[sandorski]

Psudo Psudo:

No one is denying that wealth is unevenly distributed. The argument is that presence of inequality doesn't prove an unfair system. You who wish to change the system carry the burden to prove that the system is the cause of the inequality and that your proposed changes will fix it.

Do you need the list of the places again? It's a cross-section of humanity, not a list of the worst places in the world.

Again, the corruption in US Politics is all you need to know why the imbalance needs corrected. It's not about "Equality", it's to limit Inequality in order to keep a tiny minority from dominating the majority.

[Psudo]

Specifically what corruption are you talking about? What needs to be changed in the existing system to reduce that inequality?

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

I just don't think he makes a case at all as to why discrimination should be morally condemned. He presupposes it.

The topic of this essay was the causes of income inequality. He presupposes discrimination to be wrong because 1) it's not a controversial statement, and 2) it's immaterial to his thesis. Or perhaps because his thesis is to differentiate between immorality and causality, which accomplishes the same thing.

[Zipperfish]

Psudo Psudo:

The topic of this essay was the causes of income inequality. He presupposes discrimination to be wrong because 1) it's not a controversial statement, and 2) it's immaterial to his thesis. Or perhaps because his thesis is to differentiate between immorality and causality, which accomplishes the same thing.

Perhaps you're right and I've mischaracterized him. I don't really know who he is. When I read the piece, I noted that if you removed the moral prohibition against discrimination (which, as I said and I could be wrong, seemed almost an afterthought to me) then you had here a pretty good argument for imperialism and slavery (if, indeed, the goal was to reduce income inequality). Perhaps by examing that aspct, I missed his thesis.

It was believed at one time that slavery (and thus discrimination) had the positive sanction of God.

I, myself, consider discrimination based on race or appearance ("nature") wrong, but I have no problem discriminating against cultures ("nurture"). I realize that I'm walking a pretty fine line their a lot of times.

[Psudo]

It seemed to me that he was criticizing the confidence behind the conclusion that inequality proved discrimination as empirically baseless and ignorant of other substantial influences. Criticizing confidence is not necessarily an encouragement of confidence in the opposite conclusion. I donno, though, maybe it was. I can't read minds.

You say, "I don't really know who he is." This video is a couple clips of him debating on television in past decades. It is one of the better introductions to the man available on YouTube, I think. I also liked this much longer, much more contemporary interview hosted by Harvard's Hoover Institute of which he is a senior fellow.

[Saipan]

sandorski sandorski:

Again, the corruption in US Politics is all you need to know why the imbalance needs corrected.

Really? Corruption in the US is lower than just about anywhere else. Take for example indian chiefs in Canada, some of whom, leading only couple thousand people, rake more money than some Premiers of a province.

You are free to grow ten times more carrots than your neighbour and sell them anywhere - instead of drinking beer and watching ball game.

Chretien's Sponsorgate, 'though criminal, didn't stop me from doing business. Did it interfere with yours?

[PublicAnimalNo9]

Saipan Saipan:

sandorski sandorski:

Again, the corruption in US Politics is all you need to know why the imbalance needs corrected.

Really? Corruption in the US is lower than just about anywhere else. Take for example indian chiefs in Canada, some of whom, leading only couple thousand people, rake more money than some Premiers of a province.

You are free to grow ten times more carrots than your neighbour and sell them anywhere - instead of drinking beer and watching ball game.

Chretien's Sponsorgate, 'though criminal, didn't stop me from doing business. Did it interfere with yours?

Sub-prime mortgages sure stopped a shit-load of people from doing business. That could ONLY have happened with "help" from the govt.

[BeaverFever]

Saipan Saipan:

Really? Corruption in the US is lower than just about anywhere else.

Nope. US ranks 19th, behind Canada and most of western Europe. Enough that it doesn't even make the top category.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupti ... ted_States

[BeaverFever]

Back to the OP, I don't think its valid to use colonized countries as examples of virtuous immigrants out-competing the natives. For example, the Brits took Indians to their various overseas colonies to serve as a semi-educated, semi-skilled labour force and clerical staff. Those Indians did not out-succeed the African and Caribbean natives by som superior genetic or even cultural virtue as much as they benefited directly or indirectly from the social and fincial resources of the empire. The same is probably true for Chinese emmigrants in Southeast Asia...they have family and financial resources in the more advanced home country, plus likely some measure of direct or indirect support from the home country government.

[Psudo]

Technically, you're citing the popular perception of corruption, not some objective measure of corruption. That might matter, or it might not.

I'd be interested to see nations plotted on a graph where X is a corruption score and Y is a income inequality score. I might spend a little time doing that, to see the correlation you imagine between corruption and inequality actually exists in reality.

[Zipperfish]

There is a corruption index out there somewhere.

A big problem is that (like hunger) merely identifying it as an issue doesn't do much ot solve it. The cultural predispositions that lead to the corruption (or hunger) aren't easy to fix. The Americans and NATO have the run of Afghanistan and, without being too flippant about it, from a military perspective, the Taliban and other insurgents are no more than a nuisance.

The challenge now is very much cultural. Which is why the (belated) effort over there is education. Education is a tool to chnage culture, which is why the Taliban are so dead set against it. Establishing institutions is another way.

[Psudo]

Dark blue are OECD (developed) countries, red is USA. Up is less corrupt, left is income equality. Click the image for sources. Gili is data from several sources averaged together. CPI from the source BeaverFever's source cited as its source.

If I wanted to waste a hundred man-hours, I could make similar graphs for each individual Gili source, CPI for various different years, and make dozens of comparisons until I find the one with the strongest correlation. I definitely do not have the software to do that for me.

[Zipperfish]

Doesn't look like there is much of an r-squared happening there. Interesting. I would have expected a clearer signal of corruption corrlating with income inequality.

[bambu]

During the rioting in Indonesia last year, much of it directed against the ethnic Chinese in that country,

#####

Surely not, not 'the lovely people of Indonesia' rioting against Chinese people.

[Psudo]

Zip: the best r-squared I could find was a negative logarithmic curve. It got 0.35 or so. Carefully matching years and studying the data well enough to identify and eliminate data points which have unusual reasons for being what they are might increase that somewhat.

It's also possible that actual corruption correlates to income inequality better than perceived corruption.

It's also possible that other factors that contribute to income inequality are more powerful than is typically thought, as Thomas Sowell argued at the beginning of this thread.