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Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality

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Re: Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality

#41

Post by wu-ikkyu »

VMG wrote: post #5

> It is almost universally true that violence has been necessary to ensure the redistribution of wealth at any point in time Strictly speaking, you don't need to redistribute wealth to lower inequality. Destroying wealth is sufficient. Violence and war is pretty good at that.

>The war is not meant to be won. It is meant to be continuous. The essential act of modern warfare is the destruction of the produce of human labour. A hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. In principle, the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects, and its object is not victory over Eurasia or Eastasia, but to keep the very structure of society intact."

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four_(film)

Re: Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality

#42

Post by fpig »

Ygg2 wrote: post #19
donquichotte wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how communism was supposed to work, and the guys in charge of redistribution took the lion's share for themselves.

There are ways to making this work. Sadly, none applies to dollar. One solution. Make dollars worthless, unless they have been stamped with a stamp, for the current month. Basically force people to pay taxes on money. Say you have to pay 10% of the value. Got 2bil, congrats. You are paying $200 million each month.

Inequality isn't there because the rich hoard actual dollar bills in their basement. What you suggest would affect the poor and middle class more than the rich.

Re: Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality

#44

Post by besselheim »

Neliquat wrote: post #16
tanto wrote: post #8

How about we take away everything down to 10^6$ from the 0.0001% richest and redistribute it to everyone. We repeat this with the 0.0001% of the richest every year from there on. Every time someone is chosen for this honour they get a medal.

Imagine for a moment you are a driven, self-made .00001%er. If you KNEW your profits were taken at the top, would you work hard and innovate? Or would you commit fraud and squirrel away your wealth or not bother. Im sure a few would see it as a 'goal', but stakeholders would doubtlessly disagree. The spirit, I agree with, but not possible to cleanly implement.

Who are these mythical self-made 0.0001%? All the ones I've heard about relied on family wealth and connections, inheritance, and most often worker exploitation.

The filthy rich do enjoy this ego-feeding narrative that it was all just talent and hard work that gave them a disproportionate slice of the world's wealth, but it's not borne out by the facts.

Re: Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality

#46

Post by snappyTertle »

Inequality is not inherently a bad thing. People should be compensated for the value they produce. Profits are a signal of how much people value what is produced. For example, people love iPhones, it no surprise that Apple is the most valuable company in the world.

What causes resentment between classes is lack of mobility. This, IMO, is caused by government regulations and a banking system that hurts the middle class and below and benefits the people at the top.

We have a banking system where the federal reserve can make money out of thin air and inject it into banks. This shifts purchasing power to people in finance.

Regulations like minimum wage and higher taxes on larger income make it hard to hire the next marginal employee. Minimum wage prices out low skilled workers, who would like to work and obtain on the job experience needed to climb the ladder. High taxes makes it more expensive for business owners to hire someone. I'm not talking about large businesses like Walmart (they actually support minimum wage). Small businesses are going out of business, or are just not able to start with increased costs of doing business.

This is a vicious cycle where government intervention leads to rich getting richer, and the poor being more dependent on government programs and finding it harder to move up the ladder. So to fix this people beg for more government intervention, which worsens the problem...and on and on it goes.

Re: Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality

#47

Post by daemin »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #37
perrick wrote: post #6

Louis Chauvel, a french sociology professor, made a similar argument using a Prey-Predatory model with trade union membership and income inequality over the last 100 years : "This article shows empirically how trade union membership and income inequality are mutually related in twelve countries over more than 100 years. While past research has shown that high income inequality occurs alongside low trade union members…

I think this is really interesting, especially as how it has played out in recent years - right up to the last few months - in the UK. I used to know a guy who worked for a trade union who was bemoaning its demise. In 1997 when Labour came to power in the UK for the first time in nearly 20 years, they strengthened employment laws so well, the need for trade union was perceived as lesser by much of the membership. Thi…

Most likely what will happen, and I believe this is the case already in most businesses, that the cleaning functions will be outsourced to a separate company. Therefore the limit won't be the cleaner earning 10k/y, but some office admin person earning 30k/y (just guessing that one).

Now then a CEO might want to outsource those jobs as well, so the company would officially only employ the highest income people.

Either that or split the company up based on earning bands, and have the CEO be the CEO of each company, so even though they could only get paid 500k for the company with the cleaners, they would also be paid 1m for the company with the office admins, and more for each other company in the bucket.

There are ways to work around whatever limitations will be created.

Re: Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality

#48

Post by fpig »

visarga wrote: post #29
ant6n wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A simpler way would be to print more money and cause more inflation. 10% wealth destruction per month matches the hyper inflation of Germany in the 20s.Of course the rich who store their assets in non liquid form weren't as affected as the poor who didn't know how to pay for bread.

There is another way, without issuing money. Create a new currency, dedicated for paying UBI to people. Then require that companies pay part of their taxes in this currency, in order to make it valuable. It should cycle itself back and there would be no need to issue new UBI money. The deeper problem is that companies have a conflict of short term / long term interest. In the short term, they would prefer to sell the…

I see this repeated all the time but I consider it to be completely wrong. It is always in my interest to keep $X rather than give it to someone else. Even if they use the $X to buy my product, that's still less favorable for me than to just keep it and not sell the product. And the chance that they would buy my product with that money is almost zero anyway.

Giving people money in hopes that they will buy your product is mathematically a losing strategy, in short or long term.

Re: Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality

#49

Post by tanto »

VMG wrote: post #39
tanto wrote: post #8

How about we take away everything down to 10^6$ from the 0.0001% richest and redistribute it to everyone. We repeat this with the 0.0001% of the richest every year from there on. Every time someone is chosen for this honour they get a medal.

It would remain theft. But since you asked for numbers: http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2011/03/feed-your-famil...

Actually: I did not ask for numbers.

Re: Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality

#50

Post by germinalphrase »

jasim wrote: post #32
perrick wrote: post #6

Louis Chauvel, a french sociology professor, made a similar argument using a Prey-Predatory model with trade union membership and income inequality over the last 100 years : "This article shows empirically how trade union membership and income inequality are mutually related in twelve countries over more than 100 years. While past research has shown that high income inequality occurs alongside low trade union members…

Here's another reason for unions to become defunct over time, as explained by Steve Bruce in his book Sociology: A Very Short Introduction. "Any kind of group activity requires organization. But as soon as one starts to organize one creates a division within the movement between the organized and the organizers, between ordinary members and officials. The latter quickly acquire knowledge and expertise that set them a…

Of course, many small - and still influential - unions are actively made up of their members. For instance, teachers unions (outside of large metropolitan areas) commonly vote their presidents and other officials directly from the teaching ranks. These leaders often receive little/no compensation for their additional duties.
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