Please text-search Thatcher in the comments and answer my comment about exactly that idea that "if the poor are better off, but the rich are even better off, it's still fine". Thanks!
Hi Chroma, thanks for your comment, but I disagree with you, please text-search my name on this page and read my comments, and answer them point by point if you can.
Thanks!
I think saying that some people are "crazy communists", and that communism is failed, is not enough to discredit all the positive socialist measures that are likely leading to increased innovation and a healthy economy in the long run, in most developed countries.
- debt-free higher education
- free health care
- financial sector regulations
- tax poors less than rich
- taxes on corporations, which will be important in the future to deal with automation of most jobs, such as lawyers and truck drivers.
- basic income (only exists in Finland at the moment in 2016, was tested a few times in the last decades, with success apparently)
The "Communism is failed" argument is typical of the neo con media, it's disingenuous and completely misses the point. Socialism is very different from communism. Socialism improves on capitalism. Socialism provenly works. Most developed countries are socialist, to different degrees. The most successful ones in innovation per capita happen to be the most socialist ones, literally, scandinavian countries. The US is already socialist to some extend, not just capitalist.
An interesting point to add is that Milton Friedman, the guru of the neo conservative current, actually supports basic income. Basic income just got voted in Finland. Basic income is very different from communism, and was proven to work in many real-life experiments, without affecting people's drive to work. See interesting TED talks on that subject.
… In 1962, the libertarian economist Milton Friedman advocated a minimum guaranteed income via a “negative income tax.”
And yes, of course, can't agree more with your list. That is just good for innovation and people. Pretty obvious at this point that those are desirable measures, not just for poor people but even for a healthy economy in the long term:
- Marginal tax rates at the top of 50% (France is even higher and still has rich people) and policies to make sure the rates stay progressive.
- Closing tax loopholes, forcible repatriation of stashed offshore assets, fully funding the IRS, and eliminating (for real) tax havens and their usage.
- Debt-free higher ed (full rides, living stipends, the works)
- A real universal health system
- No games with inheritance taxes
- Non-punitive, non-humiliating policies to help the poor like a GBI or expanded automatic welfare provision
- Not gutting social security
Btw if Futurebot or anyone else can give arguments against this video, it's Stephan Molyneux on "the myth of scandinavian socialism", ... that'd be interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNtyV0CXfzU
To me it seems an incorrect, incomplete analysis of the factors that lead to wealth generation, but it seems difficult and time consuming to debunk.
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ECONOMIC FREEDOM INDEX
I think for one thing that the economic freedom index, created by the Wall Street Journal is as hack, trying to reconcile neo con policies and the data on growth in countries around the world.
That economic freedom index wants to pass as "an argument for capitalism and neo conservatism", while at the same time incorporating scandinavian countries in the "good group" that is "doing it right", "the neo con way". It's then used as an argument to discredit socialist policies .... I'm not sure that index has any validity. It seems totally biased and "after the fact-y" trying to find ways group countries after seeing their wealth output, and find reasons why that was "totally neo con".
My reaction to the economic freedom index is ... well, if those socialist policies implemented in scandinavian countries are compatible with a high economic freedom rating ... how is that an index a measure of how socialist a country is? Then that means we can do everything they do! Yay!
For me the conclusion on the economic freedom index is summed up by these two cases:
A) Maybe that index is nailing it, and in that case, let's do exactly like the countries at the top of the chart ... the scandinavian countries.
B) And maybe it's not nailing it, and that index is totally made up and biased, a total hack coming from the neo con media. In that case we shouldn't feel bad to be socialist, mimic and adapt from the scandinavian countries which do well on progress and innovation.
... Same outcome in both cases, yay! That index doesn't add much to the conversation. It's just concurring on the fact that those countries are doing it right, and then it's trying to label that success as "neo con" and "libertarian". Well, to me call it whatever you want, as long as it has free health care, free school, minimum wage and all the smart socialist goodness, it's what we should be doing.
Is that index really the complete, correct valid answer to build a successful country? Is it the complete recipe, totally spot on? Or is it just a biased measure made up after the fact to incorporate the countries that do well and label them as "neo con"? Thoughts welcome.
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SMALL GOVERNMENT = GROWTH
Another idea mentioned in the video is that the size of government is inversely correlated with growth and wealth generation. Can anyone debunk this?
Small yet effective? - One thing that comes to mind is that it's possible that some countries, like the scandinavian countries, are implementing some smart policies, that would be considered socialist, with a small government. And that on the other hand a government can be big and implement the wrong things, the wrong policies.
Big government would mean more corruption and bad ineffective policies? - It's possible that the size of a government isn't so much a measure of how socialist it is, but is rather a good proxy for how corrupt a country is, how dumb its people are, and thus how likely it is to "not pick policies that are conducive to growth and wealth", but are rather instead "conducive to making the rich richer" through manipulation and corruption -- which is typical of countries that don't do that well, they are controlled by an elite that abuses and parasites the middle class, incapable to vote for itself. More middle class emancipation corresponds in general to more wealth and more progress and might be an indicator of more smart people in all classes and not just the elite. More inequality generally corresponds to less progress and less wealth. If anyone disagrees with this please tell me why, thanks!
It could also be that their measure of how small the government is isn't accurate and that there's a lot of small prints about it.
If it's indeed correct, then it's an interesting correlation. I would like to know more about it. Any comments welcome.
In particular, it would be interesting to know if there's any flaw with the idea that "Sweden's decline in growth output relative to the world average is caused by a bigger government starting in the 60s".
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In any case, the conclusion doesn't change much for me, it still boils down to the fact that some countries are doing it right, in growth and innovation, and at the same time implemented free health care, minimum wage, free schools etc. and we should mimic and adapt from their model, as much as possible since it works.
After that, all the discussions from Molyneux and other neo cons or libertarian, trying to label that success and "theirs" as "due to less socialism" don't really matter. Whatever those countries are doing, whatever you call it, it's the right thing to do.
It essentially confirms my temporary conclusion, what I've been reasoning in my comments on this page so far. Socialist policies at worst won't hurt the economy, and at best will contribute to it. In any case the neo con / libertarian position that Molyneux defends is flawed, indeed based on nothing (I wonder how he gets his data, besides from the economic freedom index which comes from the Wall Street Journal). Here are the highlights from the article, below (marked with ).
Now I really wonder how come Molyneux gets such a beautiful correlation between government size and growth output in his slides. Is it possible that his data is ... purposely altered or coming from biased sources? I don't see any other explanation. It'd be great if the author of that article (Audacious Epigone) and Molyneux had a good debate, so we can see who's right.
Quotes from the article:
There is a modestly positive correlation [of government spending as a percentage of GDP by country] of .25 with per capita wealth. To the extent that is of any importance, it is another reason why those on the left should favor policies that boost average IQ and by extension national wealth. Over time, as the economy grows, the government grows as well, generally at a slightly greater rate, then? But if European countries are removed from the analysis, the relationship loses statistical significance (p=.34).
(...)
* On its face, there doesn't appear to be much to validate the libertarian view that minimizing the size of the federal government, and suffering the consequent economic distortions its continued growth will otherwise cause, should be the primary goal of a society wanting economic prosperity (and a high quality of life). Ceteris paribus perhaps, but there are clearly a host of other demographic and cultural variables that are more important. Who would rather operate a business--or live--in Haiti instead of in Denmark?
Conclusion: For me it's not looking good for the neo con / libertarian ideology. I'm not sure I can identify even one pertinent spot on thing they say at this point. Could it be that most of that ideology and all its arguments really is 100% flawed and was manufactured by elites in their own short-term, near-sighted interest repeatedly in history? Or is there at least some good stuff in it? Any thoughts welcome.
I wanted to respond to all your comments, but they're blog-post level and I'm in the middle of writing a book so I can't properly do them justice. A very short answer to just some of your questions on government size and the innovation/social support question:
1) The Scand. model shows that larger (and more importantly well-run, and smarter) government is completely compatible with innovation and business creation (as well as high social mobility.) Stronger social supports mean more risks, which means more innovation and businesses. Size is a red herring, as I'll discuss below, though.
2) The "Freedom indexes" aren't wrong per se, in that they show what they purport to show, but the way they've been interpreted / designed is to always support the ideas that less regulation always and everywhere equals growth, even "good" growth. The cultural environment they were created in doesn't allow for much else. That doesn't mean they're useless; it just means that they have to be interpreted contextually.
3) Culture matters. A lot. A society that has a baseline of good infrastructure (broadly construed, not just physical, but social and technological) plus a culture of entrepreneurialism is likely to produce more innovation even with 50% marginal tax rates.
I'd add for all of the above is that the environment for innovation can be thought of like the range of temperatures compatible with life; there's a margin where innovation will likely go down at either end of the spectrum:
- If your MTR is too high, people might actually move or decide its not worth it to start a business. The issue is that the actual level and the level pushed by the economic right are very far apart. Scand. / France / Germany shows that 50-60% MTR works just fine, but we could easily imagine that a 90% rate would have the opposite effect.
- If your MTR (and hence ability to fund the aforementioned infrastructure [in this case everything from university tuition to public transportation to government grants for businesses to social welfare to allow people more freedom / privation protection]) is too low, you can lose innovation potential because too many people spend heir time and energy just trying to survive or get to the "baseline" of innovation (like working survival jobs instead of studying.) Even small-scale cash handouts in many developing countries to would-be entrepreneurs can bolster innovation and growth, as a number of previous and extant experiments have shown.
- Regulation and government size are often explained in terms of "number" or "size", but these should be considered complete red herrings. What's more important are good design, responsiveness to changing circumstances, good administration, hard-to-corrupt regulators, and understandability. Many of the Scand. countries, NZ, and especially Singapore (for all its faults) show that regulation can be done in a way that protects people and does not squash business. The proper way to frame this is not to think about "too many" or "too big" but "bad" and "stupid." Bad/stupid regulation can kill business, but good/smart regulation can actually support it (one way is to allow certain kinds of businesses which lines to color inside AND to let them know that they are not being undermined when their competitors cheat - standard regulations means a level playing field for businesses in many cases, particularly ones in well-trodden industries.)
The other thing I'd say, which is very interesting, is that even though there's some disagreement on the causes and the extent of many of the inequality issues, the solutions are weirdly convergent. Left-wing intellectuals with a technological bent, realistic right-wing intellectuals who have given up on a complete dismantling of social welfare provision, and technologists of the techno-libertarian (both left and right) variety have spoken in favor of the GBI, which would kill several birds with one stone:
With a proper GBI, you wouldn't need TANF, SNAP, WIC, social security or any of those. You would still need a proper UHC, and would probably need top ups for those with disabilities, but we could get to the "post-Scandanavian" model of social democratic capitalism if it was done on a large scale. Politically unlikely for another half-century, in my estimation, but a far better solution than most of the others.
The "standard" list of suggestions (like not gutting SS) takes into account political likelihood, even though I consider many of them second-best solutions.
Thanks Futurebot for your thoughful, spot on and readable commentary all over the place. I hadn't read this comment in particular before writing mines and I'm really happy to read a lot of the same arguments I gathered in different places over the years.
Absolutely, more safety net produces more innovation. That's also what I thought. Thanks for saying, finally someone else says it!
Some arguments for it:
- the middle class was important for progress in the west. That's a well established idea.
- the map of low vs high inequality countries points more toward high inequality --> less innovation per capita, on average. In particular at least, it's clear that some of the nordic countries can pull off the highest innovation rates per capita while being among the most socialist countries. So at worst, most of the socialist policies won't hurt. Like free school, free health care, financial regulations and less tax on the poor than on the rich. At worst, they just won't affect innovation, and at best they actively contribute to it.
- the law of accelerating returns states that, in rough terms, "computation power" is a function of "world knowledge" which in turn is also a function of "computation power". This is why it's an exponential trend. Well, until we reach a point where computers can innovate on their own, human brains are still going to matter in the equation for progress, still going to be a bottleneck for progress, still for a few decades in the future. Yes more powerful computers is mostly what's driving the exponential tech trend right now, but so is the raw number of brains at work, scientists and engineers in particular. This means that we need more bright kids in college and university.
Neo conservatives usually argue that "making way for investors" is the priority for the economy and innovation -- that it's currently the bottleneck for innovation and the economy. But it's clear for me that it's not the case. Investing might be the easiest part to solve among the "ingredients" that are often cited to generate progress: 1) inventors+computers 2) investors 3) middle class buyers.
For me it's clear that socialism would generally help 1) and 3), as well as 2) (for example with incentives for high risk investors or investors in renewable energy for example) while neo conservatism might help 2) only and be detrimental to 1) and 3) (especially with the current price of a university education and health care, 1) and 2) are affected negatively in non-socialist countries).
Important to point out that the law of accelerating returns formulated by Kurzweil doesn't really acknowledge 2) and 3), except maybe indirectly (if you count the political model, which is currently btw in the US "capitalist with some socialist measures", and say investing practices, as indirectly contributing to the "human knowledge" variable, which of course it is to some extend). In other words, it's probable the only thing that matters significantly for progress and the economy, is more scientists and engineers. 2) and 3) are just helpers and we wouldn't be near a bottleneck on those.
Interesting to point out that Kurzweil notes no significant variation in the exponential tech trend, throughout peace or war times, growth and recession periods. So either the only variable that changed significantly is the computational power available, or more likely the number of human brains at work also increased in the last century.
An interesting question is, would we still get the same rate of progress with the same number of scientists and engineers and investors and buyers that we had 100 years ago? I think not, but maybe I'm wrong.
I think more smart human brains at work, besides having better and better computers, has been the most important variable for progress in the last centuries. And I think it still is somewhat important today, until we get fully independent computer-generated scientific or tech innovation.
Any response to these ideas would be welcome. Great if you change my mind or correct me on some details. Thanks.
I don't think that's insightful. That's a typical neo conservative argument, repeated over and over for decades. Thatcher is famous for using that argument. The problem is the if in the ... "what if everyone was better off, yet with more inequality". We're not sure at all about that if. In fact data seems to say, probably no, people aren't better off when there's more inequality.
What if, actually, high inequality countries (with no free health care, no free schools, no financial sector regulations, and more tax on the poor than on the rich) shoot themselves in the foot? This is what the data seems to show, if anything.
A lot of people agree that a healthy middle class was important for progress in the west. I think they are right. I think the Thatcher argument is going in the wrong direction. Now that doesn't mean you want to waste taxpayer money on random hopeless bullshit. Not all socialist countries spend their money wisely. But taxing and spending wisely, to help the middle class, with schools and hospitals and smart regulations, is probably good for generating innovation and for the economy in the long term. The middle class can be pretty resilient in some countries, with still a lot of resourceful smart people, you can throw a lot at them and they will still survive. But it's probably better to help them a bit. It's probably better, for example, to significantly increase the number of truly smart kids that go to college in a country (there's more poor or low middle class smart kids than rich smart kids, in raw numbers, even if rich kids are more likely to be smart, on average).
The Thatcher argument really is a good example of a purely rhetorical argument, not based on any data, that was spread by neo conservatives, media owners in particular, to their strict advantage. It's an O'Reilly-no-spin-zone worthy argument. It's pretty insidious, a masterpiece of a meme. It basically amounts to accusing poor and middle class people of being jealous jerks for wanting free health care, free schools, wall street regulations and less tax on them than on the rich. Of course it seems to make a lot of sense at first sight. That's why the media uses that over and over again.
It's like saying "Be happy with what you have, because if we had free health care and free school and wall street regulations and taxes on the rich ... you'd be worse off". Well, that's just not true, according to the data. Countries with high inequality are generally the ones where nothing happens, in innovation or in anything else, there's no middle class, and it's sad.
There's nothing worse than dumb people voting against their own interest. That's the recipe for a dictatorship.
If you disagree I'll be happy to hear your opinion. I'm ready to change my mind. Thanks!
Great string of comments, interesting that Friedman supports basic income. If anyone wants to read my comment far down below and answer any points you disagree with that'd be super welcome! (it starts with "With this comment I'm answering both PG's post and an answer to his post that can be read here: http://cryoshon.co/2016/01/02/a-response-to-paul-grahams-art...)
Pretty good reasoning. I'm not sure though that income inequality is necessary for progress. I think it's a side effect of progress but not a cause for it. I think it might be possible to obtain hard work from smart people without a lot of inequality. Of course rewards are important, and in that sense some amount of inequality is necessary for innovation to happen. But if you look at the bulk of major breakthroughs in technology throughout history, they were done by academics or government employees. Sure we need investors to get excited. But for that we don't need insane levels of inequality.
The bottom line for me is that "taxation doesn't remove incentives". We need people to get excited about making money, and investing in startups, but we don't need most of the crap that neo cons are trying to push on us. 99% of problems we face that have to do with inequality won't affect rates of innovation and startups.
We can see that nordic countries have even better rates of startups and entrepreneurship per capita than the US as a whole. What this means is that we can deal with the inequality problem in a smart way and be better off. There is fundamentally no difference between taxation of successful people or companies, and spreading the risk like YCombinator does. This is the solution. It's just the smart thing to do. The reason we're not doing it is not because "we don't know what to do", or because "inequality is necessary for progress" but because people are dumb and are being brainwashed by the media.
Please read my comment (mike429) and answer any point you disagree with. You sound smart so I'd like to see if you make more sense than me on the things I pointed out. Thanks.
What really matters is that * being taxed doesn't remove the incentive to start startups or innovate in general . Because Sweden. Because Denmark, because Norway, and because basically every european country plus Canada and Australia, etc etc etc. That's all. Debate closed for me. Sure startups, and innovation in general, is what made people better off since prehistory and we want to keep that exponential trend going. But is it true that people need to starve and be in debt so we can have startups? People need to get screwed over? No, on the contrary! GET TO THE GIST OF THE ISSUE! People arguing that we need a lot of inequality to have innovation and startups are misinformed, and/or brainwashed by the media.
One fun fact: there's more poor* smart kids than rich smart kids, in raw numbers (despite kids from rich households being more likely to be smart, on average). Allowing these poor smart kids to waste less time at small jobs and spend more time in school and on startups is what we want. So actually it might even help innovation to have less poors.
Other fun fact: the computer, the internet, the web, GPS, touch screens, modern encryption, and most things we rely on today aren't coming from startups (see TED talk on that issue). Most tech innovations were done by regular employees with no financial stakes, working for a country's government or a university. And there's more ... I wouldn't count an employee innovating at Google, IBM or Facebook in the "startup" category. Artificial intelligence at Google or IBM or Facebook happens mostly because people are smart and passionate. These people are often knowledgeable academics, often coming from other countries where education and health care is free. Startups are the tip of the iceberg for innovation. People don't usually innovate just to get rich. They did it because they are smart, it was their job, and they got lucky to combine two old ideas together -- they were at the right place at the right time with the right knowledge.
Other fun fact: a strong middle class is necessary for innovation. Otherwise no one will buy smartphones and use the apps. (see excellent "banned TED talk" by venture capitalist Hanauer)
It's not looking good for the neo conservative ideology, the "we need inequality" and no tax for the rich idea. How can people still be convinced that we need higher inequality to have a healthy economy and get innovation? The only reason it's still widespread is because of American media owners.
What this means for anyone with half a brain is that socialism works, when done right, done smart, ... No offense to PG, who is otherwise a smart dude, but he didn't completely nail it in this article, on this specific issue. He is trying hard though and that's admirable. He is a brainwashed neo-conservative, to some extend, trying to make sense of things. It's admirable that he is trying really hard to make sense. Some of what he says almost makes sense. We can feel the neo con ideology from the early 2000s Bush Jr era still running in his neurons and preventing a fair appraisal of the problem, but he is trying. Also, he is inherently in conflict of interest, one should point out here. It's ok PG, neo cons do seem to have a lot of strong points, mostly that the USSR and China failed with communism. Economic freedom also seemed to make sense. And it's on TV. And most people agree. And it does feel kind of uncool to tax companies and successful people. But with a bit of reasoning and at this point in history, we can say for sure that "a lot of inequality isn't necessary for startups". Just a bit is sufficient. Taxing companies and personal income is fine, it's done in most successful countries.
The current state of technology (affordable smartphones and laptops, programming languages that are easy and affordable, and more people than ever in history with some free time and extra money on their hands, etc) is what's allowing the startup phenomenon, today in history. It wasn't superhuman levels of effort, that could only be triggered in an individual by the promise of millions. Kids innovate by having fun and having free time and no debt -- so peace of mind. High inequality (and the neo con ideology that promotes it) isn't necessary for startups and is even detrimental. Having lobbyists influence the government isn't necessary for startups. Dumb, bro-ish and psychopathic wall street practices and (lack of) laws aren't necessary for startups. Taxing the rich less than the poor isn't necessary for startups. Spending most of the budget on wars isn't necessary for startups. Not having free health care isn't necessary for startups. Having a bunch of psychopaths screw people over isn't necessary for startups. On the contrary. Guaranteed basic income has been tested and empirically didn't remove incentive for people to work (see TED talks on basic income). Do things smart for God's sake. The variability in innovation rates and GDP per inhabitant between countries IS NOT DUE TO SOCIALISM (contrarily to what the economic freedom index people would want you to believe). Russia is still a shithole for the most part after 25 years of capitalism, maybe even more, and it always has been and shithole anyway. It's probable Canada or France would have fared just as fine in GDP with more or less socialism -- they'd just have more poors and more stress, and less kids in school given less socialism. Nordic countries are killing it in innovation despite their small size and "despite" being very socialist. But then you have examples like West vs East Germany which do seem to indicate that socialism (or communism) can be bad for the economy in some cases. Success for a country is complicated, isn't just defined by whether it's socialist. Important to point out that there's smart socialist policies and dumb socialist policies. Look at empirical evidence. Free school and free health care happen to work if done right, and exist in countries that have a lot of startups per capita. You can verify that in countries that tried it.
The bottom line is, we want innovation, and we want less inequality. We can have both. Why are we even debating this? Because people are dumb and the neo con ideology is spread far and wide by the American media, and some of its arguments can seem to make sense (the "lazy communist worker" argument and the "economic freedom index" argument are two). People have very little time and cognitive resources to spend on this issue and are easily manipulated. Recently Hillary was declared winner of the democrat debate in the news, when every online poll indicated that Sanders won. Talk about corrupted, communist-style use of the media -- media owners trying to influence the issue of elections, straight up. People better wake up. Hopefully the internet is making things better and making people more informed over time, and avoiding the biased news. Brain time is a scarce ressource.
Now some more thoughts. Most current jobs will likely be automated in the next 20 years, including lawyers and truck drivers. Now that's inequality right there! But is stopping exponential innovation the solution? Of course not. We want to speed it up, but benefit from it. How? Spread the risk. Like capitalists in Holland did in the 1600s investing on ships to India that had a high risk of not coming back. Like YCombinator does. This form of spreading the risk basically amounts to taxing the successful ones. Countries can invest by spreading the risk or tax successful companies on behalf of their citizens and then provide guaranteed basic income. I know it doesn't feel cool to tax successful people. But that's what we gotta do to deal with the concentration of wealth inherent to capitalism (see TED talk on capitalism and the concentration of wealth).
SUMMARY:
- startups and innovation happen just as much with socialism
- startups and innovation might happen more with socialism
- to keep the historical trend of exponential innovation going, we need to maximize quality brain time spend on startups and other intellectually challenging ventures
- this can be achieved with socialism (free school for selected kids, free health care, basic income, wall street regulation, less money spent on war, no subsidies to oil companies, etc)
- to benefit from the exponential tech evolution trend, we need anyway to tax companies that succeed, otherwise they will concentrate all the wealth by automating most current jobs existing today …. we're insanely lucky to have some billionaires give their fortunes to charity, in smart ways currently, but people can't just count on that in the future to have jobs and an income when everything is automated.
If anyone disagrees with these, please tell me why, I'm ready to change my mind!
I hope you have good points.
If the premise is correct, the countries with high levels of income equality (I sorted this table by CIA GINI, as it seemed to have most data points https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq..., and it came up with Slovenia, Hungary, Denmark and Czech Republic) would overtake countries with low income equality levels (and that obviously happened when you look at the bottom of the table with Lesotho, Botswana and Sierra Leone, but it's still lacking dominance over US or Canada or China startup scene).
Things that come to my mind on why it's not happening
* social expectations change, as more people are simply looking to fit into the societal demands in brave-new-worldy kind of way, there are fewer "rags-to-riches" stories and less media attention paid to entrepreneurs
* financial reasons - countries at the top of equality list don't seem to have a lot of free capital floating around looking for high risk. No venture capital volume to speak of, so the few options left are either through academic or government grants (Germany's Fraunhofer Institute is a good model here) or some foreign entities with bundles of cash looking for higher ROI.
* taxation reasons - under US tax code investing in startups from a taxable account is interesting (as an asset class) mainly because it's taxed as long-term capital gain, and the shareholder can choose the timing of the tax event (it's only taxable when sale of securities happened). With taxation rules changed, investors will re-crunch the numbers to judge the potential ROI as compared to risk, and perhaps some other asset classes (commodities, real estate, emerging market bonds, energy) will look more attractive.
As a side note, when people mean "income inequality" they typically imply better and more universal access to things like food, housing, health care and education. Perhaps the focus should be on making those cheaper and accessible, making the income portion irrelevant. I.e., if someone suddenly had that extra income, what would they spend it on, and why can't we make that cheaper?
Are you really surprised that countries with high levels of inequality (Lesotho, Botswana and Sierra Leone) aren't doing that well in innovation compared to the ones with low inequality (Slovenia, Hungary, Denmark and Czech Republic) ... ?
That map of inequality around the world is very interesting, thanks for posting, it totally confirms my point. For me the conclusion looking at it is straightforward, countries that have high inequality are overwhelmingly shitholes, sorry to say, and high innovation rates per capita are not coming out of them. On the other hand countries that have low inequality seem to me to be the ones that on average have high rates of innovation per capita.
At worst the data is inconclusive and low/high inequality doesn't have an effect on innovation (which means we can go ahead and be socialist if we want, it won't hurt!) -- and at best it indicates that low inequality and a healthy middle class generally favors innovation (which means we should be socialist to stimulate progress!). Anyone disagrees with this?
For the idea that "free capital floating around looking for high risk isn't available in low inequality countries" .... I would say, well give incentives to high-risk investors, and/or spread the risk more. This is what the state/government is good at, spreading risk on lot of people, taking on risky business, big challenges, borrowing money, etc. As you pointed out, there is already such an incentive in place in the US. Btw, isn't that technically speaking a form of "socialism" and "government interventionism"? That's good, there's nothing wrong with doing that if it works. I'm not sure this is a big problem, worth voting neo con for. I think socialism might even deal well with that problem. I'm not sure socialist countries have problems with investing in startups. More data welcome.
The idea with socialism and interventionism is to tweak the current system, capitalism, to make it work better. Capitalism was already in the first place an idea to make everyone's life better through cheaper products. It's pretty clear that there is an evolution of political systems throughout history and as someone has pointed out earlier in the comments, taxation in the 20th century was an improvement on capitalism that helped create more wealth for everyone, while keeping innovation going at an increased rate, and avoided revolts and revolutions that were common in previous centuries at the same time.
An interesting metaphor: I think it's a good metaphor to say that exponential tech progress is the result of the interaction between 1) smart people that invent and discover, 2) investors excited by profit 3) middle class buyers ... If this is correct, increasing any of these 3 things will improve the output, i.e. more innovation.
According to neo cons, the bottleneck to improve in priority is 2) investors excited by profit. Which is important indeed, but I don't think it's the bottleneck currently. It might be the least urgent of the three. It might be that the 3) middle class and 1) more smart scientists and engineers are more the bottlenecks currently.
It's possible also that no matter what we do at this point the exponential curve will continue unaffected. What controls that curve exactly? One thing Ray Kurzweil notes about all the exponential tech trends is that they are very steady, continue unaffected during periods of war or peace, growth or recession. So could it be that those 3 "ingredients" that generate "tech progress" don't matter that much? I.e. that we already have enough of the 3 and there is no bottleneck? Kurzweil states that more existing technology leads to more possible combinations, thus more possible innovations (which I think is in rough terms the "law of accelerating returns" if I'm not mistaken). It's possible that law alone is sufficient to generate the exponential curve, and that we are not even near a bottleneck on any of the three factors mentioned.
So in the end, it might be that there is a bottleneck in one or more of the 3 ingredients, or that we are not even close to a bottleneck on any of those 3 ingredients, and in that case, we do what we want. We can be socialist or not, and the tech trend might still continue unabated.
In any case, I think 1) more engineers and 2) more middle class are the things we should focus on, if there's a bottleneck. That's my impression. I think it's our best bet. Happy to hear other opinions.
I'd like to hear other people talk about exponential tech progress and see if they believe there more than 3 ingredients and how they think it can be accelerated more besides just the law of accelerating returns.
More data about tech progress would be great, to see if in some cases something can slow it down, or accelerate it more (besides just a paradigm shift).
