I think I get the idea of what you’re saying, but I could be missing something in which case feel free to clarify in response to these two thoughts/comments:
It seems that some economic policy reforms rely a lot on percentage improvement gains, e.g., a 5% improvement in purchasing power/income, rather than solely absolute/fixed increases (e.g., +$100 per person)—although I imagine most are varying mixtures of fixed, percentage/linear, log, and/or exponential benefits relative to starting income. However, if a given policy results primarily in a constant percentage increase in income across two countries—one with high income and one with low income—does it matter which one gets the economic improvement under the logarithmic utility function? Doesn’t a 5% increase in income for a country with $100 of average income produce the same amount of utility as a 5% increase in income for a country with $1,000 average income (for a strictly log income ⇒ utility function)?
It’d be interesting to get a sense of how difficult it is to support/cause economic policy reform in rich countries vs. developing countries: that tractability consideration could shift things.
Overall though I think it’s good to be thinking about this alternative! I don’t know enough about the debate to really take a side, and like I said, I may missed some of your reasoning that dealt with this.
Hello! I will attempt to clarify, let me know whether this helps
Yes you’re right that it is the percentage increase that matters for welfare—roughly each doubling of income produces the same amount of welfare, according to GiveWell. Let me put it another way. You can actually donate to Americans through GiveDirectly. Open Philanthropy currently doesn’t do this, but it does donate to US policy work. This must be because of leverage. Exactly the same arguments apply in Kenya.
Immigration reform and housing reform in SF seem pretty intractable to me! The former is the most controversial policy issue in contemporary US politics.
I think I get the idea of what you’re saying, but I could be missing something in which case feel free to clarify in response to these two thoughts/comments:
It seems that some economic policy reforms rely a lot on percentage improvement gains, e.g., a 5% improvement in purchasing power/income, rather than solely absolute/fixed increases (e.g., +$100 per person)—although I imagine most are varying mixtures of fixed, percentage/linear, log, and/or exponential benefits relative to starting income. However, if a given policy results primarily in a constant percentage increase in income across two countries—one with high income and one with low income—does it matter which one gets the economic improvement under the logarithmic utility function? Doesn’t a 5% increase in income for a country with $100 of average income produce the same amount of utility as a 5% increase in income for a country with $1,000 average income (for a strictly log income ⇒ utility function)?
It’d be interesting to get a sense of how difficult it is to support/cause economic policy reform in rich countries vs. developing countries: that tractability consideration could shift things.
Overall though I think it’s good to be thinking about this alternative! I don’t know enough about the debate to really take a side, and like I said, I may missed some of your reasoning that dealt with this.
Hello! I will attempt to clarify, let me know whether this helps
Yes you’re right that it is the percentage increase that matters for welfare—roughly each doubling of income produces the same amount of welfare, according to GiveWell. Let me put it another way. You can actually donate to Americans through GiveDirectly. Open Philanthropy currently doesn’t do this, but it does donate to US policy work. This must be because of leverage. Exactly the same arguments apply in Kenya.
Immigration reform and housing reform in SF seem pretty intractable to me! The former is the most controversial policy issue in contemporary US politics.