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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

#61

Post by will_brown »

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…

The irony is the right holds Reagan as a shining example of fiscal conservatism.

However, Reagan ultimately tripled the debt while in office. The right loved saying Obama spent more than all other presidents before him combined (which he did, which Bush did...but Reagan the model of fiscal conservatism spent 2x as all presidents who served before him).

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

#62

Post by dragonwriter »

virmundi wrote: post #60
java_script wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Who's dang and why are you self-censoring? Are you afraid of getting banned from HN? I don't think the site can remove your comments. If you are banned, I'd take it as a badge of honor.

> Who's dang and why are you self-censoring?

dang is the HN admin, lead moderator, or whatever the official title is.

> If you are banned, I'd take it as a badge of honor.

Some people would rather continue to participate then accumulate honor badges.

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

#63

Post by GabrielBen »

simias wrote: post #36
csallen wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But Karl Marx was wrong, really wrong. About almost everything he modeled. Labor theory value did not stand academic or practical scrutiny. The reserve army idea is frankly, plain off the mark.

He contributed a great challenge to economics with his ideas, having to work towards rebuttal and debunking of his simple, yet appealing models.

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

#64

Post by virmundi »

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.

In places like the West, the poor have air conditioning, refrigerators, plumbing, and large high-def screen TVs. While the people on the top have a lot of money, they can't spend it. The people on the bottom are living better then the richest African (who is the richest man in absolute dollars) ever. When we toss in promiscuity of both sexes, better than the king.

People down vote, but where am I wrong? The West's biggest problem right now is having TOO MUCH FOOD! Think about that. We are so fat that we're dying. Not starving. FAT!

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

#65

Post by virmundi »

dragonwriter wrote: post #62
virmundi wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's dang and why are you self-censoring? Are you afraid of getting banned from HN? I don't think the site can remove your comments. If you are banned, I'd take it as a badge of honor.

> Who's dang and why are you self-censoring? dang is the HN admin, lead moderator, or whatever the official title is. > If you are banned, I'd take it as a badge of honor. Some people would rather continue to participate then accumulate honor badges.

It's a waste of time contributing. Everyone has their little bubbles. I do this while my RL agent learns. Once I'm out of ML, probably out of HN.

#OrangeManBad

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

#66

Post by malandrew »

munk-a wrote: post #50
darkerside wrote: post #34

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)

I don't really understand why this scenario is worded this way, it seems like World 2 where everybody has .5x is just worse due to World 2 getting the shaft. Here's a setup: * World 1, where everybody has x except one person has 100x * World 2, where everybody has 1.2x I think World 2 pretty clearly wins but this is a bit of a strawman to begin with. I'd personally rather live in a world where the poor have x and the…

Well you actually do end up with 0.5x instead of 1.2x because in World 2 you have eliminated the profit motive that drives progress forward. Basically you forego all progress that would have happened with the opportunity to profit by creating and inventing things and then making those things faster, cheaper and better.

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

#67

Post by roenxi »

jnellis wrote: post #37
Just_Smith wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-int…

As ideas go this is a bit of a non-starter. If you can't tell what your congressperson is voting for, how do you know if they are representing you? When you vote, how would it be even theoretically possible to make an informed decision of who you want as a representative?

The only axis of discrimination between politicians would be charisma - which is no predictor at all of what someone will actually do.

EDIT It might be even easier for handlers to corrupt the system, because they could make it known that if a bill gets through, they'll be generous with their largess to everyone - and there will be know way to verify which politicians are the ones who are being bought off.

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

#68

Post by beat »

jnellis wrote: post #37
Just_Smith wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-int…

I don't see how we can make Congress vote anonymously, and I'm pretty sure that's not good public policy.

And in general, I don't like attributing these things to a single cause of "corruption". It's too neat, too easy.

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

#69

Post by munk-a »

malandrew wrote: post #57
brandonmenc wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Other than war or complete societal upheaval, what can actually be done to solve the problem? A wealth (not income) tax.

That interferes with individual liberty. Robert Nozick did a great job illustrating this with his Wilt Chamberlain example: The font is terrible, but this is the shortest explanation of it that I could find easily: http://faculty.seattlecentral.edu/jhubert/wiltchamberlainarg...

I find the denial of a healthy existence to those impoverished to be much more an interference in individual liberty than the denial of people's ability to hand over money for a particular service.

I also think this example may be valid for some discussions but in the modern world where the acquisition of wealth is denied from a large portion of the population this example fails to provide value.

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

#70

Post by rukittenme »

Reganomics, the end of Breton Woods, the end of the "Gold Standard", "Stagflation", "Peak Oil", population growth, immigration, greying population, healthcare, welfare, tax cuts, globalization, capitalism, communism.

Oh don't mind me, just pulling excuses out of my ass. I love posts like these and I especially love their graphs. Less so for the (little) content they contain. More so for people's reactions to the content. Its confirmation bias bait all the way down!

I don't mean to be so negative and critical. I'm just tired of people trying to explain the state of the world from a single graph!

Income inequality could be increasing for different reasons at different times. It might not be increasing at all (depending on how you define income)!

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Let's stop drooling over graphs and have an actual conversation about the "problem". Who am I richer than and why? Who is richer than me and why? Maybe if we answer these questions we can solve income inequality (assuming we still want to solve it all).

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