And if everyone is entitled to the same portion of the pie, what’s the incentive to work harder? Seeing your neighbor put in a third of the effort and produce the same economic result is demoralizing.
Trust me, I don't work 3x harder than most of the people I make 3x of. My wife is a teacher and I am in tech, I make 3x her salary. She works way more and spends more of both her physical and emotional labor on her job. I work hard and I do good work, but what she does is not even in the same stratosphere as what I do. I'm not innovating anything, I'm just writing decent code. She's finding new ways to help kids learn. Which sounds more demoralizing?
It's not about how hard you work. It's about how many people can do what you do.
Don't sell yourself short, in tech you have skills that only a small percentage of the population are capable of doing. We might all say "Programming is easy" or "I really only work half the day" but for many people Programming is seen as witchcraft, and for many what would take a skilled developer an hour would take a whole day (or worse, they might just do the task manually).
If your not satisfied with programming you can of course go into teaching, if that's what you think is truly fulfilling.
It doesn't make it fair that in theory 'everyone' could get into it or that it takes probably much longer for someone to do my job than the other way around (like yes i think i would be able to sell things).
I don't know how we should incentive instead but it doesn't make it fair.
You're just basing your view of what's fair on time spent working/physical labor. If you base your view of what's fair on skillsets, and what one person can do, and what one person can not, it makes more sense.
It's worth asking why your wife doesn't switch to your job, to make 3x the salary. Either
a) she couldn't do it, in which case by extension it boils down to supply and demand, or
b) she doesn't want to do it, because she gets a whole bunch of joy from the job which is invisibly priced into compensation (and which indirectly goes back to supply and demand.)
I don't see the discrepancy as any kind of market failure.
I think there's a big problem with this whole comparison here. You're comparing a career which is almost entirely private-sector (programming) to one which is almost entirely public-sector (teaching). Teachers are mostly employed by local governments, after all, so that profession isn't subject to the market forces which affect private-sector jobs.
The reason teachers aren't paid well isn't because there isn't much demand for them, it's because the local governments choose to pay them poorly, and then they wonder why they can't find enough good teachers.
Companies that don't pay programmers handsomely will soon find themselves without programmers (or with really lousy ones), and then they'll go out of business. This doesn't happen with public schools.
> I don't see the discrepancy as any kind of market failure.
What his story underlines is that teaching young human beings about navigating life is rewarded 3x less than churing out code that fits some business objective.
The market doesn't care about people, it cares about profit. In that system, human life is only important to the degree that it helps market dynamics.
The main problem with teaching is that there's many people who can do it. If you compound the issue with paying teachers $150k a year, not only would the cost of education skyrocket, you would be running into more and more people unemployed but with a degree specifically meant for teaching.
I'm not saying everyone can teach equally. I'm saying most everyone can become qualified to teach. Please don't accuse me of saying teaching is easy. At the very least, a much larger subset can learn to teach than can learn to code.
Many people can learn to program and companies that pay poorly will only be able to hire people who aren't very good and they will go out of business. Finding good teachers is very hard as well but the government will only pay terrible salaries and mostly hire poor teachers. The difference is when the teachers suck and students do poorly, the school doesn't go out of business, they just reduce the budget and it gets worse.
>The difference is when the teachers suck and students do poorly, the school doesn't go out of business, they just reduce the budget and it gets worse.
This is true, but it's become a partisan issue, at least in the U.S, to talk about testing teachers in some way.
I believe a huge problem is finding a way to differentiate a good teacher from a bad teacher if you're not allowed to look at grades/some kind of standardized test. If you can take those into account, as long as a teacher comes into work on time I'm not sure how you could differentiate the good from bad.
An example I like to use is my AP Calc teacher from highschool, who had an average score of 4.7 for her students on the AP test. The average in 2012 was a 2.9 (the year I took it, it seems to be higher now, I can't say to as if they made it easier or if people got better though) [1]. In many school systems though, if your teacher has an average score below the national average, you can't do anything about it.
Part of the problem with doing that, especially in younger grades, is that so much of it depends on variables outside of a teacher's control. A lot of reading at a young age comes from life experiences. For instance, someone who has never been outside of an inner city is going to have more trouble reading a story about someone sailing on the ocean because they are so far removed from even the most basic plot elements that the things in the story that are actually meant to challenge are not ever gotten to. Additionally, time spent outside of classroom compounds the effectiveness of time spent inside of classroom, but the teacher has no control over that. A teacher can't even control if a student shows up for school or not. Student's performance, especially cross-school comparisons, are nearly worthless and would unfairly punish those that teach at low schools.
I would say you'd have to compare them to similar schools in the area or similar areas in the U.S. Between income range in the surround neighborhoods and population density you should be able to come up with a decent comparison, I would think.
I don't disagree with the letter of your comment, but I take issue with the spirit. Markets are about exchange, and the pricing signal is the aggregate expression of what people value and how scarce it is. Far from being cold and impersonal, they are fully and completely about human values.
OP's wife may place a high intrinsic value on teaching, which serves as a kind of internal subsidy. In that case you'd expect the job to pay less, because more people are being 'subsidized' by their desire to do it.
On the other hand, nobody is burning with desire to be a garbageman. Nobody is a volunteer garbageman, and garbagemen make more money than you might expect (or at least, they did when I was graduating from high school.)
There's a reason glamorous and fun jobs generally don't pay very much. It's not that complicated, and it's not sinister.
How so? Many people (women even moreso than men in my experience) prioritize fulfilling work over higher paying work. This is observable in, for example, people pursuing careers in saturated industries like journalism, art, or acting, as well as going for "more meaningful" startup jobs instead of FANG jobs.
I personally switched from rocket science to tech and then to a FANG so I could get increased compensation and have a chance of catching up to Bay Area housing prices. My compensation increased 3x in the process. Most of my peers wouldn't do that.
It's probably >3x more difficult to find someone with your skills to employ. It may be easy to you but to someone who doesn't know how to program, your work is unimaginably difficult.
I would also argue that writing code is a grind. I would enjoy writing code maybe 2-4 hours a day tops but when you want to get something done and code for 7 hours straight it is really tough to do.
Learning new concepts all the time, emotional waves, errors that can impact companies on a large scale. Programming is really difficult and requires constant engagement in the industry.
You're not taking into account the thousands of hours people have to put in to learning how to program. That's real work and sacrifice. It's not unfair that that investment pays off.
The teachers' situation is more demoralizing for sure.
Capitalism would explain the difference between a tech worker's pay and a teacher's pay as based on skill and worker scarcity, not on who works the hardest.
Teaching is a straw man. Teachers get paid poorly because (1) Americans don’t actually care about education, as evidenced by the amount teachers make, and (2) it’s a government-based monopoly that prioritizes “benefits” and graft (tenure, etc) over salary
> (1) Americans don’t actually care about education, as evidenced by the amount teachers make
Americans care very much about education but the system we're in doesn't. Kids have no value in a market economy until they have purchase power (or influence on purchase power). In a highly inequal society that means very fancy private schools, for those who can pay. And neglected public schools for the rest. The outlook of a market economy is not 18 years, it's 1 year (and often quarter-to-quarter).
Kids have massive purchasing power, a fact which was discovered by marketers in the 50s and cultivated extensively since then. Marketers back to then discovered they could actually market directly to kids, which wasn’t a thing before and something people take for granted now. In American households kids drive massive percentages of household spending, not just indirectly but directly as well.
> Kids have no value in a market economy until they have purchase power
Market economies are based entirely on investment. Market economies value investment and therefore kids. If people aren’t investing in kids, it’s because of market economy? as a matter of fact Americans invest tons of money in early childhood education and their children at an early age. It’s an American obsession. The problem is that outcomes have little to do with dollars invested. American culture at this point has devolved into pseudo fascist corporation and leisure identity worship, so people don’t even know what education is. Being a “geek” in America now means you watch tv and play video games. Buying your kid a tablet and plopping then down with some STEM edutainment software isn’t education. It’s just unfortunate, miguided ignorance, and we get what we pay for.
>Kids have massive purchasing power, a fact which was discovered by marketers in the 50s and cultivated extensively since then. Marketers back to then discovered they could actually market directly to kids, which wasn’t a thing before and something people take for granted now.
I dunno about "discovered", the 1950s were one of the most radical shifts in American life. Average Children were not running around with "purchasing power" prior to WWII they were working with their parents more than likely in some capacity, the war completely altered the economic landscape of America for a ceiling of better never before seen for the common man since we were the only ones left with infrastructure not bombed to fuck all. My grandparents are poor blacks from the south, that statistically puts them in the demographic set for worst possible outcomes, but they and most of their peers were able to raise large families and buy a house on factory jobs with middle-class wages in the 50s. That kind of wealth distribution opens up a lock of sectors.
>Americans care very much about education but the system we're in doesn't.
This is demonstrably false. If Americans cared about education, they would demand their local governments do a better job of providing it. But they don't. Those governments pay teachers poorly, which doesn't attract quality people to the profession, and the taxpayers just complain about their taxes being too high.
The ones who care about their kids' education enough to pay for it themselves—not just lobby to make others pay for it—and have the resources to do something about it tend to put their kids in private schools. That leaves only those who either lack sufficient resources to pay more or simply don't care.
In any case, we actually spend quite a bit on education, despite arguably worse outcomes than some other countries that spend less. Throwing more money at the problem isn't going to improve anything. The focus needs to be on spending the significant resources already allocated to education more effectively.
The attempts to equalize outcomes regardless of the amount of effort students (and parents) put into their education certainly don't help. Assuming they get their way and everyone is assured of equal pay for equal "effort"—why bother studying if cashiering at a fast-food joint offers about the same quality-of-life as managing a successful company, or performing leading-edge research and development?
But you use her in logic based arguments and then appeal to emotion so.... which is it?
Your gripe shouldn’t be with rich people, it should be with Americans en masse, who yelled and screamed all Sunday night in my apartment building about grown men running into each other on TV with such a passion you’d think they were educating their children. And then they’re poor? Boo hoo.
Maybe if Americans cared about education, showed passion for it like they do about Football, I would understand. You get paid 3x your wife because Americans care about what you produce, and they don't care about what she produces.
It’s easy to soak the rich but take a look around you, people prioritize everything except the one thing that matters: education.
> But you use her in logic based arguments and then appeal to emotion so.... which is it?
My appeal was to the amount of effort required between jobs.
> And then they’re poor? Boo hoo.
Poor people are allowed to have hobbies and interests just as well as the rich. This sentiment is disgusting and you should be ashamed.
> You get paid 3x your wife because Americans care about what you produce, and they don't care about what she produces.
Trust me, I have worked jobs where I have been paid very, very well where nobody has cared about what I produced except the couple of people who were paying me.
You won’t shame me. You can’t make me feel ashamed of my father, who got my family out of poverty and didn’t even know how to order a beer or a meal at a restaurant until he was 55 because that’s just not how we spent money. Your perspective is rooted in the heights of privilege and entitlement, wherein first world people can live cozy secure lives, entitled to leisure and “hobbies” on the backs of second and third worlders who facelessly supply us cheap goods that our rich should provision for us just because we live in a country that enslaves the world’s poor. That “hobbies” and “leisure” as a human right doesn’t give you pause is disturbing, because if you don’t earn your hobbies and leisure and expect them anyway, you’re a piece of work given what goes on in the world to make our leisure possible. Americans live in a Disney fairyland created by Ronald Reagan and the 1980s. Why should poor people in America be entitled to 50,000 USD when people who work and create the things these poor people say they absolutely need to consume make 5,000 USD. What haught, what arrogance. What willful ignorance. That’s what’s disgusting.
> You can’t make me feel ashamed of my father, who got my family out of poverty and didn’t even know how to order a beer or a meal at a restaurant until he was 55 because that’s just not how we spent money.
I never asked you to feel ashamed for that. I'm asking that you don't require everyone go though the same struggles as revenge.
Get this... I also think the people who are working to create the things that you are talking about should be able to have hobbies. I also think the people making the things that get consumed should be able to make enough to consume them. You are trying to turn my argument in to what you want it to be, not what it clearly is.
You are saying that, because I think people should be able to have better lives, I am saying some people should not have better lives? That doesn't even make sense.
Basic premise: it is undignified and immoral to buy things from people who labor tremendously and still live at a different standard of living, and to give those things for free to people here, at our standard of living. That just strikes me as incredibly twisted and immoral.
Imagine the look of those people in China who have to work to produce Tracfones, if they saw their Tracfone just given out to someone here for free, who didn't do anything to earn it? Imagine how they would feel? That feeling is not about revenge, it's about you denying them basic dignity. You're saying to him or her: you're a Chinaman, you have to do work, but we just take your work and give it to people for free. They must be better than you! They don't have to do anything because they're American. But you, you're just an inferior person from China so you have to work.
No I’m saying that things don’t fall from the sky. People make everything, and basic human dignity and justice demands that no one is just entitled to the fruits of someone else’s labor.
The revenge tack you take is also misguided. This is all about basic human dignity and people feeling like they deserve all this stuff from workers the world over, just because they live in a first world country. Or just because they live period. Being alive doesn’t entitle you to anything, and that’s probably where we disagree, because my guess is you think being alive entitles you to health care, and food and housing. But if that was true, and everyone took that entitlement, then where would all the actual stuff come from? Where? As I said, it’s the height of privilege to act like these things are human rights, because in doing so, you deny the workers who actually produce things common, basic dignity and equality.
I agree with you when it comes to "no one is just entitled to the fruits of someone else's labor". Certainly there is no inherent right to health care, food, housing, or anything else produced and paid for at others' expense. However, you're really confusing the issue by throwing in "on the backs of second and third worlders". It is not their labor which is being taken in order to provide these "entitled" residents of first-world countries their free stuff. They are getting paid for their labor, at rates better than what they could otherwise obtain, and would be strictly worse off if the first-world countries insisted on buying only from those with first-world standards of living. That would eliminate their comparative advantage, and take away what is currently their best option to earn a living and improve their situation. The workers in countries with second- and third-world standards of living are actually the main beneficiaries of this middle-class sense of entitlement; it transfers money from consumers and taxpayers in first-world countries directly into their wallets. If anyone is in a position to complain about having the fruits of their labor stolen away it's the net taxpayers in the first world, the ones actually paying for this "free" food, housing, and health care out of their own earnings.
I just think people who come in late at the party because their kid was sick and they're mentally ill and they live way out in the middle of the country and there's no pie left should at least get a couple apples or something.
My kid is disabled and I have severe anxiety and suffered depression. I live right in the middle of the US. I didn’t start my tech career until 28 because of all that, but I’m doing ok. I live in a big house with good schools.
From what I’ve gathered of non-US (European) tech jobs, I’d never have gotten an opportunity to work as a programmer because I never got a bachelors degree. Maybe it isn’t like that everywhere, but it feels good that a high school dropout can make 6 figures and live in a 2000 square foot house and easily support two kids and a stay at home wife.
I’d also likely never have learned to control my issues and gotten proper treatment if I hadn’t been left almost homeless when my family kicked me out for dropping out of college. As long as things were “good enough”, I poured my heart and soul into noble ventures like my World of Warcraft career (300 days played)! and League of Legends. I know I’m not everyone, in fact I’m likely an exceptional case, none of my friends who grew up similarly to me ended up achieving what I have, but if the safety net was too comfortable I doubt I’d have ever felt the need to climb out of it once I fell into it. I’m personally glad to live in the USA despite its flaws.
It's great that you were able to do that, and I've been to Europe (not where the country I was referring to is located) and I agree with you about the degree.
That said, it's just emotional on my part like I said in the OP. Yeah I knew people who were poor and who probably spent their entire life since that time doing drugs and collecting their assistance checks. (And to be fair I knew people who were rich and probably spent their entire life since that time doing drugs and collecting their monthly allowance. Both are far from the norm of the rich/poor people. They're just specific examples of not caring much about your life beyond it going on.)
I prefer to live in a world where five hundred thousand people are sitting on their asses doing nothing passing the seconds till their death through their own choices than in a world where fifty thousand people are running ragged feeling their bodies waste away not knowing where their time goes through the choices of people who just wanted a nicer lawn. The first world seems like it has more happiness per capita plus the outcome of each is a result of things like effort. The second world seems like it belongs in a SF story about the unchosen ones.
At least people can overcome abuse and thrive off of it. I don't know a single person who had an extremely cushy childhood who is 'on fire' for anything or striving for greatness.
You need adversity to be great. Not all adversity is abuse. The American dream is about overcoming and flourishing to the limits of your will power, taxing people who have succeeded to provide succor to people who don't care about themselves is corrosive to the national spirit. Come visit some time, I'll show you around.
>I don't know a single person who had an extremely cushy childhood who is 'on fire' for anything or striving for greatness.
You could argue our current president had a pretty cushy childhood. Not sure if he's 'on fire' or 'striving for greatness' though.
Social mobility is heavily determined by a combination of race, IQ, gender, social-class, where you were born, and physical / mental health. All of that is dictated by luck when you are born. Our ego tries to convince us that we're "self made" but for the most part life is determined by "luck of the draw".
>You could argue our current president had a pretty cushy childhood.
I think this kind of proves my point, people with cushy childhoods seem to turn out not great. I'd imagine he'd be a more effective leader if he spent more time overcoming adversity.
I went back in 09 and it was effectively equivalent in my mind to a big swap meet or a hippie craft faire. Light years of difference between that an firebombing riots.
I think that is a very weird conclusion. In Europe, because there is a safety net, there is mostly nothing to "climb out of". Working a menial job and/or playing video games before going on to university or getting a career is mostly ordinary. At least half the people I work with don't have bachelors degrees. The US actually has as high, and often higher, amounts of degrees per capita compared to European countries. Also none of my friends who were into computers growing up are doing badly relatively speaking. Which is largely a factor of the tech industry and not society.
Perhaps you wouldn't have had the same opportunities without a degree in Europe but have you considered the possibility that had you been in Europe it also would have been significantly more affordable and easier to get a degree given your situation?
Universal healthcare, for example, might have allowed your mental health issues to be addressed sooner. And even if they were addressed some people just need more time to complete their education. My sister really struggled with college due to her anxiety and depression and a four-year plan just wasn't going to work for her situation. Unfortunately, college is so expensive there is a lot of pressure to finish as soon as possible. Like you, she dropped out. Now she's in the most difficult situation: the burden of the student loans without the benefit of the piece of paper.
That doesn't happen in Europe. The affordability of university in Europe allows people who need a bit more time to figure things out or to work through their own personal struggles to actually complete the program. And even if someone drops out they aren't left with an unmanageable amount of debt that will follow them for the rest of their life.
The "safety nets" in Europe allow young 20-somethings the flexibility to figure things out for themselves without completely screwing up their future financially. I think we really underestimate the value of that flexibility for a young person in the United States.
I think about this a lot. If I were born in Europe, I would get a degree in mathematics and skate by doing easy work.
I was born American, I saw my chance for greatness, and I'm working on it. I'm currently a few years into my career - I've made a few hundred thousand for myself and at least a few million for my employers/society-writ-large, and I know that if I were European, I'd still be in school.
For me, the American system did a much better job of aligning my interests with society's interest.
The flip side is say, those, who, because there was no safety net, did not or were not able to turn their lives around the way you did and fell on really, really hard times - who didn't make it.
Temper this with the understanding that many workers don't have a good view of what their boss actually does and just assume that their boss puts in a third of the effort, when in fact he might put in much much more and the situation may also be difficult to fathom. https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3156692
Seeing your boss do it teaches you to become the boss.
Seeing your neighbor do it teaches you to switch jobs and work 1/3 as hard.
The reason this doesn't work is the same incentives people are discussing. If there are high-paying easy jobs, people will demand them and theoretically the wages will fall until demand for the job tapers off.
All of this is a bit unfair though, because "having a social safety net where poor people can have vacations and a happy life" is a lot different than the myopic, mean-spirited conservative reply of "but my neighbor is a lazy jerk who makes more than me!"
Most people who can take "massive risks" end up, at worst, in the same situation as the average American if they fail. The average American, on the other hand, can't take those risks at all because they could end up homeless or with mountains of medical debt. Reducing how far you can fall would allow for more risks to be taken.
If the worst-case scenario is starting over perhaps the risk isn't so "massive." But when the worst-case scenario is starving then it's certainly a massive risk.
It’s a standard technique to stop the discussion. As soon as someone mentions inequality just shout “socialism” and “incentives “. Never mind that nobody argues that everybody should get exactly the same but the question is how much more of the pie the top should get and whether their share should keep increasing.
Only a couple of minutes ago you were saying that effort was the measure, not resources or risk. Which are entirely different concepts. I don't really see the point of arguing if we don't even have common understanding of different words.
> In the U.S. the class into which you are born determines the class you'll reach more than any other factor. Overwhelmingly. It's not even close.
Interesting...I've always thought of the US as being more of a meritocracy than the UK and Europe in general. I mean that is what the American dream is all about right?
Nope, I think in pretty much all states, property taxes fund schools in that district. So if your parents have an expensive home, it gathers lots of property tax, which goes mostly to the school in that neighborhood.
> American Dream
The so-called American Dream of social mobility does not exist anymore. It's a relic from the 50s, where a single income from a modest job could support an entire family, with a summer vacation every year.
The more modern examples of rags-to-riches bootstrapping-my-own-widget business are atypical.
The middle class is disappearing and it's not because they are upward bound.
> ...in pretty much all states, property taxes fund schools in that district...
Not in California. Public schools in CA get an essentially-uniform fee (from the state) based on attendance - about $40/day/child.
This helps make things more equal, and it is laudable.
Richer districts, however, have the ability to raise special property taxes, and use gifts from their wealthy residents, to supply extra services for their schools (like music/arts teachers, equipment, and facilities). So, even with a basically "equal" public system, rich districts end up with more.
This is a bit of a strawman argument: the parent post does not claim that everyone should have the same share of the pie, but that one should get a minimal share rather than nothing.
But does that incentive need to be so huge? Would innovation not happen anymore when the incentive was reduced to say 1%, 10% or 25% etc?
My motivation for doing what I do (which I'd classify as innovative) is not (just) the money. The money is nice too, but I don't think I could work in e.g. finance because I like technology and developing new stuff.
>but I don't think I could work in e.g. finance because I like technology and developing new stuff.
Right, most people don't want to work in finance. They do so because of the money. And generally financial CEOs/CFOs are smart enough to only pay workers what they have to. So the incentives are probably priced appropriately.
"Innovation" always takes a ton of muck work that has very little glory. I work at a chip company. For every engineer doing cutting edge work, you have 10 people doing very unsexy support tasks that are 100% necessary. These are roles people do because they pay well, not because they are interesting.
If I didn't get paid I would still be writing code, and a good deal more complicated, but I probably wouldn't care to make the output something users needed.
As for reducing the incentives, that is already done quite heavily: the US income tax about 1/3. With that you should be able to create a very effective safety line, it is not the successfuls fault it is pissed away on political corruption and a wasteful war on drugs/minorities.
Do you think that in the US that your effort put in is always reflected in your economic result? That those with lower economic results are only those who put in less effort than their neighbor?
I don't think anyone's suggesting everyone get the same portion. I just think that if you work 40 hours (or 35, or whatever we determine is "fulltime"), you should be able to support you and your dependents without going bankrupt if you get cancer.
> Seeing your neighbor put in a third of the effort and produce the same economic result is demoralizing.
Sorry to hear you are neighbors with a hedge fund manager. Do you have someone who inherited wealth on the other side of you too? That would be hell. ;)
As others have said, tons of people work harder than me but make less than me. My wife works at least as hard as I do for less pay.
It's less about how hard you work and more about what you know. But sometimes it's even less than that -- it's about perceived value rather than actual value. You could lose an important secretary and the business might lose a lot of money but often that isn't perceived like that.
I think you're creating a false dichotomy: either you accept a large gulf between those who have/have not and innovation or you create a society with a more even distribution and no innovation. As I read comments to socio-economic posts from people in various parts of Europe, it seems as though Germany, France, etc. are developing a middle way.
As a native to the US, I think we really need to pay more attention to the middle way. We could use a little more social harmony.
Why does every conversation about social safety nets or a more equitable distribution of wealth involve a rebuttal by one group that goes directly to fulminant communism, the likes of which has never existed?
And, how does that same group--that is supposedly so concerned about fairness--see as fair, a status quo which favors capital over labor to an untenable degree?
Because of internalized anti-Russia propaganda. If the person is young enough to have not been around during the Cold War, they just internalized it from their parents instead of the Government.
I think the idea that free-market capitalism drives innovation is not something you can take for granted at all. How many companies making copycat apps that serve no purpose or complete bullshit like Juicero get millions in funding?
The market rejecting a product has nothing to do with innovation. It's people saying I can't afford this or I don't value this at the price you're selling it at, or even I don't like the politics of someone that works for you. But it says nothing about if a product is innovative or not.
Innovation includes factors like actually being able to manufacture the product at a price people are willing to pay. If something is worth at most $10, coming up with a novel way to do it for less than $10 is innovative; coming up with a way to do it for $1000 is just wasting time.
It's easy to come up with crazy, impractical ideas. The essence of innovation is turning those ideas into sustainable, marketable, and thus profitable products.
> And if everyone is entitled to the same portion of the pie, what’s the incentive to work harder?
Huge strawman. Who's arguing for total and absolute equality of our outcomes?
I live in one of those "safety net" countries. We aren't all entitled to the same share of the pie, it's just that hard-working people don't have to go hungry or work 2 jobs just to get by, or at least not that often. People can get a very good and valued education without going into debt, and cancer doesn't make you go poor.
I get a greater share of the pie than most of my friends, because I was wise at choosing degree, and worked harder at it, and also I was lucky enough to be born with some mild gifts. But when friend's parents get sick, the families don't have to go into debt to get a great treatment.
I can't be expected to know how the economy and society will change, and whether they will leave me stranded after a bubble bursts or something. We can't all be great economists; not that they get it right either. I'll work my ass off to avoid that, but I'm glad to know my compatriots have my back (to some extent), as I have theirs now.
And if everyone is entitled to the same portion of the pie, what’s the incentive to work harder? Seeing your neighbor put in a third of the effort and produce the same economic result is demoralizing.