Wage inequality is just a labor aristocracy, divide the masses tactic. We should also be looking at non-wage income i.e. dividends, interest, and capital gains. The untold story: non-wage income in the US is increasing as a share of total income, and the richest of the rich pay the lowest in taxes
U.S. Income Inequality Hits a New Threshold
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Re: U.S. Income Inequality Hits a New Threshold
#72What gets me is the job holders in the upper 20% who actively support a system that benefits the non-working (or don't need to work) top 1%.
I make a pretty high wage compared to a cashier at a store, but my interests align with them a lot more than a Walton. Yet my peers are convinced that because they have the trappings of the petite bourgeoisie and a well funded 401k that they have more in common with a Koch.
I'm not familiar with a society that experienced such high inequality and did not have very disruptive upheaval afterwards. One would think the wealthy would advocate for universal health care, education and safety nets as a small price to pay for their own self preservation. On the other hand, they haven't had much to fear from the lower classes for a long time now.
Re: U.S. Income Inequality Hits a New Threshold
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
>And an increasing share of wages going to the top income brackets isn't in itself cause for concern, only if the members of the top income brackets are largely static does it matter (since it means income is going to a small group of individuals, rather than a broader group of individuals who are swapped in and out of the top income groups). So a society in which there's competition to be among a handful of feudal l…
Uh...the gilded age resulted in massive industrial and income expansion, the rise of the US onto the world stage financially and the lowering of maternal death rates, raising of life expectancy and a general post-industrial boom. Wages and average per capita savings doubled. It was also associated with the immigration of tens of millions of impoverished people, which is part of the reason for the massive inequality n…
The same old arguments.
"Inequality is totally OK"
"But if many people have total food insecurity and bad health outcomes, that's bad right?"
"Well hey but in the long run people got wealthier overall than if we redistributed wealth and no one would have an incentive to work like a dog"
"That would have happened anyway because it's not capitalism but science and technology that drives wealth forward"
"Look, Capitalism works far better, the USSR didn't have a choice consumer devices or food while the West did"
"Fine but the USSR actually lifted more people out of poverty faster and its GDP grew faster than the USA, plus they endured two world wars on their own soil and still were able to bounce back and expand ... and China just lifted the most people out of poverty ever, wages increased 25x over 20 years, all through central planning and building entire cities"
"Yeah but China is a hugely authoritarian state and is not free. Plus they adopted some capitalist principles and that's why they are so successful. Look at Venezuela and North Korea. Socialism does't work."
"Well China is quite centrally planned as was the Interstate Highway system and other infra projects. And all those were a success. As for Venezuela did you forget the sanctions and oil prices drop? And North Korea has had sanctions for decades just because they are communists."
"Redistributing just destroys all incentive to work."
"We are automating everything anyway. We will need to redistribute money to a growing unemployed / underemployed class."
"Universal health care results in death panels and long waits. The government dictates how much doctors can charge and this stifles innovation --"
"-- and the USA is an outlier in how much we spend on healthcare, because there is no collective bargaining the prices down"
"Yeah and also no death panels. Look at the wait times in other countries--"
"As opposed to the infinite wait times in the USA for those who have 'access' but can't afford to even do a basic preventative checkup? And even if we remove those, the wait times in the USA are atrocious too. And other countries have more doctors per capita and more hospital beds too. Medicare gets better prices than almost all smaller insurers."
"We get BETTER doctors and beds. The USA leads the world in medical innovation precisely because providers are not squeezed like they are by Amazon, Apple and other monopolies, so it attracts innovation from around the world and peopel vote with their feet"
"Well maybe if you abolished drug patents innovatio could come from all over the world instead of the chilling effects we have today. Open source beats closed in the long run and Open source Drugs would beat big pharma in the long tail whose plight isn't even worth pursuing for these guys. Newton said he stood on the shoulders of giants, why is medicine different than science?"
Ayn Rand: "Stop robbing a man of the product of his own mind. I DID build that!"
"But living in the 21st century who do we compensate for all the advances throughout human history that preceded us? Can't we accept that this is a free gift and redistribute the wealth?"
"Socialist!"
"You support Billionaires!"
"No I don't, billionaires are the product of government favors and I want to shrink government"
"Then abolish patents"
"No that is intellectual property"
Etc :)
Re: U.S. Income Inequality Hits a New Threshold
#74What would you rather have? 1) Perfect income equality (1:1 poorest:richest), but everyone is starving and most don't live out of childhood 2) Perfect income inequality (1:~infinity poorest:richest)), but the poorest in the world have a much higher standard of living and that standard is going up 3-5% a year. The point I'm driving at here is that income equality, by itself, isn't automatically desirable if the cost i…
Fallacy of the excluded middle much? We can (and should!) aim for a situation between the two you have described. And in any case, your proposed model isn't working: everyone else has had stagnant real wages since the 1970s.
And income inequality actually is a problem even in and of itself, even without reference to absolute living standards. There's an increasing body of research that higher inequality in a society lowers happiness and increases resentment, ultimately undermining social cohesion and trust in government.
Re: U.S. Income Inequality Hits a New Threshold
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
>So a society in which there's competition to be among a handful of feudal lords, but where everyone else suffers tenuous and desperation is unconcerning? How so? To be fair, he did say it's concerning if the top income brackets are static, so as long as we shuffle out our feudal lords from time to time, we should be okay.
yes, but he just made that idea up, and it doesn't make a lot of sense, also probably never happens.
He certainly didn't just make that idea up. You can find plenty of research on it by googling "turnover in the 1%".
For example:
http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/07/news/economy/top-1/index.htm...
Re: U.S. Income Inequality Hits a New Threshold
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
The same could be said for the racial-based statistics, since race might be tied to cultural opinions which could impact how many hours a week or years in a lifetime someone works.
Well, the difference between race and gender is that most women have children, which take up a lot of time and require taking at least some time away from work. If the difference is due to cultural issues then maybe it makes sense to worry about the differences and try to address them, but if the difference just comes down to women have children so they work less that's a less compelling reason to try to equalize men…
You don’t need to know the reason why someone isn’t working or is working less to have better claims for or against discrimination. I’d just like to see something that says that a certain demographic who work a certain number of hours a week differs from a different demographic who works the same number of hours a week.
Re: U.S. Income Inequality Hits a New Threshold
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
>And an increasing share of wages going to the top income brackets isn't in itself cause for concern, only if the members of the top income brackets are largely static does it matter (since it means income is going to a small group of individuals, rather than a broader group of individuals who are swapped in and out of the top income groups). So a society in which there's competition to be among a handful of feudal l…
"where everyone else suffers tenuous and desperation is unconcerning?" Capitalism in the US has created more wealth and lifted more people out of poverty than any other nation in the history of mankind. Your statement applies to third world countries... not the United States. Oh, we're also the most free and most prosperous nation ever. That helps.
work a job making 12/hr and tell me how uplifted you feel. that's the reality for a lot of people in this country.
Re: U.S. Income Inequality Hits a New Threshold
#78The statistics for gender are misleading. If you're just comparing the average wage of men and women then of course women are going to earn less: they work less than men on average. If you control for age and whether women have children the gap shrinks a lot (in some areas it reverses). And an increasing share of wages going to the top income brackets isn't in itself cause for concern, only if the members of the top…
>And an increasing share of wages going to the top income brackets isn't in itself cause for concern, only if the members of the top income brackets are largely static does it matter (since it means income is going to a small group of individuals, rather than a broader group of individuals who are swapped in and out of the top income groups). Actually I have to disagree, a bifurcation in income is reason to worry in…
The problem with the “inequality” framing is that your victory condition is dragging everyone down into the crap systems. Engineering greater total suffering so that you don’t have to be indignant at others suffering less, is not exactly noble.
We could end education and healthcare inequality today by shutting down all the good universities and banning all good health insurance. But that’s backwards.
Re: U.S. Income Inequality Hits a New Threshold
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Uh...the gilded age resulted in massive industrial and income expansion, the rise of the US onto the world stage financially and the lowering of maternal death rates, raising of life expectancy and a general post-industrial boom. Wages and average per capita savings doubled. It was also associated with the immigration of tens of millions of impoverished people, which is part of the reason for the massive inequality n…
The same old arguments. "Inequality is totally OK" "But if many people have total food insecurity and bad health outcomes, that's bad right?" "Well hey but in the long run people got wealthier overall than if we redistributed wealth and no one would have an incentive to work like a dog" "That would have happened anyway because it's not capitalism but science and technology that drives wealth forward" "Look, Capitalis…
>> "Well maybe if you abolished drug patents innovatio could come from all over the world instead of the chilling effects we have today. Open source beats closed in the long run and Open source Drugs would beat big pharma in the long tail whose plight isn't even worth pursuing for these guys. Newton said he stood on the shoulders of giants, why is medicine different than science?"
Literally no new drugs would be produced if there was no guarantee of sole distributor for some X number of years. What country has "open source" drugs?
Re: U.S. Income Inequality Hits a New Threshold
#80The statistics for gender are misleading. If you're just comparing the average wage of men and women then of course women are going to earn less: they work less than men on average. If you control for age and whether women have children the gap shrinks a lot (in some areas it reverses). And an increasing share of wages going to the top income brackets isn't in itself cause for concern, only if the members of the top…
It's very fascinating to me how the vast majority of time someone is saying "the statistics for gender are misleading" it appears to be a man saying it. > If you control for age and whether women have children the gap shrinks a lot (in some areas it reverses). Citation needed. > And an increasing share of wages going to the top income brackets isn't in itself cause for concern Citation needed.
If you only ever hear men mention this, maybe you surround yourself with not very intelligent and/or not very honest women.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/christina-hoff-sommers/wage-g...
> One of the best studies on the wage gap was released in 2009 by the U.S. Department of Labor. It examined more than 50 peer-reviewed papers and concluded that the 23-cent wage gap “may be almost entirely the result of individual choices being made by both male and female workers.” In the past, women’s groups have ignored or explained away such findings.