Inequality is not a bad thing. It's actually necessary to have inequality of outcomes otherwise you have no incentives for improvement. An example of a society with very low inequality is old-school communism where most people are equally poor - it's clearly not a good thing.
What is bad is extreme inequality where a lot of people are in poverty. I think most people would agree that poverty is a bad thing that we should try to reduce.
It's quite possible for poverty to decrease and inequality to increase at the same time. The old "a rising tide lifts all boats" analogy. It just means everyone is doing better but the wealthy are seeing more relative gains. If the whole pie is growing, it's easy to see how everyone could get more pie even if it's not distributed equally.
edit If you disagree please state why. Drive by downvotes do not convince me that I'm mistaken, they just lower my opinion of the average HN user.
I've been thinking about this a lot this past decade or so, and it is an interesting question. One thought I've had is that a perception (real or not) of inequality is baked into our species as being bad, particularly when it gets extreme. Why might that be? Well, if my neighbor generally has more resources than me, it's usually not that big of a deal. You maybe have more or better food, or some nicer things, but if my needs are met and I have things I can enjoy, I don't get worried.
Now, if you suddenly have a lot more than me, say you have enough to provide for other people in a meaningful way, I start to get concerned. Why? Because you don't just have more than me, you start having power over me. And if I don't stop inequality increasing, that could quickly get to the point that I can't do anything about it. Your power can become absolute, for all practical purposes.
I think humanity has learned culturally, if not genetically, that really bad situations arise if someone has way more than you. Power corrupts and all that, and gross inequality becomes power.
Of course, these days, it might not be "real", meaningful inequality (Jeff Bezos has a lot of wealth, but it is wealth tied up in Amazon, mostly, and the US Government has far, far more wealth), but the perception is there, and the perception is enough to trigger concern.
You could probably go further and tie some of that discomfort into competition for mates. If my neighbor had more than me, I might start to worry that he will outcompete me in the market for a mate. I'm not sure this matters as much today - but one can imagine it did for most of human history when communities were much smaller and the majority of men died without leaving offspring behind.
It's an interesting idea, I don't know if there is something to it or not. It's hard to discuss anything involving gender roles these days.
This is really well-stated. The goal should be reducing poverty, not inequality. China for example has drastically reduced the number of people living in poverty while also seeing massive increases in income inequality. Few people would make the case that the average person in China is doing worse than that they would have been 30 years ago, despite the fact that there is clearly more "income inequality".
Typically that would be viewed as high inequality. If the ruling class of .1% controls 99.9% of the wealth then the "average wealth" and the "median wealth" will be extremely different aka wealth inequality.
Yes, exactly. What matters is do you have the resources to comfortably meet your needs or not. It does not matter if some people have many times more resources than you, that does not affect your situation. You might be envious, but that's neither here nor there really in your day to day quality of life.
What is bad is extreme inequality where a lot of people are in poverty. I think most people would agree that poverty is a bad thing that we should try to reduce.
It's quite possible for poverty to decrease and inequality to increase at the same time. The old "a rising tide lifts all boats" analogy. It just means everyone is doing better but the wealthy are seeing more relative gains. If the whole pie is growing, it's easy to see how everyone could get more pie even if it's not distributed equally.
edit If you disagree please state why. Drive by downvotes do not convince me that I'm mistaken, they just lower my opinion of the average HN user.