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A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

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Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#121

Post by roymurdock »

leaveyou wrote: post #110
roymurdock wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Piketty's suggested policy response is simple: high taxes on aggregated wealth. You need to go one step further and outline where and how the federal government should put this new tax revenue to work. How much should we raise taxes? Which brackets? What form of wealth do we tax? Why taxation rather than issuing bonds? What percent of gov revenue should we allocate to the DoD? How much to Social Security and Medica…

yes, we should do all the thinking, impact analysis and projections for the government because they are too busy not wanting to change the status quo. ridiculous.

No, not all the thinking, impact analysis, and projections. I asked for an outline, a sketch of a thesis for his plan beyond "raise taxes".

Please do not be hyperbolic and sarcastic.

Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#122

Post by geofft »

mwcampbell wrote: post #99
sarciszewski wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really think we are headed for bloody revolution, because most of the populace are angry, and its a rational anger because their survival needs are barely being met, in many cases. From someone who grew up poor and identifies strongly with outlaws, I concur. But unlike OP I think it needs to happen.

Surely a cool, calculated, orderly effort to solve the problems described by the GP would be better than bloody revolution, which is a mere outpouring of anger that might not even solve the problems and would probably create entirely new ones. Do you think that no other option is possible at this point? Edit: Talk of revolution makes me think of the song "Won't Get Fooled Again" by the Who, particularly the closing l…

Revolution may or may not improve things for the underclass, but it certainly ruins things for the upper class -- at least they are forced into playing political games all over again and cannot rest on previous political success (though, yes, if they are trained or predisposed towards politics at least they have a chance). And the credible threat of revolution forces that cool, calculated, and orderly effort to go somewhere, instead of merely watching the arc of history bend as slowly as the earth's surface.

Britain, for instance, was not irredeemably terrible during the American Revolution, as evidenced by them being basically as reasonable a place as America today and not having had a revolution of their own since then. And they even managed to do some things better (e.g., they banned slavery before America did). But the American Revolution was still worthwhile, and that gave credibility to the American approach instead of the imperial one.

Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#123

Post by guscost »

OK, there are a lot of claims here but the one I'm interested in is the idea that productivity has increased while wages have stagnated. I'll have to read more about which of those are adjusted for inflation and how all that measurement actually works, but for now I'd like to make a few points that might be relevant:

- There's not much consideration why productivity has increased. If I had to guess a significant part is because executives hired analysts and planners to increase productivity, not just because better technology had that side effect. The incentive to do this is presumably that more productivity means better margins for the company. I can understand the argument that the workers deserve a bigger share of the rewards than they have gotten, but there is also a share deserved by the executives and analysts who were involved. And legally you can't really say that anyone is entitled to a share, which I guess means that in our society the balance comes down to ethics and morals.

- I think this point is made elsewhere, but there are a lot of things you can do with a "middle-class" income these days that were simply not possible when the wage stagnation started. Could it be the case that even if wage numbers don't track productivity, there is some balancing elsewhere that means actual quality of life does increase with productivity?

I'd like to hear peoples' thoughts, if these ideas are not full of trivial fallacies (which may very well be the case as I am not very knowledgeable about economic stuff).

Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#124

Post by cbeach »

gaius wrote: post #62
ryandamm wrote: post #20

I think it's useful to draw a bright line around the 'value creation' that PG is referring to, also. It's not just creating chairs, it's aggregating great wealth by 'disrupting' traditional industries. Those traditional industries have workers and shareholders who lose out. What makes successful startups so profitable is they displace a large and less-efficient system with a small, efficient one. Efficient in terms o…

Disruption is merely skirting the law and pocketing what you would have spent on compliance as profit. AirBnB cleverly disguises its actual employees - the people cleaning its hotel rooms - as independent contractors. They are employees in every sense apart from having rights. And the genius of it is, they do it to themselves! This is not "creating value", it is destroying it.

It is creating value. Every new cleaning job means a cleaner gets another job to choose between. So his/her salary will be better, and ditto for working conditions.

Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#125

Post by rahimnathwani »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #111
Pyxl101 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They use investment vehicles which are increasingly divorced from "real world" economics and more like moving chips around on a poker table. Which investment vehicles are those? You cannot in general invest money into vehicles which earn a good return but which are divorced from the real world. Imagine if you invest in a company like Apple. Apple developed products like the iPod and iPhone, and the company's value…

> Which investment vehicles are those? Hedge funds and the like. > leads to their valuation, which leads to the return on our hypothetical investment. 'Return' on an increase in valuation isn't a real return. It's exactly like poker. The way markets are supposed to work is you invest in an IPO, then you get a dividend sometime in the future, and then maybe the company buys back your shares. The way it generally works…

The analogy with poker is a poor one. Poker is a zero-sum game. Capital markets are not zero sum. Capital allocation can create (or destroy) wealth, and the transactions to which you point make that process more efficient. If there were no secondary market for shares, there would less money invested in IPOs and other primary investments.

Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#127

Post by ptaipale »

marshray wrote: post #101
chimeracoder wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many countries in Western Europe have been destroyed and rebuilt multiple times This doesn't change the fact that the current economic status of Denmark and Sweden today is directly linked to their status as colonial powers and slaveholders from the 17th-20th century. > since the 19th century when slavery was practiced. This entire subthread began with the claim that being "low-class" in the US is tantamount to sla…

So perhaps you can explain why, whatever this wealth was providing Denmark's 'economic status' the Nazi's didn't plunder it when they occupied it during WWII? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denmark_in_World_War_II AFAICT, Denmark (and Germany, Japan, China, Singapore, South Korea, and everybody else) have whatever 'economic status' they have due to a lot more to what happened during the post WWII years than to colonia…

Yes, and attributing Sweden's wealth to slave trade is disingenuous. Attributing it to WWII years and selling ball bearings to Nazis is more relevant - but then, who in their position wouldn't have done that? I.e. stay out of the nasty war and trade, if it helps to keep peace on borders.

Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#128

Post by mtarnovan »

jazzyk wrote: post #116
guelo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's interesting about this election is that so much of the anger, especially from lower class whites, is being channeled into the Republican party. It's not a cry for wealth distribution, it's a cry against immigrants supposedly taking our jobs. And that's a big failing by the Democrats to tap into that anger. But I think this is going to be typical of elections going forward, red hot anger being directed at the s…

Wealth distribution is a big problem, because the richest can essentially buy the government (and that's exactly what they have been doing) [ http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/11/us/politics/20... ] But if you took the money from the 1% and distributed it to everyone, it would probably amount to a few thousand dollars each, at best. The reason for lack of jobs is the they all went to India, China, etc. As fo…

> But if you took the money from the 1% and distributed it to everyone, it would probably amount to a few thousand dollars each, at best.

That's patently absurd, given that the top 1% own 90%+ of the wealth.

Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#129

Post by eropple »

jazzyk wrote: post #108
moron4hire wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It goes a little further than what the other people are saying. It's not just that the reply "All Lives Matter" is ignoring the issue of police violence against African Americans. It's being used as a defense of the police officers who did the killings, an apologistic post-hoc rationalization that the cop was defending himself. When a person uses "All Lives Matter", what they really mean is "cop's lives matter more".…

>When a person uses "All Lives Matter", what they really >mean is "cop's lives matter more" No, I understand it to be "police can sometimes use force unjustifiably towards anyone, of any race." If a cop murders someone, s/he should be held responsible (sadly, they are not). The reason that more black people get murdered by police is that they (blacks) get in trouble more often (which is NOT a justification to kill th…

> No, I understand it to be "police can sometimes use force unjustifiably towards anyone, of any race."

This would be true if this is what the people saying it demonstrated beliefs that were congruent with their actions. However, the overwhelming majority (to the point where the counterparty is anecdotal and, frankly, possibly mythical) use it to establish a fundamentally conservative defense of the status quo. I mean--"All Lives Matter" sounds good. Except it is used as a direct and intentional response to the institutional prejudice and societal control via police that is applied to black people, and when you look at deeds instead of words, that's super fucked-up.

"All Lives Matter" requires intentionally misunderstanding "Black Lives Matter." What it means, and what they no-sell as hard as they possibly, possibly can, is that it's really "Black Lives Matter, Too". Because right now, to society at large, black lives don't matter.

Deeds, not words, and the deeds are uniformly bad.

Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#130

Post by relkor »

jazzyk wrote: post #116
guelo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's interesting about this election is that so much of the anger, especially from lower class whites, is being channeled into the Republican party. It's not a cry for wealth distribution, it's a cry against immigrants supposedly taking our jobs. And that's a big failing by the Democrats to tap into that anger. But I think this is going to be typical of elections going forward, red hot anger being directed at the s…

Wealth distribution is a big problem, because the richest can essentially buy the government (and that's exactly what they have been doing) [ http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/11/us/politics/20... ] But if you took the money from the 1% and distributed it to everyone, it would probably amount to a few thousand dollars each, at best. The reason for lack of jobs is the they all went to India, China, etc. As fo…

This buying the government is terrifyingly real. In university I once went to a dinner/seminar hosted by one of the top three law firms in DC, where we were instructed on how exactly to bribe congressmen. It turns out to buy a vote, a Representative is 10k and a Senator is 20k. They walked us through how we could give bonuses to employees with the understanding that part of that money would be written as maximum individual size checks to the campaigns. We were assured that it was not illegal as long as these bonuses and donations to not match in space and time. The law firm offered to prepare the appropriation text to be inserted into an omnibus. Then once it passed the money would be laundered through the Dept of Education, the Dept Labor, the Dept of Defense, or other Dept that would take a 15% cut for the service. Then we would be awarded the money, or get a tax credit, or so on. The law firm charged another 15% for their service, and would charge half now half on delivery.

This is the instruction that the children of the ruling elite are getting at Ivy Leagues, it permeates the entire culture of the privileged class.

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