Ben Turtel

Real­ity Testing

• Ben Turtel 23 May 2024 21:41 UTC

  1 point

  0

  in reply to: NeroWolfe’s comment on: Power Law Policy

  Hey @NeroWolfe.

  I think you’re looking at the wrong numbers. For example, their 23.3% for the top 5% INCLUDES the top 1%, which skews the averages precisely because of the power laws at play.

  The have another table further down where they break this out:

  

• Ben Turtel 23 May 2024 16:44 UTC

  4 points

  2

  in reply to: TeaTieAndHat’s comment on: Power Law Policy

  Hey @TeaTieAndHat, thank you for the comment!
  

  I think the core idea I’m trying to get across—and the reason I hoped this was a good fit for LW—is not about how govs can maximize revenue for its own sake, but that as a society we could do a much better job caring for the 99% by acknowledging the power laws behind wealth creation and focusing more on increasing our yield at the top.

  This is true even if your goal as a government is NOT to maximize productive capacity, because cost /​ revenue is the bottleneck preventing you from funding everything else. Shifting policy to take advantage of this could let us better support all the “non-productive” things we care about: higher safety nets, public arts, etc.

  So for example—if your goal as a country is to raise the standard of living via benefits to the bottom 50% of earners, unintuitively, the best to fund this is to help more high-potential folks become high-earners. Moving a single person from the 5% to the 1% generates enough revenue to pay for many dozens of basic incomes in the bottom quartile.

  Thanks again for the thoughtful read and the feedback!

• Ben Turtel 23 May 2024 15:24 UTC

  3 points

  2

  in reply to: Myron Hedderson’s comment on: Power Law Policy

  Hey @Myron Hedderson, thanks for reading and for the thoughtful comment!
  
  The 1% in this article is just a proxy for that level of success—we claim is that we can grow the number of people who achieve the level of success typically seen in the top 1%, not that we can literally grow the 1%. Productivity and the economy isn’t zero sum, so elevating some doesn’t mean bumping others down (although I acknowledge that there are some fields where relative success is a driver of earnings).

  I agree I could have been more clear about this a little bit, and I considered it—I just thought it was a bit of a distraction from the core point. Maybe I was wrong :) I appreciate the feedback.

  “I am somewhat leery of having a government bureaucracy decide who is high potential and only invest in them.” − 100% agree with this point. I see this mostly as pushing for a better way of allocating efforts and budgets that are already being spent, but I like your framing around marking sure “everyone has access” instead of picking winners.

Power Law Policy

The Progress Paradox