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Economy
In reply to the discussion: STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Wednesday, 26 August 2015 [View all]Demeter
(85,373 posts)11. And now, a harrangue from the 1%---because they are special, dammit!
Let's Get This Straight: Income Inequality And Poverty Aren't The Same Thing
a Forbes Guest post written by Harry Frankfurt
Mr. Frankfurt is the author of the NYT #1 bestseller On Bullshit and the upcoming On Inequality, both from Princeton University Press.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2015/08/24/lets-get-this-straight-income-inequality-and-poverty-arent-the-same-thing/
There is very considerable discussion nowadays about the increasingly conspicuous discrepancy between the incomes of wealthier Americans and the incomes of those Americans who are less wealthy. President Barack Obama has declared that income inequality is the greatest political challenge of our time. But just what is so awful about economic inequality? Why should we have this great concern, urged upon us by so many politicians and public figures, about the growing gap between the incomes of the richest people in our country and the incomes of those who are less affluent?
The first thing to notice is that economic inequality, however undesirable it may be for various reasons, is not inherently a bad thing. Think about it: We could arrange for the members of a society to be economically equal by ensuring that the economic resources available to each member of the society put everyone equally below the poverty line. To make everyone equally poor is, obviously, not a very intelligent social ambition.
Insofar as people aim for equality (i.e., having the same as others), they are distracted from measuring the specific economic needs that are implied by their own particular interests, ambitions and capacities. The trouble with adopting equality as a social goal, then, is that it is alienating. It diverts people from being guided, in assessing their personal economic circumstances, by the most pertinent features of their own lives; and it leads them instead to measure their economic needs according to the significantly less pertinent circumstances of others.
It isnt especially desirable that each have the same as others. What is bad is not inequality; it is poverty. We should want each person to have enoughthat is, enough to support the pursuit of a life in which his or her own reasonable ambitions and needs may be comfortably satisfied. This individually measured sufficiency, which by definition precludes the burdens and deprivations of poverty, is clearly a more sensible goal than the achievement of an impersonally calibrated equality.
There is, of course, an evil other than poverty which it is important to avoid. The social undesirability of wide economic inequality does not lie only in a concurrent incidence of poverty. It lies also in the superior political influence, and other competitive advantages, enjoyed by those who are especially well-off. These advantages, when they are deliberately exploited, tend to undermine a fundamental requirement of our constitutionally mandated social order. Accordingly, such anti-democratic misuses of the competitive advantages provided by exceptional wealth must be discouraged by suitable legislative, regulatory and judicial oversight.
It is not inequality itself that is to be decried; nor is it equality itself that is to be applauded. We must try to eliminate poverty, not because the poor have less than others but because being poor is full of hardship and suffering. We must control inequality, not because the rich have much more than the poor but because of the tendency of inequality to generate unacceptable discrepancies in social and political influence. Inequality is not in itself objectionableand neither is equality in itself a morally required ideal.
THAT'S RIGHT, YOU SANCTIMONIOUS BASTARD...WHEN ONE MAN OR EVEN A GROUP OF THEM CAN BUY THE ENTIRE GOVERNMENT: LEGISLATIVE, EXECUTIVE AND JUDICIAL, THEN EVERYONE ELSE IS IMPOVERISHED BY DEFINITION.
AND THAT'S WHAT WE HAVE TODAY. BERNIE WILL SHOW US IF THERE'S ANY LAST HOPE OF DEMOCRACY--AND IF HE DOESN'T, THEN IT'S A LA LANTERNE!
METHINKS THE AUTHOR JUST DUMPED A LOAD OF BS ON US.
a Forbes Guest post written by Harry Frankfurt
Mr. Frankfurt is the author of the NYT #1 bestseller On Bullshit and the upcoming On Inequality, both from Princeton University Press.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2015/08/24/lets-get-this-straight-income-inequality-and-poverty-arent-the-same-thing/
There is very considerable discussion nowadays about the increasingly conspicuous discrepancy between the incomes of wealthier Americans and the incomes of those Americans who are less wealthy. President Barack Obama has declared that income inequality is the greatest political challenge of our time. But just what is so awful about economic inequality? Why should we have this great concern, urged upon us by so many politicians and public figures, about the growing gap between the incomes of the richest people in our country and the incomes of those who are less affluent?
The first thing to notice is that economic inequality, however undesirable it may be for various reasons, is not inherently a bad thing. Think about it: We could arrange for the members of a society to be economically equal by ensuring that the economic resources available to each member of the society put everyone equally below the poverty line. To make everyone equally poor is, obviously, not a very intelligent social ambition.
Insofar as people aim for equality (i.e., having the same as others), they are distracted from measuring the specific economic needs that are implied by their own particular interests, ambitions and capacities. The trouble with adopting equality as a social goal, then, is that it is alienating. It diverts people from being guided, in assessing their personal economic circumstances, by the most pertinent features of their own lives; and it leads them instead to measure their economic needs according to the significantly less pertinent circumstances of others.
It isnt especially desirable that each have the same as others. What is bad is not inequality; it is poverty. We should want each person to have enoughthat is, enough to support the pursuit of a life in which his or her own reasonable ambitions and needs may be comfortably satisfied. This individually measured sufficiency, which by definition precludes the burdens and deprivations of poverty, is clearly a more sensible goal than the achievement of an impersonally calibrated equality.
There is, of course, an evil other than poverty which it is important to avoid. The social undesirability of wide economic inequality does not lie only in a concurrent incidence of poverty. It lies also in the superior political influence, and other competitive advantages, enjoyed by those who are especially well-off. These advantages, when they are deliberately exploited, tend to undermine a fundamental requirement of our constitutionally mandated social order. Accordingly, such anti-democratic misuses of the competitive advantages provided by exceptional wealth must be discouraged by suitable legislative, regulatory and judicial oversight.
It is not inequality itself that is to be decried; nor is it equality itself that is to be applauded. We must try to eliminate poverty, not because the poor have less than others but because being poor is full of hardship and suffering. We must control inequality, not because the rich have much more than the poor but because of the tendency of inequality to generate unacceptable discrepancies in social and political influence. Inequality is not in itself objectionableand neither is equality in itself a morally required ideal.
THAT'S RIGHT, YOU SANCTIMONIOUS BASTARD...WHEN ONE MAN OR EVEN A GROUP OF THEM CAN BUY THE ENTIRE GOVERNMENT: LEGISLATIVE, EXECUTIVE AND JUDICIAL, THEN EVERYONE ELSE IS IMPOVERISHED BY DEFINITION.
AND THAT'S WHAT WE HAVE TODAY. BERNIE WILL SHOW US IF THERE'S ANY LAST HOPE OF DEMOCRACY--AND IF HE DOESN'T, THEN IT'S A LA LANTERNE!
METHINKS THE AUTHOR JUST DUMPED A LOAD OF BS ON US.
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