
Inequality is real, personal, expensive, and it was created - ph0rque
http://inequality.is/
======
MikeCapone
Let me be the first to link to Paul Graham here:

[http://paulgraham.com/gap.html](http://paulgraham.com/gap.html)

[http://www.paulgraham.com/inequality.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/inequality.html)

~~~
quotemstr
These neo-Calvinist arguments are absurd (and cribbed from the 1880s), and the
sprinkling of the efficient market hypothesis on top doesn't make them any
better. No one individual is billions, millions, or probably even thousands of
times more productive than any other able-bodied individual. When you see
these massive differences in wealth appear, they must either come from theft
or luck, both of which are unfair because they reduce the rewards to labor of
the vast majority of humanity and instead funnel unearned power to those least
equipped to use it for our mutual benefit.

~~~
thatswrong0
> No one individual is billions, millions, or probably even thousands of times
> more productive than any other able-bodied individual.

Productivity is not the only determinant of wages. Not only that, but it is
quite hard to definitively say how productive a person is. And this doesn't
even matter because in general, people get paid however much their employer
thinks their labor is worth and that's very subjective. And I would say that
many people have in fact created billions in wealth for the world.

> When you see these massive differences in wealth appear, they must either
> come from theft or luck, both of which are unfair

Luck itself isn't unfair, although you might say that the distribution of luck
is 'unfairly' stacked towards the wealthy.

> because they reduce the rewards to labor of the vast majority of humanity
> and

I (by luck) invent some fantastic widget that improves the lives of people all
over the world and I become a billionaire. By becoming a billionaire, did I
really make everyone else poorer? I would say no, because I _created_ wealth.
Wealth doesn't have to be taken from other people to be had. I won't disagree
that theft (which generally involves government/corruption) is 'unfair',
although you'll have to clearly define that word since it can mean anything.

> instead funnel unearned power to those least equipped to use it for our
> mutual benefit.

And who is best equipped to use it? What is 'our mutual benefit'? Who
determines what is earned and unearned power (wealth?)?

------
nickff
"Electric lighting is no great boon to anyone who has money enough to buy a
sufficient number of candles and to pay servants to attend to them. It is the
cheap cloth, the cheap cotton and rayon fabric, boots, motorcars, and so on
that are the typical achievements of capitalist production, and not as a rule
improvements that would mean much to the rich man. Queen Elizabeth owned silk
stockings. The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing
more silk stockings for queens but in bringing them within the reach of
factory girls in return for steadily decreasing amounts of effort."

Joseph Schumpeter, from "Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy" (1942)

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jmomo
"inequality.is is best viewed with browsers that support the newest elements
of HTML5 and related technologies. Would you mind upgrading your browser?"

You want me to enable Javashit in my browser in order to view your site.

That's fine, if you really think you need it, but you need to be honest with
me, and you are not being honest.

Quite frankly, I don't enable java on most websites and I don't think I want
to see what you have to say enough to enable it.

------
Brian_Curliss
I'd love to see the stats after this page stays on HN for a bit. (ie., how
many people make it the entire way through; how many people click "take
action")

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Not so many will make it all the way through, with the white text so hard to
see.

------
od2m
I'm tired of this lie.

------
cynwoody
I care about the magnitude of my net worth, not the ratio of Mr Bill's net
worth to mine.

------
jongraehl
Huh? Why shouldn't the top 10% be more than 5 times as productive as the
average?

------
smm2000
Apparently entry-level software engineer salary is "making too much money".

------
chamblin
$106,187 is the you're-rich-enough cutoff (at least for an Other Race-male)

------
snowwrestler
Totally uninformative because it concerns itself with the structure and
history of income equality, rather than the root causes. It's great at showing
what happened, but has no clue about why.

To name one example, they address the question of education by showing
correlations between college degrees and income. What this is missing of
course is any change _within_ college degrees themselves. What are students
studying? What is the quality of their work? How well does it match up with
what employers need?

I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I believe if you drill down, you
find that some college degrees (like electrical engineering) have kept up very
well with productivity and wage growth. Others, like anthropology, have not.

I will tell you that I live in one of the most educated regions in the nation
(DC area), and it is extremely difficult for technology businesses to hire
people with the right skills. If you are a good programmer or sysadmin, you
can make a lot of money here tomorrow. But a bachelors in political science is
not, by itself, going to get you much.

~~~
fragsworth
If the numbers on this site are correct ($90-$100k average is what we all
should be making) then some degree wages have _kept up_ with productivity but
none have really grown faster than it. That's still a problem, isn't it?

~~~
quotemstr
Our wages have kept up, but we're in a _very_ privileged position. We happen
to have the right skills at the right time. We're not more industrious or more
virtuous than the typical struggling middle-class wage earner. We're just
luckier, and we shouldn't forget that.

Let's also not forget that there are benefits to living in a just and
equitable society that aren't reflected in paychecks and equity grants, and
that the marginal utility of each additional dollar is less than that of the
previous dollar.

