Inequality is generally accepted as differences in material possessions acquired/consumed or access to services (eg health, travel, whatever). It's fair to aggregate it into "consumption".
Jeff Bezos is literally never cashing in the vast majority of the IOUs he has. The actual difference in his life isn't anything close to that suggested by the difference in net worth between he and I.
Net worth differences aren't a good proxy for actual lived differences. It's off by orders of magnitude. This isn't a groundbreaking idea, Piketty is aware. He discusses it briefly in his book, with handwavy, abstract notions about "power" and "influence", as if that's what most people care about. But, it doesn't sell the same way his nonsense does. So he pedals his nonsense.
This is nonsensical. The response to "net worth is a bad proxy for consumption" isn't to show various ways of slicing and dicing net worth. A person with net worth $30m doesn't consume 10x that of someone with $3m, or anything like it. Piketty's own assumption is that most of the money is used for investment capital.
The argument is clear - net worth is a bad proxy for consumption and lived experience. You just can't read. Piketty can, he just doesn't like that it makes his argument significantly less potent so he tries to paper over it with "power" and "influence" as if 99% of the world could care less about those things.
> net worth is a bad proxy for consumption and lived experience
Because it's simply not. It's a very good proxy. I understand what you said and only think you are somewhat right if talking about people who are at the very tail of the distribution (yes, when it comes to "consumption and lived experience" it hardly matters if you have 100 millions, 500 or even a billion).
For those in the the 99.X% it's certainly (and obviously backed by all kinds of data) good indicator.
Talking about the "lived" part. Here is another indicator http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/health/. Of course now you'll claim that living for significantly longer does not say much about the "experience" part or some other nonsense.
> You just can't read.
Or have a low tolerance of ideologically driven demagoguery.
>doesn't like that it makes his argument significantly less potent
I'm still waiting for you to elaborate on that besides just claiming it as fact or "proving" that it doesn't apply if you're in the 0.1% (which is hardly relevant).
The top 1% make ~800k pa. The bottom 1% make ~15k. Thats over 50x difference.
The difference in life expectancy is 15%. That's 1.15x. And that's including that steepest part right at the front.
You've been bamboozled by the y axis not starting at 0. Someone making 10x more than someone else gets a few % extra life expectancy. Significantly less than just taking a 30 min run a few times a week.
Which is huge. Life expectancy in the US increased by ~15% between 1955 and now. Surely you would be entirely content with receiving the same level of care as was available back then and inhaling some lead now and then?
> You've been bamboozled by the y axis not starting at 0
It must be fun being so absurdly obtuse. The whole line of reasoning in your comment is so silly that it's hardly worth commenting on.
There is a massive difference between dying before you reach 72 vs living for another 15 years.
The difference in avg. life expectancy between Germany and Ethiopia is less than that.
Again, surely there is no measurable difference between living in either place when you are making median income?
The difference is less than those who exercise v not, slightly larger than that between men and women. For 50x chance in income. Money simply isn't as big a differentiator in life as you desperately want it to be. And that's the tiny bit of common sense required.
It seems by your standards nothing is. Yet if you add it all together instead of looking at a single indicator money is inarguably (if you have any arguments or data please share them) statistically the biggest differentiator compared to anything else besides congenital diseases and other health conditions we can't treat yet.
> And that's the tiny bit of common sense required
Well having more than a "tiny bit" of common sense would made it obvious than it's not the case.
> For 50x chance in income.
Directly comparing wealth/income ratios and absolute differences in life expectancy or other indicator just makes no sense and claiming that it somehow proves something. Having only a tiny bit of knowledge about statistics would make that obvious.
> Piketty is a hack.
Generally those IOUs are real as a ton of gold bars or dollar bills somebody might be hoarding in their vault.