News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn by tadfisher on Thursday June 04, 2026 @12:13AM (#48393724)
Don't be dense, please. It's not conducive to the actual discussion at hand.
Re:American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn by WalterBright on Thursday June 04, 2026 @12:18AM (#48393767)
What's dense about it?
Re:American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn by wvenable on Thursday June 04, 2026 @12:25AM (#48393832)
If so much wealth is being created, why is everyone so poor?
Re:American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn by WalterBright on Thursday June 04, 2026 @12:39AM (#48393945)
The poor in the US live better than medieval kings.

Look at poverty on an absolute scale, not a relative one.

Re:American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn by wvenable on Thursday June 04, 2026 @01:15AM (#48394241)
Do they really? The poor have castles and servants and hardly work? No, the real poor work 60 hours a week and live out of their cars. My children, who are not poor, with good jobs still can't afford their own home -- where is their castle, sir?
Re:American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn by jph00 on Thursday June 04, 2026 @12:34AM (#48393899)
It's both an illogical question and comes from a place of ignorance about a topic which one would expect folks nowadays to have some basic competence in.

First, the illogical part: the statement was about "inequality" to which you asked about wealth generation. These are two separate issues, and inequality is not, logically, necessarily tied to wealth generation. So "How does creating wealth hurt others?" is, at best, a non sequitur.

The ignorance part: there is a lot of empirical research over many decades showing the negative impact of wealth inequality on societies. With Google and AI there's really no good reason to ask such ignorant questions when in a moment you could educate yourself, and then ask an informed and thoughtful question instead.

Re:American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn by eduction on Thursday June 04, 2026 @12:20AM (#48393783)
Not at all dense. It’s axiomatic that as societal wealth increases so does the potential for wealth inequality, and in a capitalist system it is a given that inequality will also actually increase.

Perfectly reasonable to debate if there is too much wealth inequality but just hand waving at its mere existence doesn’t add anything to the discussion. The person you’re replying to was calling this out. Ironically, you’re trying to shut down the discussion in the name of perpetuating it.

Maybe you’d like to explain how you think about wealth inequality, since you say you’re interested in a more freely flowing discussion. I’m all ears.

Re:American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn by tadfisher on Saturday June 06, 2026 @05:49PM (#48429337)
I had assumed the parent was ragebaiting with the explicit redefinition of "wealth inequality" as "creating wealth". Is that the definition you're operating under?
Re:American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn by eduction on Wednesday June 17, 2026 @11:19AM (#48571710)
That's not my memory of the post but it's gone now. My second sentence sums up my thoughts in the area, but I never suggest simply equating one word with another, nor do I use the term "creating wealth."

Still, I can rephrase my contention: In a basically capitalist society, growing societal aggregate wealth necessarily grows inequality. Even a Nordic welfare state, which many (including me) hold up as a robust way to promote income equality, is going to show more variance in the size of pie pieces as the size of the pie grows (even when you account for taxes).