Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money • Hacker News Board

Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#111

Post by jacoblyles » Sun, Dec 26, 2010, 6:39 AM UTC

redwood wrote: post #49

jacoblyles wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fears of a plutocracy are overblown. You write that "money is power and speech". But people like Meg Whitman and Mitt Romney have tried to buy elections with their personal fortunes and it didn't work (and self-funded candidates do worse, on average, than other candidates). Political inertia, the passions of the mob, and the maladaptive incentives facing legislators and bureaucrats are much more potent forces sha…

Agreed today: but it could be that the wealthy will LEARN to be more controlling. Meg Whitman was a failure: but what if she's backed someone who was a great politician instead. And perhaps this is precisely how much of our politics already works. I don't fear this as much as some because I know that elites have always held undue influence, and that has been generally a good thing, with some bad apples throughout. Sm…

>" Meg Whitman was a failure: but what if she's backed someone who was a great politician instead."

It would be illegal, unfortunately. The amount of money you can spend on your own campaign is unlimited, the amount you can spend on others is capped.

>"It's just that today, with media and technology, the ratios are larger than ever before."

If you mean that more people can exert political influence, then I agree with you. Something like the Tea Party would have been impossible a few decades ago. The internet allows citizens to organize and exert pressure on politicians like never before.

That said, 99.9% of the bureaucracy is unelected. Changing the thin film of politicians layered on top doesn't have as large of an effect on actual policy as we think.

Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#112

Post by _delirium » Sun, Dec 26, 2010, 6:43 AM UTC

clarkm wrote: post #77

gort wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea is that your neighbours are poorer than you thought they were.

Poorer relative to the other neighbors, not poorer in absolute terms.

For housing, your relative slice of a community's wealth is actually a pretty good predictor which bits of land/housing you'll be able to buy / live on, since real-estate prices in a region tend to rise with its GDP.

Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#113

Post by fleitz » Sun, Dec 26, 2010, 6:44 AM UTC

cletus wrote: post #61

jonhendry wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" The reality is just that they're taking less money. Bit of a difference." Can you afford to take a year off from work? It's just taking less money. The fact is that tax cuts aren't free. If they aren't matched by spending cuts, you're just deferring the tax increase until later and incurring deficits in the meantime. So you have to decide what you're going to cut. Which means weighing, say, decent healthcare for ve…

Nice try but no sale. This is the problem: talking about this issue will get you labeled as being anti- (health care for veterans in your case). The budget is blowing out for three reasons: Social Security, health care and the military. Of the three only the last is largely discretionary (being the ongoing cost for campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan). When FDR introduced Social Security there was something like 50 wor…

The budget is blowing out because of simple economics combined with electoral pressure, there are a large number of people who desire increased services and a large number who desire decreased taxes, politians deliver both. This combined with services paid for by A, delivered to B and provided by C are destined to be delivered inefficiently. When you combine all these factors you get a lot of services at high cost for which no one will pay for. The only answer that solves all these issues in the short term is raising debt. However as Keynes aptly put it in the long run we're all dead

Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#114

Post by javert » Sun, Dec 26, 2010, 6:49 AM UTC

natrius wrote: post #79

javert wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it may be that, through the miracle of technology's abundance, we will continue on a track where we all have a high quality of life, but only a smaller and smaller pool of people "own" the production engines. I think the first part of what you said is right: we will continue on a track where we all have a high quality of life, absent a paradigm shift in which the economy crashes like in Weimar Germany. The second par…

We engineers live in an information economy. Many, if not most Americans do not (pardon my lack of statistics). They work in service jobs that will be trivially automatable in our lifetimes. Wealthy people will actually own the means of production in a very meaningful way, and those that aren't equipped by their genes, upbringing, or education to participate in the information economy will be unable to earn an income…

Many, if not most Americans do not (pardon my lack of statistics). They work in service jobs that will be trivially automatable in our lifetimes.

Most jobs that truly are "trivially automatable" have already been automatized. I think it's extremely unlikely that most or nearly most of Americans' jobs can be replaced by computers in our lifetimes, barring something like the Singularity happening (which I'm not holding my breath for).

Wealthy people will actually own the means of production in a very meaningful way

Like I said, this is a Marxist bromide. Fundamentally, the means of production is mens' minds. Marx mistakenly believed that production amounted to physical human labor + expensive heavy-industry capital (like factories), which leaves work requiring intelligence and skill (MOST work) out of the picture, and is inaccurate - and is becoming more and more innacurate.

those that aren't equipped by their genes, upbringing, or education to participate in the information economy will be unable to earn an income.

Everyone is equipped to participate, barring exceptionally low IQ. Human beings are not automatons; they are not determined by the environment or their parents or their genes; they exercise choice.

Secondly, despite the information economy, it is still very much about what you own. If you are capable of making something amazing, you still need savings or investors who will feed and house you while you make those things and pay the still significant costs of infrastructure that many products require.

Big projects typically require capital investment, but so what? That can be gotten if you have a good idea. Also, lots of people that work in service jobs and don't need heavy capital investment do important, creative work. My point here is that, no, it's not "very much about what you own." Most people in America are doing just fine, especially those with an education, and most people in America did not inherit a trust fund or something.

Concentration of wealth matters. That doesn't necessarily mean that government intervention is a good idea.

If it has no implications, then by definition, it doesn't matter. So if you claim that it matters, you should give an implication.

Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#115

Post by jacoblyles » Sun, Dec 26, 2010, 6:50 AM UTC

jonhendry wrote: post #52

jacoblyles wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fears of a plutocracy are overblown. You write that "money is power and speech". But people like Meg Whitman and Mitt Romney have tried to buy elections with their personal fortunes and it didn't work (and self-funded candidates do worse, on average, than other candidates). Political inertia, the passions of the mob, and the maladaptive incentives facing legislators and bureaucrats are much more potent forces sha…

"But people like Meg Whitman and Mitt Romney have tried to buy elections with their personal fortunes and it didn't work (and self-funded candidates do worse, on average, than other candidates)." Seeking office is probably the least effective way for wealth to exercise its power. They do a lot better from behind the scenes, giving smaller sums to many politicians (or threatening to withhold it) to buy influence. Jami…

It sounds like we both agree that the fear of the power of rich individuals with regards to campaign finance is overblown.

People want to believe that there is some conspiracy of rich people screwing things up and if there weren't then everyone would have roses and unicorns. But I don't think that's quite right. Sure, entities that have a lobbying budget have a bigger say in policy than people without. But they get to influence a couple paragraphs in a 2,000 page bill. You add it all together and you get a bad bill that squanders public resources on private interests. The bill making process is broken, but that doesn't mean there is a cadre of rich people acting as puppet master.

The United States government is more like a boat where the captain is drunk and passed out than one highjacked by some nefarious pirate.

Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#116

Post by OpieCunningham » Sun, Dec 26, 2010, 6:55 AM UTC

m_myers wrote: post #100

vacri wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, the good ol' "if you're poor it must be your fault" reasoning, wearing yet another dress today.

More like "if you stay poor it's probably your fault".

That assumes equality of opportunity, which doesn't exist.

Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#117

Post by javert » Sun, Dec 26, 2010, 6:56 AM UTC

z0r wrote: post #91

javert wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it may be that, through the miracle of technology's abundance, we will continue on a track where we all have a high quality of life, but only a smaller and smaller pool of people "own" the production engines. I think the first part of what you said is right: we will continue on a track where we all have a high quality of life, absent a paradigm shift in which the economy crashes like in Weimar Germany. The second par…

Who cares who owns what, as long as it isn't stolen from others, indeed. But there are conflicting opinions about how predatory the current economic system is. How much wealth is stolen? It's not easy to answer unless you are an ideological zealot.

What are you talking about? It's illegal to steal money from other people, barring taxes -- so other than taxes, none of it is stolen.

The only economic system that is not predatory is a free market, which is based on voluntary trade for mutual benefit; any other economic system involves coersion, which is required for something to be predatory. In the current economic system of the civilized world, government holds a monopoly on coercive power, so only the government and those influencing it can be/are predatory.

Among the people who have the most wealth (at least in the US), most of them are prey, not predators, if you agree with my claim about the nature of predation.

If you're going to make accusations, don't hint at them, make them.

Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#118

Post by lotusleaf1987 » Sun, Dec 26, 2010, 7:20 AM UTC

Some of these comments are so bizarrely disconnected from reality trying to talk about how money isn't zero sum, but seriously when the top 20% of the population has 85% wealth there is something fundamentally and critically wrong.

Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#119

Post by Daishiman » Sun, Dec 26, 2010, 7:26 AM UTC

redwood wrote: post #48

javert wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it may be that, through the miracle of technology's abundance, we will continue on a track where we all have a high quality of life, but only a smaller and smaller pool of people "own" the production engines. I think the first part of what you said is right: we will continue on a track where we all have a high quality of life, absent a paradigm shift in which the economy crashes like in Weimar Germany. The second par…

The second part of what you said -- about ownership of the "engines of production" -- is straight out of Marxism, which is, by the way, broken. More and more we live in an information economy; it's not about what you own, but what you know and what you can make. I don't agree: while it's important to know a lot to be valuable today, the people who are in this extreme high echelon of wealth are accumulating wealth thr…

I disagree completely about 'what you can make'. This only applies to a few extremely qualified positions in the workforce.

The large majority of jobs, while they do require a level of intellect, which may be at times large, are nowadays less dependent on individual thought and more about being able to follow processes and procedures, to the point where the skills themselves are mere commodities and original thought is not needed unless we're talking about the higher echelons of a company.

I can't find the NYT article on the matter, but I can describe my experience as a systems administrator: While in theory Unix sysadmins are highly qualified people who should be thinking independently, I left the line of work largely because of the extreme tediousness and lack of independence.

- 90% of the tasks that had to be done were extremely trivial but their automation had already been maximized (adding users in heterogenous systems, altering filesystems, touching files and installing software)

- Most nontrivial errors were deferred to support lines. Decisions on how to proceed with most "important" issues were left up to project executives and people with no technical qualifications.

- Most change issues were managed through tickets which had a list of steps to follow to the implementer. Most of the work there consisted of chasing the proper approvers so that I could do the work for them on time.

What was left was a highly predictable, boring system where all the originality and intelligence was made at the procedure level, and we were expected to follow procedure at all times, even when it was not necessarily the best choice.

Corporations do not generally want an inspired rank-and-file. Intelligent individuals want to question and are willing to make mistakes, and this clashes with organizations that want to automate what cannot be automated at a fundamental level. My skill set was reduced to just knowing the commands and locations to do stuff; creative problem determination was discarding as being dangerous and disrupting, and even though there were a hundred different ways to improve processes, the bureaucracy to do that made it an incovenience that I was not willing to put up with.

Thankfully I left that position for places that did require much deeper through and rewarded creativity, but the reality is that a large chunk of work simply doesn't require that; some jobs have a ceiling as to how productive one can be, and IMO, the current trend of making everything dependent on processes doesn't help in bringing the best out of people.

Think about this on retail jobs and food services: interaction with the customers is scripted at incredibly deep levels with little margin for the person to make his or her best judgement. The problem is that not everyone is in a condition to leave and operate their own establishment or find better positions, so we have a large mass of people whose skills are being purposely underutilized.

Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#120

Post by natrius » Sun, Dec 26, 2010, 7:35 AM UTC

javert wrote: post #114

natrius wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We engineers live in an information economy. Many, if not most Americans do not (pardon my lack of statistics). They work in service jobs that will be trivially automatable in our lifetimes. Wealthy people will actually own the means of production in a very meaningful way, and those that aren't equipped by their genes, upbringing, or education to participate in the information economy will be unable to earn an income…

Many, if not most Americans do not (pardon my lack of statistics). They work in service jobs that will be trivially automatable in our lifetimes. Most jobs that truly are "trivially automatable" have already been automatized. I think it's extremely unlikely that most or nearly most of Americans' jobs can be replaced by computers in our lifetimes, barring something like the Singularity happening (which I'm not holding…

> "Most jobs that truly are "trivially automatable" have already been automatized."

Food service. Retail. Automobile repair. Lower-end healthcare jobs. Any job that doesn't require creativity can be automated.

Do you doubt that a McDonalds with zero human employees will exist in our lifetimes? When farming and transportation are automated as well and Big Macs are produced with zero human involvement, will you agree that "owning the means of production" is quite possible?

> "...which leaves work requiring intelligence and skill (MOST work) out of the picture..."

You are very, very wrong. Here are the 15 most common jobs according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/06/the-most-popular-jo...

3.2% of Americans work in retail sales alone. Those jobs are going away. I count two jobs in that list, elementary teachers and general managers, that will be difficult to automate. What careers do you see this huge group of people switching to?

Please stop bringing Marx into this. It's basically an ad hominem argument. You're arguing against him instead of me.

> "Everyone is equipped to participate, barring exceptionally low IQ."

This is extremely wishful thinking with no evidence to back it up. The incentives for training oneself for a job in the information economy is huge today, yet only half of Americans have completed any college coursework.[1] If all of the people doing menial tasks today are capable of doing more intellectual work, why are they ignoring the incentives that exist today to get them to do so?

> "Big projects typically require capital investment, but so what? That can be gotten if you have a good idea."

Your arguments are skewed by your familiarity with the software industry. The businesses normal people start don't get venture capital. They get small business loans on their personal credit. If you have no credit or bad credit because you're poor, you'll never start a business. Concentration of wealth creates more people who are relatively poor.

> "Most people in America are doing just fine, especially those with an education, and most people in America did not inherit a trust fund or something."

I agree. I've been talking about the future, not now.

> "If it has no implications, then by definition, it doesn't matter. So if you claim that it matters, you should give an implication."

Implications:

1) An almost-permanent upper class.

2) An almost-permanent lower class.

3) (1) and (2) lead to civil unrest.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_U...