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To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

nytimes.com

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Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#351

Post by trapperkeeper74 »

solidsnack9000 wrote: post #325
esarbe wrote: post #321

What strikes me the most when looking at many of the comments here is the blatant disregard for human suffering that extreme inequality and the resulting poverty cause. The current economical status quo is accepted as a given and all the harm it causes is dismissed with the shrug of a shoulder. "It can't be helped, the poor sods should have made better life choices to avoid ending up as janitor" is the attitude by wh…

As long as we accept the need for people to be janitors, we must accept that becoming a janitor is not a "mistake", it's a useful thing that we all want to see happen for some people. We can't on the one hand say, that we need people to do this job and on the other hand say, "tough luck" to those that do it.

Robots aren't capable of doing everything people can do yet, but as they become more capable, what and how are displaced unskilled workers supposed to do if they can't get any job at all? Starve to death under a bridge? Not everyone can handle social or intellectual labor. I think this is why UBI is essential: prevent riots and meet people's basic needs so they're not pennyless and sleeping rough.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#352

Post by wkrause »

nnfy wrote: post #322
erentz wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This thought experiment isn't about looking at your neighbors plate, it's about incentives for us as a society. I think the question to answer for yourself is whether you think everyone should start with a fair playing field or not and the implications such a tax would have on how you structure society to ensure that everyone gets the same shots at a good life.

There is substantially more value for all of us in allowing more resources to be distributed to those who are able to do more with them. And your definition of "fair playing field" is skewed because, again, you treat economics as a zero sum game. You are making the classic mistake of conflating equality of outcome with equality of opportunity. In any case, this class warfare inspired policy of exhaustively taxing wea…

I think you're reading a lot into the comment you're replying to that wasn't there. Sounds more like he's coming from a rawlsian perspective of what constitutes a just society.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#353

Post by Sniffnoy »

esarbe wrote: post #321

What strikes me the most when looking at many of the comments here is the blatant disregard for human suffering that extreme inequality and the resulting poverty cause. The current economical status quo is accepted as a given and all the harm it causes is dismissed with the shrug of a shoulder. "It can't be helped, the poor sods should have made better life choices to avoid ending up as janitor" is the attitude by wh…

> What strikes me the most when looking at many of the comments here is the blatant disregard for human suffering that extreme inequality and the resulting poverty cause.

Apologies to pick on you without addressing your main point, but this sentence is an example of an error I see a lot yet I rarely see addressed.

Specifically, you're claiming a chain of causation where by inequality causes poverty. But in fact the relation between these two isn't causal at all, but rather logical.

(Well, not actually. Inequality is independent of poverty -- you could have no poverty but lots of inequality, or no inequality but lots of poverty. The assumption that inequality and poverty are so closely linked seems to me to be be basically assuming that we live in a zero-sum world. But let's just continue with that assumption right now, because that's not the point I want to address.)

Point is, why put the arrow of causation that way? Why not the other way around? Of course either way you put it's still not actually a causal relation -- but I think putting it the other way around is a much more useful way of thinking (mathematicians still think in terms of things causing things, because it's a useful way of thinking, even though mathematics doesn't actually have causation). I think there's something wrong with the assumption that inequality is somehow primary, and poverty just an effect.

You see this a lot in other contexts too -- people claiming "A causes B" when in fact the correct relation is "B is an example of A". (OK, that's not exactly the same error as here, but it's closely related -- mistaking a logical relation for a causal one, and putting the arrow of "virtual causation" in the wrong direction. As if someone said "all-cause mortality causes accidental deaths"; how silly would that be?) Watch out for this!

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#354

Post by jackmott »

esarbe wrote: post #321

What strikes me the most when looking at many of the comments here is the blatant disregard for human suffering that extreme inequality and the resulting poverty cause. The current economical status quo is accepted as a given and all the harm it causes is dismissed with the shrug of a shoulder. "It can't be helped, the poor sods should have made better life choices to avoid ending up as janitor" is the attitude by wh…

there are a lot of posters here who seem to be border line sociopaths, so maybe another thing they should conaider is that when inequality increases to much the proletariat will tend to kill the elite. nobody wins if we get there and there are signs we are headed there.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#355

Post by humanrebar »

cjlars wrote: post #252
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…

For the sake of completeness. Top capital gains rate is 20% + 3.8% medicare surcharge + state tax. In a high tax state like California, you're paying 37.1% on investment income, not 15%. Also, top federal rate is 39.6%, not 35%, plus state income tax, you can pay as high as a statutory rate of 52.9% in CA, or around 47% after deductions. And more to your point, we already have a defacto wealth tax in the US because i…

> we already have a defacto wealth tax in the US

We have actual wealth taxes, too, in the form of property taxes.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#356

Post by RobertoG »

kofejnik wrote: post #337
RobertoG wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, so…

basically, your argument is that you know better than the market. Let me assure you, this isn't so. Source: grew up in the USSR.

Markets are optimization processes, so, very powerful tools.

Leaving the metric to optimize to the optimization process doesn't look a good idea, the same way it's not a good idea to leave the thermostat to choose the temperature.

In my experience, the only people that think that the thermostat it's who should choose the temperature, it's the people that feels very comfortable with the current one and don't care about the comfort of the others in the house. Or, maybe, also the people that grew up in a house without thermostat and thinks, correctly, that anything is better.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#357

Post by richardknop »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #266
bb611 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you trying to claim the United States doesn't have those? Because it currently has 2 of those (minimum wage and a health insurance mandate) at the federal level.

The United States have both of those implemented in exactly the wrong way: the minimum wage is livable nowhere, and there is still people without health insurance in the US today.

Minimum wage is hardly livable anywhere in the western world so that has nothing to do with US. Show me any country in Europe where living in minimum wage means anything else than poverty in all but name.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#358

Post by humanrebar »

erentz wrote: post #318
Turing_Machine wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then you just donate the money to institutions your progeny would just happen to enjoy: your alma mater, the country club, private schools, etc. Segregation would still be maintained through astronomical real estate prices.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#359

Post by albinofrenchy »

whack wrote: post #305
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…

The real problem though isn't wealth inequality, it's income inequality. If someone has a billion dollars that's invested in various stocks, and never tries to withdraw that money, leave him alone. The day he decides to sell his investments and start buying private jets, that's the time to tax him on his income. The argument against a wealth tax, is that it penalizes savers, and rewards spenders. Which is not what we…

The argument against income tax is that it penalizes earners, and rewards not working.

Sure, that is a reductionist argument but so was yours.

The real argument against taxing wealth is that it isn't really feasible; you'd just encourage banking in other countries or buying up a lot of land.

I also agree that capital gains being taxed at a lower rate is insane and makes sense only when you realize that's how politicians tend to get wealth.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#360

Post by alansammarone »

whack wrote: post #305
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…

The real problem though isn't wealth inequality, it's income inequality. If someone has a billion dollars that's invested in various stocks, and never tries to withdraw that money, leave him alone. The day he decides to sell his investments and start buying private jets, that's the time to tax him on his income. The argument against a wealth tax, is that it penalizes savers, and rewards spenders. Which is not what we…

Could you please expand on why its necessarily better for the average Joe to invest money (without knowing beforehand whats gonna be a "productive enterprise" of course) instead of fuelling the economy directly by buying goods? (honest question)
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