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Thomas Hazlewood's avatar

Let's pretend that Nike stops making all its sneakers. All those workers, who are underpaid by WESTERN standards, will they be poorer, or ecstatic that the 'evil corporation' no longer exploits their labor? They do the work because it's the best they can find and it feeds them, and without it they'll be back to picking rags from landfills.

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Paul Schmidt's avatar

“…billionaires are the cost of the people being fed”

You’ had me until here. In a free market, billionaires are not a cost, they’re a benefit, providing jobs and investments both directly and indirectly.

(I grant you they may not be a benefit if what they invest in are politicians.)

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Tim Worstall's avatar

Trying v hard to avoid that justification - they buy yachts, yacht makers get money etc. I know Smith points it out but still.

My point being that *even* if you think the existence of billionaires is a bad thing they're still worth it, a cost worth bearing.

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Paul Schmidt's avatar

Fair enough, I guess. I don’t want to make too big a deal of it, but in an effort to avoid alienating the class warfare mob, you’ve appeared to somewhat ally with them.

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a fascinating look at the data, and supports my contention that the claim that “income inequality is bad” is false. No doubt there are many defective polities where there is high income inequality, but i would argue that it is not a primary marker of a bad economic system.

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Tim Worstall's avatar

It's a wholly usual logical stance of mine. To take the claims of the other side seriously. To say "OK, so you say this and this and this, do you?" and then attempt to go on to show that they're still wrong, even within their own evidence and logic.

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Francis Turner's avatar

"within their own evidence and logic."

There's your problem. They have Alice in Wonderland Humpty Dumpty logic

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