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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (44479)	7/29/2010 11:14:37 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

(I was always discussing the RATE of relative accumulation of wealth by various traunches of the population No, you where not always discussing that. When you quote a specific statement by me, directly and clearly about transfers, and then say its utter nonsense, then at least for that one statement you are talking about transfers. My responses have been to that statement. You keep defending the statement by talking about the rate of accumulation of wealthy by various sectors of the population, but as a defense of your statement, that whole subject is a non-sequitur. You could argue its a more important issue, its certainly one you seem to be more interested in, but it isn't a response to the point I raised, or a defense of your comment, that I've been continually disputing. You might try withdrawing that statement, since its false, then we could focus on the topic you want to talk about. Who is GETTING RICHER OK, now turning to a different topic (since its the topic you obviously really want to talk about). Who's getting richer (over the long run), every segment of society. Anticipating a possible change in the question - Who's getting richer the fastest, or to the greatest extent? - Well that question is more complex than it seems, since the different income tranches of society are not static. You don't have 5 different quintiles that all stay the same. If Bob goes from poor to a billionaire, and John goes from a millionaire to desperately poor, then by the usually measures, "the rich have gotten richer, while the poor have gotten poorer", but really the poor got richer while the rich got poorer. That's a rather extreme example to make the point, its not all that typical. But the point is important, and extreme examples make it clearer. A more realistic real world example (not during a recession when every group, and many individuals have their income and/or wealth decline), is that a new illegal immigrant comes in, becomes richer than he was in Mexico, but is poor enough to bring down the average even for the poorest quintile, so "the poor get poorer", even as really the poor person is getting richer. But measured by the standard measurements which don't consider the actual people over time, but just the difference between the the people who happen to be the richest and the poorest (and perhaps in other income groups) over time; the wealth of the people who happen to be wealthiest at the moment, tends to increase more (compared to the previous people who where wealthiest), than the wealth of people who are currently in the middle class or poor segments. Or to put it another way the inequality in wealth and income has increased over the last few generations. Even as most individuals during that time have increased their wealth, and all income quintiles have moved up.

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (44479)	7/29/2010 12:47:29 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Cognitive Bias of the Day: The Zero-Sum Bias Posted by Jeffrey Ellis Jul 21 From Less Wrong comes this post about the zero-sum bias. ========= One of the most pernicious of all human biases is zero-sum bias. A situation involving a collection of entities is zero-sum if one entity’s gain is another’s loss, whereas a situation is positive-sum if the entities involved can each achieve the best possible outcome by cooperating with one another. Zero-sum bias is the tendency to systematically assume that positive-sum situations are zero-sum situations. This bias is arguably the major obstacle to a Pareto-efficient society. As such, it’s very important that we work to overcome this bias (both in ourselves and in broader society). ========= The author (who goes by the handle “multifoliaterose”) speculates on a possible evolutionary explanation for the zero-sum bias. ========= Anatomically modern humans appear to have emerged 200,000 years ago. In the context of human history, economic growth is a relatively recent discovery, only beginning in earnest several thousand years ago. The idea that it was possible to create wealth was probably foreign to our ancestors…… our ancestors lived in contexts in which growth of resources was not happening. In such a context, the way that people acquire more resources for themselves is by taking other people’s resources away. The ancient humans who survived and reproduced most successfully were those who had an intuitive sense that one entity’s gain of resources can only come at the price of another entity’s loss of resources. Iterate this story over thousands of generations of humans and you get modern humans with genetic disposition toward zero-sum thinking. This is where we come from. ============= The zero-sum bias is why so many people have such antipathy towards the rich, and why those emotions can be played upon so easily by politicians. The belief is that for every rich person there must be many poor people who are going without. There is no recognition of the fact that wealth is created (i.e., is a positive-sum situation) and is not a finite resource (i.e., a zero-sum situation). jeffreyellis.org