Posts by BenWilson
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Speaker: Inequality: Too big to ignore, in reply to Rosemary McDonald,
>growth
What does that word really mean?????
In this context I think it's just a measure of the change in GDP, or maybe GDP per capita. It's always been a very fraught measure to try to maximize, because it doesn't directly measure the general welfare of people at all, and the "boundary of production" is very open to interpretation. What is and is not productive behaviour? For instance, child rearing is typically not paid, but it can be hard work and is clearly of value to society in the long run. But it's popular because it's some kind of measure of the total economic power of a country. Which is why it has to be contrasted to other measures like equality, and the relationships between them need to be discovered.
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Speaker: Inequality: Too big to ignore, in reply to Max Rashbrooke,
and we now have two major reports, OECD and IMF, arriving at the same point using different methods/data sets, so it looks rigorous.
Yes, and both from organizations that could hardly be accused of having been raving hotbeds of radical leftwing economists.
you go with the repeated, peer-reviewed stuff
That's what policy makers should do, certainly. Unfortunately, that's also what they did when that orthodoxy was all around growth at the necessary expense of equality. Which leads to that horrid neck of the woods that sees economics in terms of class struggle rather than assuming that those in control of it actually even want equality, or see it as a good at all.
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Speaker: Inequality: Too big to ignore, in reply to Max Rashbrooke,
Aha, you answered while I was guessing. Timing is a fairly obvious answer. Does the methodology seem sound to you? I guess the obvious question is: Does the same apply in reverse? Can one pick growth changes and then look for lagged inequality correlation? If so, then it’s still not clear to me how one unpacks this, other than through deliberate and conscious experimentation.
ETA: And once again, just to be clear, this all devils advocate. I strongly believe that what the OECD found is correct, since the mechanism just seems more believable at a microeconomic level. But strong belief is no substitute for actual scientific understanding.
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Speaker: Inequality: Too big to ignore, in reply to Bart Janssen,
But you can observe societies where inequality has changed and observe changes in economic growth
Sure, which is what is done, and the correlation is well established. But how do you make a sound inference about the direction of causation? Correlation is pretty good indication of some kind of causation at work, for sure. But so long as a credible mechanism can be specified to describe the causation in either direction, how does one establish which is the stronger?
I have always presumed the answer lay in analyzing the timing of specific changes - implement a measure specifically aimed at inequality, then observe changes. It's an experiment of sorts...
You can’t do a controlled expt, nobody will let you.
Is that the only reason a controlled experiment can't be done, or is it impossible, even if we could get to the point of being allowed to experiment? It seems to me that in theory, economic experimentation is possible, and if questions are unsettled that could be reasonably clearly answered, it's very, very well justified. Since the alternative is just claiming to know the answers anyway, without evidence. I know it's very hard to get anyone to buy into being the control group for poverty, but every country makes conscious economic decisions all the time, and the idea of "let's try it and see" hardly seems evil to me, quite the opposite. This is, after all, an extremely important question. In fact, I'd say a refusal to approach the idea scientifically, and to insist on pretending to know all the truths of economics the way our politicians always do, seems far worse.
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I've thought inequality stifles growth for a long long time, but just as a devil's advocate, for a moment, can I ask the question: How do we know which causes which? We can see that lower growth is correlated to rising inequality, but perhaps low growth causes rising inequality, rather than inequality causing lower growth?
I do think that mostly the causation is the other way, since the mechanism is clear - the wealthier one is, the less one spends as a fraction of what one has/earns. Money flow is like the blood in a the body of the economy, and if it stops flowing, the body doesn't function so well. Money pretty much exists for this purpose, to move economic goods around faster and more efficiently, rather than accumulating in stagnant piles.
But one could argue that it is the inactivity of that body that caused the blood to slow. An actual decline in the desire to spend money across the board could slow the economy all by itself. Perhaps a critical mass of comfort can be socially reached that creates inertia all by itself.
It seems like a complicated question. I'd like a good answer to it.
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Hard News: Public Address Word of the…, in reply to Sukie Damson,
This was new to me & Russel Norman today. ARSE CLOWN
It's at least a decade old:
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Moment of Truth
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Bubble.
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Can someone be sued under multiple hats?
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As with your last post, I find it hard to say anything meaningful to add to your message, other than moral support. It seems like one of the most difficult paths, to attempt to change an organization from within. It is no wonder that people mostly prefer to abandon it. It takes a brave person to fight that kind of prejudice, to face the hostility of the remaining membership. I imagine that it's also a path plagued with doubt at all times, since the alternative path of breaking away so as not to have to deal with bigotry whenever one want to partake of spiritual feelings, is sitting right there, beckoning.
It seems like a fight worth fighting, if you have the stomach for it, but it's against great odds. As an unbeliever, it's hard for me to feel that it's a battle that could ever be won, that a big part of the problem is the very way in which a church is structured, that its very design is to give away personal conscience in favor of guidance by authority. To even have one book that one is committed to considering the most authoritative source on the matters that it deals with is ceding authority right there. To even be seeking in an ancient text for solutions to modern problems. To choose one semi-historical figure for all guidance, especially one living in a society so different to most modern experiences.
All of these seem like insurmountable obstacles to finding progressive solutions. It's like insisting on Aristotelian astronomy (which the Church, ironically, did). How can you progress in understanding of astronomy if the last word on it was written thousands of years ago? Similarly, for moral progress? At some point (well, actually, at countless points) one has to ask "maybe Christ was even wrong about this?", rather than "can we adapt what Christ said to be more right?"
But that said, I understand that the framework I'm talking about here is essentially to not be a Christian at all (in many understandings of that). And in taking it one abandons the other people left behind. To that end, I can see merit in attempting to change from within, even if I find it very hard to believe it wouldn't be ultimately futile. Anything you can do to improve the lot of any gay people left in the faith is a good thing. Even if you don't manage to change the institution, you could be helping real people.
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