Re:What to Do About Inequality (2012)
by leetcrew on Tuesday May 07, 2019 @10:13AM
(#19849519)
I never really understand this perspective. it's not like there's some magic cutoff where finally an organization has enough money to do something good. unless there's some significant economy of scale or transaction costs at play, the 83% of your wealth funds just as much "good" whether or not other people pay. why are you only willing to pay if it solves a huge problem in one fell swoop?
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You mean economy of scale or transaction costs such as the government being able to negotiate drug prices when everyone is on Medicare (or some other version of nationalized healthcare) so that drug companies can't raise insulin and epipen prices 10,000% with no improvements to the drugs?
That’s plainly incorrect. 83% of my lifetime wealth might pay for 0.1% of a suspension bridge, but 0.1% of a bridge by itself does not carry 0.1% the cars that a completed bridge carries. The incomplete bridge carries no cars.
we don't only need large discrete items. 83% of a software engineers lifetime earnings could feed/house a lot of people for a short time or at least a few indefinitely. it could pay off many student loans. it could buy thousands of books for a library.