this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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Many people have problems related to income inequality. We went to college, got good jobs, and we still don't have enough money to maintain the lifestyle we were promised. We don't live in a socialist country, we live in a capitalist country.
So 30% of people can't afford their own house and that doesn't seem like inequality to you?
Here's the wiki page on global income equality, to address your claim that Europe is worse than the US:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality
[citation needed]
And even if true, what do you think is driving that decision? Decisions aren't made in a vacuum. I posit - it's the financial burden.
This really only affects landlords and estate agents. Most people looking for a home are looking for a place to stay for life, and any "bureaucratic cost", if you're purely talking about red tape, form-filling, phone calls etc, is more than worth it for a lifetime home. Again, citation needed. If you're talking about a literal monetary cost... whoa, look at that - capitalism!
"Flexibility" is a daft measure, only useful for people who plan to move often, which, again, is not common, except in the case of people needing to move often for work, which - hey, it's capitalism again!
"Almost" is doing a lot of work in this sentence. The risk of being made homeless by your landlord for petty reasons is a pretty clear risk. Having your rent hiked is a financial risk. Having to bite the bullet and choose an expensive place to rent because it's the only one reasonably close to work is a financial risk. Being under someone's thumb to provide them income is itself an inherent financial risk.
And by the way - what do you think causes the financial risk of home ownership, since you're so intent on proving my point for me?
Try and think a little more deeply. An accident in itself is not a financial risk. Even flooding isn't inherently a financial risk. Do you know what is?
Also, "market changes" is a part of what I'm pointing at ;)
It's capitalism!
fosforus uses deflection!
It's not very effective!
Answer me instead of making bad jokes, coward.
By the way - are you unaware of the incredible self own inherent in this? In your attempt to "recommend" a book for more information on these issues, you recommend "basic economics". Well...
Dude. It was entirely a deflection. Answer my fucking comment. I have literally no need whatsoever to respect your "recommendation". It was an attempt to avoid answering my statements and nothing more than that. So go ahead, answer. Or are you too scared?
Also, I have Cowbee's statements to lean on, which you yourself conceded to, to know what the book is like.
Still not an answer. You can say all you like, but until you answer you are only continuing to deflect.
Oof, unironically suggesting Sowell? Might as well toss in Prager-U, or DailyWire.
For one, I wouldn't recommend a clown that supports removing the minimum wage, or argues that colonization was a good thing. Recommending a far-right Chicago economist, who is far-right even by Chicago school standards, is laughably absurd.
I have many positions of my own. Decentralization is key, as is democratization, and this extends to production. I think protecting worker power is key, and I think Imperialism and colonization are terrible. As such, I can't agree with recommending Sowell.
All of those are reasons why I'm a leftist and am on Lemmy, rather than a Capitalist site like Reddit.
It's also clear that people who deny the extent to which capitalism actually makes the world worse either a) don't know what capitalism is, or b) are rent seekers
What history? What economics? Vague gesturing and feigning superiority without actually saying anything is peak.
Edit: turns out the economics was just Sowell all along, lol. Guess we have an AnCap over here.
You weren't replying to the meme, you were replying to someone else in the origin of this fork of the comment chain. I'm implying that you in particular have no nuance.
Fair enough, but again, you somehow had even less nuance and pulled the classic bit of feigning superiority.
Edit: oof, you unironically suggest Sowell in another comment as a good resource. Looks like I'm correct, the superiority was indeed completely unfounded.
Instead of berating him for not leaving a robust enough comment for your taste, why don't you ask for more information? Calling capitalists uninformed or rent seekers is way more unfair than alluding to historical or economic evidence to the contrary. The latter clearly leaves itself more open to good faith discourse, getting nothing out of it has simply been a failure on your part
The very first thing they said was "what history? What economics?" - so yeah, they've asked for information.
Don't strip away context, this is what he said:
Those are clearly rhetorical questions, his comment was an accusation of feigning superiority. His comment encouraged the other guy to be defensive instead of opening up about his ideas. If he wanted information, then he's doing it wrong.
I'm not removing context at all. And if anything, the extended quote only further makes my point - it isn't only an accusation of feigned superiority, is it? It's also an accusation of vague gesturing without substance. Thus, out of 5 statements, 4 are directly about the fact they didn't really say anything, and 2 are requests for them to elaborate.
Or not. Adam Smith - the father of Capitalism recognised the problem of Rent Seeking behaviour.
No. Of course not. But my point was that we understood rent-seeking as a negative in Capitalism FROM THE OUTSET. You can't criticise people today who point out that flaw in Capitalism on the basis of not "know[ing] history and economics"
Whatever. I don't agree with you but that's not the point. My point was that you can't dismiss people making criticism about rent seeking as if they're naive, as you did