Without falling back on valuation is subjective and not measurable, being defined only through action.
Read until you have something to write...Write until you have nothing to write...when you have nothing to write, read...read until you have something to write...Jeremiah
i think one has to take in consideration a specific location in order to consider a group of people rich or not. for example, prices are not the same in all locations, so saying something like, "making $250,000 + classifies you as rich" is a pointless assumption. Because $250,000 living in Dallas is not the same as $250,000 living in New York City.
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Could you be more specific as to what you're looking for? I'm not sure how one is supposed to respond to a subjective statement without speaking of subjective terms. It sounds like you're asking the equivalent of someone to prove someone else isn't good looking.
A good point, supporters of the claim would do better to change the message to a dollar is worth more to a specific area as opposed to another areaa
I merely want a different response than subjectivity. Something more scientific or counter intuitive
I'm not sure if this would be considered an elaborate duh but we live in a universe, say, roughly 156 billion light years wide, of which it's highly possible that the only forms of intelligent life reside on a sphere of minute comparable size. Thus, intelligent life is itself distributed massively unequal, yet, we still must indulge the questions of inequality?
I ask you, why even bother with a response to such a challenge? It does not merit a response. no policy conclusions can come of it alone, they would need to be combined with many other beliefs and positions, including really important stuff like enforcing preferences at gunpoint, and imagining that your preferences might best be implemented by means of a monopolist entity to which you surrounder you authority.
' so you think, that person A having object X is a better world than if person B has it, ok, well person B has it, is the action required to implement your preferred world itself a costless transaction, or will it amount to doing violence on B ... '
etc. etc.
Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid
Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring
Jeremiah Dyke:I merely want a different response than subjectivity. Something more scientific or counter intuitive
This is what I'm talking about. You want scientific proof to refute a subjective valuation. Someone claims one thing is "worth more" to one person versus another (a complete subjective statement about subjectivity). And you want to try to prove that's objectively not true. You're chasing rainbows. (However there's no way for anyone to scientifically prove you're wasting your time. It is your time after all. If you want to spend it trying to find a way to objectively prove you're wasting it, have at it.)
I may be kicking a hornets' nest, but I think a dollar is subjectively worth more to a poor man than to a rich man. I learned it as the concept of diminishing marginal utility.
I'm an insurance broker and in fact it is a cornerstone of why buying insurance is rational even though the expected value of the claims payments one would receive are significantly lower than the premiums one pays to the insurance companies. There is overhead for insurance companies to advertise, pay salesmen, build buildings to house the accountants, actuaries and claims managers and appraisers etc. must on average come out of those premiums before they are paid back in claims settlements.
The combined marginal utility of the dollars paid in by the policyholders, however, may well be less than the marginal utility of the fewer dollars paid out on average to the people who have been victims of a catastrophe, whether that be a tornado, fire, car accident of untimely death or disability.
If one were to try and measure it by human action, I could picture a homeless man who is very hungry going to great lengths to try and get a dollar bill out of a sewer, and yet I remember someone who tried to make the case that it wouldn't be worth Bill Gates' time to pick up a $500 bill if he were to drop one (if there is such a bill.). My guess is that Mr. Gates probably would pick up a $100 bill or less if he dropped one, but I think the gentleman's point was still a valid one.
I remember reading a story with pictures and maybe even video of people who were in Haiti, I believe, and whose job it was to try and clean up the raw sewage in a big pool of water in the middle of the city. People used it as an open toilet and garbage dump, and these guys were wading around in it pulling garbage out for a few dollars or so a day. Money was so short they hadn't been paid in awhile but they kept doing it anyway. They acknowledged that it was very risky and that they could die from the germs in that cesspool they worked in but their families needed that money to survive.
I haven't seen a scientific study on it, but I would be willing to bet you could quadruple the salary those guys made for an out of work former Goldman Sachs employee and they would laugh in your face before they would ever wade into that cesspool to pull out garbage.
I think that same phenomenon is evident all over the world every day. For instance, the U.S. is building a wall, at least in part, to try and keep Mexican immigrants from coming in who are all too willing to do hard, backbreaking dangerous work for far less than their American counterparts are willing to do the jobs for.
JeffB:I think a dollar is subjectively worth more to a poor man than to a rich man.
At least someone got it.
ask you, why even bother with a response to such a challenge? It does not merit a response. no policy conclusions can come of it alone
Actually there is. If you're going to have a tax, I can justify progressive taxation as the only valid taxation (the real "flat" tax) merely by falling back on the "a dollar is worth more to a poor man, than a rich man." I am not saying you can objectively prove a bum values a dollar more than Bill Gates. But we all know how interest works. And 1% interest is worth far more when you have a lot of money put in, than it is when you don't.
In States a fresh law is looked upon as a remedy for evil. Instead of themselves altering what is bad, people begin by demanding a law to alter it. ... In short, a law everywhere and for everything!
~Peter Kropotkin
Actually there is. If you're going to have a tax, I can justify progressive taxation as the only valid taxation (the real "flat" tax) merely by falling back on the "a dollar is worth more to a poor man, than a rich man."
I know a poor man would like a dollar. I still don't see how it follows that he therefore has the right to take it either through his own force or through the force of others.
Well, if you're going to have a tax...
Your wife might be more valuable to me than to you, so what? Can I kidnap her?
Well if you're going to have a tax....
Can I make it any clearer I am not saying this is a justification for taxation?