Posted on 10/03/2022 9:05:15 PM PDT by DoodleBob
There is immense concern about economic inequality, both among the scholarly community and in the general public, and many insist that equality is an important social goal. However, when people are asked about the ideal distribution of wealth in their country, they actually prefer unequal societies. We suggest that these two phenomena can be reconciled by noticing that, despite appearances to the contrary, there is no evidence that people are bothered by economic inequality itself. Rather, they are bothered by something that is often confounded with inequality: economic unfairness. Drawing upon laboratory studies, cross-cultural research, and experiments with babies and young children, we argue that humans naturally favour fair distributions, not equal ones, and that when fairness and equality clash, people prefer fair inequality over unfair equality. Both psyhological research and decisions by policymakers would benefit from more clearly distinguishing inequality from unfairness.
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...In this paper we have outlined a wealth of empirical evidence suggesting that people don’t care about reducing inequality per se. Rather, people have an aversion toward unfairness, and under certain special circumstances this leads them to reject unequal distributions.
...
in the study in which children had to award erasers to two boys who had cleaned up their room and chose to throw out the extra eraser, both boys were described as having done a good job. But when children were told that one boy did more work than the other, they awarded the extra eraser to the hard worker28,40. In fact, when one recipient has done more work, six-year-olds believe that he or she should receive more resources, even if equal pay is an option26,41–43. Likewise, although infants prefer equality in a neutral circumstance, they expect an experimenter to distribute rewards preferentially to individuals who have done more work
(Excerpt) Read more at avalonlibrary.net ...
Kids are smarter than Democrats.
That comment is offensive to children.
Inequality is equal pay regardless of skills, duties, ability, and/or training/education.
Its because in one, the system will be the primary reason you are screwed over. In the other one, the fault for your lack of progress rests primarily on the individual.
People inherently don’t want to live in a system that is set up to screw them over. Kinda why many socialist countries have fences to keep the people IN.
Not much.
We suggest that these two phenomena can be reconciled by noticing that,...
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... your Marxist academics are Marxist and the “general population” you claim is all about the equal are products of your Marxist academics’ indoctrination and the idiots in the streets that listen to them.
Of course, academically, it’s a conundrum. How ever will they figure it out?
Forgot to add:
Currently, there is nothing so destructive to our society and culture than the education system and the diseased minds that infest it.
There’s a big difference between equal opportunity, and equal outcome.
Even children recognize it.
Even old hippies get it.
Bob Dylan et all, My Back Pages
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEoZfu-XNZc
Redistribute everything equally and within a short time you will have rich and poor again.
The only way “equality” works is via fascism and the elimination of property rights.
Even then, some will barter their way to a better life while others will squander what they have, waiting to be saved.
The reason for this seeming paradox is because your average human is stupid and thus, self defeating.
The headline is actually a false premise.
One of the problems we have is so many perceive inequality as “unfair.” It is not, all it means is something is not the same as another, they are not equal, a mature adult learns the things being unequal has no specific bearing on the fairness of the quality, it may have some but one doe pot always require the other.
In the above headline the idea of “Unfair in-equality” is presenting this premise.
Bottom line, there is nothing inherently unfair about a person earning what the are capable of as we are not all the same our abilities will not be so either and what we can achieve will always be different.
Unfortunately this concept is far to advanced for many of today’s society to grasp and accept. This was better understood by more when most actually had to work hard to even survive As we have moved to an easier existence many have not learned how hard life really can be and thus turn to shallow easy assumptions to arrange their world view.
But just take a look at the academy. There is little more unequal than how adjunct faculty are treated by their full-time, Marxist counterparts. The former are often afforded less than your illegal day worker standing outside a Home Depot.
Do you mean one of the Dems new favorite words “equity” which seems to mean equality of outcome? Dems do not care if it results in the vast majority of people being equally poor with a very few very wealthy people at the top.
Yes. They now believe that any system that does not have equality of outcomes must be inherently flawed (racist).
They will use this to diffuse the label of "communism" by saying even traditional communism does not create equality of outcomes for everyone. They can point to Marx being an open racist.
That will leave us with no label for them (even though they are just repackaged communists).
Societies that focus on “equality” morph into kleptocracies where those with political power become extremely wealthy while everyone else is poor.
Yes. Chavez came to power by promising to equalize between the rich and poor. In essence, he did make everyone destitute poor while his family amassed billions.
It really does not matter if it is a monarchy, dictatorship, fascism, communism, theocracy, etc.....the label is irrelevant because the result is always the same....a small group hold the majority of wealth and power while everyone else suffers and the economy becomes dysfunctional.
All these do-gooders are great at redistribution. They just do not know how to produce anything....which is why their economies collapse.
The only system that works is unleashing the individual and imposing as few restrictions as possible.
Yup—once you understand the “secret” it becomes obvious why “developing countries” never develop.
If you have the opportunity to talk to average folks in those countries they will explain that even the tiniest amount of wealth must be hidden—both from roving gangs and the government.
That makes public capital formation impossible.
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