Low income US households get $0.08/month in Fed housing subsidy; 0.1%ers get $1,236

[hmclachlan]

Commenters like fche are the cheet grass of the internet.

[Wanderfound]

@hmclachlan

Commenters like fche are the cheet grass of the internet.

Weirdly enough, that’s one that we don’t get in my area.

Ehrharta erecta, OTOH, is fucking everywhere. Bastard of a thing.

[hotel]

@anon50609448

but looking around the world, it seems like economic equality is much better for everyone than economic inequality.

Indeed.

@anon50609448

I don’t doubt that as you start approaching 100% income equality the relationship breaks down - we are talking about a metric, not something we should gamify and maximize for its own sake.

(Bolded by me). I know this thread is basically about the income end of the problem, but the society-wide effects you’re talking about are categorically not only related to income inequality, but also to many other sorts of inequality (relatively trivial example: academy award winners have a greater life-expectancy than academy award nominees).

These “social determinants of health” have actually become a whole new field in public health/epidemiology:

• WHO: Social determinants of health
• CDC: Social Determinants of Health: Know What Affects Health
• PHAC: Social Determinants of Health

[GilbertWham]

If nuance was possible with the phrase, then what others have said vis a vis us needing people with money to buy shit for capitalism to kinda sorta work would be correct, and that simply wouldn’t do.

[GilbertWham]

Thank all depends on where you shit

[anon50609448]

@tlwest

That said, this Wikipedia article based on self-reported Gallup polling reports PPP adjusted income as 51K for Norway, 43K for USA, and 34K for Finland, which about matches my priors on the US and Finland, but makes Norwegians much wealthier than the Norwegians I talk to claim - maybe they’re just being modest…)

Well, we could get really complicated and start talking about what that wealth is actually buying. I mean, people in Norway might pay more for everyday goods, but they also live without crippling anxiety that if a loved one gets sick they’ll end up homeless from the bills. How much is that worlth? Overall, I think people in Norway are better off than people in the US, and I think if you take a broad view of what makes people better off that’s even true for the top decile, despite the much lower income in Norway for that group. But I can’t make that argument using a couple of stats I can quickly google.

@tlwest

And that would be my point - it’s really hard to claw back increased income even when it is the result of cultural trade-offs that have many severe negatives. Also, to be fair to the USA, I suspect that there is a strong racial component to many of the US’ low scores that would not disappear in the event of Norwegian levels of inequality.

I’m not sure if in my earlier comments I overstated what could be accomplished by lowering inequality. Basically, if you want a metric for the wellbeing of a society, the numbers tell us that income equality correlated better to pretty nearly everything good than any other economic metric we have does (e.g., GDP per capita, mean income). But maximizing metrics to maximize what they measure doesn’t work.

I agree, if you somehow managed to have a society where incomes were very equal but one group is targeted by racist discrimination then you’ve still got big problems. It’s just that in the real world, racist discrimination is going to tend to increase inequality (in incomes as well as in other ways). So the reason the metric works is probably because terrible things and inequality go together.

So I think the best approach is to do things like address systemic racism and then wait to see the result of that in your income inequality numbers, not to try to think we can solve racism by taxation. Mostly I use the income equality is better metric when people argue against increasing taxes on the rich. There’s no evidence to say that having a few extremely rich people makes society better off.

@Snowlark

Found a typo.

But, let’s remember that thanks to our long lifespans, the generation that is voting to keep the rich rich was actually alive when they were heavily taxed. The boomers had opportunity because we had a more equal society, and then they got theirs and voted to increase inequality because they became the haves. (This is grossly unfair to a huge swath of people, I’m just constantly frustrated to see the age breakdown on all kind of issues from gay marriage to Brexit. As if older people are just trying to ruin things for everyone else)

@hotel

(Bolded by me). I know this thread is basically about the income end of the problem, but the society-wide effects you’re talking about are categorically not only related to income inequality, but also to many other sorts of inequality (relatively trivial example: academy award winners have a greater life-expectancy than academy award nominees).

Yeah, I think income inequality is such a powerful measure because wealth is power (Adam Smiths aid it was the power to command the labour of others). But like I said above, it just turns out income inequality is a the best money-related metric we have, and I bet it correlates positively to pretty much every other determinant of well being. Not that it must do so in any conceivable world, but that it happens to do so in ours right now.

[SpunkyTWS]

One thing I’ve noticed again and again is libertarians are more than happy to benefit from the existence of government. They just don’t want to have to pay for it.

[anon50609448]

@SpunkyTWS

One thing I’ve noticed again and again is libertarians are more than happy to benefit from the existence of government. They just don’t want to have to pay for it.

The vast majority of people like it when government does things they agree with and don’t like it when government does thing they don’t agree with. The main difference for most libertarians is that they don’t like taking care of people. (To be fair, they might think taking care of people is good but have a narrow idea of who deserves to be regarded as a person)