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A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality

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Re: A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality

#31

Post by jeffdavis »

FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #7
fake-name wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best option is probably hackernews's boogeyman - government regulation. The issue is it has to be in place before money command structures have a chance to develop, so it's not something you can really implement now . Realistically, it may not be fixable without fixing capitalism, which no one has figured out how to do.

Capitalism is working quite as intended right now. The goal is to move more and more money to the capitalists, and that goal is increasingly faster being reached.

Not sure that all the money is moving to those who own the most capital/machines. It seems to be moving to those that have the most data.

Mark Zuckerburg has very little of what I'd call "capital" that actually produces stuff, yet he makes tons of money.

Re: A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality

#32

Post by [deleted] »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #2

What's the best solution to this - if wealthy and high-income individuals get more power via political lobbying, they can then gain more wealth and higher incomes, gaining even more lobbying power. They can also flood the media with advertising money and propagandist messaging to convince voters to care more about less impactful issues. It feels like an endless cycle to me. Other than war or complete societal upheava…

[deleted]

Re: A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality

#33

Post by 0181109 »

jjoonathan wrote: post #9
WhompingWindows wrote: post #2

What's the best solution to this - if wealthy and high-income individuals get more power via political lobbying, they can then gain more wealth and higher incomes, gaining even more lobbying power. They can also flood the media with advertising money and propagandist messaging to convince voters to care more about less impactful issues. It feels like an endless cycle to me. Other than war or complete societal upheava…

I'm still amazed at how effectively we have collectively shunned thought along these lines by turning the founding father of the relevant branch of economical philosophy into a real life he-who-shall-not-be-named. Anyone who wants to talk about these problems either has to either re-invent the wheel or mention the unmentionable name and doom themselves to immediate dismissal as a kook.

Probably because the implementations tried have failed so badly. If people distanced themselves from the hammer and sickle, communism could possibly be given another chance but in the meantime it looks like people showing that icon either don't know about history or they have explained it away quite callously.

Re: A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality

#34

Post by darkerside »

Is there an inherent problem with income inequality? Would you rather live in:

* World 1, where everybody has x, except one person has 100x * World 2, where everybody has .5x and is thus totally equal

(I realize assets and income are not equal, but I think the point stands)

Re: A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality

#35

Post by csa »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #20
digitalmaster wrote: post #8

So looks like the 80s is when things start going south (increased income inequality) so I looked up who was president during that time, then looked at their wiki page to see their economic policy and found this gem of a quote: "Soon after taking office, Reagan began implementing sweeping new political and economic initiatives. His supply-side economic policies, dubbed "Reaganomics", advocated tax rate reduction to sp…

It was sold to the middle class as "Trickle down economics". Basically, if you make the rich richer, your pie gets bigger too. Sadly, people bought that line.

I’m not sure why you are getting downvotes, but that was precisely the line that was used.

The economics and finance professors I took classes with had a good laugh at that idea.

Re: A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality

#36

Post by simias »

csallen wrote: post #14
jjoonathan wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still amazed at how effectively we have collectively shunned thought along these lines by turning the founding father of the relevant branch of economical philosophy into a real life he-who-shall-not-be-named. Anyone who wants to talk about these problems either has to either re-invent the wheel or mention the unmentionable name and doom themselves to immediate dismissal as a kook.

Who are you talking about?

Karl Marx. And I see the point the parent is making, although that's probably more of an issue in the USA than in Europe for instance. And I do agree that it's a shame because the writings of Marx are extremely interesting and deserve to be studied and discussed even if you don't believe in socialism and communism, it's really about economy in general first and foremost. Dismissing this important ground-breaking work because of what people did in its name decades after Marx's death is pretty strange. You could argue that he was wrong in his "praxis" but the diagnostic is very thorough, methodical and unfortunately a lot of it is very much relevant.

And let's not even talk about whatever rebranding of Marx is used as a strawman these days, like this "cultural marxism" dog whistle I hear 10 times a day and I can't be bothered to figure out what that's even supposed to mean anymore. Actually I just tried to search the term and the first result was an entry on "urban dictionary" which goes like:

>An umbrella term for identity politics, affirmative action, feminism, radical LGBT activism, Islam apologetics, white privilege, political correctness... Basically the SJW ideology.

I think I missed that part in Das Kapital...

Re: A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality

#37

Post by jnellis »

Just_Smith wrote: post #28
digitalmaster wrote: post #8

So looks like the 80s is when things start going south (increased income inequality) so I looked up who was president during that time, then looked at their wiki page to see their economic policy and found this gem of a quote: "Soon after taking office, Reagan began implementing sweeping new political and economic initiatives. His supply-side economic policies, dubbed "Reaganomics", advocated tax rate reduction to sp…

It looks as if it began mid-70s. You can see the red and blue start diverging then, though the line stroke width causes some overlap. The heavy divergence begins in the 80's, as you pointed out. I think confirming your theory would be as simple as comparing the policies of "Reaganomics" with the policies that emerged in the 70's that caused the initial bump shown on the chart.

There's a fellow that's discovered a piece of legislation in 1970 that was the turning point for all this lobbying taking over congress so heavily. The lynch pin of his argument is that we have to remove lobbyists from the actual physical galleries in congress and preserve the anonymous nature of how each congressman votes so they can vote their conscious and not how their lobbyist handlers choose. It's a counter-intuitive idea because everyone is already sold on wanting to know how their congressmen voted.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=cardboard+box+r...

Re: A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality

#38

Post by fixermark »

jjoonathan wrote: post #9
WhompingWindows wrote: post #2

What's the best solution to this - if wealthy and high-income individuals get more power via political lobbying, they can then gain more wealth and higher incomes, gaining even more lobbying power. They can also flood the media with advertising money and propagandist messaging to convince voters to care more about less impactful issues. It feels like an endless cycle to me. Other than war or complete societal upheava…

I'm still amazed at how effectively we have collectively shunned thought along these lines by turning the founding father of the relevant branch of economical philosophy into a real life he-who-shall-not-be-named. Anyone who wants to talk about these problems either has to either re-invent the wheel or mention the unmentionable name and doom themselves to immediate dismissal as a kook.

In fairness, attempts have been made to translate the revolution part of his ideas into functional policy at least twice now and both events have included massive violence (and one has followed up that massive violence with a general mismanagement of public resources to the detriment of the "unconnected," not unlike the pain inflicted upon them by the previous ruling class).

At this point, the burden of proof is on the theory to show merit. It's a bit like Extreme Programming in that regard---looks great on paper, but how many times does it get to fall short of its promises before people stop blaming the implementers for "holding it wrong" and start talking seriously about the flaws in the originating theory?

Perhaps also like XP, however, pieces of it do seem worthwhile and are bearing fruit in the nations that have adopted them.

Re: A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality

#39

Post by danharaj »

0181109 wrote: post #33
jjoonathan wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still amazed at how effectively we have collectively shunned thought along these lines by turning the founding father of the relevant branch of economical philosophy into a real life he-who-shall-not-be-named. Anyone who wants to talk about these problems either has to either re-invent the wheel or mention the unmentionable name and doom themselves to immediate dismissal as a kook.

Probably because the implementations tried have failed so badly. If people distanced themselves from the hammer and sickle, communism could possibly be given another chance but in the meantime it looks like people showing that icon either don't know about history or they have explained it away quite callously.

I mean, Marx specifically thought that communism could not be achieved by jumping from a pre-industrialized economy and skipping capitalism.

Re: A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality

#40

Post by csa »

java_script wrote: post #15
csallen wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who are you talking about?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx_Brothers e: Oh shit I just realized who I'm replying to. Serious answer time. Socialism will be a disruptive new paradigm for start-ups and other businesses where (following the idea of a meritocracy) workers, and not stuffy old capitalists, each own an equal number of shares at their place of work. And even more innovative in structure than Zappos and Valve, it allows for capital i…

I liked your original answer. It got the point across while being absolutely fucking hilarious.
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