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To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

nytimes.com

621–630 of 694 posts

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was just using the parent comment verbiage. Perhaps I should have quoted it. I meant a mistake by society , i.e. it's a mistake to put people in a dead-end job, functionally ever.

Gotcha. Maybe it could have been worded better but I understand what you mean now, so it's all good.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#622
post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How do you kill the elite if they have advanced weaponry and can monitor all communications? What happens if they have no use for servants or consumers by virtue of having automated all their production needs? This scenario may sound extreme but it's certainly not implausible.

Start new religion. Few sermons, overturning few tables in a temple and provoking violent retribution. Chance that elite will reorient it's aspirations from militarism into monasticism and the evil empire will be a toast.

Organize a small band of hardened cadres and wait for your opportunity. Major war not going as well as planned or other crisis, few million frustrated citizens with arms and your small cadre have a chance to take over largest country on Earth.

Combine both - thirty years of exhausting war plus new religion and you can take over everything from Afghanistan to Morocco in just few years.

Refuse violence and keep repeating your arguments despite oppression - it might take shorter then you think - like British leaving India or Soviet Union leaving Central Europe and Central Asia.

Just few examples of impossible and unthinkable happening.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As long as there are old, ugly men who want to have sex with young, beautiful women no matter the cost to either party, economic exploitation will remain at the heart of civilization, stunting our growth to the point of deformity.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxing capital itself, rent-generating assets, and inheritance. Providing for a living working wage. Providing for labour unionisation or equivalent functions. Curtailing the capability of the wealthy to seek self-serving concessions from legislatures. Supporting a vibrant programme of public schools and works. Pretty much Adam Smith's prescription in 1776.

Dang that doesn't sound true at all. Smith arguing for unionization? Also by classical economics, you cant afford to give less than living wage because then you would kill the people that work for it.

Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter VIII, generally. Smith doesn'tquite say "allow unions", but he makes all the arguments in favour:

As soon as land becomes private property, the landlord demands a share of almost all the produce which7 the labourer can either raise, or collect from it. His rent makes the first deduction from the produce of the labour which is employed upon land....*

[I]n every part of Europe, twenty workmen serve under a master for one that is independent; and the wages of labour are everywhere understood to be, what they usually are, when the labourer is one person, and the owner of the stock which employs him another....The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little as possible. The former are disposed to combine in order to raise, the latter in order to lower the wages of labour.

It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must ... have the advantage in the dispute, and force the other into a compliance with their terms. The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorizes, or at least does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work; but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes the masters can hold out much longer.

We rarely hear ... of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines ... that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate. To violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbours and equals. We seldom, indeed, hear of this combination, because it is the usual, and one may say, the natural state of things, which nobody ever hears of.

Masters, too, sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this rate. These are always conducted with the utmost silence and secrecy, till the moment of execution, and when the workmen yield, as they sometimes do, without resistance, though severely felt by them, they are never heard of by other people. Such combinations, however, are frequently resisted by a contrary defensive combination of the workmen ... But whether their combinations be offensive or defensive, they are always abundantly heard of. In order to bring the point to a speedy decision, they have always recourse to the loudest clamour, and sometimes to the most shocking violence and outrage. They are desperate, and act with the folly and extravagance of desperate men, who must either starve, or frighten their masters into an immediate compliance with their demands. The masters upon these occasions are just as clamorous upon the other side, and never cease to call aloud for the assistance of the civil magistrate, and the rigorous execution of those laws which have been enacted with so much severity against the combinations of servants, labourers, and journeymen....

A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation.

https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_...

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxing capital itself, rent-generating assets, and inheritance. Providing for a living working wage. Providing for labour unionisation or equivalent functions. Curtailing the capability of the wealthy to seek self-serving concessions from legislatures. Supporting a vibrant programme of public schools and works. Pretty much Adam Smith's prescription in 1776.

Dang that doesn't sound true at all. Smith arguing for unionization? Also by classical economics, you cant afford to give less than living wage because then you would kill the people that work for it.

Regards wages below subsistence, I strongly recommend you read Smith's account of China. Also WoN 1.8.

So long as there's a surplus population, employers will not want for labour.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Parking money in index/hedge funds is not "investing it back in the economy". Of course it is. What do you think those funds invest in? Piles of cash? > Bank lending is driven by demand, not deposits. If that were true, banks wouldn't need deposits and certainly wouldn't offer free checking. They're not charities.

Buying a stock on the secondary stock market is not investing in the economy. Buy that logic, high-frequency traders are investing in the economy. > If that were true, banks wouldn't need deposits That doesn't follow from what I said. Banks are required by law to back their loans up with reserves. So when they don't have enough reserves, they borrow on the interbank lending market or from the central bank. http://www…

> Buy that logic, high-frequency traders are investing..

HF traders don't hold for long, so why are they equivalent?

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#627

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not proposing anything. Just suggesting that there are more factors than income that affect 'inequality'. An article that focusses on inequality due to low income should perhaps pick an example with a more typical family situation.

Rewind 50 years, and it would be highly typical for a janitor to support a wife and 3 kids on HIS salary - families were larger, and mothers didn't work. The fact that a working single mom can't support her four kids today is indicative in and of itself.

Would that janitor have many vacations too? And decent college funds? Healthcare?

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#628
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…

> The real problem though isn't wealth inequality, it's income inequality. I disagree. Wealth provides financial security to an even greater degree than high current income. Wealth provides the means to move your family to a place where they will be safe and thrive. Wealth provides a means to start the next generation with a leg up, financially, socially, and academically. High current income can go away next year fo…

You might be interested in an essay I wrote in 2009 which mentions a wealth tax (perhaps with the government insuring and protecting declared wealth): "Basic income from a millionaire's perspective?" http://www.pdfernhout.net/basic-income-from-a-millionaires-p...

We can of course quibble about the details... Mostly just trying to shift the way of thinking and talking about a UBI...

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#629
post #606
post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Lots of pre-1917 Russians weren't fond of socialism or any form of wealth redistribution. They have lost all their wealth and their lives as well. Some levels of inequality are healthy and motivating, extreme social inequality with large groups of population feeling left behind by the social system is undermining stability and a recipe for revolution.

When poor have nothing to eat, they eat the rich.

Or, I'd modify that to say they eat the upper middle class, because the truly rich just bolt at the first sign of trouble.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the pay for "janitorial work" has simply decreased. Author's point is not about decrease in pay but about the social changes that came about as a result of prioritizing the outsourcing of non-core-competency work to contractors, which increased competition and had the effect of reducing effective pay. In other words, income inequality has increased as contract work has increased, and the reason why is because a lar…

That's the theory of the journalist, yes. The NYT does not actually show that though, they just state it/assume it. If you read through the comments, one of them points out a perhaps less popular explanation - Ms Ramos apparently does not speak English. Large quantities of low skill immigration will inevitably make life tougher for people like her. But that would not be an explanation that'd be acceptable to the Time…

> That's the theory of the journalist, yes. The NYT does not actually show that though, they just state it/assume it.

Well what do you expect? Journalists write news articles, not peer-reviewed studies that obey the scientific method.

A lack of English skills would certainly contribute to social isolation within an American company, so if anything, it helps drive home the point that social isolation exacerbates income inequality. I don't think anybody is making the argument that Apple bears responsibility for giving Ms. Ramos English fluency, and it's part of the reason why there aren't easy solutions. But you can't even think about solving the problem until you can start to think about its root causes.

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