I'm curious what your experience is with the world that makes you think every citizen is capable of completing college level classes. People with an IQ of 85 or less are like 15% of population and I think most of them with have a very hard time with high level logic.
A few thoughts. One is that not all of christendom subscribes to the view that it was literally one man, some take a less literal view. Second, a vast majority of human suffering is down stream of human decisions. Yes it is possible for an omnipotent being to stop all suffering but I would argue it would remove all moral decision making from humans which is important.
> not all of christendom subscribes to the view that it was literally one man, some take a less literal view
I grew up in a Christian country and your "some" is doing a lot of work. Sure, perhaps some specific Christian theologists take that view. But, all actual Christians are taught from childhood that it was one specific man, tempted by one specific woman into eating a literal fruit. The only thing that's generally mentioned as open to interpretation is whether the fruit was an apple. You might get exposed to more nuanced theological views if you study at a seminary, but not while living your life as an average person who identifies as Christian, which is the vast majority.
The majority of Christians (Catholics) are told to not read the bible literally. Taking the bible literally is where logic and critical thinking breakdown.
> One is that not all of christendom subscribes to the view that it was literally one man, some take a less literal view.
I was raised Catholic (mass every weekend, CCD through 8th grade) and not once were we ever taught your interpretation. It was Adam and Eve, one man, one woman.
It’s not a part of Catholic doctrine. You won’t find the core beliefs of much, much more mainstream sects in Catholic teachings, let alone the more uncommon beliefs that are out there.
This general consensus is part of why Trump gets support for his recent trade and defense comments and actions. Also, from an economic perspective the US has been successful and has poured that success into different buckets than Europe would prefer but that's fine, let the US be the US and let Europe be Europe.
Numbers for anyone curious
US gdp per capita ~$82.7k
EU gdp per capita ~$41.1k
GDP of Mississippi and Bavaria, Germany are about the same.
You would be simply insane to think that Bavaria wasn't far far wealthier than Mississippi though.
This doesn't show the limits of either the US or European ways of life but rather GDP itself as a figure. It has it's uses but that's it. Lay people are far too dependent on GDP as a meaningful indicator of wealth. Professional economists use a variety of metrics to compare and contrast different areas and systems.
All that GDP per capita and there are still hungry children in West Virginia and single mothers that can't afford to eat healthy food because of their medical debt.
Is your entire argument that it's a really big number? Are we afraid of big numbers? How much do you think it should spend? It's the federal government, they do a lot of stuff. Stuff costs money. We can complain about how they spend the money, or that the money is being wasted or stolen, but pointing out that it's a big number isn't a very convincing argument.
That number is meaningless without also considering US GDP (even if you write trillion in caps). The US averages about 14% government spending as a fraction of GDP, placing it at ~90/140. For the size of the US economy, spending should be significantly higher.
>...The US government's Bureau of Economic Analysis as of Q3 2023 estimates $10,007.7 billion in annual total government expenditure and $27,610.1 billion annual total GDP which is 36.2%.[1]
Is this actual spending, or are you rolling pass-through savings programs into this? Cause the caveat there is people always seem to want to count the outflow but not the associated inflow…
Go find a startup right now that is on the Series A-F pathway
Each new investment incurs ownership dilution. Based on what? Did the employees vote for this? Never
PE broadly and dictatorially controls the flow of capital as a class - they also mostly collude for deals - so early employees have zero say about these dilution actions
If the only solution is to not play (eg “well then go somewhere else/start your own”) then the structure is fundamentally flawed and needs to go away
Dilution happens when the majority of share holders agree to a issue more equity. Again, this is a fully agreed to and is part of the standard rights of share holders. Early employee are given documents that explain this and sign. Can you explain this is illegal taking of property?
In a venture backed startup, the majority of shareholders aren’t employees
Also even if they are at Seed, they increasingly won’t be
So unless the founding team is a bunch of syndicalists - which almost be definition they aren’t - they won’t ever structure the organization to reduce their own power on behalf of future workers
Thats by design and origination with the modern firm. Capital will not fund companies that don’t prioritize returns on capital
You see how the entire structure is built to prevent even challenging the structure
Companies founded as dictatorships are the only option people think is available and yet it’s not.
However there is no money for expanding this message because it does not benefit the people with money to invest in reducing their own power
I find it a little surprising that while we have hundreds of languages for writing software, and several options with a modicum of popularity in almost any describable paradigm, one database schema and query language remains so dominant.
A lot of people use ORMs, though, which (though often poorly) translate the SQL model to one more familiar to most programmers. An unfortunately less popular alternative is query builders (such as jOOQ for the JVM) which, especially in statically typed language, provide a degree of safety against basic typos, SQL injections, etc., while still keeping the mental model of SQL intact.
The majority decided to answer a question not part of the case, namely that Congress must act to invoke 14.3. That determination means that the entire amendment is not self-executing. They leaned on the 14.5 for this, though a strict reading would be that the amendment is worded as self-executing with no stipulations and 14.5 only offers Congress an avenue to act for a universal answer to, in this case, the question of the eligibility disability.
The ruling justifies this by saying that it seems nun reasonable for states to have the power of deeming a federal candidate ineligible. That meaning is not stipulated at all in the amendment, and goes in the face of both states' authority to run the election process and states' duty to enforce federal law (in this case the ineligibility of a candidate).
The amendment does not stipulate that the power to enforce sits only with Congress, the bench made this up. The amendment does not limit the authority to enforce the amendment only with the federal government, they made this up. Nowhere in the amendment is it written as non self-executing, to the contrary 14.3 specifically provides a way for Congress to undo the intelligibility after the fact.
Would you be willing to articulate why wealth inequality is bad for society? I am fairly certain that wealth inequality globally is higher than it was in 2000. At the same time, well the poorest globally are doing much much better on average.
In my mindset as long as the median is improving and the poorest are improving, the ratio of rich to poor isn't important and isn't clearing a bad thing if the inequality is increasing. You seem to think otherwise, why?
Inequality is usually measured by Gini index and a quick search will indeed tell you that inequality rose since 2000 in USA.
Inequality gives rise to populism and extremism all the way up to civil unrest. If the middle class ignores the woes of poor it is swept by revolution aimed at rich.
Inequality is like an infection, weakening the immune system and allowing owners of the press, politicians, and agitators to spread populist ideas that would otherwise be laughed off.
Inequality makes possible our current situation, where the owning class encourage and exploit immigrant labour, only to disseminate "news" aimed at making the working class hate those immigrants.
There's definitely a factor of diverting the anger from the class issue to race and cultural wars. But happy, well off people wouldn't be angry in the first place.
Same story as in plantation times: Make the white servants feel superior to black slaves by virtue of skin color; manipulate poor whites into believing that any perceived gains by blacks had come at their expense.
Our material wealth in the US is way way higher than it was in 1900 but people aren't happier. I don't think I agree that well of people would stop being happy. Unless you want to define well off in relative instead of absolute terms.
Look, you might start getting the inequality concept.
Although the absolute wealth of poor might have improved since 1900, people can still be angry that someone is extracting disproportionate amount from the system while their situation is stagnating. See flatlined real wages since 1970s
The problem is also that people want class warfare. Not just that it sometimes sublimates into other tribalisms. And all of this is regularly taught in universities, so I don't think it just arises due to "inequality".
My point was that this anger itself seems rooted in media and agitation / political movements. Anger (= news headlines) sells news subscriptions, anger sells votes (or something).
Like many pointed out here, this "43%" was nothing special this year if, for example, you are mid-career and have moderately aggressive stock market participation. It's an example of headline entirely cooked up for agitation.
You are right, it's not the majority of the population. The fine article was trying to raise indignation at the wealth increase of "the 25 richest families in the world", using seemingly gross numbers that they militarized without even noticing that these numbers were completely unremarkable. Or perhaps in bad faith altogether.
For another counterpoint, I'm certainly angry about things. You are welcome to count me as angry. But do NOT count me as angry because of inequality. Inequality is a distraction and cause celebre useful to distract people. Rather it's the gross inefficiency and ludicrous aims of the current system (= two parties and press and government) which make me angry. And that has nothing to do with inequalities.
I know US history education isn't greatest but you might have heard about French revolution, rise of Nazism or various communism uprisings, Mexican revolution in 1910s.
With better outcomes for society: labor movement at the turn of century and in 30s.
French revolution for one was not about income inequality per se. It doesn't seem the idea itself was in people's mind - and too many other issues instead.
If the French revolution wasn't about income inequality then there has never been a conflict about inequality... Read the Rosseau and Voltaire of the period leading up to the crises. You can feel their passion when they talk about inequality.
"The rioters had already availed themselves of the stores of the Hôtel de Ville, but they remained unsatisfied: they wanted not just one meal but the assurance that bread would once again be plentiful and cheap. Famine was a real and ever-present dread for the lower strata of the Third Estate, and rumors of an "aristocrats' plot" to starve the poor were rampant and readily believed.[2]"
Not about income equality per se, but you know, not wanting to starve in the streets. Lol what the fuck.
You negate your own critique: "assurance that bread would once again be plentiful and cheap".
So like I say "inequality" doesn't even enter the broad collective mind. And the intellectuals that try to run "what's next" do talk about "égalité" but again that's not what they mean.
This is not what anyone means by "inequality" now. Not killing the economy with random wars, yes. Welfare, yes. Price controls even, sure. Better planning (because we are talking about famines here in this specific case - not even taxes.) Even when "Egalité" and "Fraternité" make it into foundational texts, soon after, this is not what they are about.
I think it's a big stretch to point to all of those and say wealth inequality is the main reason all of those happen. For example, people were starving around the French revolution. With Germany I believe it was just as much (if not more) general depression and national embarrassment rather than wealth inequality. With Arab Spring you can point to poor leadership as opposed to innate wealth inequality. I'm not convinced wealth inequality is the underlying reason.
Just open Wikipedia man. It has citations to primary sources.
"Although the 18th century was a period of increasing prosperity, the benefits were distributed unevenly across regions and social groups. Those whose income derived from agriculture, rents, interest and trade in goods from France's slave colonies benefited most, while the living standards of wage labourers and farmers on rented land fell."
Same for Arab spring, it's like second sentence on the wiki. It's also heavily about corruption, but guess what, those two go hand in hand. Open maps for corruption and Gini index and you will see strong correlation.
Of course there are more reasons. Society is complex.
You're quite right that while the rich have gotten richer the poor have gotten richer too, just to a lesser extent. But it doesn't mean the poor are better off in every way. That's only true if we look purely at monetary wealth/purchasing power. But because we live in a society that gives a bigger voice to people with money, many people who are relatively poor can feel increasingly disconnected from a feeling of being an active participant in society.
The issues are broad and subtle with wealth inequality, too much for the scope of an HN comment, but I would posit that inequality issue are about more than access to goods.
Thanks for taking the time to have a thoughtful reply.
I think pointing to wealth inequality as the reason there is increasing disconnection is a stretch. Yes it's a factor but I don't think it's the chief one.
Do you have a pointer to a resource that covers some of the more broad and subtle issues with wealth inequality?
> I think pointing to wealth inequality as the reason there is increasing disconnection is a stretch.
I think it is the chief one. Every time I have seen it suggested that it is some other thing — you don't have to peel but a few layers and find money in fact behind that other thing.
> Would you be willing to articulate why wealth inequality is bad for society? I am fairly certain that wealth inequality globally is higher than it was in 2000. At the same time, well the poorest globally are doing much much better on average.
Wealth inequality is an issue largely borne out within a particular society.
In the UK we've seen rising poverty and food insecurity at the same time as a rapid increase in the wealth of those at the top. That global poverty has improved means little to someone who is now struggling to put food on their table, or stay on top of their mortgage.
> In my mindset as long as the median is improving and the poorest are improving, the ratio of rich to poor isn't important and isn't clearing a bad thing if the inequality is increasing. You seem to think otherwise, why?
Wealth buys power. Allowing it to concentrate into a small group of people leads to issues.
Social cohesion seems to suffer as inequality rises.
> Social cohesion seems to suffer as inequality rises.
I don't think there is any seems about it. I'm quite confident that social cohesion/solidarity is poorer in the UK now than it was fifty years ago and considerably worse than here in Norway where we have more compressed income and wealth ranges.
FWIW I agree personally. I find that stating a position too strongly sometimes leads to a debate about semantics rather than the merit of the explanation/justification.
My opinion is that inequality destroys people's ability to relate to one another. My worries now are completely different to those I had growing up, and the people who have staff to run their lives increasingly show themselves to have no concept of what life is like for the rest of us.
It feels like there's a fairly dangerous game being played in the UK at the minute, with frustrations around inequality are being exploited and redirected as anger towards out-groups.
The issue is that leaving the EU and attacking immigrants doesn't actually solve the underlying issue. The people behind it still benefit in the meantime but eventually it's going to blow up in someone's face. My sincerest hope is that it's theirs.
Rising wealth inequality grants power disproportionately to the wealthy. Money is power, the means to make your view stick. And guess what, people with money want to hang on to it and the life it gives them so they promote ideas and behaviours that help them do that regardless of whether this is good or bad for everyone else.
I was just reading (from HN recently) about when, in the Nineteenth Century, I believe) England did away with trust perpetuity. It destroyed the dynastic family wealth but instead kicked off the greatest entrepreneurial expansion the country had ever seen.
Even if the poor fared a little better we cannot say if they would not have fared even better still had we less of a wealth divide.
19th century England was the height of the Industrial Revolution. Trust perpetuity probably had no effect on entrepreneurial expansion, especially considering that the aristocrats who were the primary beneficiaries of these dynastic trusts weren't the people who were engaging in entrepreneurship to begin with.
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