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How America's Top 20 Percent Perpetuates Inequality

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Re: How America's Top 20 Percent Perpetuates Inequality

#71

Post by gizmo »

jacob019 wrote: post #66
gizmo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

History shows no such thing. Making college free (or at least easily affordable) is highly redistributive and highly accretive. See also: public transportation, affordable childcare, and so. You're not just wrong when you say that government efforts to redistribute wealth mostly destroy it. The opposite is true: funding the commons through progressive taxation makes modern society possible. Redistribution is at the a…

An interesting perspective, feels cynical to me. I fully support progressive taxation, free education, public transit, affordable health care and so-forth. I would argue that government is a service provider. We can't all be expected to maintain our own defense, so we do it together. When we are provided these services that are equal to or greater than the value that we pay for them, we are richer for it. There is no…

> government efforts to redistribute wealth mostly destroy it

> I fully support progressive taxation, free education, public transit, affordable health care

Choose one.

(Hint: all taxation is redistributive)

Re: How America's Top 20 Percent Perpetuates Inequality

#72

Post by JSONwebtoken »

jmaygarden wrote: post #27

If you define a class by the top 20% of income earners, then you can never have a "classless" society. You'll always have a mathematically top 20%. That's an entirely different idea than say nobles versus peasants or racial apartheid. I liked much of what the author had to say, but claiming that America has a more rigid class structure than a nation with a hereditary monarchy seems like a stretch.

Why should I not deserve to be in the top 20%? I worked hard, studied diligently, and obtained rare and pragmatic skills so that I may live my life to a greater degree of contentedness than 80% of people.

Why should I not I want my kids to grow up with the privileges of the top 20%? I worked the hours of 3 standard people over my lifetime to accumulate the wealth I want to pass onto my offspring to secure my genetic legacy. Aren't I just fulfilling what biology deems as life's most imperative mission?

Why should I feel hated for cashing in the chips on a successful venture that would have failed 9 out of 10 other times? Starting a business already has negative expected value, so why is it on the 1 out of 10 times that I succeed, 40% of what I win gets taken away?

Why should I want to live my life to the same degree of effort and reward as every else? What is the point of living life in such a manner, as governed by some impenetrable limiter of success and reward, it would be like being stuck for the rest of your life on tutorial island in Runescape, where you can't burn your shrimp on the campfire and you can't die to monsters, as that is where 100% of accounts begin their lives and where 80% of accounts never log back in.

Re: How America's Top 20 Percent Perpetuates Inequality

#73

Post by dagw »

rarec wrote: post #61
flexie wrote: post #55

The article says top 20 percent consists of the households making $112,000 or more. Many of those families live in places like New York or California where $112,000 is not much. The families I know in New York City making around $2-300,000 live paycheck to paycheck in tiny, old rented apartments. Both parents work until 6-8 PM, they barely see their kids except in weekends. They spent the first decade or so after col…

Families making $200,000-300,000 lives paycheck to paycheck? Sorry, but just what in the everliving fuck are they doing with that money? Burning it for warmth?

Housing costs for a place in the nice part of town plus sending a couple of kids to the 'right' school will eat up much of that. Plus then (of course) you need the clothes and cars and vacations to match the the above lifestyle and that will eat up the rest of it.

Re: How America's Top 20 Percent Perpetuates Inequality

#74

Post by harryh »

flexie wrote: post #55

The article says top 20 percent consists of the households making $112,000 or more. Many of those families live in places like New York or California where $112,000 is not much. The families I know in New York City making around $2-300,000 live paycheck to paycheck in tiny, old rented apartments. Both parents work until 6-8 PM, they barely see their kids except in weekends. They spent the first decade or so after col…

Living in NYC is one of the most expensive luxury goods there is (I say this as someone who lives in NYC myself). That's the luxury they are buying with their high income.

Also, FWIW, median family income in Manhattan is somewhere around 75k. So someone making 250k is making over 3x the median. They're doing very well for themselves.

Re: How America's Top 20 Percent Perpetuates Inequality

#75

Post by mac01021 »

gizmo wrote: post #69
mac01021 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that the wealthy regularly perform acts deliberately calculated to instill apathy in the general populace? If this is true then it is very interesting and I would like some examples.

Deliberately? Probably not. But all of consumer culture, 5 minute news cycle, pop culture, and economic pressure makes it very hard for people get politically involved. Most people have to struggle just to survive. The middle class worries about living in the right neighborhood with the right schools, so their children can have a good life. Nobody can afford to get involved in their community, or with local politics.…

I definitely believe all that, and these phenomena are something I've been thinking about a lot lately. (Also, any pointers to Chomsky articles on that specific topic would be most appreciated)

But sentences like "This is not an accident, people are pushed towards apathy because that serves the wealthy", without much additional clarification, might help you get perceived as some kind of conspiracy theorist.

Re: How America's Top 20 Percent Perpetuates Inequality

#76

Post by jacob019 »

gizmo wrote: post #71
jacob019 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interesting perspective, feels cynical to me. I fully support progressive taxation, free education, public transit, affordable health care and so-forth. I would argue that government is a service provider. We can't all be expected to maintain our own defense, so we do it together. When we are provided these services that are equal to or greater than the value that we pay for them, we are richer for it. There is no…

> government efforts to redistribute wealth mostly destroy it > I fully support progressive taxation, free education, public transit, affordable health care Choose one. (Hint: all taxation is redistributive)

I do not accept the premise that all taxation is redistributive. When services are provided to the taxpayer that exceed the value of the taxes then wealth is created. We as a society choose to perform certain services collectively though our government because it costs less to do it together. There is a tipping point where taxation becomes redistribution.

Re: How America's Top 20 Percent Perpetuates Inequality

#77

Post by throwaway2016a »

rarec wrote: post #61
flexie wrote: post #55

The article says top 20 percent consists of the households making $112,000 or more. Many of those families live in places like New York or California where $112,000 is not much. The families I know in New York City making around $2-300,000 live paycheck to paycheck in tiny, old rented apartments. Both parents work until 6-8 PM, they barely see their kids except in weekends. They spent the first decade or so after col…

Families making $200,000-300,000 lives paycheck to paycheck? Sorry, but just what in the everliving fuck are they doing with that money? Burning it for warmth?

Can't speak for those people but our household makes roughly $200,000 and after paying:

- Taxes

- Mortgage

- Interest on the mortgage

- Property insurance

- Our child's daycare so we can both work

- Payments on loans for every appliance that unexpectedly broke

- Saving

Half those costs would go away if we didn't buy a big house. For example, we have two air conditioning units and the heaters and both heaters died in the past year and costs $2,000+ to repair.

More money = more money tied up in assets and "good debt" = less actual discretionary money at the end of the mont

It ends up being about the same as someone who makes significantly less BUT we have equity in our property and money in our retirement funds at the end.

And I'm not going to lie. I enjoy a nice dinner ($500), a broadway play ($1,000 for good seats), or a Red Sox game ($900) once and a while.

Re: How America's Top 20 Percent Perpetuates Inequality

#78

Post by maxerickson »

droithomme wrote: post #26

> the top fifth of the income distribution—broadly, households with incomes above the $112,000 These are not rich oligarch industrialists at all. If your total household income, husband and wife together, is $112k, you're middle class in most of the country. In some areas like the Bay and Manhattan, you're lower middle class. You generally don't have access to subsidized rent and you don't get subsidies for health ca…

Have you properly accounted for households vs people in your final calculation and comparison?

Re: How America's Top 20 Percent Perpetuates Inequality

#79

Post by maxerickson »

briandear wrote: post #62

... likely to run into the solid wall of upper middle-class resistance, even those that simply require a slightly higher tax bill... What are the unintended consequences of this slightly higher tax bill? Does this writer not know of the Laffer Curve? The top 20% already pay the vast majority of income taxes in the United States And now he suggests they should pay more? Why not instead reprioritize spending, including…

The Laffer curve is a fantastic rhetorical device.

Where's your data showing what the slope of it is for the current US tax regime? Oh, you don't have one? Why not? Afraid it might undermine the rhetoric?

The fraud in Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid isn't that high. If you want to bitch about those programs, bitch that they don't pay market rates for the services they mandate, hiding a tax in the payments other people make for medical services.

Re: How America's Top 20 Percent Perpetuates Inequality

#80

Post by flexie »

rarec wrote: post #61
flexie wrote: post #55

The article says top 20 percent consists of the households making $112,000 or more. Many of those families live in places like New York or California where $112,000 is not much. The families I know in New York City making around $2-300,000 live paycheck to paycheck in tiny, old rented apartments. Both parents work until 6-8 PM, they barely see their kids except in weekends. They spent the first decade or so after col…

Families making $200,000-300,000 lives paycheck to paycheck? Sorry, but just what in the everliving fuck are they doing with that money? Burning it for warmth?

Let's see. Taxes take around 1/3 of it. Rent takes 1/6. Schools, kindergarten, nannies takes 1/6. That leaves around 1/3 for food, clothes, insurance, phones, cable, heat etc. for a NYC family.

A family I know in the East Village says they spend $12,000 per month. They live 2 parents, 2 kids in a 500 square feet rent stabilized apartment (a walkup). The 140 square feet living room has a kitchenette in the corner. I believe rent is $2,200 monthly. Last time we visited, my one year old found a syringe outside their door. Don't know what they make before tax but it can hardly be less than $200,000. I asked why they didn't just move away from Manhattan, but they would have to commute 1-2 hours more per day to find a cheaper solution. They were already aways from the kids 10-12 hours a day as it were so that was not an option.

Families in such situation is a big part of the so called upper class.

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