I don't understand why many people care so much about income inequality. Live has been improving for everyone for centuries. Why does it matter if some have more than others if everyone has more material wealth and, more importantly, more opportunities than ever before?
I think that argument would be more compelling if everyone had adequate food, shelter, and medical care.
Yes, we have high average wealth. Yes, even people in poverty have access to technology that was unavailable to the richest people on the planet a century ago. But none of that really matters when you don’t have enough money to feed your kids and you can’t afford to see a doctor about that nagging pain that’s threatening your ability to string together multiple <$10/hr jobs.
In a vacuum you may have an argument, but income inequality is really a proxy to multiple larger issues. A big one is lack of healthcare and/or health issues driving people to bankruptcy. Second, which many people here are keenly aware, is the cost of education. And finally, people having few other options when in a crap work situation.
So yeah, it doesn't matter that Bezos has more material wealth than any of his workers, but what matters is that healthcare will not bankrupt him and he can easily send his kids to school.
You compete with other people for scarce resources, so relative wealth matters. Real estate and the stock market spring to mind, but political influence is probably the most pernicious place where this applies.
In ever measure there is, life has been getting better for centuries. Life expectancy, abolishment of oppression (slavery, debtor's prisons, serfdom, involuntary servitude, military conscription in many countries), educational attainment, and even standard of living have all improved.
Finally, the word "poor" needs to be retired. I've met lots of people with no money, and very few of them were poor people.
Life expectancy is down in the US pre-covid, driven in part by the opioid epidemic and in part by poor health/obesity,both of which are associated with poverty. Involuntary servitude is alive and well in US prisons which incidentally don't have a ton of high income people.
So I don't think it's fair to say that life is necessarily getting better in the US for low income people.
Sure, if you set the averaging horizon to much longer than 40 years the problems of the last 40 years wash out, but that doesn't mean they are small.
People can tell when they have things worse off than their parents. The social contract will erode in ways that people don't expect. In particular, the tidy arrangement where your retirement is in investments, so if you hurt the capital gains of the wealthy you hurt yourself, falls apart if most people are too poor for retirement savings. Suddenly, in a democracy, our retirement accounts (and the poorly hidden accounts of the actual wealthy) become up for grabs. That situation is developing quickly enough that we may well see the breaking point in our lifetime.
>In ever measure there is, life has been getting better for centuries.
My country has salary record from 16th century. It is in gold, so can be translated to buying parity. Shoe maker today and in 16th century had roughly the same salary and expenses for living, heating, food etc.
>Life expectancy
has improved mainly by reducing child deaths. For adults it has not improved significantly, for some groups life expectancy is declining.
> abolishment of oppression (slavery, debtor's prisons, serfdom, involuntary servitude, military conscription in many countries)
Slavery and serfdom is still a reality in many countries. Even western countries have debtors prison and involuntary servitude (child support).
>educational attainment
It just caused education inflation. Person has to now study longer to do the same job. For simple child minding you may need college degree in some countries...
> standard of living have all improved.
Standard of living in most western countries is declining.
> I've met lots of people with no money, and very few of them were poor people
> Life expectancy, abolishment of oppression (slavery, debtor's prisons, serfdom, involuntary servitude, military conscription in many countries), educational attainment, and even standard of living have all improved
What fancy measures you have. How about "cost of owning a house", "cost of getting an education", "cost of getting health care" instead of those banal measures you got there?
Nobody cares that life is comparatively better than during Roman times.
Our fathers and our grandfathers lived a better easier life. In particular they had much better economic opportunities. People are upset about those opportunities evaporating.
Because it‘s good for business for left-wing politicians. If they didn‘t stir the shit up by means of data skewed in their favor, we‘d all be living more satisfying lives.
