Re:Economic Inequality: The Simplified Version
by edanm on Monday January 04, 2016 @07:10PM
(#10839896)
I think this is exactly where people disagree with pg's essay.
He is talking abstractly, about whether economic inequality is bad and should be targeted. Most people will answer "no" to this.
The major criticisms of pg's points that I've seen are:
1. Your criticism - namely that economic inequality is, in itself, a bad thing. I.e. pg is wrong, we do need to target economic inequality. (I've actually seen this criticism brought up less, I believe)
2. Even if economic inequality is not bad, and we totally buy pg's abstraction that we don't want to target economic inequality on its own - in the real world, concretely, the wealthy are using their economic/political influence to give themselves more (possibly at the expense of others). I.e., pg agrees that we want to promote the good kind of economic inequality (building startups! yay!), and we should discourage the bad kind (stealing money), but misstates how prevalent each of these is. And the people arguing "against" economic inequality are actually just arguing against these specific "rent-seeking" behaviors, not against the concept of economic inequality like pg seems to think.
Btw, I'm not arguing which side is "right" here, I'm just presenting the major arguments as I see them being brought up (by e.g. Mark Suster, some economists [I think I saw Greg Mankiw talking about this topic]).
He is talking abstractly, about whether economic inequality is bad and should be targeted. Most people will answer "no" to this.
The major criticisms of pg's points that I've seen are:
1. Your criticism - namely that economic inequality is, in itself, a bad thing. I.e. pg is wrong, we do need to target economic inequality. (I've actually seen this criticism brought up less, I believe)
2. Even if economic inequality is not bad, and we totally buy pg's abstraction that we don't want to target economic inequality on its own - in the real world, concretely, the wealthy are using their economic/political influence to give themselves more (possibly at the expense of others). I.e., pg agrees that we want to promote the good kind of economic inequality (building startups! yay!), and we should discourage the bad kind (stealing money), but misstates how prevalent each of these is. And the people arguing "against" economic inequality are actually just arguing against these specific "rent-seeking" behaviors, not against the concept of economic inequality like pg seems to think.
Btw, I'm not arguing which side is "right" here, I'm just presenting the major arguments as I see them being brought up (by e.g. Mark Suster, some economists [I think I saw Greg Mankiw talking about this topic]).