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To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

nytimes.com

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Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#541

Post by mikeash »

conanbatt wrote: post #200
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…

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

That's a terrible analogy. Taxes don't destroy wealth.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#542

Post by mikeash »

humanrebar wrote: post #372
gok wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wealth tax is a good idea that’s very hard to implement effectively. Many countries have tried it only to give up on it (Germany, Sweden). France has a comprehensive wealth tax but it raises less than 2% of total tax reciepts, suggesting it’s not doing much. It’s very difficult to prevent the wealthy from finding ways to hide wealth.

This is part of the reason some want to tax consumption more aggressively. "Wealth" that isn't used is really just a collection of expensive large numbers. Sooner or later, when that wealth is used, it can be taxed as consumption and/or real property.

Unless "use" includes stock purchases and political donations, you'll just hurt the poor even more. The problem with wealth concentration isn't buying houses and cars, it's buying power.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#543

Post by austenallred »

ScottBurson wrote: post #524

I think one of the most important issues raised by this article is toward the end: > Ms. Ramos, the Apple janitor, lives down the road in San Jose. She pays $2,300 monthly for a two-bedroom apartment where she and her four children live. Before overtime and taxes, her $16.60 an hour works out to $34,520 a year. Her rent alone is $27,600 a year, leaving less than $600 a month once the rent is paid. $2300 a month for a…

It's almost as if the problem in the Bay Area isn't so much wages as much as cost of living

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#544

Post by ericd »

sokoloff wrote: post #498
ericd wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Low risk fixed income doesn't currently keep up with inflation.

Yes, it does, at least in the case of TIPS: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/tips.asp

Actually, almost by definition TIPS don't, because you're taxed on the inflation adjustment.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#545

Post by sp527 »

mikeash wrote: post #538
sp527 wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 nu…

I'm sure that inequality is inescapable, but it's pretty obvious just by looking at a few decades of history that current levels of equality are absolutely not a given.

In this respect, I think you should look at history as a function of the maximum potential global throughput of wealth transfer as opposed to a function of time. The past few decades look more like several millennia on that scale.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#546

Post by solidsnack9000 »

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.

It is actually entirely fine, from the perspective of getting the job done, if someone is a janitor for forty years. There is no reason that being useful should net out to a bad life.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#547

Post by fzeroracer »

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…

Part of the issue seems to be that in America people simply don't understand inequality. I've had a fair amount of conversations with coworkers that simply didn't 'get' being poor or living in poverty because they never had that experience. At the same time they had a strong belief that they earned everything and that we live in a meritocracy.

As you said it essentially comes down to 'they should've made better choices and got a better career path!' while having everything handed to them at birth. It's the sort of thing that really made it apparent how different my upbringing was from my coworkers because I experienced that sort of deep poverty.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#548

Post by dionidium »

kevinchen wrote: post #535
dionidium wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should move . There are janitorial jobs all over the country, most of them in areas where you could rent a nice two-bedroom for 1/3 that cost. There is just absolutely no reason to stay in the SFBA with prospects like that. I wish more people realized this. They'd be much happier somewhere else.

There are many reasons why someone can't simply move. Maybe they're caring for parents who live in the area. Perhaps they want their kids to attend well-funded Bay Area schools, so the kids can have a shot at earning more money. It could be they can't save up enough money to make the jump. The list could go on and on... my point is, moving is hard, especially so for those with little disposable income.

Yes, of course! Been there! But a lot of stuff will be easier once/if they pull it off.

Pop culture insists on a very silly perception of the non-coastal parts of the country. There's still a lot of opportunity elsewhere -- at drastically lower costs of living.

Moving isn't easy, but everything else in their lives will be easier once they do. One impediment to this, as I see it, is that the culture is telling them the opposite of this. And that's actively harmful to their long-term prospects.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#549

Post by jessaustin »

ux-app wrote: post #529
gremlinsinc wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why Trump is arming police force with military grade weapons--to protect the elite should the lower classes rise up.... That and he's using racism to divide and conquer us--make us hate and fight ourselves poor/middle class vs poor/middleclass -- if we're too busy infighting we'll never join forces and rise up against the elites...

the police force is part of the proletariat. Those guns aren't going to be pointing the direction Trump wants for too long.

This is why the institutional racism is so important. Shooting innocent people is difficult if one hasn't already alienated himself from those people. If he has, it's easier.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#550

Post by conanbatt »

chromatic wrote: post #530
conanbatt wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure austrian school purist would tell you that a storm is coming quickly to correct that insanity, if it was one.

Thus Apple hoards cash because it believes the bubble will burst? Is that the Austrian explanation for Apple's behavior? (Still an honest question. I've never understood this about the Austrian school.)

Im no expert on Austrian school, but what little I read is that they have an organic view of economics, and that anything that deviates the natural flow will be corrected eventually. If the money is too cheap, it will eventually become really expensive to correct itself, and Apple might be preparing for that. Or it might be causing it.

To be fair, Austrian school of economics is more occultism than anything else in the field, while Chicago School Economics (Milton Friedman&co) have more accepted models and economic ideas. The 'neoliberal' model as far as I understand can't really explain corporate cash hoarding. The situation today is very unique: historically cheapness of money could easily provoke inflation, which would promptly push any cash hoarder to spend.

If the U.S. had a small spike in inflation the whole thing could change quickly.

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