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To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

nytimes.com

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Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#551

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

sokoloff wrote: post #496
pcrh wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that there's no obvious harm implicit in denying people an inheritance. They did nothing to earn it. There's no inherent right to be bequeathed wealth; that this is evident is that it is nigh on impossible to sue one's parents (or their estate) for not willing their wealth to you (in the US; under Napoleonic law, there is a right to inherit). Many people spend inherited wealth frivolously. Business acumen…

In the other direction though, there is inherent right (IMO). I have the right, in my pursuit of happiness, to make allocations of my lawfully earned money to my current needs, to my retirement savings, to my children's clothing and education, and other such pursuits and accounts as I see fit. There is harm to the donor to abolishing inheritance. I don't want to live in a world where "I farm this land, just as my fat…

Sure but if we're going to live in the land of inheritance then we need to toss the ideas that "anybody can make it" or "I earned this."

>I don't want to live in a world where "I farm this land, just as my father, his father, and his father for 5 generations has done." is not possible.

Why not? A man works hard to support himself but allowing four generations of free-riders seems like a pretty bad idea. It strikes me as a sort of neo-monarchism. In the past we had royalty blessed by god and passed through blood and now we have the economic elite blessed by capital and passed through blood.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#552

Post by nnfy »

yorwba wrote: post #328
nnfy wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Don't you think that inheritance is a pretty bad way of achieving that? After all, traits like intelligence (which probably dominates the ability to use resources efficiently) are only about 50% heritable.

When intelligence is literally the trait which enables development of science and technology, who in their right mind would not spend money on children of intelligent adultst with a 50% success rate? Dont you realize someone on the high end of the IQ curve would be exponentially more beneficial to society if given resources? How much have a couple hundred visionaries shaped our daily lives?

Why dont we spend more federal funds on gifted children? We watch the trainwreck that is our school system as we fail to match pupils in other countries at senior high school level. The issue is, again, not taxation, on the contrary, we are not spending enough where it counts because of the greed of the entitled.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#553

Post by jaggederest »

mikeash wrote: post #536
jaggederest wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So, let's make growth and mobility possible for janitors. The whole point of the article is that it used to be, so we should be able to do it again.

That's exactly what I'm saying, and I'm not sure why people in this thread are misunderstanding it.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#554

Post by conanbatt »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #442
conanbatt wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Actually forcing people to spend their money before death would be really good for the economy (despite you picking illegal activities for the negative connotation.) Well, this is were we clearly disagree. I am very certain that if i knew that i was going to die in 6 months, id be burning all my money into some kickass 6 months with "Burguers" and "Premium Tinder accounts". Consumption vs Investment is a core battl…

I'm no Friedman acolyte. Are you actually opposed to meritocracy?

I think the concept of a meritocracy requires someone to decide what is meritocratic and all goes to hell from there.

Its like saying that you are going to base justice on "protecting good people and punishing bad people".

I can be swayed otherwise if I was shown what a meritocratic system would look like, but most of the times I heard that word it was as a criticism of laissez-fair capitalism that would rarely claim to be meritocratic.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#555

Post by jaggederest »

fiblye wrote: post #501
jaggederest wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think you understand what I'm saying. I'm not saying getting promoted. I'm saying getting better at being a janitor, or rotating between different properties, or learning to do a little light maintenance, or operate a lift or clean windows, or anything to break up the 100% identical routine.

If you're a contracted employee, there's zero investment in you as an employee. You come in, do the task, and leave.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#556

Post by jaggederest »

solidsnack9000 wrote: post #546
jaggederest wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right. I'm saying there's no opportunity, not that there should be a requirement. I'm saying that we're trapping poor people in a world where they are totally powerless and that is fundamentally evil.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#557

Post by mikeash »

jaggederest wrote: post #553
mikeash wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, let's make growth and mobility possible for janitors. The whole point of the article is that it used to be, so we should be able to do it again.

That's exactly what I'm saying, and I'm not sure why people in this thread are misunderstanding it.

I thought you were saying that growth or mobility was inherently impossible for a janitor. Maybe because you describe being a janitor for 40 years as a mistake rather than as a failure of the system. Anyway, if you meant it the other way around then consider my reply some extra support for the idea.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#558

Post by conanbatt »

mikeash wrote: post #541
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".

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

Taxes might or might not destroy wealth, but government surely does.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#559

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

conanbatt wrote: post #202
pcrh wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inheritance tax was the original solution to this. Someone could be as rich as Croesus during their lifetime, but on their death returned the money from whence it came. Their offspring could benefit from a generous endowment of a proportion of this wealth, say 10%-20%. Edit: and no sneaking about with Trusts, either.

Inheritance taxes are always avoidable, and they could also have devastating consequences. Even if you could effectively prevent a single coin getting to the hands of your children, that would mean lavish expenditures, not investment.

You've asserted several times in this thread that there are devastating consequences to the estate tax but never explain what those might be. Care to enlighten?

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#560

Post by conanbatt »

pjmorris wrote: post #513
conanbatt wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats a terrible to reason to have or increase taxes. If you eliminated paper currency altogether in one fell swoop, the next day you would have another one replace it, be it bitcoin, gold or cigarettes.

Something underlies the value of bitcoin (proof of work), gold (rarity, utility, beauty, portability), cigarettes (addiction). Think through what underlies the value of fiat currencies like the US dollar. I'm with the chartalists [0]/Modern Monetary Theorists [1], believing that a government's ability to tax is the anchor for the currency's value. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartalism [1] https://en.wikipedia.…

Have barely scanned these articles, but even if I agreed that tax collection is what gives currency most of their circulatory value, thats no reason to have taxes, let alone making them higher.
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