this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2024
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To be fair that's kind of true under capitalism.
Not really, and especially on a macroeconomic level it's the opposite of the truth.
The happiness described here is not monetary. It's stuff like gay people existing. Your economic status and your queerness shouldn't correlate. So queer people being happy with their lives doesn't take away anything from anyone else.
And on a macroeconomic level, more equal societies produce more growth and thus more wealth for everyone.
My bad, didn't appreciate it was referring to happiness in terms of social freedoms.
I meant for someone to have a good life without monetary worries on one side of the world it almost necessitates worse conditions elsewhere.
No, that's what I just described above.
Ok well I disagree then. In general countries that experience the most growth have fewer workers rights, longer hours and worse working conditions.
Western countries that have the highest economic growth are either tax havens or have high quantities of fossil fuels. Both of these negatively impact others indirectly.
And that is backwards thinking. The undeveloped countries catch up to more developed countries, but not more. If they get too expensive, another exploited country is needed.
The West had it fastest growth during a time when inequality was relatively low and taxes high - 50s to 70s.
In case you want sources: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00181-021-02152-x
Just search "inequality gdp growth" you can find a lot of sources disagreeing with you.
That's my point.
Western countries had the fastest growth during those two decades due to a post-war boom. ie. Workers were glad they were no longer being sent to die and the future looked bright.
The study you linked isn't conclusive and even mentions in the abstract that different measures could yield different results.
The results it found might not hold true everywhere because it uses data from places where poverty is very high, meaning that the conclusions may not be as broadly applicable as they might seem at first glance.
This source, which I found searching for "inequality gdp growth", explores that further: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-59858-6_19
There are other issues with it surrounding data quality as there often are with economic studies and as such they shouldn't be held in the same regard as scientific ones.
But more fundamentally, capitalism works by paying workers less than the value of what they produce, thus extracting surplus value from their labour. That is what I was getting at with my original point.
American corporatism does not equal capitalism, it's a defunct subset. European social democracies are capitalist countries, too.
I agree but I don't understand what your point is?
Capitalism nececitates inequality in order for profit to be made.
Why does it necessitate inequality? Don't you "believe" in added value? Inequality may be an outcome (complete equality is hardly possible in reality anyway) but it certainly isn't a prerequisite.
Don’t be afraid to learn about the tendency of the rate of part to fall.
Because workers don't receive what they put into the system in terms of effort. Profit must be made, which makes the workers unequal compared to capitalists that make the profit. Name one billionaire where their pay-to-effort ratio is worth that of say, a cleaner.
I think most "added value" is not worth as much as is made out when contrasted the amount of profit earned by shareholders.
I agree, complete equality is hardly possible but we're talking about vast wealth discrepancies which prop up the global capitalist system.
Genuinely surprised so many seemed to have missed my point here. Not sure if it's because it came across like I was supporting a conservative (I wasn't, just saying that their ideologies will always require some degree of inequality in wealth/happiness) or that there are more neolibrals on this sub than I assumed.
I got you. Capitalist markets require competition. Competition breeds inequality among individuals. Individuals get angry others get more ( money, attention, fame, power). Conservatives want to secure their status in society (hierarchy), and resort to authoritarianism to do it.
Don’t be afraid to learn what a euphemism is.
Don’t buy into the lie. Most happiness grows when shared. It’s important to have enough, but no material goods bring nearly as much happiness as the joys of other people
The key word is "enough". Most people in the world spend the majority of their lives working to make money for someone else in order to put food on the table.
More money means more time available to spend with their loved ones, from which happiness is derived as you say.