Re:Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned
by m12k on Wednesday July 15, 2020 @10:18AM
(#23845527)
The danger of inequality is not something new, and the problem isn't that someone is super-rich, the problem is that median purchasing power is going down, because economic growth is not going into the hands of the lower and middle class, and this is causing demand to fall in the market, leading to an inevitable economic downturn. The dangers of this were discovered a century ago during the Great Depression, and are well understood and not really considered controversial anymore: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics
According to Wikipedia, that book makes the argument that economic equality will grow over time. It doesn't show that countries with more economic freedom grow slower. To copy from the "Criticisms" section of that wiki page:
" According to Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf, he merely assumes that inequality matters, but never explains why. He only demonstrates that it exists and how it worsens.[36] Or as his colleague Clive Crook put it: "Aside from its other flaws, Capital in the 21st Century invites readers to believe not just that inequality is important, but that nothing else matters. This book wants you to worry about low growth in the coming decades not because that would mean a slower rise in living standards, but because it might ... worsen inequality." "
>Also, do I really need to remind you that correlation is not the same as causation?
Indeed, fortunately we also have economic models suggesting such a relationship should exist so it's not just blind correlation.