Hacker News Reader

Comment by andriesm | Hacker News Reader

I'm always amused by how much people value wealth differences above absolute measures of poverty. I am more a fan of, let's increase wealth inequality even more if it means we can raise the bottom. In America very few people die of starvation, but Americans complain bitterly about the fact that others have it so much better than the people at the bottom. I have been in many truly poor places where people would give anything to trade their miserable starvation at the door lives for that inequality that poor Americans have to endure.

View on HN

There are intangible costs to high relative inequality (whatever the absolute level of wealth). They don't matter as much as not starving. But I can see why people are concerned about it.

In economically more equal societies, people tend to treat each other as equals in other ways. For example, I'm fairly convinced that the wealth inequality in America is why Americans to treat their low-paid service workers so poorly, compared to most other very wealthy countries. They're beneath them in the implicit class hierarchy created by the unequal wealth distribution.

Similarly, if the yearly salary of a police officer, judge, or tax auditor, is simple pocket change to the wealthy, then they're all for sale.

This is how we're wired as a species, and frankly more than just a species. We don't just look at what we have and what we want, we look at what other people have and ask ourselves why they got it and we didn't. At a basic level it's an instinct that exists in lower primates, and in us as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg

The difference with us is that we can learn and understand the reasons why one person gets a "grape" and the other a "cucumber"... and those answers are often not just unsatisfying, but infuriating.

It exists even in dogs. It's well studied and not new even.

And it's entirely rational, not merely universal or understandable.

Chris Rock has a joke about the same sort of argument that some white people try to make about black people having it objectively and absolutely so much better now. True. They do. So would you trade places? Even a Walmart greeter wouldn't trade places with me in a million years "and I'm rich!"

If "objectively better off than yesterday" is all that anyone "rational" should care about, then I'll take over your valueless extra 400k (you can keep 100). After all, your dad had to get black lung in the coal mine and die at 47, all you gotta do is play around on a computer in an air conditioned clean office. You have it objectively 1000x better. You (the parent comment not you) should be fine with this. After all, it does not matter at all what I do with that 400k, or what I did or didn't do to get it, or what you did or didn't to to only get 100.

That's what "I'm always amused by".

We have an inefficient distribution of benefits in the US.

Hell we are in an active housing crisis because of inequality.

Sure you won't starve but the idea that the wealthiest country in the world can't house everyone isn't something that should be ignored.

We’re in a housing crisis because of NIMBYism, stupid zoning laws and poor city planning.

There’s plenty examples of nations with way worse inequality but abundant housing options.

Your reasons for the housing crisis are valid, but not a complete telling of the story. AirBNB for example is an issue, short-term rentals in general are, and the tendency of developers to build luxury accommodations which are purchased and left vacant is a problem. I'm not one of those people who thinks that it shouldn't be possible to use real estate as an investment, but the degree to which we do that while people can't find homes is also a problem.

And at the same time we need to acknowledge that NIMBY arguments aren't totally without merit, they're just cynical. If you believe that only half measures will be taken and ultimately neglected, that the full range of investment required to make a lot of low-cost housing work will not appear... then you're just potentially living next to a project.

Likewise with zoning laws, some are stupid, but some are there because they're the best compromise solution to proven problems. If we want housing to be both a place for people to live and a potential investment then there needs to be a degree of stability in the housing market, and zoning helps with that.

Ehh, the government has tools to solve that they don't use.

Not saying it is an easy problem just that it could be solved more directly.

Honestly our federated nature and in fighting make a real solution super difficult.

If you tackle your homeless problem others will ship you their homeless since bus tickets are cheaper than solutions.

Reminds me of a “founder” who interviewed me and told me he had done a photo-documentary on the “Flyover states”.

Just because you’ve been somewhere doesn’t mean you’ve got a real understanding of anything that’s going on there. I’m very skeptical that someone wearing a visit to a place with poor people as some kind of badge of authority on the topics surrounding them actually has any clue.

The people I’ve talked to who had “miserable, starvation at the door lives” elsewhere who now live with low incomes in the us have mixed feelings about it… nothing as clear cut as what you’re implying

Reply on news.ycombinator.com