Hacker News Reader

Comment by jonnypotty | Hacker News Reader

The person writing this article is almost definitely part of the 1%. Who cares what gender the 62 richest people in the world are; these people cannot be the victims of inequality. What evidence is presented here that says "if rich people earnt less then poor people would earn more" which is the obvious inference. It is intuitive but is it true? If rich people pay more tax this doesn't get given to poor people as wages, so how does the tax question relate to the poverty issue? I agree that more tax revenue is good as it pays for better public services but there isn't any talk of 'wealth' provided by public services being part of the discussion.

View on HN

More tax revenue could mean more/better public transport and less pot holes on roads, so a "poor" person doesn't have to buy/maintain a car or spend their time walking to/from work[1]. They can use the money not spent on a car on other things they need/want, spend the time more productively at work to earn more money, at home to learn some new skill, or heck, even spend time with their kids and help them grow up to be productive members of society.

But well, many think: OMG, spending tax money on public utilities!?! That's Unamerican! Spending time with kids? That's commie socialist talk!

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=man+walks+work+got+gifted+a+... - incredibly there are several different people here, and there are probably a lot more who aren't getting gifted cars.

> could

I think the GP was making a note about exactly this: it could, but will it?

What evidence is there that keeping equality at the same level for the uber-rich would have resulted in higher standard for the poor?

It could have translated to the second 49% still leaving the bottom 50% in the gutters.

In all likelihood, the result would have been quite similar to what has already happened: slightly larger gains for the poorest, but most of the gains would be in the middle and higher classes. Nothing to be sneezed at, but hardly a substantive change, yet with the risk that some of those investments in jobs would be gone too.

Are we talking about taxing the rich more, or about the gender equality of the top 62? I think the post I'm replying to is talking about taxes, and I'm talking about taxes as well.

> It could have translated to the second 49% still leaving the bottom 50% in the gutters.

What is "It" here? Gender equality of the top 62 people/1%?

I am talking of taxes too. We've got no proof where the tax money would go or that it would benefit the poorest if governments simply had more money. Basically, there's no commitment from any government that it would spend any surplus tax money on the poor (because it wouldn't be a surplus without alternate reality).

As my comment said, it doesn't have to be explicitly spent on the poor. https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2021/6/15/econo...

I still have no idea what you're trying to argue, and I feel your generalization about "there's no commitment" is a lazy argument, let me join you in your laziness because I won't bother trying to refute it.

Ad hominem attacks are no solution to misunderstandings between people.

The point is that we don't know that increasing taxes for the rich would change anything in the wealth distribution. A model is a model, not proof.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com