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Czcibor
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Vanadium 50 said:Czcibor brings up an interesting point. If reducing inequality is a virtue in and of itself, how much worse off are we willing to make the poor in order to reduce inequality. If we could make the Walton family millionaires instead of billionaires at a cost of $10 for every poor person, should we? $100? $1000? Reducing their quality of life to that of poor Londoners in the 19th century? Poor Calcuttans in the 18th century? Poor Judeans in the 1st century?
This is the other side of the question "how much inequality are we willing to generate if it helps the poor?"
I think that we're discussing wrong subject: "inequality" instead "why the hell the USA experienced quite nice GDP growth but the median income stagnate and whether something can be done about it".
For sure there are:
-some problems with measuring it (smaller households, treating as personal income that what earlier would be classified as corporate income);
-cost of cool electronic toys accessible for masses vs. cost healthcare and education; (cherry pick the one that you prefer and get the answer that you want ;) )
-some dysfunction of US political system where too much money influence system;
-short term calculation (even if everyone would get a few times in his life a huge bonus then the inequality of annual income would go up);
-globalization which makes only some people to face very fierce competition (textile workers hit but not lawyers).
I personally also suspect that inequality to big extend is not the problem to be tackled, but a symptom of underlying problems (like low quality of education for some social groups; or problems with taxing the top incomes).
Maybe we should rather start discussing the other problem? Not as moral issue but as efficiency issue? (Because of my research subject I can say quite a lot about international taxation)