
Economic Inequality: It’s Far Worse Than You Think - Cynddl
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/economic-inequality-it-s-far-worse-than-you-think
======
fullwedgewhale
The point of the article is that the meritocratic system in this country is
broken. In part this is because we have systematically transferred wealth out
of the bottom to the top. For example, focusing on tax cuts that benefit high
income individuals while cutting support for public colleges. These two things
are usually done at different times with tax cuts usually to stimulate the
economy and spending cuts coming to reign in budget imbalances. The result is
that you could work your way through college in the 1960's by working about 20
hours a week. Now you'd have to work 40+ hours a week to pay tuition at a
public university. The difference income throughout someone's working life
between a college degree and no college degree is about 1,000,000 dollars. So
the middle and lower middle income people don't see the benefits of tax cuts
but they bear the burden of college tuition increases. And their long term
earning potential suffers. And the country as a whole suffers because we have
a less well educated work force.

You can repeat this pattern with a whole host of other programs and issues.
For example, the minimum wage is still behind where it needs to be if it were
adjusted for inflation. We're becoming a casino culture where people keep
playing the game because they believe they're going to be the ones that turn
out okay. For the most part, your ability to leave your social class is pretty
close to zero, with the rich staying rich because their wealth can insulate
them against bad decisions. The only real mobility for most people has been
down.

~~~
ryandrake
I'd build on that to point out that the systematic transfer of wealth from the
bottom to the top is not something that "we're doing", but simply the natural
product of capitalism. It doesn't require an evil mustache twirler sitting in
a dimly list room scheming about how he's going to systematically conduct a
massive wealth transfer. Wealth transfer is the natural result of any system
that rewards the deployment of capital with more capital.

There exist lawmakers that focus on cutting taxes on the rich and reducing
access to education, health care, and economic opportunity. While they are
helping to widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots, they're
unnecessary--the gap would widen with or without them.

~~~
icebraining
_Wealth transfer is the natural result of any system that rewards the
deployment of capital with more capital._

That's not what capitalism does, otherwise the Webvan investors would be
massively wealthy.

It rewards _effective_ deployment of capital with more capital. And it often
rewards ineffective deployment of capital with less of it. So you can have
massive transfers of wealth from "side to side", not necessarily from bottom
to top.

~~~
candu
Sure - but "effective" here is essentially a random variable, and the central
limit theorem does the rest.

"Wealth transfer" isn't transfer to/from particular individuals. As a group,
the wealthiest will tend to accumulate wealth faster than everyone else.
Furthermore, it may be possible for individuals to enter/leave this class, but
it gets less likely the further you are from the dividing line.

------
ryandrake
And, it's only going to get worse while [1] 39% of Americans either believe
they are already among the top 1% or believe that they one day will be. If
your mentality is one of "Don't tax the top because that's me (or will be)",
you're going to constantly vote against your own economic self-interest, and
continue to support policies that help the real rich get ultra-rich.

1\. [http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/12/opinion/the-triumph-of-
hop...](http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/12/opinion/the-triumph-of-hope-over-
self-interest.html)

~~~
blfr
_39% of Americans either believe they are already among the top 1% or believe
that they one day will be_

And how many people will actually be in the top 1% of earners at least once?

EDIT: 12% [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/opinion/sunday/from-
rags-t...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/opinion/sunday/from-rags-to-
riches-to-rags.html)

 _What’s more, 39 percent of Americans will spend a year in the top 5 percent
of the income distribution_

Not that far off.

~~~
Retric
Lots of things can temporarily boost your income by consolidating several
years’ income into one big payment. Sell a flower shop you built up over 40
years for 150k and you are clearly not doing that well. Gamboling can be a net
loss over someone’s lifetime and give them one very good year. Even just
swapping jobs and seeing getting a few months of saved vacation in one big
chunk.

The point is for the 88% of Americans never see the top 1% even after their
biggest windfall that's a vast gap. And nothing says 1% is defined by their
annual tax returns lifetime earnings adjusted for age are a much better link
to someones finances than what they made last year.

PS: Sure, in theory Bill Gates was not in the top 1% while at Harvard, but his
nominal income had little to do with his status. Don't forget his Mother was
friends with the CEO of IBM that's serious connections.

~~~
warfangle
Wait, where can you save vacation and receive that time as paid as one big
chunk?

~~~
gkop
California state law.

~~~
whybroke
And non-competition clauses are unenforceable in California. Yet other states
wonder why no mater how many tax incentive they give business, silicon valley
remains stubbornly in CA.

------
kokey
I always feel a number of important metrics are left out, either by accident
or on purpose, when people talk about inequality. Most importantly when it
comes to wealth itself, by most measures there is a very, very long tail of
people with no wealth. 'No wealth' ranges from the most poor, to those living
from paycheck to paycheck all the way to those who have as much debt as their
assets. Many of these people are fine because, for example, their earnings
potential over the next 40 years is good. They are wealthy in things like
skills, social connections, etc. and they are certainly not comparable to
someone with few skills, bad health and no money. The other issue is the
longer term earning potential of top earners. Apart from the fact that
companies are bigger and more global and that 'hits' can be bigger (like Kesha
selling more records than The Beatles), the average tenure of a CEO has also
gotten shorter and is around 5-7 years which usually can be described as the
prime of their career, while the average worker can be anywhere in their
career including eventually being a CEO one day.

~~~
whybroke
>while the average worker can be anywhere in their career including eventually
being a CEO one day

From the article:

> our indifference lies in a distinctly American cultural optimism. At the
> core of the American Dream is the belief that anyone who works hard can move
> up economically regardless of his or her social circumstances.

Aside from the factual error in the notion that there's more social mobility
in the US than other countries, there is a difference between "anyone can
become CEO" and "everyone will become CEO". If antebellum southern plantations
had been structured such that one of the slaves might occasionally become the
owner, it would not make it acceptable.

~~~
300bps
_there is a difference between "anyone can become CEO" and "everyone will
become CEO"_

I favor a system that guarantees equality of opportunity. I do not favor a
system that guarantees equality of outcome.

~~~
ryandrake
Well, neither of those systems exist, so discussing the differences between
them is kind of pointless.

EDIT:

See the response by cgearhart in a different thread for links to actual
citations. Upvote that user's comment instead of mine.

~~~
sokoloff
Convenience link to the comment referenced:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9296654](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9296654)

------
strommen
Wow, the "ideal" wealth distribution based on what people want is simply nuts.
If top quintile owns 35% and bottom two own 25% (perhaps 15% and 10%,
respectively)...that means the richest would own 3.5x more than the poorest,
on average.

(If you think this makes any sense at all, consider the _median_ American has
a net worth of about $45K. Having 3.5x that amount wouldn't allow you to
retire, or even own a 3BR house in Minneapolis.)

A person's wealth should (hopefully) increase as they grow older and save more
money. It's clear that the responders to this survey didn't account for that
at all.

~~~
cadlin
Yes, but the _average_ net worth is 301k. It doesn't make any sense to look at
median numbers when talking about uneven wealth distribution. Of course the
median is going to be very low, that's the whole point!

------
dandare
The fact that someone is rich does not mean he took anything from you, no
matter how poor you are. Statements like "If poor people knew how rich rich
people are, there would be riots in the streets" are not only stupid but also
dangerous.

~~~
ghouse
Well, but it also does not mean that he didn't take anything from me.

Generally, the US tax code is designed in such a way that capital begets
capital. Put differently, if you make money passively from the money you
already have, you pay a lower tax rate then if you haul brick on your back, or
teach children.

Is this taking? No, not directly, but indirectly, sure.

~~~
thecopy
I would argue that the state is taking, not the rich (which are not the only
people with money invested in the market).

~~~
SigmundA
That would be like arguing your landlord is taking your rent.

~~~
thecopy
Not at all. Your relationship with the landlord is voluntary.

------
enoch_r
Every time someone says "X people have a higher net worth than Y% of people
COMBINED" I get very, very skeptical. Some net worths are negative. Some net
worths are significantly negative. A homeless man has a much higher net worth
than 8,000 people who just graduated from medical school with some debt
_combined_. Relevant article.[1]

[1] [http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2014/04/04/stop-
adding...](http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2014/04/04/stop-adding-up-
the-wealth-of-the-poor/)

------
proveanegative
I think the popular conceptualization of economic inequality (effectively,
"inequality is suffering") is misleading because it doesn't take marginal
utility into account.

What I mean is, take the pizza-dividing example and suppose we have doubled
the pizza. The inequality (expressed as the ratio of pizza owned to the
available total) would stay the same but those with the smallest part of the
divide would be noticeably less hungry than before.

In a world of plenty inequality would not mean suffering. More realistically,
inequality would not mean (nearly as much) suffering in a world where a
minimum slice of pizza was the birthright of a citizen.

Edit: This line of thinking is seriously flawed when applied to the real
world. See drabiega's comment for why. metaphorm mentions some examples of
where competitive costs may apply.

~~~
adamc
"...in a world where a minimum slice of pizza was a birthright of a citizen."

We do not remotely live in such a world, or even such a country. (I'm
referring to the U.S.)

~~~
proveanegative
Whether a basic income or even a basic job program is plausible under the
current conditions in the US is very debatable (you can find yummyfajitas'
criticism here on HN).

What I had in mind with my final remark is more about the future, i.e., "how
to handle things when the machines take over".

------
Taek
You want the economy to be top heavy. You want the best people managing the
most money, and you want them to have the strongest incentive for managing it
correctly.

When you have 10 billion dollars in capital and you are trying to figure out
what to do with it, you want the people managing that money to be top-notch,
0.1% or better. And you want to make sure they have an appropriate amount of
personal stake in the game. It's not necessarily _fair_ to the 99% that they
aren't given similar opportunities to manage that much wealth, but it's what's
healthiest for the economy.

It's also healthy to heavily emphasize education, and make sure every kid is
brought to their full potential. It's downright unhealthy to have an
intelligent human being caught in a poverty spiral.

My point is that the emphasis should not be on the fact that we are a top-
heavy economy. A healthy economy is going to be top heavy, potentially
extremely top heavy. The emphasis should be on the bottom, where people are
getting completely bottlenecked by their own poverty. The question shouldn't
be 'how can we redistribute wealth?'. The question should be 'how can we give
every person a proper education' and 'how can we make sure poverty does not
get in the way of a person's creativity and potential?'

------
joeclark77
Nothing in the article explains why "economic inequality" is a bad thing.
Which seems to be a logical pre-requisite to declaring it to be "worse than
you think".

~~~
ryandrake
It's not necessary. Economic inequality is widely considered a social ill.

~~~
joeclark77
That's assuming the thing you want to prove. (I'm sure there's a Latin term
for that, but I don't remember it.) It's a logical error that Margaret
Thatcher blew apart beautifully probably before you were even born. (Bing the
video.)

------
snarfy
The estate tax should be near 100%. We do not need dynasties. I don't mind
people making the wealth, but they can't take it with them. It shouldn't just
transfer to their children.

~~~
totalrobe
You haven't quite thought this out. Young parents die too, and children need
to be provided for.

~~~
RodericDay
If you believe in equality of opportunity, parents should not be the main
source of provision for children.

Every time someone mentions "who will provide for your children if you don't
leave an inheritance behind?" I immediately have to ask, "what about all the
children whose parents are not able to leave them an inheritance (ie: most of
them)?"

It seems that it is you who have not really thought it out. Here's Adam Smith
on the topic btw:

> "A power to dispose of estates for ever is manifestly absurd. The earth and
> the fulness of it belongs to every generation, and the preceding one can
> have no right to bind it up from posterity. Such extension of property is
> quite unnatural." Smith said: "There is no point more difficult to account
> for than the right we conceive men to have to dispose of their goods after
> death."

[http://budiansky.blogspot.ca/2010/10/adam-smith-thomas-
jeffe...](http://budiansky.blogspot.ca/2010/10/adam-smith-thomas-jefferson-
and-other.html)

~~~
totalrobe
Equality of Opportunity as defined legally has nothing to do with taking care
of the children.

1) n. a right supposedly guaranteed by both federal and many state laws
against any discrimination in employment, education, housing or credit rights
due to a person's race, color, sex (or sometimes sexual orientation),
religion, national origin, age or handicap.

Most human cultures are built on the nuclear family.. especially when it comes
to raising children. I'm not sure what system you propose to replace that..

Adam Smith lived in the clouds. We live in a civilization where we have to
consider actual use cases, transitions, exceptions, etc.

~~~
RodericDay
>> Most human cultures are built on the nuclear family

>> Adam Smith lived in the clouds

>> Family structures of one married couple and their children were present in
Western Europe and New England in the 17th century, influenced by church and
theocratic governments.[5] With the emergence of proto-industrialization and
early capitalism, the nuclear family became a financially viable social
unit.[6] The term nuclear family first appeared in the early twentieth
century. [...] The concept that a narrowly defined nuclear family is central
to stability in modern society has been promoted by familialists who are
social conservatives in the United States, and has been challenged as
historically and sociologically inadequate to describe the complexity of
actual family relations.[8]

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_family](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_family)

Is this some kind of joke?

~~~
totalrobe
What are you getting at?

If you have some amazing Utopian plan where everyone has the same
opportunities and equal chance to succeed at life regardless of which
backwater hellhole they grow up in, please share.

------
PythonicAlpha
The wealth of the US at times shortly after the second world war came from the
broad middle class. Today the wealth of the US is lying in the hands of the
top 1% of the society. Something must have been happening in between.

In the European Union there is also a similar trend. There exist studies that
today it is much more difficult for somebody coming from lower income (and
society) levels to become rich than it was 40 or 50 years ago. There is nearly
no exchange anymore happening, because today's rich can rely on the fact that
their money will beget more additional money nearly automatically. Also times
are over, where many people build their riches from scratch. Most rich people
today are rich in the second, third or fourth generation today.

Low taxes on wealth and inheritance are doing their job. But also the fact
that earning money by just having (enough) money costs less tax than hard
working for money in Europe (in Germany, you will pay for your worked-for
money (if you earn enough) up to ~40% on taxes and additionally you have to
pay social security fees that can eat up an additional 20% (estimated) of your
earnings. For money you got threw having money, you will today come away with
25% flat rate tax.

With such tax laws in action, you could come to the view, that letting work
your money for you is more difficult than working in a factory and must be
promoted by the state.

------
pluma
The problem isn't wealth. The problem is _poverty_.

There isn't much of a practical difference between 1MM and 10MM or 10MM and
100MM. Or even 10K and 100K. It's not that there isn't any difference, it's
just that (ignoring extreme scenarios like having to pay medical bills in the
US) the difference is mostly a luxury.

But below a certain threshold, it's not a matter of luxury. It's a matter of
being able to afford the bare necessities.

I don't make 100K/month. Right now I don't even make 10K/month. To be honest,
I'd probably be able to cope (as I have had to in the past) with as little as
1K/month or less. But I don't mind if some investment banker or Fortune 500
CEO makes several orders of magnitude than me.

The problem isn't just that someone who works two full-time jobs can barely
afford the absolute minimum of necessities. The problem is that making money
is a requirement to have access to these essentials. We don't need more jobs,
we need better social care. We don't need to cut rich people's wages, we need
to eliminate poor people's reliance on wages to keep them housed, fed, warm,
healthy and content (or "maintained" if that sounds less socialist and more
business-y).

Minimum wage is a red herring. Minimum wages are (and should be) dictated by
economical concerns alone. It's impossible to regulate them. You can dictate
numbers, but that doesn't solve the problem they're meant to address.

Minimum wage jobs are not only useless because they can't pay for a living.
They're also useless because they generally don't offer any opportunity for
personal advancement. If you mop floors at McDonald's for a living, you're
likely not going to turn that into a career. If anything, it's a stop-gap, but
any effect it will have on your future occupations will likely have nothing to
do with the actual tasks you performed (except maybe for a marketing sob-story
if you make it big).

So separate the two concerns: give people what they need whether they have a
job or not, and pay them whatever is economically sensible for any job they
take.

Basic income and/or strong social services are a better solution than always
trying to regulate businesses into supplying sufficient wages against market
demands. If anything, the latter just encourages businesses to eliminate those
minimum wage jobs entirely to reduce unnecessary costs.

You can't compete with technological progress. If you artificially inflate
wages, that just makes the humans even less appealing.

~~~
sokoloff
I'd argue that there's a massive difference between 1MM and 10MM USD. The
former is not enough to comfortably retire on at age 30 and heading up a
household of 4.

The latter is.

That's a massive qualitative difference, IMO.

~~~
sirrocco
That's exactly what he said - it's a matter of luxury. Retiring at 30 is a
luxury.

~~~
sokoloff
Extended far enough, so is not starving to death in utter squalor. One
person's luxury is another person's normal.

I view retirement as "normal" and it's just a question of when. 30, 40, or 50
- none of those would I define as luxury-due-to-age.

~~~
pluma
I think the mistake is the underlying assumption.

What does it mean to "retire"?

If you mean being able to live comfortably without having to work, I'm arguing
(for some definitions of "comfort") that's where you should start in the first
place.

If you mean having a house, money in the bank, paying for your hobbies and
taking regular vacations overseas, then that's what I'm arguing is a luxury.

Sure, if you define "luxury" as something that goes beyond your goal in life
(say, having a reliable amount of savings to afford your lifestyle), then
retiring with a yacht at 30 may possibly not be something you'd consider a
luxury. But that doesn't change what I said.

I don't view retirement (in any shape or form) as "normal", unless medically
necessary. But I also don't conflate unemployment and poverty. So you may very
well decide to stop working at 30 regardless of your savings and prior income
-- assuming you're guaranteed access to all necessities by default.

As far as I'm concerned, the only reason you should ever end up in poverty is
if you have extremely unreasonable spending habits (e.g. gambling), and even
then it's most likely an indicator of an underlying psychological or social
problem than "your own fault".

~~~
sokoloff
In today's world, absent social security or other income programs, $1MM in a
post-tax account provides about $35K in income over a 60+ year projected
period of non-work (aka "retirement").

This is about 75% of the median income for families of 4 and has to cover
everything (including rent, unless you take some of the $1MM and buy a house,
reducing your safe withdrawal rate accordingly).

That's a fairly spartan existence, IMO. Proponents of basic income systems
(which are certainly appealing emotionally and viscerally) need to account for
how to give every family the purchasing power of millionaires, forever. That
seems economically a non-starter, regardless of whether or not I think it
would be awesome to live in such a world where every precious hour of my labor
could be devoted to improving my family's comfort and overall lot in life
instead of more than half of it going to "run the family".

------
dwaltrip
I would love to see these types of metrics for other domains. I think any
technical question about some distribution across the american population will
produce results that contrast with reality, simply because people don't know
how to reason about mathematical distributions or large numbers very well.
This isn't to say that America does not have an issue with economic
inequality, of course.

------
wooyi
It isn't a zero sum game. The top 20% doesn't take away 84% of the wealth pie
and leave the rest to us. They also create a lot of it. If fact, if the top
20% can create enough wealth for the whole country to live a good quality of
life, that is not a bad thing.

------
Futurebot
Three things define American culture when it comes to economic values,
decisions, and status:

1) The Lottery Effect "...the other main reason Americans seem so unperturbed
by the widening chasm between the rich and everyone else is what I like to
call the lottery effect. Buying lottery tickets is clearly an irrational act
-- the odds are hugely stacked against us. But many millions of us do, because
we see the powerful evidence that an ordinary person, someone just like us
whose only qualifying act was to buy a ticket, wins our favorite lottery every
week. For many Americans, the nation’s rowdy form of capitalism is a lottery
that has similarly bestowed fabulous rewards on the Everyman." \-
[http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/03/21/rising-
wealt...](http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/03/21/rising-wealth-
inequality-should-we-care/the-lottery-mentality)

2) Last Place Aversion "that poor Americans’ antipathy toward redistribution
might be due not to their desire to one day be at the top of the income
distribution, but to their fear of falling to the bottom. We show that humans
have a deep psychological aversion to being in “last place” -- recall the
shame of being picked last in gym class -- such that individuals near the
bottom of the income distribution may be wary of redistribution because it
could help those just below them leapfrog above them." \-
[http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/09/19/do-taxes-
nar...](http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/09/19/do-taxes-narrow-the-
wealth-gap/tax-policy-and-americans-last-place-aversion)

3) The Just World Fallacy "The just-world hypothesis (also called the just-
world theory, just-world fallacy, just-world effect, or just-world phenomenon)
refers to the tendency for people to want to believe that the world is
fundamentally just. As a result, when they witness an otherwise inexplicable
injustice they rationalize it by searching for things that the victim might
have done to deserve it. This deflects their anxiety, and lets them continue
to believe the world is a just place, but often at the expense of blaming
victims for things that were not, objectively, their fault." \-
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-
world_hypothesis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis)

Hopefully articles like this will get more people to understand these things.

------
kzhahou
We have an inequality problem in our own backyard: the disparity in equity
between CEOs, SVPs/upper management, and rank-and-file employees.

I remember all the stories of how google made 1000 millionaires at IPO.
Wonderful! They built a powerhouse and were rewarded. But Larry and Sergey had
BILLIONs between them. Possibly more than all the rest combined. Two people
(plus throw in Eric Schmidt and whoever else).

We all just accept this huge inequality and take it for granted, spouting some
rationale about risk, etc. I do believe the founders and earlier people should
have higher reward, but not at such extremes.

Every time an engineer joins a startup as employee #5 and accepts .5% of the
company, they are promoting this huge discrepancy.

------
greggyb
Or it's far better than you think. What if the cause of the misconception of
the true distribution is that standard of living is far closer than ever
before, so the relative distance of wealth is less visible.

~~~
drabiega
Seems more likely that it's the increased geographical wealth/income
segregation.

------
knowaveragejoe
"Work hard enough" doesn't mean the same thing it did in the middle of the
20th century. The amount of resources available to the everyman today is
orders of magnitude larger, be it tips on frugality or ways to supplement
income. They don't really expand upon it in this piece, but it feels like
they're using it in the "older" sense, i.e. simply working your job dutifully
and being conservative with your money.

------
vasilipupkin
At least some inequality is the result of our choices. Meaning, Google's new
CFO is going to make 70 mln. But, how many people would like to be CFOs? CFOs
work crazy hours and have insane amount of responsibility - many people
wouldn't want that tradeoff. So, should we somehow normalize inequality
numbers for this phenomenon ?

~~~
JustSomeNobody
RNs work crazy hours and have an insane amount of responsibility. Should they
make $70 Million?

~~~
vasilipupkin
no, because many more people want to be RNs and enjoy being RNs than CFOs.

------
xaetium
On this topic, I almost always concur with these people:
[http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/tag/inequality/](http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/tag/inequality/)

------
streptomycin
Alternative title: Humans are bad at estimating things on logarithmic scales,
and probably don't adequately factor in things like student loans and mortgage
debt when estimating the wealth of the "poor"

My title is much less catchy.

------
mrcactu5
The youtube infographic video doesn't work:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM)

------
spuz
Is it just me, or does the article contradict its own conclusion?

> They asked about 55,000 people from 40 countries to estimate how much
> corporate CEOs and unskilled workers earned ... the patterns were the same
> for all subgroups, regardless of age, education, political affiliation, or
> opinion on inequality and pay

> One likely reason for this is identified by a third study, ... that suggests
> that our indifference lies in a distinctly American cultural optimism

If 55,000 people from 40 countries make the same poor estimate of the reality
of inequality then surely the affect of American cultural optimism is
insignificant?

~~~
jplahn
I think the keyword is "indifference." While everybody miscalculates the CEO -
unskilled pay ratio, the article is implying the indifference caused by
"American cultural optimism" is what prevents us from changing it.

~~~
spuz
That may well be true but there is a difference between 'ignorance' and
'indifference'. The former is relatively easy to measure but the second is
not. In fact the study on social mobility that supposedly demonstrates this
indifference doesn't mention the word. It simply shows ignorance of American's
understanding of social mobility but does not compare these findings with
populations from other countries.

Let's say that American's perception of social mobility was found to be
significantly skewed relative to that of other populations'. Would that show
more or less indifference? You could argue that the 'American Dream' cultural
thinking leads more Americans to believe that the poor can become rich and at
the same time more passionate about ensuring that that is indeed the case. The
fact that it blinds them to the reality does not imply that they don't care.

------
happyscrappy
Europe is unequal, not quite as much as the US, and yet they are implementing
austerity. Why? Because capital needs to flow to where it is most useful. If
it does not your economy suffers and everyone loses.

------
JackFr
Wow. Scientific American has really gone off the rails.

~~~
JackFr
I suppose I could have been clearer.

This is a well-intentioned advocacy piece. It would be at home on the Op-Ed
page of the New York Times, the Washington Post or even the Wall Street
Journal. It seems much of the reporting in SA has gone the way of
editorializing the flavor of the month rather than reporting on well, science.

I miss that.

