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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

#81

Post by harryh »

flexie wrote: post #80
rarec wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

12k - 2.2k (rent) leaves 9.8k. You can get a great full time nanny for 3k a month. That leave 6.8k. Where is the rest of their money going? 6.8k for food/bills/clothing/etc is HUGE.

Re: How America's Top 20 Percent Perpetuates Inequality

#82

Post by gizmo »

jacob019 wrote: post #76
gizmo wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Taxes are not exclusively redistributive, but redistribution is at the core of what the government does.

Healthcare transfers resources from the healthy to the sick. Government redistributes resources to children and to the elderly, because they can't provide for themselves.

We pay for roads we don't drive on. We pay for airports we don't fly through. We pay for parks and libraries we don't visit. All of this is redistribution from people who pay for the services to those who use them.

That these government services create wealth doesn't change that they are still redistributive in nature. In fact, the government has created and enforces the rules by which people can accumulate wealth in the first place. If the government makes the rules such that wealth automatically accumulates in the hands of the few, that's redistribution too!

It seems to me that you look at society as if there is a natural wealth distribution, and it's only redistribution when the government intervenes with that natural equilibrium by taking from some and giving to others. My perspective is that the government creates the very rules through which wealth can be created and accumulated (property law, IP law, incorporation, etc) and taxation is just part of this system.

Re: How America's Top 20 Percent Perpetuates Inequality

#83

Post by yorwba »

JSONwebtoken wrote: post #72
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…

> Why should I want to live my life to the same degree of effort and reward as every else?

I think a constant effort/reward ratio would be something to aim for, since it keeps each individual equally motivated. This might not be optimal for the society as a whole, but it is pretty close. ([0] discusses this in terms of network usage pricing, but the math is more general.)

[0] http://www.mit.edu/people/jnt/Papers/R-04-rjsm-elastic-tr.pd...

Re: How America's Top 20 Percent Perpetuates Inequality

#84

Post by harryh »

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?

FWIW here is my (rough) monthly spending for a family of 3 (husband, wife, 2yo son) in NYC. My income is in that range, but I've always been a saver (and I've had more than my fair share of lucky breaks) so I do not live paycheck to paycheck.

https://gist.github.com/harryh/970743e082bc7c9857ac9149997cc...

(I'm going to delete this gist later. Maybe silly but I don't feel 100% comfortable posting this data on the internet forever).

I live a nice life and have nothing to complain about. Last year 40% of my AGI went to taxes (fed, state, local + fica). There are plenty of good reasons to think that number should be higher.

Re: How America's Top 20 Percent Perpetuates Inequality

#85

Post by yorwba »

DarkKomunalec wrote: post #28
morsch wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're all mongrels: http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/mongrel.htm More to the point: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/11/opinion/the-myth-of-a-whi...

Isn't that just the 'race/ethnicity is continuous and therefore not real' argument?

From the first link:

> Please understand that I do not claim that the concept of race is totally meaningless. People in certain parts of the world do bear physical similarities to one another and racial terms are sometimes useful as labels for those similarities, provided that we do not pretend that these terms have well-defined meanings. Ashley Montagu [1] and others have pointed out that most popular racial concepts are, in fact, myths. What is truly nonsensical is to turn the fuzzy concept of race around and try to classify all individuals as being members of some particular race.

Re: How America's Top 20 Percent Perpetuates Inequality

#86

Post by jacob019 »

gizmo wrote: post #82
jacob019 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Taxes are not exclusively redistributive, but redistribution is at the core of what the government does. Healthcare transfers resources from the healthy to the sick. Government redistributes resources to children and to the elderly, because they can't provide for themselves. We pay for roads we don't drive on. We pay for airports we don't fly through. We pay for parks and libraries we don't visit. All of this is redi…

We also pay for cell towers that we don't use when we pay our phone bill. We all see through our own lens. Heavy handed approaches to improving equality by disrupting the status quo destroys wealth, and we must instead strive for rules of wealth creation that promote decentralization without harming the net sum of wealth created.

Re: How America's Top 20 Percent Perpetuates Inequality

#87

Post by NoGravitas »

The top 20% certainly do support problematic policies, and they do need to look at how their preferred policies are harmful to most Americans.

But the real problem is still the 1% (or the 0.1%). It just hasn't caught up with the top 20% yet. Unless the arc of US politics changes radically, and I've seen no indication that it will, over the next 30 years, these people are going to be proletarianized the way the rest of us have been over the last 30. You can see it already in the decline of private medical practices as doctors become employees of hospitals and chain clinics. In the decline of tenured faculty at universities. The zottas are not going to tolerate that share of their wealth going to their high-skilled servants for any longer than they have to.

Re: How America's Top 20 Percent Perpetuates Inequality

#88

Post by notacoward »

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.

> If you define a class by the top 20% of income earners, then you can never have a "classless" society.

True, but I don't think that's what "class" generally means. Class is about privilege - about the ability to get ahead because of who you are rather than what you do. If you're in a higher class you're more likely to get into or to stay in that top 20% than somebody of a lower class who made equivalent choices and efforts. In a classless society there would still be a top 20% but those kinds of disparities could not happen. I think it's an unachievable goal, because environment is not quite the same as class (though the two are strongly related) and also affects outcomes, but it's something generally worth striving toward.

Re: How America's Top 20 Percent Perpetuates Inequality

#89

Post by notacoward »

JSONwebtoken wrote: post #72
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…

> Why should I not I want my kids to grow up with the privileges of the top 20%?

You might deserve whatever you've worked for, but that has nothing to do with the question of whether your children deserve more or less than others. I'll let you look up John Rawls's "veil of ignorance" thought experiment for yourself.

> Why should I feel hated for cashing in the chips ... 40% of what I win gets taken away?

The system does enough to incentivize gambling already. The results are already non-linear, and if you were truly one of those lucky ones then you're still richer than the other nine even with 40% taken away. To the extent that incentives for gambling and arbitrage displace incentives for more beneficial or sustainable kinds of effort, that's bad both morally and economically. Almost nobody's suggesting that everyone should be kept absolutely level. The question is to what extent we should attenuate the accumulation of riches (especially inter-generational riches) to balance out the various "rich get richer" amplifying effects that already occur.

Re: How America's Top 20 Percent Perpetuates Inequality

#90

Post by crusso »

jacquesm wrote: post #70
crusso wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would beg you to look for a much more nuanced understanding of the people whom you oppose politically. Attempting to reduce all the of the great Conservative/Libertarian arguments for not wanting top-down tyrannical centralized high-tax government that takes away liberty to instead being single-mindedly rooted in racism, homophobia, etc. may make you feel better that your opponents are irrational emotionally-driven…

I would beg you to try to understand that the whole 'Conservative/Democrat' divide as far as I can see from some distance is utterly ridiculous in the eyes of a good chunk of the world. If gays/guns/racism and abortion were not hot political buttons in the United States the Republicans would likely never win an election. Libertarians have to all practical intents and purposes no representation in congress that is abl…

utterly ridiculous in the eyes of a good chunk of the world

I normally find that people outside of the US are not so nearly informed as they think they are about the driving dynamics of US politics, especially when it comes to things like "why do people vote the way they do".

For the most part, people outside of the US start with their non-American cultural biases which makes them extraordinarily susceptible to what are also the loudest voices: Hollywood, the news media, and the most outrageous politicians - while being almost completely ignorant of the undercurrents that actually drive dinner table conversations.

Although libertarians aren't very represented, if you don't see the heavy strain of libertarianism in modern Conservatism - I'd say that's another indicator that you don't know much about the politics of the people you're overly simplifying.

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