The Refragmentation

> Other evidence points indirectly to a strong role of market power. At this point, for example, there is an extensive empirical literature on the effects of changes in the minimum wage. Conventional supply-and-demand analysis says that raising the minimum wage should reduce employment, but as Reich notes, we now have a number of what amount to controlled experiments, in which employment in counties whose states have hiked the minimum wage can be compared with employment in neighboring counties across the state line. And there is no hint in the data of the supposed negative employment effect.

> Why not? One leading hypothesis is that firms employing low-wage workers—such as fast-food chains—have significant monopsony power in the labor market; that is, they are the principal purchasers of low-wage labor in a particular job market. And a monopsonist facing a price floor doesn’t necessarily buy less, just as a monopolist facing a price ceiling doesn’t necessarily sell less and may sell more.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/12/17/robert-reich-chal...

There's also something similar to your subsidy idea today called the Earned Income Tax Credit [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit]. Guaranteeing a minimum income does seem like a promising idea, but it will probably have to be tried elsewhere before the U.S. will adopt it (if ever).

What has happened is instead technology allowed some luxury products to be commodized and available to everyone. I doubt multi-billionairs build their own OS-es, cell phone towers, hardware, batteries, support from scratch. They buy an iPhone. Someone on food stamps could concievable save money and still get an iPhone. They both have a luxury product so to speak. But this is a cool anomaly. It doesn't happen with cars, housing, job opportunities, healthcare, clothes, safety, free time, food, etc.

So I think looking what kind of tech products are avaiable to everyone doesn't work as an argument regarding inequality. What about inflation adjusted salary, isn't that a better metric to look at? Or say the cost of healthcare or housing as percentage of wages... defintely not the type of computer and printers people can get.

To the extent they aren't being argued for (I won't comment on whether they are "longed for" except to say that you don't seem to have read many leftist writings), that's because they are now the norm, so the burden of argument is now on those who want to change them.

For example, it is now considered the norm that the government will mess with the money supply and the banking and financial system whenever it feels like it, in order to implement centralized control of the economy. Nobody has to argue for it; the burden of argument is on those who aren't sure things like the Fed printing money are a good idea (and most of the time their arguments aren't even heard, they're dismissed as crackpots, even though the worst depression in history occurred after the Fed took control of the money supply).

Also, it is now considered the norm that larger and more centralized government is better; the US Federal government, the EU, etc. People talk about a single world government as though it were a natural next step. Nobody has to argue for any of these things. The burden of argument is on those who think centralization of power has done more harm than good (and again, most of the time their arguments aren't even heard, they're dismissed as crackpots).

> What we're looking for is just more equality in economic opportunities and esp capital and that distribution of capital to be more fair across all the classes and not to be a privilege only for rich and highly connected people.

And Graham's point is that, even in a perfect world where economic opportunity and access to capital was perfectly equal, there would still be huge variations in wealth, simply because there will be huge variations in how well people take advantage of economic opportunity and access to capital in order to create wealth. And the more technology advances, the larger the variations will be, because technology amplifies the differences in productivity between people.

So by all means, fight for a fairer world in which there is equality of opportunity. But don't measure your success by equality of outcome. Unfortunately, equality of outcome is exactly how "success" is measured by basically everyone. And we have "lefties" to thank for that.

It's a question of liquidity.