What are the positive and negative effects of income inequality, not "redistributing" income, etc.?
Most of the answers I've received on this issue veer far through the line of color politics and come out the other side spray-painted with logos and other such blatant advertising that the viewpoint in question is the only reasonable one. I'd like to get a rather straighter answer.
I'll give it a shot. Note that I'm going to discuss wealth inequality, not income inequality. (Because the discussion is almost always really about wealth, and not income.)
The con side: Wealth inequality lead to resentment and multi-tiered systems; the rich get better healthcare, for example, and therefore live longer. It is supposed that it leads to hardening class lines, as well; if only the rich can go to Harvard, and only Harvard graduates get rich (a gross simplification, but you see the basic idea), then class mobility goes to zero, which leads to...
In line with the results of the poll here, a thread for discussing politics. Incidentally, folks, I think downvoting the option you disagree with in a poll is generally considered poor form.
1.) Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.
2.) Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
3.) A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate.
4.) In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.
If anybody thinks the rules should be dropped here, now that we're no longer conducting a test - I already dropped the upvoting/downvoting limits I tried, unsuccessfully, to put in - let me know. The first rule is the only one I think is strictly necessary.
Debiasing attempt: If you haven't yet read Politics is the Mindkiller, you should.