91–100 of 302 posts
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> Please, point to me one example of this blue collar utopia. Much of the "oil states" are like that. > What about CPAs, lawyers, and their must be some sort of corporate hierarchy wherever these people are employed right? (1) In other words, you don't actually know anything about these biz,so you're hoping that what you picked up watching "The Office" is reasonably close. It isn't. (2) Not really. How many lawyers d…
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Technological progress should cause increasing economic inequality, because the bottom end of the scale is firmly anchored at zero (someone taking a vacation), while technology gives the top end ever more powerful levers. So the interesting question is not why economic inequality is increasing, but why for a few decades in the mid twentieth century the trend was reversed. There are probably several factors at work he…
Is this view at odds with mainstream economists?
I believe the mainstream view is that technological progress is a tide that should naturally lift all boats.
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I'm not talking about any crappy dirt pile anywhere, I'm talking about owning my own place to live in a community where there are jobs and 1960s technology. I could move to Nebraska but it is unlikely I could find a job that would afford me a residence. This isn't about social norms, this is about whether the computer revolution has been worth it for the great majority of Americans. A lot of Americans would kill righ…
No, I'm pointing out that just owning land isn't enough. If you want to idealize the 1960's, no skin off my nose, although you're probably white and male. And you weren't alive in the 60's. The only reason to put "owning land" on a pedestal is because you can grow food on it. There's no other reason to care about land ownership. But you don't want to be a caveman and actually grub in the dirt - no, you want to be an…
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>What does one person's income have to do with anyone else If I make $10/yr I could be the richest man on earth or the poorest. It kind of depends on what everybody else makes too.
Right, but this sort of begs the question: why does it matter whether you're the richest or poorest? Isn't the relevant question the extent to which that $10 worth of wealth satisfies your own needs, irrespective what anyone else may or may not have?
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That is not true. They vastly overstate the decline in wages, due to the rise of more single person households. See: http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=a7jenngfc4um7_&#... Individual wages have risen steadily since 1910, with no gaps. The household income chart is a misleading chart.
Does this take into account inflation? It could be that they are actually decreasing with inflation. I don't think it's like that but I'm just curious.
Technological progress should cause increasing economic inequality, because the bottom end of the scale is firmly anchored at zero (someone taking a vacation), while technology gives the top end ever more powerful levers. So the interesting question is not why economic inequality is increasing, but why for a few decades in the mid twentieth century the trend was reversed. There are probably several factors at work he…
I suspect you're the exception rather than the rule, Paul. Checking the numbers released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the percentage of self-employed workers in the economy has FALLEN from 10 percent of the workforce in 1968 to 8.5 percent today.[1] Fewer people are working for themselves, although you're right that the 1980s seem to be when things started to change. [1] http://www.bls.gov/webapps/leg…
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I'll give up 100% of my silicon-based technology if in exchange I can afford to own some land. Easy choice. You can't possibly be serious. Why aren't you already in Nebraska, then? There's plenty of land in the United States, most of it dirt cheap (being dirt). If you're not already from the country, you probably don't know why we all left the country. (Myself included.)
I'm not talking about any crappy dirt pile anywhere, I'm talking about owning my own place to live in a community where there are jobs and 1960s technology. I could move to Nebraska but it is unlikely I could find a job that would afford me a residence. This isn't about social norms, this is about whether the computer revolution has been worth it for the great majority of Americans. A lot of Americans would kill righ…
Technological progress should cause increasing economic inequality, because the bottom end of the scale is firmly anchored at zero (someone taking a vacation), while technology gives the top end ever more powerful levers. So the interesting question is not why economic inequality is increasing, but why for a few decades in the mid twentieth century the trend was reversed. There are probably several factors at work he…
This is so true, and I also think the fabric of our society will be strained as the gap grows. Especially when the offspring of these highly productive people begin inheriting enormous sums. Maybe a larger estate tax is a good counterbalance.
Technological progress should cause increasing economic inequality, because the bottom end of the scale is firmly anchored at zero (someone taking a vacation), while technology gives the top end ever more powerful levers. So the interesting question is not why economic inequality is increasing, but why for a few decades in the mid twentieth century the trend was reversed. There are probably several factors at work he…
Man, what fantasy world do you live in? Large corporations decrease inequality? [citation needed] Ambitious people started to lose interest? I can't even dignify that with a [citation needed]. Ambitious people have what to do with anything on a national scale? Ambitious people somehow caused, or were party to, the decimation of the middle class, which somehow never once gets mentioned by the actual economists and pol…
Large corporations decrease inequality?
Yes. All (most) software developers in a large corporation are paid the same wage. Well, there are persons that can make millions not working in a company (ie. Indie game developer, iphone app developer...). But when you work for a large corporation, you might take 20% more than the average developer, but not 20X times more.
So large corporations increase equality among developers. Boss get paid 10 times more than a dev. gets? Well, a boss is not a developer, and you are doing the wrong comparison here. Compare the boss in this corporation to another boss in another large corporation. They are getting paid in the same range, no? That's equality.
When you are your own boss, and your friends is his own boss; you can become as unequal as you want. So, small businesses and startups promotes inequalities.
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>I don't think there is much debate that societies should try to mitigate that. You haven't been reading HN then, and you haven't met the Tea Party. There are a lot of people here who believe that poor people deserve their lot and should wallow in it. In my opinion society needs to use tax dollars to ensure a basic standard of living for all citizens. This idea (the welfare state) is deeply unpopular in contemporary…
Just because I might disagree with your methods of equalizing income, doesn't mean I "believe poor people deserve their lot and should wallow in it." You've turned a political disagreement about the methods to accomplish some desirable goal do so into a moral argument. You've decided that if I think there is a better way to elevate the poor than your way, I must want them to stay poor and thus must be evil. Why do yo…
There are SOME free market ideologues who believe that unrestrained corporations will enrich the poor, however I believe they are in the minority. You may be one of them.
The majority of libertarians believe that individual property rights are sacrosanct and that it is wrong to forcibly redistribute wealth to prevent poverty, hunger, suffering. This is the argument of the Tea Party to my knowledge. Am I wrong?
Right now the excess wealth is in the hands of the rich, especially the top one-tenth-of-one-percent (0.1%). Society is presented with a choice: (a) we can take it from them and redistribute it to the bottom 80%, or (b) we can let them keep it and allow people to suffer.
(a) is a moral statement, that the poverty of the poor trumps the property rights of the rich.
(b) is a moral statement, that the property rights of the rich trump the poverty of the poor.
Almost all proposed actions in this situation amount to either (a) or (b). The wealth of society can increase over time, but at any single point in time it is a fixed quantity whose distribution is intimately related to whether poor people exist or not.