

Our Banana Republic - auxbuss
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/opinion/07kristof.html

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drcode
The types of arguments made in this nytimes article make me angry- They are
intellectually dishonest.

It is irrelevant if there is "income inequality". The rational question to ask
is "what is the quality of life of low income workers?" Who cares if some
wealthy person is making a lot of money.. Why begrudge them their wealth?
Where is the logic in that?

It is mostly accepted among economists that poor people are better off today
than they were in the 1970s. Do you believe these economists are wrong? Good:
That is an argument I'm happy to have with you- It is a relevant and rational
argument. I suspect the economists are right, but I'm not 100% sure on this,
either.

On the other hand, it's possible there are rich people that acquired their
wealth through underhanded means. Again, if you think this is the case I'm
happy to have a discussion on that topic. I think there are many cases where
this has proven to be true. However, it isn't relevant in a discussion on the
situation faced by low income people, because the welfare of the poor and rich
are separate issues. They are not linked in any simple-minded fashion.

In summary, I think the recent fad of discussing "income inequality" is a
shell game that mixes together several unrelated issues and clouds attempts at
rational conversation. It is a tool people use to make dishonest ideological
arguments.

~~~
scottostler
You might take another look at the second half of the article, as it directly
addresses the "perceived...tradeoff between equity and economic growth", and
why income inequality is relevant.

I personally wouldn't go to an op-ed column for analysis on this kind of
issue, but Kristof certainly addressed the matter.

~~~
drcode
No, he makes the claim that "inequality we’ve now reached may actually
suppress growth" and as evidence he cites a study that shows areas with
inequality have more bankruptcies.

What does the rate of bankruptcies have to do with growth? I would expect MORE
bankruptcies in a place that has high growth.

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rbarooah
What's seems more important to me is not the degree of inwquality, but whether
that inequality represents a poor distribution of resources, for example it
seems ok to me that people like Larry and Sergei, or Bill Gates, are mega-
rich, because they got that way by providing world-changing value to society.

If the bulk of the inequality is spoken for by people like these, then I don't
see a problem.

If on the other hand most of the inequality comes from financial manipulation
that isn't also productive to society, then we have a serious problem as the
incentives are skewed towards gaming the system rather than trying to produce
value.

According the the Bureau of economic analysis, finance accounts for 24% of US
GDP from private industry and captures 39% of the profits.

What value is this providing? Learning how to create new derivatives or HFT
algorithms to compete against other people doing the same thing doesn't seem
to create shared prosperity in the way that curing a disease, creating Google,
or making electric cars does.

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known
(Dummy) Democracy and (Crony) Capitalism within the context of Global Economy
is not suitable and scalable. Hope somebody finds a comprehensive solution.

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swombat
Not a terrible article as far as this political junk goes, but really has no
place on HN. This is reddit/r/politics fodder.

