"Income Inequality"...

Serious question: On what ethical grounds should a ditch digger earn the same salary as a heart surgeon?

No, it's really not. The whole argument is predicated on the idea that people with different skillsets should, somehow, not earn different incomes by them. Now, if you can offer an ethical reason for that, please do. If you can't, just be honest and say so, or at least bow out and let someone who thinks they can do it step up to the plate.

Reducing inequality does not involve making everyone perfectly equal. So, despite what you say, this is not a "serious question".

But it does, by definition, involve some "authority" engaging in largely arbitrary interference in the personal lives of individuals. So while it may be a question you'd rather shy away from, it is in fact a serious question. If you can't offer an ethical grounding for the interference, that's fine. Maybe someone else can. Step aside and let someone else try.

No, that's a different question. If you wanted an answer to that one, you should have asked it.

And you don't get the benefit of the doubt here, because you're a relentless troll who has never shown no interest anything approaching a "serious question".

Not thematically, it isn't. It's a restatement of the same principle. I get that you're not going to address it, but that being the case, you could do the courteous thing and not bury the question under blather.

You're never not going to fall prey to the Genetic Fallacy, I see.

On all ethical grounds. All the heart surgeons should get is "bragging rights" and maybe (maybe) a gold watch when he retires.

"Income inequality" sounds like something from the pages of the Communist Manifesto.

Asimov also supported this notion. And in one of his F&SF essays wrote that the full employment society was the wrong goal--we should be working toward the full unemployment society.

You are asking people to justify something that nobody has said should happen. So,

Neither of those is an ethical defense. In Fuller's case, he's content simply to claim that this or that idea is 'false' or 'specious' without proposing any logical argument to establish why what he dislikes is false or specious. Claiming that Asimov had the same idea is like claiming that Dayton is right about Muslims because Dayton says so and MF agrees, or like claiming that T.R. is right about Obamacare because T.R. insists that he's right and I agree with him.

Feel free to state your own interpretation of the idea of 'income inequality', propose a solution to it, and proceed to justify your solution, then.

Should not the goal be an easier life for all? Isn't that what man has been striving to achieve for 6,000 years?

As for a solution to income inequality, I don't have one, nor do I expect one. I support a floor, I don't demand that everybody live on it. But nobody should fall beneath it. See, you have these ideas about what people think and go on your riffs about statism and whatnot, but you don't actually read our words.

No, it isn't. That's a utopian fantasy. Man hasn't been striving for anything for 6,000 years, because man isn't a single 6,000 year old entity.

Nobody should, but people do. Some will fall; some will fly. That's life. And there's no ethical argument to be made, in my opinion, for supporting the imposition of a floor or a ceiling by anybody on anybody. Nobody is 'better than' everybody else to the degree that they have the ability or the authority to make such an imposition.

I don't know about solutions, but at least one justification is that it would be better for the economy. Hell, the belief that the current wealth gap is a bad thing that needs to be addressed is one of the few things liberals and conservatives are in agreement.

@SkinofVisionCastle

Philosophical disagreement, and you won't get most of us to embrace the idea that some of our fellow human beings deserve to die in the street. If you think that's cool, go right on ahead continuing to espouse that shit. But you aren't going to gain any converts.

That's the beginning of an ethical argument. Care to flesh it out?

Nobody said they deserve to. I will say that centralized planning can't effectively prevent it, and that historical attempts to allow government to do so have typically resulted in even greater suffering than that they were proposed to eliminate.

I'm not looking for converts. Refer back to the OP to see what I am looking for.

So now you're back to arguing against things nobody has said? Bravo, WasteofTimeCastle.

So if that's not what you're saying, what are you saying? That people fall through the cracks, and they shouldn't, but...? Don't be a pussy, fill in the blank.

I already said that, dumbass. Go find the answer up thread.

Sorry, what were you saying again about 'arguing against things nobody has said'?

Just looking more short term, the middle class tends to spend more of their income than the uber rich. If you weaken the middle class, they don't spend as much, the economy suffers.

What you have said is that you support the idea of a 'floor' -- presumably, you mean an income 'floor' -- but you refuse to offer any ethical foundation for that support, nor propose how that 'floor' is to be established.

That's all a lot of fuzzy Utopian fluff, isn't it?

So what's weakened the middle class?

The fact that fewer and fewer people own more and more of the household wealth?

That may be a related fact, but can you show how it's a cause?

Ethical foundation should be obvious. How to achieve it? There are various options for that, but why discuss the how when we don't have agreement on the need for it?

Are you asking me what's causing the wealth gap?