About Financial Inequity

As an above average income earner, there is zero reason to feel any guilt, and any attempt to gin up guilt in people who make between 250-750k a year is completely misguided. The extreme wealth inequality does not come from the professional class, it is a result of the federal government and their monetary policy. When they print money, financial assets go through the roof making everyone who does not hold assets poor. This is not the fault of middle upper class Americans, and the idea that it is needs to stop.

I hate it. I'm 41. A web dev (laravel / php), but totally burned out, to the point I can't focus on freelancing hardly at all. Depression has been raging in me all year, and I feel bleak about it ending soon.

The only time I come out of my haze is when I work on side projects or think about ways to change the world by creating some sort of dual-power healthcare union co-op that basically is medicare for all without gov't control. However, having been 3 months since my last client, I'm struggling to put food on the table, let alone work on social good projects.

if I had 400k, I'd invest that so I could live off dividends, then work with other left-leaning programmers to figure out ways to build non-statist programs for UBI and Healthcare.

I had to crowdfund this month's rent and Christmas presents for my two children (under 4). So, financial strain is kind of sucking the life out of me too...

i definitely have empathy, in that i've had good months, years, and bad ones. So, I've been at both ends of spectrum, though never earned > 100k before, i've lived comfortable enough for me. I also want to devote the remainder of my life to helping others, and finally start my non-profit/union/co-op endeavor to build a true sharing economy. Where workers and consumers own the companies they work at and buy goods from, and execs do not get compensated above a decent multiplier of the average worker salary. (Voted on by said workers).

Do you know the origins of the word 'salary'?

If you compare wallet size, you're likely bound to find someone with a fatter wallet.

If you compare wealth over time, you may find you're richer than many just by opening your kitchen cabinets. [0]

As long as humanity moves forward for each other (and we don't * up [2]), wealth increases for everyone, on average. [1] In metrics that a dollar amount can't capture.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_salt [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_catastrophic_risk

Warren Buffett: "Time is the only thing you can't buy."

I make way more than average - $500k/year. It used to bother me but it bothers me less nowadays. My late teens through my mid thirties were spent being relatively very generous to worthy causes and people I would meet who were down on their luck. I gave a close family member doing charity work in Africa $80,000 so they could stay there and give their kids a good education.

Looking back - I don't think any of it made much difference - though I have no regrets.

Now that I'm in my early 40s I've sort of lost the energy to care so much. I empathize with people struggling but sort of throw my hands up in the air.

I've shifted my focus toward my family and I feel pretty good about that.

It feels like I'm having A LOT more impact by investing time and money into my family than I was able to by investing in others and their families.

I make a little bit less than the median income (grad student). If it was up to me, I feel totally satisfied with my income. I can afford anything I want to buy, I can go out for dinner without worrying, I have savings, etc. Similarly I do not feel envious of others who have more than me, I am not looking for a change in lifestyle, and like some others in this thread I think some degree of inequality is optimal.

However when my longtime girlfriend (working in finance) feels insecure dating a man with a lower income, and is not happy with me because I can't afford / am not interested in luxury vacations and sport cars then my income becomes an issue. When I chose my job I knew I'd be taking a big loss in earnings and I knew I would be okay with that, but when it affects the people important in my life and they think less of me because of my low salary it feels bad.

Financial inequality is a good thing. Consider the alternative: humans are equalized in terms of income/wealth. What happens? They start competing along other axes and their status will start being measured by other means. Would that actually be better? Think about it.

Financial inequality is actually a beautiful "equalizer", because no matter who you are, no matter what genetics you are born with and what family you are born into, you are theoretically able to attain the same status (i.e. worth in the eyes of others) as any other human. Of course in practice this is mostly false but it is still better than the alternative.

Status/power attained through money is much more fair than status/power attained through good looks or family name. Both of the others are much more unequal and unfair.

Growing up poor and now making more than average, nothing has changed for me. I've always acknowledged that it's unfortunate, but also always consider it just part of humanity. I never wasted time moping about obstacles or people having it better than me, instead I just make the most of opportunities I have, try to get more opportunities for myself, and try to help my loved ones. Beyond that isn't my problem

The US median household makes about $65k per year, so many of us on this site will fall above that line. This varies from state to state based on cost of living too.

I don't have any contempt or empathy for people based on how much or how little they make. I would need to know their specifics to judge someone, and even then I try to stay away from that.

Policy-wise, I would like to capital gains reform and strict responsibility for congress when making financial decisions (eg no more "borrowing" from SS/Medicare, pass a budget as required in the Constitution, etc).

I probably fall within top 10% earners bracket in the UK. I've got mixed feelings about it.On one side, it feels like I'm not making that much money and that everyone else is doing so much better. However, more recently I often catch myself thinking 'hold on a second, just a few years ago most of the things I can now do were absolutely impossible because of my low income'. I think there's way too much focus on the 0.001%,while ignoring the other end of the spectrum. At least in western countries, because they are rich enough,there shouldn't be a need for things like food banks, hungry kids and millions of homeless people. What makes it worse is that financial inequality makes it very easy to 'hide' yourself from the less fortunate by living in areas where you simply don't see many of the issues.

Making more has allowed me to help people who make less, especially during these times. I wouldn't be able to help if I didn't, or in a lesser capacity for fewer people.

It is good to be able to do something about something.

Consider being good at something, say electronics or software or "computers" or handicraft. When a situation arises and you can wield that skill to solve a problem, everybody is better off. That is, if you don't consider that knowledge, skill, or "richess" are a pie where one has more, the other has less.

I suppose I'd like to know more about the struggles people have, without the sensationalism and manipulation one usually gets from the the media. For instance, the matter of foodbanks (in the UK). On one hand, they are a great example of private charity, they stop food waste, and give people an option that might let them save money for something else. But on the other hand, usually the media reports it like 'Thousands turning to foodbanks in desperation! Foodbank use up 15,000%! These are dark times!'

What average? Average in the area? State? Country? Continent? World?

Anyone earning $100 a month is making twice the average salary of Sudan or Afghanistan. But it’s extreme poverty in other countries.

It’s all relative.

I think that your actual question is different from the title of the post and people seem to be responding to the title. The two questions are:

- how do you deal with knowing that you're on either of the far ends of tech salaries? (calling this financial inequity is a stretch)

- how do you feel about financial inequity in the general sense? (this is a much bigger societal/economical/political question and the division really isn't between the lower and higher paid tech workers)

I don't mind inequality, as long as even the poorest can live nice lives. What matters is everyone can live good lives.

I would like to get rid innate status comparisons humans do. It is the cause of uneeded suffering. But it's partly because being on the bottom is so scary in western societies. It's that that needs to change.

Recently I came across a new Ethereum Token (RFI) that automatically redistribute 1% of all transactions to all holders.

This is a Novell idea of redistributing part of the wealth. Since it is built into the tokenomics it works by default without any other intervention.

I personally don't believe that financial inequity is a bad thing perse. So I don't have any strong feelings towards people who have more or less than I do.

"All life is about 'power forces'."

If you accept that 100%, you understand a looot more things that if you believe in equality.

People who earn less earn less because they have less power or did not know how to use it, for example during negociations. I think 50% workers around do not negociate..

(Even equality comes from power struggles: it's a concept invented by poor / not powerful people to unite behind a concept and creat a "group power".)

It's the cold harsh reality to me.

I come from a left wing family where class awareness was present so it's a concept I think would be nice at a society level to have more equlity.

But where I don't have any sympathy to people who earn less, is that in the engineering world, when you try to explain this, most people get angry or tell me that I'm an asshole. Also they don't want to make unions and refuse to engage in any power struggle. I am not an asshole, I'm trying to be realistic. However in that caae they are the literal cliché of the "nice guys". Well let's say I tried. Now I don't care being called an asshole, it's even a compliment to me. You want more ? Fight for it, don't be just "offended" or "sad".

I make triple of the average income my country as a software engineer. It makes me feel calmer, because I save most of my income. It's sad that most people have trouble to earn enough. I don't feel bad for earning money, because it took me a lot of time and effort to get to the point I earn this much. As a citizen of post communistic country, I prefer inequality more than equality.

Is inequity the same as inequality? If not, what’s the difference?

Are you willing to vote against your own interests in the short-term (ex. your wait times for your non-emergency doctor visits due to Medicare for All may increase, but in exchange everyone has healthcare) to help those that are less fortunate than you in the long-term? I don't blame anyone for playing the hand they're dealt, minimizing their taxes, not donating money to charity. Those are the laws and norms we've agreed on - maximize your quality of life from there.

Related note I've been thinking about it a lot recently: Will & Ariel Durant wrote an 11 volume history of the rise and fall of Western Civilizations (after touching on China and the Middle East) called The Story of Civilization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Civilization

It was written in the 1930s-70s so it has some fascist, racist and pro-eugenics overtones. Different time, pretty expected - you'd have to be pretty high on Western Civilization to spend your entire life, all the way to your deathbed, writing about it. Conveniently, he wrote a summary of what his takeaways were after all of his research The Lessons of History https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008GUIEYU/ref=dbs_a_def_r...

After studying the rise and fall of hundreds of states and civilizations, he credited excessive wealth inequality as one of the most consistent causes of a failed state - Romans, Greeks, Chinese, etc. Once you hit a certain level of inequality - norms fail, and it gets redistributed anyways. Since capitalism inherently concentrates wealth upward (returns on capital are higher than returns on labor), controlled income redistribution (e.g. The New Deal) is necessary to maintain stability.

Blog post with a few examples from the book https://fs.blog/2016/03/history-concentration-of-wealth/

It feels like a lesson that humans have repeated thousands of times, and we've managed to forget again.

I’ve been close to poor and now I’m rich. (Don’t tell me about the fucking Sudan I mean in USA terms.) I’m not sure how I feel about it other than that I would help anyone in my life who needed it. There is someone close to me who I have helped a lot and will continue to. This is why I made the money, because I think our societies are brutal and terrible and will trample all over whatever and whoever they can. And nobody is ever going to fix that. That includes me, I can’t either. I can help those around me though.