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I'm not sure I buy this line of thinking.
The argument is that less distribution of resources (aka high wealth gaps) leads to a more productive society, yet if you look at the countries with the greatest gini coefficients there's a large overlap/correlation with the poorest countries and the countries with the largest wealth gaps.
There is also an argument to be made that slavery actually hampered the economic growth of the South. It may have made a few individuals very wealthy, but the reliance on slave labor in agricultural production led to a slower growth in industry and the development of cities. There is also a dispute that farms with slaves outproduced cotton relative to if those regions did not have slaves. So the economic condition of the South may have been better off if there was no slavery (and thus much less blacks).
Also, the USA's economic strength relative to Europe was already well ahead by the late 1800s, fueled by America's abundant natural resources, the development of railroads, increases in population and industry, and the development of new patents and technologies. Two world wars devastated Europe while the United States was left largely alone, putting the USA in a prime position to become even more dominant on the world stage.
Many modern technologies such as computers and nuclear power were developed/accelerated during the United State's rivalry with the Soviet Union. The space arms race during the late 1950s accelerated the growth of Silicon Valley. When the Soviet Union got an early lead in the space race with Sputnik, President Eisenhower created both the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). DARPA would fund nearly 70% of computer technology research in the US in the early 1960s. NASA had huge demands for integrated circuits, which led to the explosion and growth of Silicon Valley. ARPANET was also developed as a way to mitigate the threats of Nuclear war by allowing a nationwide communications network, which would eventually lead to the creation of the Internet. In other words, the technologies that enabled the United States to greatly surpass its European counterparts were developed and created in response to the Soviet Union and had nothing to do with the fact that there were some black people in the United States.
In terms of attitudes against redistribution hampered by the existence of a black population, what was stopping them from making a system of welfare just for whites? The more likely answer is that America's culture of individualism played a bigger role in slowing the growth of the welfare state relative to their European counterparts rather than racist attitudes against specific groups of people. I'd also like to point out that the richest cities and states in the United States also tend to have the greatest amount of welfare. Yes, you could argue that they would be even richer without the welfare, or that the welfare came after economic growth, but GDP per capita continues to grow in the US even with the vast expansion of welfare programs, while Europe has seen a stagnation since the early 2008s.
Here are some more likely explanations for the growing wealth differences between Europe and the United States. Americans also work more hours on average compared to Europeans (US: 1811 hours, France: 1511 hours, Germany 1341 hours per year). Furthermore, Americans are more entrepreneurial compared to Europeans. Here is a Gallup poll showing the difference in attitudes. A greater percentage of Americans start their own businesses, and an even greater proportion of Americans build billion dollar businesses compared to Europeans.
Maybe attitudes on race might play a factor, but it's insignificant compared to other factors.
This is very, very false equivalence. Wealth gaps are product of both policies and qualities of population. If you add low IQ permanent underclass to a country, keeping its economic policies same, then GDP per capita does down and Gini up. If everyone has same ability, then very intense competition doesn't create major difference in wealth. It's competition, not wealth gaps per se, creates economic growth.
I dont see strong correlation of what you claim on 2d plot: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gini-coefficient-vs-gdp-per-capita-pip Very low GINI index doesn't help Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia grow economically. It's just a reflection that these countries quite homogenous in regard to IQ.
Also obesity and number of HIV+ people in US continues to grow. Probably obesity is not harmful and even good for economic growth.
obese people have slightly shorter life expectancy compared to non-obese ppl but spend more on food and other services . Govt. spending on obese ppl good for healthcare sector but makes society worse and is misallocation of resources.
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I'm not claiming this, this was my summary of BurdensomeCount's argument. If it's an uncharitable summary of his view then fair enough but he literally said "Today the USA is much richer than other peer countries in Europe etc. because it has and has had for a long time significantly lower taxes and a much weaker redistributive welfare state compared to places like Sweden and the UK." A distribution of resources would lower the wealth gap.
Also, I don't see any reason to believe the bell curve of IQ distribution has significant differences between countries. The only statistics I've ever seen was on median/average IQs by country/race, not on the IQ distributions in each country. If you have any studies on this I'd be interested in seeing it, as I could not find anything. Regardless, there are literally 0 countries in the world where everyone has the same or similar amounts of ability. I don't see any reason to believe that Ukraine, Belarus, or Armenia is quite homogenous in regards to IQ. If you look at any IQ bell curve charts on race, you'll see that there is a common bell curve pattern. The best example of one bell curve being thinner or flatter on the tails is in regards to gender (women being more clustered around the mean) but even that gender difference still has gaps between the smartest and dumbest. You're claiming the bell curve of IQ in a place like Ukraine is extremely tight around the median but I see no evidence for it.
That's a logarithmic scale on the X-axis, most of the countries with a high Gini coefficient are quite poor. You can see the richer countries are clustered to the bottom right with the United States being the exception. I'll admit I didn't do a great analysis writing from my bed late at night and only spot-checked the map chart in my link, which showed that the countries with the largest Gini coefficients were mostly in Africa/South America which are poorer 2nd/3rd world countries. I took the data from your link and organized it by the most recent data for each country sorted by highest to lowest Gini coefficients (which you can see in the table below) and you can see the years vary, so doing any actual statistically valid analysis on this is quite difficult. A quick correlation on this data shows -0.36 which admittedly is a weak correlation, but this is by weighting each country equally regardless of population, and this is a univariate analysis which is not a good analysis for something as complex as this topic. As I pointed out earlier the dates aren't even the same, ranging from 1992 to 2021.
Anyway, I'm not making any claims in terms of the impact inequality has on economic growth as a whole, I'm providing some counter-evidence to BurdensomeCount's claim, which is that the lack of a redistributive welfare state leads to economic prosperity. I doubt any of the top 20 (or even top 50 except the United States) in the table below have a strong welfare system, yet these countries are not economic powerhouses. My rebuttal of BurdensomeCount's argument does not mean I believe a low Gini coefficient leads to economic growth. It should be clear from my points further down in my previous post that I believe there are other factors other than inequality that better explain economic growth and development.
In retrospect using the Gini coefficient alone is not a good analysis as it doesn't reveal much about welfare, and you'd want to look at changes in GDP per capita over time, but at this point to properly do a statistical analysis is a lot of effort for what is a rebuttal of an argument which in of itself doesn't even have statistical backing. I still think my general point here stands, which is that BurdensomeCount's argument is wrong.
What are you trying to say here? My point is that wealth redistribution is not a major factor in the economic growth of the United States compared to Europe and I'm not sure what your statement here either refutes or adds to the discussion.
If you actually believe obesity is good for economic growth then I'm genuinely curious as to why you think so.
Edit: Reworded my last point to be less antagonistic, I just assumed you were being sarcastic but I realized I don't know if that's true.
Table of Gini Coefficient Data
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This is correct, but I do not think BurdensomeCount's thinks redistributive welfare state and gini index are interchangeable (I don't). This is my main objection.
There are lots of countries with large percent of GDP in wellfare system having very high Gini index regardless.
adding individual bell curves with averages far apart does not look like bell curve.
Fair enough. But see my point on the correlation between welfare spending and Gini below.
I have organized and sorted the data for you in my previous post, can you pick out a few countries (other than the US) that are high on the list and has a large percentage of GDP in welfare system?
I've also tried to add some stats on welfare spending, there isn't much, so I put togther a new table below using what sources I could find. Newly added data in new columns is from here: https://data.oecd.org/socialexp/social-spending.htm
If the country is missing that means there was no data on the percentage of GDP spent on public spending.
The correlation between Gini and % spending is -0.61, the correlation between % spending and GDP per capita is 0.36. Again, the same caveats as the previous analysis, except this time we also don't have much data on the highest gini coefficient countries so any analysis here shouldn't be used for any serious argument, but we now see a medium/strong negative correlation between public spending and gini coefficient. I mean is that such a surprise? If you don't like the use of gini coefficient then look at the correlation between GDP per capita and welfare spending and you see a small positive correlation. You could correctly point out that correlation != causation and the more likely explanation is that richer countries distribute after getting their wealth (to do a more appropriate analysis on this we would have to look at changes in GDP per capita over time) but my point is that welfare distribution is not a major factor in economic growth/development and there are more likely answers.
The populations are likely weighed heavily in one race or the other, not like those populations have equal distributions, and again this reveals very little about the tail end of the IQ distributions which is more important when we consider your argument on large gaps in ability leading to higher wealth gaps. Do any of the countries below have significant amounts of populations with differing means of IQ to properly explain the inequality outcome? I'm not saying your argument has no value, if we were looking at specific countries such as the United States there's definitely some merit, but as a general trend across all the countries, I don't think IQ gaps are the main or primary explanation for the higher Gini coefficient in these countries.
List of countries with high Gini index: Namibia Zambia Central African Republic Eswatini Colombia Mozambique Botswana Belize Angola Saint Lucia Zimbabwe
That is such an arbitrary cutoff that conveniently cuts off all the high gini coefficient countries, don't do this.
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