Hacker News Reader

Comment by fxtentacle | Hacker News Reader

This strikes me as a very elitist article.

Bill Gates wants to help the 99% by improving school life for them. This article argues that instead of slightly raising the average among the 99%, we should instead help the top 1% and given that we now focus our budget on a lot less people, each of them will see bigger improvements.

Among other things, the article says "healthy childhood of few concerns without the relegation to daycare is the root of greatness". Unless they are independently wealthy before having kids, most normal parents will need daycare because they still need to work for money.

My personal opinion is that recent years have clearly shown us that we live in a winner takes all system and that wealth doesn't usually dribble down. Large companies keep billions in profit offshore, where they don't pay taxes (that could help education) and where the money surely won't help the middle class find jobs with livable wages.

View on HN

that wealth doesn't usually dribble down

You're not alone with that opinion, in fact I thought it was established by now the trickle-down effect in economics is a myth (or at least I read so)?

Well trickle-down was always a matter of how much, not if. And yes, it seems pretty much established that it is a lot less than what we usually plan for when using it as argument in an economic plan.

wealth doesn't dribble down but a cure to cancer does -- I'm not advocating for overinvesting in the top of the distribution but governments can have legitimate, prosocial goals that involve cultivating specific talents

heard a throwaway comment in a podcast that poor countries have to invest in the top of the distribution because they have limited resources and need to max out highly-educated people so they can develop their tech economy. (I wish I had a real footnote for that claim or understood it better).

If you model the US as a poor nation that's falling behind its peers, or more plausibly, if you modify half of US states this way, there's an argument we should have the same education strategy as india or 1990s china.

> Unless they are independently wealthy before having kids, most normal parents will need daycare because they still need to work for money.

This is not so simple. Half a century ago, it'd have been common place for either the Mother or the Grandparents to be looking after the children around the house.

In the name of modernity we've replaced family with the nation-state. Yay progress! I say 'modernity', because some of the policies that have led us here were distinctly marketed with the very same adjective.

If the winner takes it all, what good is it to help the 99%?

Parents don't need daycare if they only work half of the time. (Of course, this means owning less.)

Offshore money doesn't matter for the economy. Actually it improves the life of the 99% because the value of their money would decrease if the offshore money would join the onshore money circulation.

That’s an odd take.

That money is labor taken out of economic activity and left rotting away in a vault.

Surplus needs to reinvested in the cycle, otherwise the overall economy will shrink.

What’s being quarreled about in the last generational policy struggle, is who gets to dictate how to spend it. The Jeff Bezos-es, the neoliberal technocrats, or the political establishment. Or something else

That’s only true if the holder of that money decides to spend it on creating jobs, which are almost invariably the largest single expense in any business.

Trickle-down economics depends on progressively better paid work and more of it, while the incentives for businesses are to have as few people on payroll for as little compensation as possible.

That’s why you need to force reinvestment with corporate taxation, and subsidizing innovation with de-risking, either via direct state investment or via reduction of labor cost (UBI, unemployment benefits to compensate for looser contracts.)

I think this is the gist of Mazzucato’s views

Quite uncharacteristic for a HN comment but every sentence in yours is wrong.

> Parents don't need daycare if they only work half of the time. (Of course, this means owning less.)

Many parents are not wealthy enough to have the choice you're implying any more.

First, if they earn half the time, that means part-time work which generally means earning less than half the wages because companies tend to use a full time employee for higher value work.

Second, if they are renters, they don't "own less" by earning less than half. Instead, they might (for example) go from being able to afford the rent on a place to raise a family, to being able to afford the rent on a room in a shared house which is unsuitable.

If they own a place (with a mortgage), they'd go from buying a place which is big enough to not being able to afford to buy a place, because they won't even be granted a mortgage for a family-size home on a single typical income.

> Offshore money doesn't matter for the economy. Actually it improves the life of the 99% because the value of their money would decrease if the offshore money would join the onshore money circulation.

The parent comment is referring to the lost taxes due to trading profits being creatively accounted to hide them in offshore reservoirs. If paid those taxes would improve the life of the 99%.

As for the value of onshore money decreasing if offshore money were to join it, it's not that simple because much of that additional circulation would end up inside the pockets of the 99%.

You honestly think that parents working half the normal hours on minimum wage would make enough to raise a family without daycare? Minimum wage working 40 hours a week would net you ~$15k. How do you expect to raise a family of four on less that $300 a week?

What do you think will happen if the wealth gap grows further and more and more people become angry and unhappy? Riots and revolution are only a matter of time if the gap keeps growing. Having billions of dollars in an offshore bank will mean nothing if we continue on the same path. Even if you have no empathy for the 99%, at least look at it for self preservation. Our country is still extremely young and recorded history doesn't stretch back very far; chaos and revolution are normal and it would not be hard to pass the point of no return.

There is a reason most tech aristocracy believe that minimum basic income is a good idea.

How do you expect to rise a family of four on less than $600 a week with no time for healthy shopping, cooking, or taking care of problems?

I am pretty sure plenty of women do rise their children alone on $300 a week because they are working a full-time minimum wage job and rise their children. As a couple, doing it together, why should the same not be possible? Why is it preferable for both parents to work full time instead of actually having time to rise their children?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com