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To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

nytimes.com

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Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#311

Post by peoplewindow »

solatic wrote: post #165
fatjokes wrote: post #35

It sounds like the real reason for inequality is that the pay for "janitorial work" has simply decreased. The article makes a point to say that the pay is the same, accounting for inflation, but it's disingenuous not to highlight total comp, which Ramos had significantly less of than Evans.

> the pay for "janitorial work" has simply decreased. Author's point is not about decrease in pay but about the social changes that came about as a result of prioritizing the outsourcing of non-core-competency work to contractors, which increased competition and had the effect of reducing effective pay. In other words, income inequality has increased as contract work has increased, and the reason why is because a lar…

That's the theory of the journalist, yes. The NYT does not actually show that though, they just state it/assume it.

If you read through the comments, one of them points out a perhaps less popular explanation - Ms Ramos apparently does not speak English. Large quantities of low skill immigration will inevitably make life tougher for people like her. But that would not be an explanation that'd be acceptable to the Times.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#312

Post by erentz »

esarbe wrote: post #290
erentz wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't have to be. A "death tax" for example that takes 100% of a persons estate at death would be both simple, non distortive, and in terms of equality level the playing field every generation.

Why does this get down voted? Even if you don't agree with the idea; it has been proposed in a calm and reasonable manner. Care to explain?

It's pretty hard to discuss such things without people getting emotional and defensive. I think people look at something like this and say "but that's not fair I earned all my money"[1]. They don't look at it and think about what the world would look like in such a scenario, how they might have lived differently, how they would instead spend their money before death (perhaps making the world a better place), or how they might have less concerns about needing to pass on money to their children because their children would be "just fine" in the society they created under this system.

[1] ignoring the whole subject about luck and what it means to earn something when two equivalent folks just have different dice rolls go their way, etc. Or especially in the context what it means to earn something when you just inherited it. (I have a bunch of friends who have inheritance coming their way and just totally expect it, they lead very different lives because of that than those I know who don't have that.)

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#313

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

Spooky23 wrote: post #29
nsriv wrote: post #8

As a resident of Rochester for the last 3 years post-grad, the wasted human talent here is staggering. There are engineers from Kodak that were bought out of their pensions who (anecdotally of course) get passed over for adjunct positions at RIT, because they either don't have the degree or RIT prefers younger adjuncts. Many haven't moved away because of the sense of family among former co-workers, but are whiling aw…

I recently spent some time in the Roc recently. It was an amazing tale of two cities. Some areas are incredibly beautiful and prosperous looking, but a few hundred yards away it feels like Detroit.

Much of the wealth in Rochester never left. It just moved from city to suburb.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#314

Post by Turing_Machine »

pjmorris wrote: post #229
conanbatt wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we should stop thinking taxes are the solution to inequality. "Cutting all the high trees so the forest looks even".

Taxes are what give fiat currencies their value. No taxes, no fiat currency. If you don't believe me, consider why the US dollar has value at your local store and the Monopoly dollar doesn't.

"If you don't believe me, consider why the US dollar has value at your local store and the Monopoly dollar doesn't."

Well, the primary reason is that US dollars are declared by government fiat (hence the term) to be "legal tender for all debts public and private". You can't legally refuse to take US dollars (in the United States, obviously ... other countries give their own currencies a similar status). That seems only tangentially related to whether the dollars come from taxes or printing presses.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#315

Post by mcbits »

choxi wrote: post #180

We should tax wealth, not income. [1] The majority of income the top 0.1% make is from investments and gets taxed as capital gains, only about 15% of their income is taxed as ordinary income. [2][3] We have an economic system where it's dramatically easier to make money the more money you already have. If you have $50M, you can park it in an index fund to get 4% returns and make $2M every year just off of your invest…

By "park" you mean "invest" in (hopefully) productive participants in the economy. It arguably makes sense to seize wealth that's being invested in ways that are harmful to society and divert it into investments that are good for society, but imposing taxes based simply on the quantity of wealth won't accomplish that.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#316

Post by [deleted] »

erentz wrote: post #286
conanbatt wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Taxation is both effective, and far less invasive to markets than many other solutions. I don't really agree with this. Taxes are distortive and doesn't necesarily help inequality. It might even make it worse. But also, there is taxation as a progressive system of government funding, as there is taxation as in "You will never own more than X, because the government will seize it". In terms of solutions, I'm not a p…

They don't have to be. A "death tax" for example that takes 100% of a persons estate at death would be both simple, non distortive, and in terms of equality level the playing field every generation.

[deleted]

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#317

Post by RobertoG »

nnfy wrote: post #292
erentz wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't have to be. A "death tax" for example that takes 100% of a persons estate at death would be both simple, non distortive, and in terms of equality level the playing field every generation.

Yes, I look forward to being barred from sharing the wealth that I've accumulated with my children and other loved ones. Why should they have any advantage, right? After all, you probably think I didnt do anything myself, right? Who are you to make that decision for someone? And, frankly, you're delusional if you think an estate tax is non distortive. The entire meaning of wealth would change for the elderly. One can…

I think you are right about leaving something to our children. It's a very natural human (mammal!) instinct, but there are a lot of middle ground between don't leave anything and leave them an empire.

About merit, I think I know about merit. If you take the public transport at 5:30 in the morning you will see a lot of people that go to work for years for a ridiculous small pay and, that if they stopped doing that, society as we know would stop. That, I think, have a lot of merit.

On the other hand, in any standard corporation, you can find people with huge wages, with company car, that never pay a lunch because they put in the expenses account and that employ its time in political movements to try to go up in the ladder.

Of course, if you think that markets give everyone whatever they deserve, or you have not been in the public transport at 5:30, then, what I'm saying doesn't make any sense.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#318

Post by erentz »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #306
erentz wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't have to be. A "death tax" for example that takes 100% of a persons estate at death would be both simple, non distortive, and in terms of equality level the playing field every generation.

Hmm... wouldn't that just result in people transferring the assets to their heirs before they died?

Could do. That might be captured sufficiently by the gift tax though. A bigger issue could be evasion through establishing trusts and the like.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#320

Post by dionidium »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #313
Spooky23 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently spent some time in the Roc recently. It was an amazing tale of two cities. Some areas are incredibly beautiful and prosperous looking, but a few hundred yards away it feels like Detroit.

Much of the wealth in Rochester never left. It just moved from city to suburb.

This is the case all over the country. When people say things like "St. Louis has lost over half its population" all it really means is that the small city center lost those people to the suburbs. What any reasonable person would call "St. Louis" didn't actually lose 50% of its people.

This applies basically everywhere. And a failure to really understand it leads to all sorts of erroneous conclusions about the rust belt.

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