433
we have the worst fucking politicians (lemmy.world)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/politicalmemes@lemmy.world
106 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 1 point 6 months ago* (3 children)

There are different measures of wealth inequality, and they are going to give different results.

For income inequality the typical approach is to consider the distribution of income post-transfers by Gini coefficient. In this sense the Dutch economy has among the lowest inequalities in the world (Gini ~0.26-0.29 depending on the estimate and methodology), though still a bit worse than the most equal societies (Gini ~0.23-0.25). (By comparison, the US is around 0.40-0.42.)

wealth inequality is high

Compared to what? What it should be? Other countries? Other times? For much of history, most people weren't even allowed to own property aside from their personal belongings. Do I, personally, think inequality should be reduced? Yes. But let's not deny that these societies are among the most egalitarian in history, "corporatism" or not, and the feudal and ancient civilizations were all invariably much worse.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (2 children)

    Yes, there are countless way to measure these metrics, thank you for taking the time to explain this. Also, in this particular area of Europe are some of the best wealth distributed areas on Earth.

    This does not make it okay though, as you point out yourself. As fascism grows in power this wealth gap will continue to grow as it has in all but one place in Europe for a little amount of time. I believe it was Slovakia, but it had been awhile since I read about it.

    Currently this wealth gap is increasing in the entire world which has lead me to the conclusion along with other research that fascism has captured the world's economy and has for some time.

    Fascism doesn't have a real left/right ideology either, but it will happily stroke the far right since their message is so effective due to propaganda. Fascism represents the monied interests and in theory if these entities were altruistic we would be living in a different world. So ultimately it is a cultural problem rather than a system issue which in a lot of ways is a bitter pill to swallow.

    This does raise the question of inevitability. Will capitalism and fascism inherently lead to these wealth gaps that allow monied interests almost complete control of government policy. So far it appears so.

    Is this a bad thing? I tend to believe yes due to several major issues with the top being environmental degredation and the next being arms proliferation. Human suffering due to these two issues is enormous and there doesn't appear to be a way to counterbalance this.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago* (1 child)

    I think what you're still missing, aside from the situation of the "wealth gap increasing" being a bit more nuanced, is that extreme inequality long predates corporations and capitalism. Therefore, using these concepts to attempt to explain it begs the question of what happened before.

    Again, wealth inequality is primarily a consequence of the existence of markets, capitalist or not, corporatist or not. The modern market economy in fact allows societies today to much more effectively combat the issue. The Bible doesn't mention progressive taxation, estate taxes and welfare states since those societies never had the administrative capacity to organize it.

    Now, you can argue that current societies that do use these tools effectively (certain European countries) should increase the degree of progressivity of taxes, and I would agree. But it has absolutely nothing to do with corporations or capitalism directly. The influence of moneyed interests in these countries, while arguably still too large, is not anywhere near the overt bribery and naked corruption we can observe in the United States.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

    I totally get you are in denial about fascism around the world. Imperalism is not unique to the US nor is supporting genocide. We can see Germany and the UK both supporting Israel full heartedly. Many European countries are extremely corrupt as well, like France that supplies weapons to kill civilians all over the world. Furthermore, issues like anti-muslim sentiment abounds.

    The US is horrible for sure, but Europe does everything the US does. Just like your belief that inequality predates modern markets so does European imperialism predate the US.

    You are also horribly in denial of the reality of capitalism. It is out of control in Europe. While it may be slightly better at initially spreading the wealth around once corporations take over exploitation and wealth concentration abound.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent