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Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2007 10:30:47 -0400 (EDT)
To: James W Mickens <jmickens &AElig eecs.umich.edu>
cc: Dave Morris <thecat &AElig umich.edu>, improvetheworld &AElig umich.edu,         reeves-hayos &AElig umich.edu, reeves-kalkman &AElig umich.edu
From: Daniel Reeves <dreeves &AElig umich.edu>
Subject: Re: mind the gap

Oy, either we're terribly miscommunicating or you're falling for the Daddy 
Model hook, line, and sinker.  Are you imagining that when a rich person 
makes an extra dollar that that's one less dollar for some poor person?


> I am not in agreement ;-). I believe that skewed wealth distributions can be 
> *directly* harmful to poor people. I think that as an individual accumulates 
> wealth, the utility accrued from every additional dollar decreases. For 
> example, the additional utility that a billionaire gets from buying her fifth 
> yacht is much smaller than the additional utility that a poor person gets 
> from having medicine to cure malaria. Thus, skewed wealth distributions can 
> have a pernicious impact on net utility. As I mentioned in my previous post, 
> some amount of skewedness may be necessary to encourage the talented or the 
> industrious to work for the benefit us of all. However, there reaches a 
> tipping point at which this inequality starts to generate negative aggregate 
> utility. This phenomenon is causal, not correlational---the accumulation of 
> negative aggregate utility is a direct consequence of the diminishing utility 
> return for wealth accumulation.

-- 
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/dreeves  - -  search://"Daniel Reeves"

You know what they say about dogs dogged by other dogs?
The dogged dogs dog the dogging dogs back.
Said more clearly:  Dogs dogs dog dog dogs.