If you want to reduce economic inequality instead of just improving the overall standard of living, it's not enough just to raise up the poor. What if one of your newly minted engineers gets ambitious and goes on to become another Bill Gates? Economic inequality will be as bad as ever.
I find that assertion illogical. If I raise the income niveau of low wage workers, income inequality does go down. I don't have to keep the top down to reduce inequality, that's just nonsense.
The interesting question is where that money will come from. Increasing lower wages take away from the income of the companies they work for (those people are usually not self employed). So what we will see is a little less income for large companies and their owners, who form the very top incomes anyway. Also, note that the incomes of the top 1% do not really affect the median (and also the average, to a lesser degree) income all that much.
I don't see how that is fundamentally keeping innovation from happening. Founding the next MS might be a little less profitable, but I don't think it'd have kept Bill Gates from doing what he did if he had a billion less by now. Also, Microsoft is quite the counter example: they pay their workers comparatively high wages.
As for the practical effects: I think we can see that Europe (and in particular the more egalitarian Northern Europe) does not necessarily fit his description of a poor country only offering raw materials and cheap labour. There is also lots of innovation happening, not necessarily in IT, but in other sectors (machine engineering, medical, the whole car industry, ...).
So, I think the theoretical point is illogical, and practice shows the effects it predicts do not happen. Colour me unconvinced.
I really think you ought to read the full article. He addresses all of this directly.
The interesting question is where that money will come from.
That's quite the point. And to the degree that you limit income or profitability, you make it less likely that businesses will take risks.
Founding the next MS might be a little less profitable, ... we can see that Europe ... does not necessarily fit his description of a poor country
He also makes the point that this isn't binary, it's a spectrum. Making things "a little less profitable" makes innovation a little less likely.
Microsoft is quite the counter example: they pay their workers comparatively high wages.
A counter-example of what? I don't see how that relates to the argument at hand. We're discussing systemic inequality of income; the fact that one employer or another has different philosophies of compensation has little effect on the range of incomes through the USA or the world.
I find that assertion illogical. If I raise the income niveau of low wage workers, income inequality does go down. I don't have to keep the top down to reduce inequality, that's just nonsense.
The interesting question is where that money will come from. Increasing lower wages take away from the income of the companies they work for (those people are usually not self employed). So what we will see is a little less income for large companies and their owners, who form the very top incomes anyway. Also, note that the incomes of the top 1% do not really affect the median (and also the average, to a lesser degree) income all that much.
I don't see how that is fundamentally keeping innovation from happening. Founding the next MS might be a little less profitable, but I don't think it'd have kept Bill Gates from doing what he did if he had a billion less by now. Also, Microsoft is quite the counter example: they pay their workers comparatively high wages.
As for the practical effects: I think we can see that Europe (and in particular the more egalitarian Northern Europe) does not necessarily fit his description of a poor country only offering raw materials and cheap labour. There is also lots of innovation happening, not necessarily in IT, but in other sectors (machine engineering, medical, the whole car industry, ...).
So, I think the theoretical point is illogical, and practice shows the effects it predicts do not happen. Colour me unconvinced.