If wages are to rise, workers need more bargaining power

Re:If wages are to rise, workers need more bargaining power by mikk14 on Wednesday June 06, 2018 @01:36PM (#17249214)

I'm not sure I understand this rebuttal, do you want to expand a bit? Everyone getting 1% richer would not affect the Gini nor the absolute gap, or at least not as much as you imply. So I must be missing something.

In any case, you are not necessarily addressing my rebuttal of the elephant graph. What I'm saying is that the elephant graph is an interesting conversation starter, but, by itself, it does not convey enough information to make a conclusion about fairness. To make an extreme example, if I have literally $0 last year and I have $1 now, my growth rate in the elephant graph is infinitely higher than the richer 1%. I'm still going to starve to death, though. Absolutes matter.

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Re:If wages are to rise, workers need more bargaining power by aoeusnth1 on Wednesday June 06, 2018 @02:37PM (#17249810)

But it would affect the absolute gap - everyone is proportionally richer, so the absolute gap is proportionally larger.

My point is that knowing only the fact that "absolute inequality has increased" doesn't tell you anything about whether that's good or bad for the world.

I agree that absolutes matter to the individual - but I personally think percentages are a better way of understanding and interpreting growth over time for most populations, because growth has historically been very consistently exponential.

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