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Joseph Stiglitz Says American Inequality Didn’t Just Happen

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Re: Joseph Stiglitz Says American Inequality Didn’t Just Happen

#111

Post by ergothus »

sgt101 wrote: post #90
ergothus wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> B is typically viewed as both preferable and less equal to A. Your examples involved totals of 325k and 740k, so yeah, of course the one with more than twice the wealth (and divided among one fewer person) is considered more deisreable. An example to match the inequality we have today would be closer to 1 person earning 900k, 90 people earning 10k, and 9 people earning 100k. The issue isn't just inequality, your po…

The other side of the equation should be rebalanced too - there is every reason to believe that less extreme inequality would lead to greater overall economic activity and wealth (so more money in the pot). So the it should be $740k distributed more evenly vs $325 skewed to the right.

That might be true....if we hadn't spent the previous two generations in a period of extreme wealth creation and far more equitable wealth distribution. I can certainly accept a level of inequality being healthy. I see no evidence for "every reason to believe" - I actually see the opposite: We have evidence that such extreme inequality is not necessary.

Even if the argument was accepted, one would have to prove such inequality truly generated 2x the wealth creation, which is an economically HUGE difference.

Thirdly, comparing 1@900k, 9@100k, 90@10k (1 mill total) vs 100@10k (1/2 mill total) and you see that the difference is only there for those 10 people. Were I one of the 90 (and to be clear, I'm one of the 9 in this model) I'd not give much care for arguments that the extreme difference is worthwhile.

Lastly, In addition to inequality, there's also the issue of mobility (one might defend my example by saying the 90 want the chance to be one of those 10). Social mobility has been dropping for quite a while. If you want to live the American Dream, you have notably better odds outside of America. The chance at social mobility as an incentive is not an effective argument for the point-in-time system of today. A system where it IS an effective argument doesn't have to be radically different, but it does have to be different.

Re: Joseph Stiglitz Says American Inequality Didn’t Just Happen

#112

Post by lajhsdfkl »

pjc50 wrote: post #68
lajhsdfkl wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it should be obvious that you won't get rich unless you sell something... None of those people sold things or seemed to be interested in the process of selling things (except Shockley and that point is moot since the coinventors/creators reaped the rewards). Is it really that surprising to people that you wont become rich unless you convince thousands upon thousands of people to hand you money? What our syste…

> Is it really that surprising to people that you wont become rich unless you convince thousands upon thousands of people to hand you money? > What our system rewards are practical products that provide value that the average working class person would want to spend money on. Hmm. The first statement either tautologous or ignores the importance of inheritance and marriage; the second one ignores the importance of pro…

Thank you for posting an argument against a point I've never made. Hmmm, it's almost as if I didn't state that selling things was the only way to make money.

Re: Joseph Stiglitz Says American Inequality Didn’t Just Happen

#113

Post by refurb »

zzzeek wrote: post #109
walshemj wrote: post #96

But the American revolution being a revolution (as many of the others at the time) was for the benefit of the rich landowners. And the devolved nature of the Republic meaning that reforms that the UK and Europe went through haven't happened has nothing to do with it?

You fail to take into account the New Deal and many decades of progressive taxation, the Civil Rights act, etc. The current inequality crisis only got started for real in the 1980s.

The biggest equalizer was world war 2. The new deal created a few social programs but didn't drastically change wealth distribution.

Re: Joseph Stiglitz Says American Inequality Didn’t Just Happen

#114

Post by gaius »

ItsMe000001 wrote: post #102
gaius wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Future generations have to deal with whatever their situation is at their future time I’m not talking about “generations”, I’m talking about us . The people who enjoyed an easy credit-fuelled boom in the 00’s didn’t fully understand that they were merely spending their retirement money now (or rather, then)

It does not change what I wrote. There is no time machine. What is produced now and the services brought now always are for the people living now. Now, whether society allocates less resources to some people and more to others despite being perfectly capable of producing enough for all is an entirely different question, that's a problem at any given point in time. Such as right now, today, in the by far richest count…

What is produced now and the services brought now always are for the people living now

So farmers should eat their seedcorn now and worry about what to sow only when it’s already the next season?

Re: Joseph Stiglitz Says American Inequality Didn’t Just Happen

#115

Post by pjc50 »

lajhsdfkl wrote: post #112
pjc50 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it really that surprising to people that you wont become rich unless you convince thousands upon thousands of people to hand you money? > What our system rewards are practical products that provide value that the average working class person would want to spend money on. Hmm. The first statement either tautologous or ignores the importance of inheritance and marriage; the second one ignores the importance of pro…

Thank you for posting an argument against a point I've never made. Hmmm, it's almost as if I didn't state that selling things was the only way to make money.

You said "you won't get rich unless you sell something" upthread?

Re: Joseph Stiglitz Says American Inequality Didn’t Just Happen

#116

Post by eecc »

sokoloff wrote: post #99
bilbo0s wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this will sound provincial to the HN crowd since it's very Silicon Valley oriented, but a thought occurred to me while reading this comment. The thought that it's pretty amazing that there are places in the US where, say, 5 million in assets is "middle class". I understand the thinking, it's just that where I come from all of the guys with 5 million in assets are considered to be pretty F'n rich. I don't know…

I certainly didn't mean to imply (nor state) that a net worth of $5MM was middle "middle class", merely that someone with $1MM was technically in the dastardly "millionaires and billionaires", but wasn't someone that confiscatory and redistributive tax policies should heavily target, and that single digit millions wasn't outrageously wealth hoarding. If our family had $5MM net worth and paid off our house, we'd be lo…

Well 120k for doing nothing is a pretty rent I would say... unless you have a nasty disease and no health insurance. (Unlikely)

Re: Joseph Stiglitz Says American Inequality Didn’t Just Happen

#117

Post by sokoloff »

eecc wrote: post #116
sokoloff wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I certainly didn't mean to imply (nor state) that a net worth of $5MM was middle "middle class", merely that someone with $1MM was technically in the dastardly "millionaires and billionaires", but wasn't someone that confiscatory and redistributive tax policies should heavily target, and that single digit millions wasn't outrageously wealth hoarding. If our family had $5MM net worth and paid off our house, we'd be lo…

Well 120k for doing nothing is a pretty rent I would say... unless you have a nasty disease and no health insurance. (Unlikely)

Most commonly, it's $120K/yr in income based on a lifetime of two earners carefully saving (deferring current consumption-this is the "doing") and investing for their self-managed retirement.

Couple A with $3MM in liquid assets and self-funding their retirement is not particularly better off than couple B[0] who has zero liquid assets and $120K/yr in state-funded pensions, yet couple A is the target of multi-millionaire scorn and couple B is just "well, that's why we have unions and pensions..."

[0] Couple B is probably far better off as most state pensions include healthcare coverage.

Re: Joseph Stiglitz Says American Inequality Didn’t Just Happen

#118

Post by pitaj »

specialist wrote: post #87

Also true: Creating the middle class was a deliberate, hard fought policy choice. The USA has done it (massive redistribution of wealth) three times. We're overdue for the fourth cycle. Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich [2003] http://a.co/6rMyoc1 "The Second Gilded Age has been staggering enough in its concentration of wealth to dwarf the original Gilded Age a hundred years earlier. Howev…

The middle class was not created via redistribution of wealth. It came about through wealth creation. It existed long before the New Deal and WWII.

Re: Joseph Stiglitz Says American Inequality Didn’t Just Happen

#119

Post by eecc »

Just how many publicity funded post-doc research programmes could be funded with Zuck’s stash?

When you say someone is worth N billions, that’s all money that’s out of the economic and spending budged loop; trophies to vanity and greed hanging over a fireplace

Re: Joseph Stiglitz Says American Inequality Didn’t Just Happen

#120

Post by pitaj »

pdkl95 wrote: post #106
fallingfrog wrote: post #66

Favorite quote: "Those at the top have learned how to suck out money from the rest in ways that the rest are hardly aware of—that is their true innovation." Rings true to me. That's why labor markets are purely competitive but the markets for products are dominated by price fixing. It's why you get more jail time for stealing a car than cheating your employees or customers to the tune of millions of dollars. And so o…

> markets We regularly hear people concerned about the hypothetical existential threat of a paperclip maximizer AI being invented in the future, yet this concern reliably ignores the AI overlords we already have : paperclip^Wprofit maximizing corporations. The VM for this type of AI has an incredibly slow clock rate and an extreme CISC ISA that often modifies itself in the RTC interrupt. The AIs are not a future thre…

> unregulated capitalism

Ah yes, the unbridled laissez-faire capitalist markets throughout the world. It couldn't possibly be that our markets are more regulated than ever before, or that the very regulations and bureaucracy meant to protect us have caused these failures.

No no no, it's capitalism's fault. It's certainly not that government power has for decades been exploited by the incumbents to kill competition.

The market has failed. Now government regulation is necessary to protect us from the evil rich corporations who want nothing but profit. Rest assured, if we allowed them to operate freely it would result in catastrophe!

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