Paul Graham has posted explanations about his recent high-profile article on economic inequality.

Paul Graham's blog has a shortened version of an article he published this week entitled Economic Inequality. In his brief essay, the founder of Y Combinator tries to clarify some points that have caused a storm of comments on the web.

The author himself noted that many interpretations of his judgments appeared on the network, which, according to Paul Graham, is an integral part of controversial issues causing controversy among readers. Therefore, he decided to briefly outline the essence of the article, explaining his point of view as accessible as possible - this time to exclude any points that may be misinterpreted.

The abbreviated version of Paul Graham's article talks about how many people talk about economic inequality. Practically everyone asserts that the growth of economic inequality is extremely undesirable, and the decrease is the opposite. But Graham believes that economic inequality, in fact, is not really such a bad thing. He has many reasons. Many are rather negative, while some can be rated as quite good and desirable factors.
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For example, a high prison rate among the population and loopholes in tax legislation are negative factors that cause an increase in economic inequality. But startups also increase economic inequality. The founder of a successful startup eventually becomes the owner of a lot of capital. And unlike the high rate of prisoners among the population and loopholes in tax legislation, start-ups are overwhelmingly positive.

And since, in its very essence, economic inequality is not something bad, we, as Graham argues, should not come out with a hostile criticism of this phenomenon. Instead, we must fight the negative factors that often cause it.

For example, instead of fighting economic inequality, we need to fight poverty. Combating economic inequality would be a double blunder. She would hurt both the good and bad factors that cause such inequality. And even worse - such a policy would be an extremely ineffective method of dealing with the negative phenomena underlying it.

According to Paul Graham, we will improve the situation with the negative factors causing economic inequality, only if we fight directly with them. But if we eliminate all the negative causes of economic inequality, then its level will still grow due to the increasing power of technology.

A translation of the full post of Paul Graham about economic inequality is currently being prepared. Follow new posts.