Quote from: taltamir on December 22, 2013, 11:54:10 PM

Quote from: jinni on December 22, 2013, 10:01:15 PM

Quote from: taltamir on December 22, 2013, 09:47:35 PM

Quote from: jinni on December 22, 2013, 09:33:12 PM

This is clearly an issue. The more unequal the spread of wealth the more problems.

Other way around.
Equal spread of wealth = everyone is poor, downtrodden, and live short brutish lives.
The more unequal the spread of wealth the more prosperous a society is for everyone, even the people at the bottom.

No, maybe I was to brief in my wording. I'm not saying wealth has to be spread exactly equally for everything to be perfect, only that grossly unequal societies tend to have problems because of the gross inequality (see my video and countless other evidence). It is definitely possible that a really unequal society can be better for the poor than a more equal society, but not if every other factor is equal between those societies.

Look, complete equality should not be the goal of any society, but ignoring gross wealth inequality as an issue is simply not realistic and not backed by science.

1. what video?
2. When someone says wealth inequality they always misuse examples. They point at examples where you have LIFESTYLE inequality brought about by communism and say that the solution is to prevent WEALTH inequality.
Wealth inequality comes from either a capitalistic society where the standards of living for the poorest are better than they are for the average communist.
Or from a slave owning society where the slaves have 0 wealth and as such the ratio between the richest and poorest is infinity (X/0 = infinity) where the poorest have horrible conditions
Or it comes from a totalitarian society where the king is said to literally own anything in the nation, even if its owned by someone else its still the kings property (I can't think of an example where this didn't overlap with slave owning society)

The thing is, the latter two examples are non existent and are a binary status while capitalism and communism are a continuum where the more you move towards equality (communism) the worse life is for the average person.

1.

Quote from: jinni on December 22, 2013, 09:33:12 PM

Here is a great video: Paul Piff: Does money make you mean?

2. First of all I think you are wrong. At least in the sense of using the word "communism" - that is surely not what I'm taking about.

Rather I think you should use talk about the use of force. Taxes in a liberal democracy are collected at gunpoint.

What capitalist societies are you talking about anyway? I was not aware that there where any? Surely not the US, right?

What I'm trying to say is that while I don't approve of the use of force, one should not brush of the inequality as a non issue. Imagine immense ghettoization with just a few extremely wealthy and almost no middle class, yes one could argue that it is better than communism, but what we are talking about is whether it is a fortunate situation or not. In fact wealth disparities that big, make it hard for anyone to change their wealth position and these conditions are ripe breeding grounds for revolution.