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To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

nytimes.com

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Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#431

Post by glhaynes »

lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #403
trapperkeeper74 wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your statement "not everyone can handle social or intellectual labor" is a larger sociological problem. If we insist that the only people allowed to participate in the labor market are college educated white guys, maybe; I don't see that statusquo continuing. The hoops some members of this forum will jump through to convince themselves that building CRUD apps is some zenith of intellectual might just continues to ast…

Seems a strange complaint when janitorial positions (which aren’t often held by college educated white guys) are under discussion.

Presuming we want people to have good lives who aren’t able or inclined to do jobs requiring much higher intellectual demands than janitorial ones (and I certainly do want us to presume that!), we need to figure out how to in the short term allow people doing those jobs to have good lives and in the long term allow them to have good lives while robots do those jobs.

Perhaps I’m misunderstanding your comment.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#432

Post by dredmorbius »

pjmorris wrote: post #232
zanny wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do a wealth tax by targeting the big ticket items. Rather than invade everyone's home with tax collectors to guesstimate how much every couch cushion you have is worth, you can hit probably 98% of wealth by just taxing the calculated value of owned land and buildings (which is already being appraised for property taxes in most states) and stocks, bonds, and options. So we already invade your privacy to apprai…

> you can hit probably 98% of wealth by just taxing the calculated value of owned land and buildings (which is already being appraised for property taxes in most states) Henry George proposed this in the 1800's [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism

And David Ricardo prior to him (George credits Ricardo lavishly, though I seldom see this mentioned).

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#433

Post by point78 »

oh_sigh wrote: post #430
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…

How does inequality in itself cause suffering? If all super rich people were magically erased from the earth, would the poor have it any better?

And their wealth was distributed evenly? Hell yeah the poor would have it better, is this a trick question?

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#434

Post by flyinglizard »

zanny wrote: post #208
RealityNow wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but how would we enforce a wealth tax? Seems like it'd be really easy for rich people to hide their money in assets. What about just printing money? Not ideal obviously, but there'd be no way to avoid the inflation "tax".

You can do a wealth tax by targeting the big ticket items. Rather than invade everyone's home with tax collectors to guesstimate how much every couch cushion you have is worth, you can hit probably 98% of wealth by just taxing the calculated value of owned land and buildings (which is already being appraised for property taxes in most states) and stocks, bonds, and options. So we already invade your privacy to apprai…

Once you start targeting public market holdings, it would just create an even stronger incentive for companies to remain private. Soon enough you'd have secondary markets for high rollers dealing in shares of private entities, which would be completely inaccessible to the average Joe - and congratulations, you've increased inequality. In fact, this is already the situation in technology investments to a large extent. Companies remain private for longer to avoid post IPO regulations and restrictions, and the only guys who can invest are the insiders who get the opportunity through their network. The companies are only pumped to the public when the ascent in value has pretty much diminished (SNAP, anyone?).

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#435

Post by aoeuasdf1 »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #402
aoeuasdf1 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose you have two options: - Work for MEGACORP and produce $400k/year of value - Develop a new business which has a 30% chance of succeeding. If it succeeds, you estimate it will be worth $50M. Suppose the marginal tax rate for income above $400k/year is 40%, and you want to maximize your expected earnings (say, to donate to a charity you think is particularly effective). Which option is rational? Now suppose the…

Hypothetical scenarios are only valuable insofar as they're close to reality. In real life, if I'm taking home $400k/year in salary it's because I'm creating $1 million/year in revenue. Also in real life, a start-up business that will be worth $50 million usually has more like a 1% chance of success, so it's expected value is actually just about 25% more than the proposed salaried job -- less than my value-per-year a…

If one can create $1 million/year in revenue for $BIGCORP it's completely plausible that they could create $5 million/year in expected value on some better, innovative idea of they own (or a startup's). The only problem is that the second option comes with a double-digit probability of failure. Extremely progressive tax systems artificially distort this decision towards complacency and mediocrity.

You mention people are risk averse (logarithmic utility of money). I posit that that is only true for non-altruists. An altruist prefers to save 10000 lives nearly exactly 10 times as much as they prefer to save 1000 lives. Given a secure enough financial base off of which the logarithmic personal rewards factor is a non-issue, this is the primary driver for plenty of people that I personally know.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#436

Post by GuiA »

peoplewindow wrote: post #307
GuiA wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why it's so upsetting that companies in Silicon Valley (Google, Facebook, Apple, all of them) hire cooks/janitors/bus drivers/etc from 3rd party companies and offer them none of the benefits their full employees get. Just doing that would be a huge pipeline, and would play no small part in addressing the diversity problem they all claim to be preoccupied with (but don't do much about).

Google is famous for having made its early cooks and massage therapists into multi-millionaires by giving them stock options. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/technology/12google.html?m... Remember that this NY Times article is designed to push emotional buttons. Their entire story revolves around comparing Apple against Kodak. There aren't really any deeper studies or figures provided. You could as well compare a c…

Except I work at such one big company, and talk to its security guards, shuttle drivers, cafeteria cooks, every single day.

And what do they tell me?

That once this ends, they're headed to Whole Foods for another shift. Or that they'll sleep in their car for a few hours tonight before heading to the next job, not seeing their kids. Or that they're struggling to pay for their mom's medical bills and have no clue how they'll ever get out of it.

This NY Times article pushes buttons so well because it resonates deeply with what I, and many others, have been hearing every day since they've set foot in Silicon Valley.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#437

Post by flyinglizard »

tomjen3 wrote: post #213
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…

Rather than tax wealth, tax spending: no taxes on your income, no taxes on anything until you spend it. That way people will have more money to invest in companies allowing the economy to grow and create wealth, and we kill the ludicrous idea that consumption creates wealth, rather than construction. It does have the issue that this hurts poor people, but that is easily solvable with a direct transfer of (electronic)…

At the end of nearly all civilian investments, stands a consumer with their wallet out. Take them out, and you are left with unused infrastructure.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#438

Post by user5994461 »

point78 wrote: post #433
oh_sigh wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does inequality in itself cause suffering? If all super rich people were magically erased from the earth, would the poor have it any better?

And their wealth was distributed evenly? Hell yeah the poor would have it better, is this a trick question?

The rents would increase everywhere the next year to capture all that new cash.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#439

Post by 0xbear »

fasquoika wrote: post #422
0xbear wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Says a person who doesn't (yet?) make $400k a year. This too shall pass, once you start making more money.

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

I am a multimillionaire. Came here with a negative net worth, by way of skilled immigration. Born and raised in the USSR. Don't bother trying to convince me about the virtues of socialism. Unlike you, I actually lived it.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#440

Post by weirdstuff »

lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #403
trapperkeeper74 wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your statement "not everyone can handle social or intellectual labor" is a larger sociological problem. If we insist that the only people allowed to participate in the labor market are college educated white guys, maybe; I don't see that statusquo continuing. The hoops some members of this forum will jump through to convince themselves that building CRUD apps is some zenith of intellectual might just continues to ast…

I'm inclined to agree with that.

Maybe if jobs for all skill-sets were still growing (in availability and compensation) it'd be easier to write off a good portion of the population as mentally inferior, but now that knowledge jobs are gaining a monopoly on living wages/salaries I don't think it's as easy to be that glib.

We need to do better as a society.

We're not that glib when it comes to children and early education, and I don't think we should change attitude just because a person has reached adulthood. Laziness and/or the attribution fallacy seems to get the better of a lot of us on HN.

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