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To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

nytimes.com

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Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#501

Post by fiblye »

jaggederest wrote: post #342
solidsnack9000 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Doing janitorial work is not a mistake, but being a janitor for 40 years certainly is. It's not the core job, it's the fact that there's zero growth or mobility even possible that is the issue.

Life isn't all about getting promoted. Loads of people get far more satisfaction from knowing they're carrying out an important duty than they do from knowing they got promoted from Javascript Ninja to Javascript Assassin.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#502

Post by jaredklewis »

gremlinsinc wrote: post #493
whack wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Am I understanding -- you're saying it's better for money to sit in an investment account, than spend it on goods/services locally -- thus applying it to local economies? Money doesn't do anyone but the holder any good sitting in an offshore account and even then it's really not doing them any good... do they really need it if it's not being used for something important/worthwhile..literally just collecting dust (and…

Chicken or the egg? It seems equally intuitive that investment drives the economy. Investment gives companies capital, capital to spend on employees and services or products from other companies (which in turn spend it on employees or other companies). In this way, money makes it way into the pockets of consumers who then spend it on products and services, and the endless cycle of economic activity continues.

But I'm not an economist and am somewhat skeptical of macro-economics in general, which seems a bit like reading tea leaves.

Even if you if you don't buy into supply side economics, I think "Money doesn't do anyone but the holder any good sitting in an offshore account" is somewhat misleading. Savers and investors, through loans and capital, certainly help someone.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#503

Post by posguy »

gremlinsinc wrote: post #488
posguy wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UBI is a bad attempt to patch a broken capitalist system that has no regard for the humans within it. It may delay riots, but people's basic needs still won't be met.

What would you suggest as an alternative if there were only enough jobs to support 20-30% of people .. including professional jobs like doctors/radiologists/lawyers being displaced?

Sounds like it could be great, terrible, or somewhere in between in the future you describe. I'm a socialist by upbringing, hopefully we would be smart enough to organize our society such that we take care of those most vulnerable among us. Currently we make a modicum of effort towards this, and vilify the working poor as lazy, no good scum, despite how they often work much more than those who earn more than them.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#504

Post by wavefunction »

throw2016 wrote: post #378
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…

It's not surprising that those who have bought into Rand and her ego stroking 'superman' ideology are sociopaths. These highly individualist supermen don't need society or anyone else for their success. They stand alone. Celebrating themselves while seeing others suffer and blaming them for their suffering is simply the natural order of things. Empathy is completely absent in this impoverished binary world view of su…

Also, the Randian superman does not exist and is a juvenile fantasy.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#505

Post by pasquinelli »

foxhop wrote: post #500
pasquinelli wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Not everyone can handle social or intellectual labor." then they can become janitors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox but you're right, ubi is essential. not everyone can handle janitorial work. ;)

Its not just janitors, this happened to me in a highly technical call center.

that's kind of what i'm getting at. there's a presumption that the future will be for tech workers, and everyone else will have to starve or, preferably, be supported. i think that's optimistic. i think the future will be for janitors, and everyone else will have to starve or be supported.

manufacturing went away, agriculture went away, mining went away, all through automation. coincidently, this corresponded to growth in the people working in tech and other intellectual labor. but it's sloppy thinking to say that automation causes growth in intellectual labor, which seems to be the presumption. automation causes whatever it automates to shrink. intellectual labor will be automated-- possibly before janitorial work.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#506

Post by pjmorris »

aninhumer wrote: post #277
pjmorris wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The reasons fiat currency has value are far more complicated than just "taxes". If that were true, people would only convert their money to dollars as needed to pay tax, but obviously that's not the case. There is an inherent value to a currency system, and that value amplified by network effects. The government definitely anchors that network (through many mechanisms, not just taxation), but there's still a lot of i…

> through many mechanisms, not just taxation

What other (governmental) mechanisms do you view as anchoring the currency?

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#507

Post by chromatic »

jaredklewis wrote: post #502
gremlinsinc wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I understanding -- you're saying it's better for money to sit in an investment account, than spend it on goods/services locally -- thus applying it to local economies? Money doesn't do anyone but the holder any good sitting in an offshore account and even then it's really not doing them any good... do they really need it if it's not being used for something important/worthwhile..literally just collecting dust (and…

Chicken or the egg? It seems equally intuitive that investment drives the economy. Investment gives companies capital, capital to spend on employees and services or products from other companies (which in turn spend it on employees or other companies). In this way, money makes it way into the pockets of consumers who then spend it on products and services, and the endless cycle of economic activity continues. But I'm…

It seems equally intuitive that investment drives the economy.

The economic principle you're looking for is "velocity of money". If you think of a GDP in terms of a multiplier in how often/fast money circulates, then you can analyze whether investment or spending is more important.

The second economic principle to look into after that is "marginal propensity to consume".

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#508

Post by pjmorris »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #314
pjmorris wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 on…

> "legal tender for all debts public and private"

Government accepting payment for public debts in legal tender... is taxes. They're the first market maker for a fiat currency. It's certainly possible to just run printing presses, but that typically leads to hyperinflation and the replacement of the currency.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#509

Post by chromatic »

wonder_er wrote: post #461
alansammarone wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Not OP, but I have an idea of what they're getting at. Another word for savings is "deferred consumption". If I earned 1000 dollars this month, and spent 700, I have 300 in savings, or, put another way, I deferred consuming 300 of those dollars. Now, 300 in a checking account doesn't do anyone any good but me, but if I took half of that money and invested it w/the bank at a 7%/year interest rate, I'd be investing $15…

That said, the banks + federal oversight encourage money to be created out of thin air, which makes it easy to spend money, and makes it impossible to incentivize deferred consumption. So, everyone spends money, no limits on it, and we all get to ride the waves between economic booms and economic crashes.

Honest question -- how does the Austrian school reconcile the slow growth of the US economy during and immediately after QE with enormous corporate warchests such as Apple's cash stockpile?

I'll accept that some of this is tax shenanigans to defer US repatriation... but only some of it.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#510

Post by sp527 »

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's a fascinating argument in 'The Lessons of History' that suggests we simply haven't accepted, as a species, that inequality is an inherent characteristic. We are quite purposely endowed with varying capabilities.

One of the essential patterns of history is the vacillation between freedom and equality as societal ideals. A freer society is a more unequal society, and vice versa. It's a fairly paradoxical and nuanced idea because we (particularly Americans) don't tend to think of those principles as existing in tension with one another.

Furthermore, once a civilization reaches a certain threshold, it follows that a great majority of people become unproductive deadweight. Technology accelerates that deterioration.

These aren't terribly inspiring human truths, but I find they do hint at the futility of bemoaning the condition or hoping for emergent and sweeping policy solutions.

Better to empathize where possible, feel eminently thankful for our good fortune, and donate whatever surplus of time and capital we might have to a helpful cause.

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