Besides moralizing about unfairness, one of the reasons why people argue that we should try to lower inequality is that inequality leads to revolts and social instability.
I would argue that this isn't the case -- it's actually sudden declines in welfare (recessions, depressions) which cause social instability.
I would argue that, from the perspective of preventing revolutions, it would be better to set aside a rainy day fund to absorb the impact of economic corrections (like Joseph in the Bible) than to attempt to eliminate inequality.
As societies became more developed, it became easier to store wealth. Hunter gatherers literally couldn’t efficiently own anything they couldn’t carry on their backs. Neolithic pastoralists and farmers could amass stuff, but their money was living things that could die or rot. Bronze Age societies had coinage but no banks
Interesting. Though I'm not sure I share your intuition about an absolute measure of equality. Gini is relative absolute mean difference for a reason. People don't care about the *amount* more stuff other people have, they care about *the proportion* more stuff other people have.
But I think the pairing of an absolute s.d. increase and a Coefficient of Variation (s.d./mean) is a good move: both give very intuitive and understandable quantities (especially if you ratio CV to maximum s.d. possible in distribution)--compared to Gini which is very hard to know exactly what's going on unless you have the graph.
For example, in your example (adjusted for inflation from 1940-2013) it makes perfect sense:
4x increase in absolute equality.
If we want relative equality (divide by means) and we find a ~30% decrease in relative inequality.
In fact, graphically, equality may be best pictured as a two-dimensional quality with these absolute equality & relative equalities on different axes--lines representing distributions of resources over time.
Cool story bro but I remember that by his Rubicon moment Caesar controlled some 20% of all Roman wealth.
I don't see Musk's legions marching on the US senate anytime soon.
Yes, I know I am being a bit cheeky. Just wanted to point out that you can't really make a pertinent historic comparison of wealth inequality since the relation between wealth and power, what both of them mean in material terms, change so dramatically from historic period to historic period and system to system.
Besides moralizing about unfairness, one of the reasons why people argue that we should try to lower inequality is that inequality leads to revolts and social instability.
I would argue that this isn't the case -- it's actually sudden declines in welfare (recessions, depressions) which cause social instability.
I would argue that, from the perspective of preventing revolutions, it would be better to set aside a rainy day fund to absorb the impact of economic corrections (like Joseph in the Bible) than to attempt to eliminate inequality.
I'm looking for Substack creators to do collaborations with. Would you be available for a preliminary call?
Sure.
As societies became more developed, it became easier to store wealth. Hunter gatherers literally couldn’t efficiently own anything they couldn’t carry on their backs. Neolithic pastoralists and farmers could amass stuff, but their money was living things that could die or rot. Bronze Age societies had coinage but no banks
Interesting. Though I'm not sure I share your intuition about an absolute measure of equality. Gini is relative absolute mean difference for a reason. People don't care about the *amount* more stuff other people have, they care about *the proportion* more stuff other people have.
But I think the pairing of an absolute s.d. increase and a Coefficient of Variation (s.d./mean) is a good move: both give very intuitive and understandable quantities (especially if you ratio CV to maximum s.d. possible in distribution)--compared to Gini which is very hard to know exactly what's going on unless you have the graph.
For example, in your example (adjusted for inflation from 1940-2013) it makes perfect sense:
4x increase in absolute equality.
If we want relative equality (divide by means) and we find a ~30% decrease in relative inequality.
In fact, graphically, equality may be best pictured as a two-dimensional quality with these absolute equality & relative equalities on different axes--lines representing distributions of resources over time.
Cool story bro but I remember that by his Rubicon moment Caesar controlled some 20% of all Roman wealth.
I don't see Musk's legions marching on the US senate anytime soon.
Yes, I know I am being a bit cheeky. Just wanted to point out that you can't really make a pertinent historic comparison of wealth inequality since the relation between wealth and power, what both of them mean in material terms, change so dramatically from historic period to historic period and system to system.
🎵 wagie wagie, get in cagie 🎵
🎵 boss needs help now dont be lazy 🎵
🎵 zero breaks will make you crazy 🎵
🎵 i'll tell the guards to get their tazie 🎵
What distribution did you use to calculate the SD?