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Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2007 20:04:56 -0400 (EDT)
To: improvetheworld &AElig umich.edu
From: Daniel Reeves <dreeves &AElig umich.edu>
Subject: Re: mind the gap

This is what is so awesome about improvetheworld.  These debates actually 
*get* somewhere!  Seriously, I'm excited about this. :)

Let's pause for a straw poll:
   http://dreeves.wufoo.com/forms/mind-the-gap/


--- \/   FROM James W Mickens AT 07.09.04 16:51 (Today)   \/ ---

>> And I don't think you clarified what James is saying.  He said that more 
>> real wealth to billionaires does directly hurt poor people.  I'd like to 
>> hear the chain of causality he has in mind.
>
> According to Graham, "wealth is not money. Money is just a convenient way of 
> trading one form of wealth for another. Wealth is the underlying stuff---the 
> goods and services we buy." The underlying stuff, the goods and services, are 
> constrained resources. For example, using a wealth resource in one way often 
> prevents its use in a different way; real estate that is used to build a 
> library can't be used to build a sports stadium. Wealth is also constrained 
> by the rate at which it can be produced. There are a finite number of 
> automobiles that can be produced per month. There are a finite number of 
> hours that doctors can spend treating patients. These figures may improve 
> over time, but they will still be finite. This means that many types of 
> wealth are scarce. Ergo, distribution matters. In particular, skewed wealth 
> distributions directly hurt poor people because there is a finite amount of 
> wealth for everyone to share, and giving a unit of wealth to one person is 
> equivalent to taking it away from someone else. Thus, the Daddy Model of 
> Wealth is not totally broken. Wealth is not money, but many types of wealth 
> *are* constrained by natural limits.
>
> A society's wealth can grow over time, but it will never be infinite. Thus, 
> there will never be enough wealth to maximize everyone's utility. But given 
> diminishing utility returns on wealth accumulation, sound public policy 
> should ensure that wealth imbalances do not grow too large.
>
> ~j
>

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

  "Everything that can be invented has been invented."
    -- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.