Aside from the huge problems correlated with income inequality for which evidence and reasoning are readily available if you look, there's a basic problem with the idea that something like inequality could be a net good despite what people tend to think... it's that because the majority of people, who are on the losing side of inequality, despise inequality and that is already leading to huge political ruptures, populism, depression, demoralizing feelings of injustice, etc etc etc. (There are related basic problems with focusing only on "metrics".)
Inequality itself is bad for many reasons. It creates a rift between people, causing feelings of envy and unfairness, increasing crime. It concentrates powers into fewer hands, and concentration of power rarely results in something good for the general population.
It seems doubtful that income inequality is inherently bad, but perhaps it's strongly correlated with things that are inherently bad (i.e. suffering, if you ask me).
Consider a society A, and then society A+ which is identical except the most well-off person is twice as well-off. It's hard to see how A+ could be worse than A in any way. Maybe there's an even better A++ where A+ has some redistribution, but that's another argument.
We don't mind inequality within lives (nobody says it's inherently bad to have most of your happiness distributed toward the later half of your life), so we'd need an argument why inequality across lives is bad.
Great point! That sounds like a genuine disagreement. Can you expand a bit on why economic inequality is intrinsically bad, rather than instrumentally bad?
It is very rare for someone to have a sound argument from first principles as to why inequality is worse than equality for society as a whole. The majority don't get past "well, it's wrong because people kept saying so since I was young, duh!" to consider the pros and cons of inequality as opposed to equality (either as abstract ideals, or actualized realities) for society as whole.
Inequality in all its forms is not bad per se. Economic inequality is bad because (1) on a moral level, it is grotesque that some people have so much while others struggle immensely (and we can do something about it - money can be transferred, looks cannot), and (2) money amplifies the political voice of those who have it, undermining the concept of democracy - especially when they use that voice to direct benefits of the political system to themselves, at the further expense of the have-nots. Socialism for the rich and capitalism for everyone else, as the saying goes.
Plus, the sheer magnitude of inequality is immense in the area of wealth. It follows an exponential distribution; those other things you mentioned follow a normal distribution.
I think what was missed was that a lot of people feel inequality is inherently bad, independent of the cause. I think both sides are mostly talking past each other on this one. It's possible for the fact that an entrepreneur getting rich by founding a startup to be a good thing because of the wealth they create while the fact that it increases inequality to be bad. I think most people agree that entrepreneurs getting rich is on the whole net good. That doesn't make inequality inherently good though.
Inequality is not a bad thing. It's actually necessary to have inequality of outcomes otherwise you have no incentives for improvement. An example of a society with very low inequality is old-school communism where most people are equally poor - it's clearly not a good thing.
What is bad is extreme inequality where a lot of people are in poverty. I think most people would agree that poverty is a bad thing that we should try to reduce.
It's quite possible for poverty to decrease and inequality to increase at the same time. The old "a rising tide lifts all boats" analogy. It just means everyone is doing better but the wealthy are seeing more relative gains. If the whole pie is growing, it's easy to see how everyone could get more pie even if it's not distributed equally.
edit If you disagree please state why. Drive by downvotes do not convince me that I'm mistaken, they just lower my opinion of the average HN user.
Income inequality in itself isn't bad. I can argue that a certain amount of it is desirable even.
The problem is more the difference in quality of life and opportunity. This is a problem even if the base quality of life is generally improving. If the folks at the bottom are continually stressed about money, if they have shelter, food, power, etc, it is bad. If the folks at the bottom cannot get access to the things that basic society thinks they should have - internet, cell phone, transportation and decent clothing, it is bad.
If one simply cannot afford education, regardless of intelligence, because of simple money or knowing they'd not be able to ever pay off the loan with a teacher's salary, it is pretty bad.
And those are the things that really matter - if one can have a comfortable (though sparse) life at the bottom, and if one can actually work or try to improve their situation. Unfortunately in the US, a lot of folks are bound by circumstance. Their circumstances - such as bad health, whether or not they have children, not making enough to afford transportation, or even their parents' circumstance - determines their opportunity. Yet if they don't have the opportunity, or circumstances tend to be unlucky for years, they might never climb out. They are stuck at a miserable bottom.
And it seems that countries that have transcended this also tend to have less income inequality. And the bottom isn't nearly as horrible as it is in the US - and you still have some opportunity. It can likely be solved without reducing the inequality, but I'm not sure exactly How do do this.
I can tell this article is preaching to the choir because it doesn't bother to explain why inequality is bad. It just assumes that we agree it is. So why is it bad? Especially since most Americans don't even know about it, how can it be hurting them? Two possibilities I can think of:
A) Jealousy
B) Risk of revolution
Inequality is a problem because inequality is itself empirically shown to be a source of disutility, independent of those other concerns you raise.
It may also be a problem for those other reasons, but that's not necessary for it to be a problem.
(People often mistake output and consumption measures of typical economic statistics for direct measures of experienced utilities. While they are proxies for utility, they are imperfect proxies, and one of the ways we know they are flawed is that they do not account for the disutility that directly results from inequality.)
Inequality is a pretty big problem when you're one of the majority stuck on the bad side of it. Most people here seem to exhibit a deeply held ignorance on the plight of the vast majority of their fellow citizenry.
"You shouldn't be upset with the unfair treatment of someone if anyone in human history has had it worse than them" is not a particularly convincing moral argument.
I believe income inequality is bad because many people don't have enough to live comfortably and my parents taught me sharing is important. We can get into all sorts of economic arguments, but at its heart it is really as simple as that.
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