Take Me As i Am, And Watch me As I Go @ghyd24-blog - Tumblr Blog

love-personal

relatable-memes

therelatableimages

need some inspiration? look at this blog!

holaaitsshann

my-teen-quote

therelatableimages

Are you a teen? This blog is for you!

relatable-memes

therelatableimages

need some inspiration? look at this blog!

impactings-deactivated20240405

hollywood-noir

micdotcom

The 85 richest people on Earth own as much wealth as the 3.5 billion poorest

Follow micdotcom

fishingboatproceeds

The free marketish responses I see most often to rising economic inequality are: 1. “So what?” 2. “The rising tide of capitalism lifts all boats,” and 3. “Poor people are less poor than they ever have been.”

Argument 1 is easily dismissed; all human lives have equal value, and those who believe otherwise are just, like, wrong. But there’s something to arguments 2 and 3, right? I mean, childhood mortality has gone way down in the age of rising inequality, and hundreds of millions of people have emerged from poverty (at least by UN definitions of the word).

But there is A CRAPTON of data indicating that lower economic inequality leads to higher levels of longterm economic growth. It’s just wrong to say that rising economic inequality is associated with rising long-term growth. Maybe that would be true if everyone and every market on earth acted in accordance with classic economics models, but we don’t, and instead of basing our policy on theory we should base it on available information*, and the available information is clear: Massive economic inequality means more poverty, not less—and it also means less longterm economic growth.

(Here is a fascinating essay that summarizes some of the research and also discusses the importance of the poor getting access to better networks so that they can be healthier, better educated, and ultimately participate more fully in the economy.)

* Slightly off topic, but this is the same way I feel about minimum wages. Yes, in an economically rational world, we wouldn’t need minimum wages, because the labor market would find its own equilibrium. But that’s irrelevant to, like, actual human life on earth, which is not an economically rational model at all. So instead, let’s look at the data, which is pretty clear that minimum wages do reduce poverty without affecting employment levels much (if at all).