Ok, holy flying fuck.
Who here shared this slatestarcodex post about cost distease?
"And yes, part of this is because inequality is increasing and most of the gains are going to the rich... Most gains going to the rich means at least some gains are going to the poor."
http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-disease/
Well here's a thought:
A) GDP of not-top-10%-wealthiest in US has *fallen* 10% since 80s.
B) top executives now make ~300x median worker pay
It's. The. Rich.
Like, even the article says "yes, income inequality is increasing..." blah blah blah- but then doesn't actually look and see how much so? It nails down "could it be regulation? No. Salaries? No. Base costs? No" then just *gives the fuck up* instead of saying
"the only remaining component of the system is the high-payed, low-value-added executives and essentially untaxed investors. Let's see how much better they're doing-
OH LOOK there's all the money how fucking amazing never woulda guessed"
Really?
None of the golden parachutes of the last thirty years clued you in that *somebody* is doing obscenely well as the rest regress?
Did they really not observe how most major corporations are now publicly known to pay 0 net taxes yearly? On fuckface mccheetonips #45 not having paid taxes for a fucking decade because we just take on his fuckups' cost?
They still talk "trickledown" even though it *obvs doesn't happen*
They concede ineq "has an effect" but just throw up their fucking hands?
to be clear and concise:
"Most gains going to the rich means at least some gains are going to the poor."
^ true... unless the gains the rich see are >100% of the overall gains
OH LOOK THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT'S GOING ON
https://mastodon.social/media/qFEYYZ0a5Mz5xtwFoe8
http://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/9/25/6843509/income-distribution-recoveries-pavlina-tcherneva
This shit isn't hard. If you model using assumptions, and it doesn't fit results, your assumptions are wrong.
@rebound
The total gains are the sum of the gains experienced by top 10%, and gains experienced by bottom 90%
10 = 5 + 5, sure
but also
10 = 11 + -1
It's not a single big pot- people store gains independent of each other, so you have to talk flows on a network/graph. Even if total activation density is increasing, particular nodes can be a sink, and grow at >100% of avg rate by having others net lose activation.
The only way this isn't the case is if *ownership* ceases to be a thing.
@rebound
Yep. Taking money from the poor, faster than any improvements in overall efficiency might "trickle down", if that actually even is a thing.
btw, it's not a dumb question at all- there's an underlying diff of models used to represent society.
Structure Functionalism: Is society "an organism w/ organ systems handling subproblems"?
or
Social Conflict: Is society "a multitude of independent groups striving toward their own ends, thus often in conflict"
SF does not model selfishness.
MOVED; formerly Twryst
Carlos