that are becoming more developed, counterbalancing changes elsewhere, without neoliberal policies being correlated.

In Brazil, extreme poverty was reduced by 75% during a decade of a left-wing, welfare focused government, and then promptly went up again as soon as neoliberal (not exactly, but close enough for the purpose of this argument) politicians came back to power. And the averages didn’t improve either - quality of life has deteriorated for everyone else too.

kanduri3• 4 years ago

75% of global poverty reduction has been due to China lifting over 800 million people. The real number is even higher if you account for Vietnam, Laos and Cuba. Then there are also many nations that don't classify themselves explicitly as government-planned economies where the public sector plays a huge role in providing a wide breadth of basic services to the people, rather than the private markets doing so.

So virtually all of the poverty alleviation has happened when governments have prioritized access to basics (housing, education, healthcare, public transport, pensions, wage regulations, utilities like power/water/sewerage, etc) to the common people rather than leave it up to "market forces".

Institutions that represent the interests of people using state budgets for inclusive policy have a much bigger role in poverty alleviation, by creating an environment of fair opportunity for the poor, than explicit deregulation/privatization.

Source: https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/l...

gruez• 4 years ago

75% of global poverty reduction has been due to China lifting over 800 million people. The real number is even higher if you account for Vietnam, Laos and Cuba. Then there are also many nations that don't classify themselves explicitly as government-planned economies where the public sector plays a huge role in providing a wide breadth of basic services to the people, rather than the private markets doing so.

You can also make the opposite argument by pointing out China's growth only really got started with Deng's market liberalization reforms, which did the opposite of what you described.

mindvirus3• 4 years ago

Where did China get the money to do all of that? They're the poster child of benefiting from globalization and free-trade.

BirAdam• 4 years ago

Neoliberalism hasn’t actually been the world order at all, but rather soft fascism in which government and corporation walk hand in hand. If you add to this the cartelization of global banking, the situation starts to look more like neo-feudalism. I would hasten to say that there has never and will likely never be a “neoliberal” world order; people in power don’t typically just give up their power.

Also, don’t start an article with words like “findings” and then use the article to spout your own moral values.

VictorPath4• 4 years ago

Yes, this idea of neoliberalism and free market reforms has meant corporations getting more government involvement in the economy. Eliminating market barriers to promote competition is mythical, it has been the opposite - most industries are oligopolies.

Look at the 40 billion that Congress just pushed to give to US military contractors en route of some of the output to Ukraine (supported by the Squad, opposed by some Trump friendly Republicans). This has been modus operandi of US pumping taxpayer money into corporations since World War II. Biden had diplomats go to Venezuela to get oil and pull back Monroe Doctrine US military operations down there as its shifting military operations from around Venezuela to the western border of Russia.

VictorPath4• 4 years ago

A lot of the framework is tautological. Income for work, that he receives more money for an hour of labor than him, has always been of minor concern to people who have not bought into the neoliberal system. It's a concern for some at the top of the system. Social relations between those who work and the heirs who expropriate surplus labor time from those who work might be more of a concern.

I don't know what market friendly psychological tendencies are or free-market reforms. Large corporations have instituted reforms to quash the market. Don't rely on me, Warren Buffett, Peter Thiel and others have said the same thing. Industries are oligopolies from music (Universal controls more than half of US music) to breakfast cereals.

I am not sure what a free market is, in the Soviet Union people were free to go to a small market owned by the proprietor and buy potatoes or radishes with rubles, just like in the UK (with pounds) or US (dollars). So what is a free market? Or are they talking about control of the commanding heights of the forces of production? But that is not a market.

Also a country can be run by FDR and he says a New Deal economy is good and this idea is promoted from the top. It can be run by Reagan, with control of the media becoming consolidated and corporatized, and promoting another view if the economy. It is no surprise if all people hear 24/7 from people from Bush to the Clinton's how great so called free trade agreements etc. are that more will echo that sentiment. The reality is working people have been and are resistant to these economic agreements which harm them, relative to the opinion of the decision makers.

cameronh905• 4 years ago

Probably true but "preference" almost feels like a loaded word.

I suspect few people want inequality directly, but it's a means to an end.

Looking throughout history, extreme inequality, while unfair for most people, still achieves some useful progress. All attempts for a perfectly equal economy, that I'm aware of, have ended in disaster. Sometimes horrifically.

For that reason, I think it's fair to see some level of income inequality as a necessary evil until someone can convincingly demonstrate otherwise.

mola2• 4 years ago

I would go further than the article and say neoliberalism is optimizing for income inequality.

I would also point out that the dichotomy you talk about: neoliberalism vs equal economy is false . Modern Social democracies don't optimize for perfect equality, they try to strike a balance between market forces and humane values. They reject the neoliberal idea that perfect markets are morally correct.

cameronh905• 4 years ago

I'm not sure any economy is fully behind what you describe as neoliberalism though? Even the USA has welfare, tax and many other not purely Laissez-faire institutions.

You'll note that I never even actually argued for neoliberalism. I think social democracies are far better than unfettered neoliberal capitalism.

However, I think the way that people answered those questions is completely compatible with social democracy too. They never asked do you want inequality and perfect markets above all else. Modern social democracy is much closer to neoliberalism than it is to communism or even 70s style socialism.

One way or interpreting these poll results is that living under a neoliberal world order has increased support for inequality because people are, on the whole, happy with how it changed their lives. Sure, some rich people are absurdly, unfairly rich, but in many ways the average person's life drastically improved from the 70s to now at far quicker rate than ever before in history.

Perhaps many people accept that increased inequality is a fair price to pay for the way they feel life has improved?

Certainly speaking for myself, I don't particularly care that Elon Musk is so rich that he could buy every superyacht in the world, provided that I have all my basic needs met and the economic resources to try and achieve what makes me happy. I'm not jealous of the wealth of others. Looking at what happened to my family under the economic policies of the 70s in the UK, I am pretty glad to have grown up in the 90s.

I'm aware that not everyone is as lucky as me to have all their basic needs met. I think that's a great shame and as far as inequality goes, I think it's fine if someone is 100000x as wealthy as someone else PROVIDED THAT person on the bottom has a house, food, heating, healthcare etc. which certainly is not the case right now.

Ultimately, I'd prefer to be the poorest well fed person in Britain rather than starving in the same boat with everyone else.

goatlover8• 4 years ago

I don't see why income inequality is inherently "evil". Yes, too much can be a problem, although I'd be more concerned with the overall standard of living than whether billionaires exist. Is it evil that some artists or athletes become extremely popular? Is it evil that someone's business becomes extremely successful? Do either of those things lower the standard of living for other people? I tend to think they grow the economic pie and provide goods and services which didn't exist to the same extent before.

This isn't to say there are no problems with income inequality, or that there shouldn't be proper safety nets or taxation, just that income inequality doesn't seem to be an evil in my judgement. Some people are just going to end up more successful than others for whatever reasons, and as long as it's done within the law, I don't see the inherent problem with it. I do see a big problem with trying to make economic outcomes equal, and I don't think it works.

mola2• 4 years ago

Income inequality isn't evil, optimizing for it is. Creating a system where wealth and thus power and freedom is concentrated in a shrinking percentage of the populos is wrong and exploitative.

vsareto• 4 years ago

The current nature of what is unequal is also a problem. If we had enough food/housing/water/necessities for everyone that were created and delivered autonomously, and the only inequality were social criteria (reputation, jobs, accomplishments), it would seem more tolerable, or not as high of a priority.

The lower bound of inequality means you go hungry/thirsty or become homeless. If the lower bound meant you just lost a cool opportunity (but could go chill until the next one), then I think most of us would be okay with that.

VictorPath4• 4 years ago

All attempts for a perfectly equal economy, that I'm aware of, have ended in disaster. Sometimes horrifically.

I guess the tens of thousands of years from when humans were painting on caves to the first manifestation of a class society 10000 years ago was a horrific disaster.

WaitWaitWha• 4 years ago

Can you site your reference or foundation for your comment please? Like to see a counter-point to what my understanding is.

I was always under the understanding that inequality was horrific 'tens of thousands of years from when humans were painting on caves'. If I was not producing enough for the tribe or group I would be left behind or worse. The strong ones had the most food, women, and best spot in the 'cave' i.e. inequality.

cameronh905• 4 years ago

I am indeed not aware how those societies worked, and I put that caveat in there because I knew someone would probably say we what about cavemen or something.

But I'm not sure you can really compare cavemen to the past 6000 or so years of attempting society at scale.

For one there's fairly limited understanding of what those societies were really like. Discussions about how they were attempting to architect their economy are likely to run into walls pretty quickly. Do we have anything to suggest they were perfectly equal?

Secondly, I think the constraints are much different when you're talking a few family groups mostly eating and hunting, where everyone knew and personally cared for each other, rather than 8 billion people in a highly developed and interconnected global economy.

I suspect a lot of societal features and economy in general is just due to the need to scale out trust. Many things are easier when you have almost perfect knowledge of everything that's going on in your tiny group, but the larger that group gets the more you need to invent abstractions like money.

The closest things that exist to those societies now is probably families or partnerships, which can operate on a broadly equal basis - though even they often don't.

andrepd6• 4 years ago

So is it "some level" or is it "extreme"?

See this chart: piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capital21c/en/pdf/F0.I.1.pdf This is the income inequality in the USA in the 20th century. The slump in inequality coincides with the post-war "golden era of capitalism". On the other hand, its return to gilded age levels heralded the decline of the working class, overfinancialisation, and eventually the catastrophe of 2008.

All attempts for a perfectly equal economy, that I'm aware of, have ended in disaster. Sometimes horrifically.

There can never by any such thing as a "perfectly equal" economy, so it's useless talking abou it. But we can see that most of the best countries in the world to live in (economically) have comparatively low levels of income inequality.

olsonjeffery2• 4 years ago

For that reason, I think it's fair to see some level of income inequality as a necessary evil until someone can convincingly demonstrate otherwise

If all you have to share is “I guess the status quo is as good as I’m willing to allow”, just say that instead of trying to browbeat those of us who have the ability to believe a better world is possible.

If all you can do is dress your FUD up as shrewd analysis, at least recognize that you aren’t actually sharing anything new and are just defending the status quo. I’m sick of this kind of dishonesty and, frankly, fear mongering in defense of a machine that operates on greed and suffering by design.

Jtype• 4 years ago

Utopian thinking has always, and will always, lead to disaster. There will never be a 'perfect' world for humanity, we have enough historic evidence to show how foolhardy it is to try.

On the other hand, optimizing for a better balance than we have currently is possible. We had much lower levels of income disparity in the middle of the 20th century and we could certainly aim to restore those levels.

However, that would be difficult in our globalized economy of the past 40 years. This is the part of neo-liberalism that is causing the most problems for the non-elite. Globalization is leveling the field for the non-elite of the world, American wages are stagnant or dropping by real value, while wages are rising in east and southeast Asia(for example). The global elites are winning no matter what. The only way to change this is to restrict globalization and international corporations, just changing US laws to tax the rich more or break up us companies won't change much as global elite will give up their citizenship and international companies will detach from their us divisions. You will need a global effort at this point to affect any change to the system, and even then you will have serious problems. And that is only for minor changes to the system. The fact that we have interconnected most of the world in the way that we have means that any disruptions to the system are global and everyone suffers.

cameronh905• 4 years ago

We have attempted fully equal societies though - many times. It always seems to end in mass poverty and violence against the population it claims to exist to protect.

How many times do we have to try it before deciding it doesn't work? If you have a good idea, feel free to describe it, and explain how it would not suffer the same failures all past attempts have. I can't see how it would work, and if you're convinced it can, show your working.

I don't defend the status quo either. I said SOME level of inequality. I personally think that inequality has gotten out of hand in the last few decades - the gap between the rich and poor has become absurd. Scandinavian nations and others have shown that a nation with less income inequality than UK/US is possible and may be desirable - though there are definite limits to how comparable Scandi countries are to countries like UK/US.

Broadly equal societies may be possible at extremely small scales when in a state of abundance. Once you go past the limit where everyone knows and trusts each other, things seem to rapidly fall apart without hierarchy and inequality.

posix86• 4 years ago

Isn't... isn't that the core idea of liberalism? Letting people do their thing? Which, naturally, leads to some people getting more than others? What am I missing?

andrepd6• 4 years ago

Me grabbing a gun and a baseball bat and terrorising the neighbourhood into paying me protection money is "me doing my thing" which "leads to some people getting more than others". Yet it's hardly Liberalism (at least as understood in the classical sense of the term, not sure about current "neoliberalism" :))

refurb• 4 years ago

Income inequality decreases significantly during recessions. Check out the wealth owned by by the top 1% during the latest recessions.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBST01134

Would anyone argue that the situation of the poor got better during this time?

1ncorrect• 4 years ago

Neoliberalism overwhelmingly rewards self interested behaviour, explicitly at the expense of cooperative and altruistic counterparts, which iteratively nurtures disproportionate sociopathic tendencies in those who thrive in the system. It’s often posited that the solution is to replace it wholesale with something else entirely, but I’ve argued for some time that it’s best to be subjected to a counterbalance in the form of a competing system that rewards cooperation and altruism at least equally.

My thesis is neoliberalism, in the way it rewards self interested behaviour closely aligns with valuing optimisation, which in turn requires quantifiable resources with which to precisely measure performance, namely those intrinsically finite. Long story short, this boils down to basically energy and time, a lay explanation I’ve used is anything that intersects with E=mc^2.

An example of a resource that’s abundant, or at least not intrinsically finite, is information. The way this is currently incorporated into our value systems is through artificial scarcity constructs, namely copyright and patents. These mechanisms incentivise locking them up as tightly as possible, manifesting as greater sociopathy.

An alternate would directly value the breadth and depth of an idea’s use, the scarce component being the links between the ideas, and amplify the incentive for the idea to be used and made as widely available as possible, rewarding collaboration and altruism. I see it as basically Page Rank applied to the current scope of copyright and patents. Funding for payments would be an additional or modified source currently used by entities who hold sovereignty over their currency, and I’d argue would require much less abstraction from the realised value than existing debt and interest mechanisms.

LatteLazy• 4 years ago

Neoliberalism has resulted in preference for greater income inequality

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