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Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

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Re: Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

#81

Post by mark_l_watson »

gentschev wrote: post #16

We all agree the article's dumb and pretty poorly written. Many lower income people pay no income taxes at all. I think that's rightly so, but it seems silly to write about a lack of redistribution in the US. In fact, the top 50% of households in income paid 97% of income taxes in 2008. What is troubling, and what the author ignores, is the changing distribution of returns in our economy. There's no point in trying t…

Tax all financial transactions: a very small tax, but just enough to keep trading systems that do many transactions quickly become less attractive. I believe that this type of high speed trading does not generate value for society. I am thinking of something similar to proposals that would make people pay $0.000001 per email to make spamming none cost effective.

Re: Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

#82

Post by lusis »

mkramlich wrote: post #80
lusis wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wealth isn't a fixed pool of stuff. Me having more wealth isn't taking away from someone else.

Not strictly true. In real life, sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn't. It depends on the particulars.

True. Obviously if we both work for the same company, there's a fixed set of money they pay for our two salaries (generally speaking). Should I perform better, My salary might go up at the expense of yours going down but alternately your salary could stay the same while mine goes up.

Re: Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

#83

Post by lusis »

henrikschroder wrote: post #70
chairface wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nor is that what henrikschroder is claiming. I understand him to be saying that the majority of Americans have declining incomes, adjusted for inflation, over some recent period of time. Could be true, but I'd like to see numbers.

Exactly, I've even seen some articles here on HN that were about this, but a quick googling seems to say that the jury is kinda out on that one. If you look at wikipedia the incomes for the lower percentiles are pretty flat, but not really declining. shrug

Yes, I apologize. There are a few things that raise my hackles when it comes to discussions of "income inequality" and "rich people".

1) The presumption that wealth is gained at the expense of someone else. 2) That wealth is always given and not earned. 3) That being "rich" is the result of some sort of criminal behavior. 4) Phrases like "doesn't need that much money" or "has too much money" and the like. 5) The idea that a job belongs to anyone other than the person providing it.

You didn't claim any of those things per se.

Re: Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

#84

Post by charlieconroy »

This article is fodder for those 1000 Thoreau is talking about -- "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."

Not once did the author submit forth anything of value. I kept thinking I wish I wrote this article and instead of complaining about the troubles focus on WHY? WHY is this happening? I've always come to the same answer: give kids the opportunity to find what they love (or who they are) through education.

I dislike the PIE analogy! Anytime they mention pie and those greedy few it gives the wrong idea about wealth generation.

I think a growing trend of more educated peoples will fix this inequality over time -- wealth distribution will be more sparse.

Re: Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

#85

Post by cstross »

hga wrote: post #74
cstross wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that UK healthcare costs are lower than US healthcare expenditure in part because there's no parasitic insurance industry . (Or rather, there is, but it's tiny: private healthcare accounts for <10% of UK healthcare expenditure). Instead, there's a single payer that funds everything and doesn't bother with assessing individual eligibility for treatment except in edge cases (foreign visitors, or rare and horren…

Are you asserting that the US system spends more effort "assessing individual eligibility for treatment" than the U.K.'s? Well, I suppose so, the UK's NICE ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Institute_for_Health_a... ), much like our CMS ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centers_for_Medicare_and_Medica... ), establishes the impersonal guidelines, but in the US only those over 64 or on Medicaid are impersonally boun…

the NHS has got to have some level of sovereign immunity.

Does it? (I don't know of anyone suing NICE, but they've certainly brought lawsuits against GP practices and hospital trusts, and won substantial damages for malpractice and/or judgements requiring the provision of treatment that was at first denied on various grounds.)

Meanwhile, the NHS bodies that deliver healthcare -- be they PCTs or fundholding GP practices -- don't have a profit incentive for excluding people with pre-existing medical conditions from receiving treatment. (They may have a cost control incentive to for denying anomalously expensive treatments, but that kicks in at the opposite end of the supply-and-demand chain: and it's defended by reference to metrics like quality-adjusted life-years per unit expenditure rather than the requirement to show a profit.)

Finally, the "loser pays" rule has been greatly undermined by the widespread adoption of conditional-fee lawsuits for civil damages in the UK over the past decade.

Re: Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

#86

Post by danssig »

moultano wrote: post #5

The more divided a society becomes in terms of wealth, the more reluctant the wealthy become to spend money on common needs. The rich don’t need to rely on government for parks or education or medical care or personal security—they can buy all these things for themselves. In the process, they become more distant from ordinary people, losing whatever empathy they may once have had. They also worry about strong governm…

To be fair, I think the US itself is a pretty good citation.
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