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Too Hot for TED: Income Inequality

nationaljournal.com

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Re: Too Hot for TED: Income Inequality

#201

Post by anthonyb »

Daniel_Newby wrote: post #196
anthonyb wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Decent food. There are two main effects at work: If all you can afford is ramen/bread/fast food, your body makes you overeat to get enough other nutrients (eg. vitamin C, B). The second is that your insulin goes crazy with all those simple carbs and sugars (carbs are cheap, unlike protein, fish and vegetables, and get metabolised to glucose) so you get massive blood sugar swings. The low side of those makes you eat m…

Complex carbohydrates are cheap. Fat is cheap. Eating simple carbohydrates is not an economic choice. Vitamins pills and vegetables are reasonably cheap. And anyway if deficiencies caused obesity, the rate would drop off dramatically over some threshold income. Lotteries matter because that's where poor Americans spend about 10% of their income. Taxing the rich to destruction will not fix that.

They're not as cheap though, are they? Here are a couple of articles on poverty, obesity and cheap calories that you might find interesting:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/14/obesity-...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/not-having-enoug...

10% of a poor person's income turns out to be about $25/week according to this article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2123448/Poorest-peop.... Hardly earth shattering or likely to lift them out of poverty if they somehow manage to save it.

Re: Too Hot for TED: Income Inequality

#202

Post by dmpk2k »

toyg wrote: post #73
freshhawk wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are seeing this through European eyes. This is the kind of thing that gets you yelled at, threatened and told you're the "kind of [people] ruining america" if you talk about it in the US. It's not controversial among people who are educated in the subject, but among the general amerian public it's incredibly controversial.

The problem is that the feedback loop between US and Europe ends up being very unbalanced: American thinkers are hugely influential in Europe, but European ones get disqualified in the US almost by default because they're "socialists". This is a problem for us Europeans as much as for you.

I was shocked how hard it is to find any books about ordoliberalism in North America, even though it was a driver of economic thought and policy in Germany for decades.

The only book I found was at a major university's library, in German.

It was a "WTF" moment.

Re: Too Hot for TED: Income Inequality

#203

Post by ry0ohki »

driax wrote: post #154
ry0ohki wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why the size of inequality matters. If I make $20,000 and Rich guy makes $2,000,000, how does me making $20,000 and him making $200,000,000 million make any difference?

Because the money he spends raises the price of goods etc. Therefore your 20,000 becomes less money. This is easy too see in expensive cities. The same middle-class person would have to demand more money to live at the same standards as he/she would have elsewhere, simply because richness have driven up the prices.

So inflation is the primary concern?

Re: Too Hot for TED: Income Inequality

#204

Post by swah »

rayiner wrote: post #116
webXL wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you solve this fairness issue: "the US already gets 70% of all its taxes from the top 10%" The rich are getting richer not because they pay too little in taxes, they're getting richer because they rig capitalism with the help of their buddies in D.C.. Level the playing field of commerce, and you'll start to see some redistribution of wealth.

You're assuming that "capitalism" doesn't naturally lead to the rich getting richer. There is absolutely no evidence on which to base the idea that capitalism doesn't naturally lead to massive wealth inequality.

Wealth creation as well...

Re: Too Hot for TED: Income Inequality

#205

Post by [deleted] »

smsm42 wrote: post #192
mikecane wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really, do you tend to see everything in the form of "take" instead of in the form of "give"?

Because when people give voluntarily, there's no state involved. People can and do give without any need for the state to intervene. When the state intervenes, it always takes. It can not give anything without forcefully taking it from somebody first.

[deleted]

Re: Too Hot for TED: Income Inequality

#206

Post by [deleted] »

horsehead wrote: post #8

I hate the term "the 1%" it's just a bunch of malarkey. Whether you got your money through savvy investing or hard work, it doesn't matter. What you earn, you should KEEP. I detest handouts, especially when someone tries to give them to me. Each person should get according to their work (or their ability to work. The disabled are the only ones remotely eligible for handouts, IMO). Now I'll just watch as my karma plum…

[deleted]

Re: Too Hot for TED: Income Inequality

#207

Post by davidhollander »

muhfuhkuh wrote: post #107
webXL wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to pay TARP back in full when you can borrow at the Fed at 0% and lend at 5%. Favor. Education performance has stagnated ever since the DoEducation was created. Who benefited? Not me or my kids! And the fact that we have third-rail (untouchable) programs in this country is NOT a strong argument in favor of more "investments".

"Education performance has stagnated ever since the DoEducation was created. Who benefited? Not me or my kids!" Education performance lagging in the US is not the fault of it being federated. The shining education systems by competency in Math, Science, and Reading comprehension (S. Korea, Finland, Canada, New Zeland, and Ireland) all have federated education systems. FWIW, though, I love the idea of the Finnish 7-16…

Countries with smaller population, smaller geographical area, or more homogenous culture are at some point more comparable to individual states in the US than the United States as a whole. "Federated" isn't very meaningful relative to other metrics when making international comparisons.

For the sake of presenting the alternative perspective advocating the abolishment of involuntary schooling, I would recommend reading the following piece by Cevin Soling: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmarshallcrotty/2012/02/27/w...

Re: Too Hot for TED: Income Inequality

#208

Post by crusso »

Ygg2 wrote: post #195
crusso wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, doesn't anyone see the correlation between increased government power (revenue/spending) and an increase in the income inequality gap? Look at a graph showing govt spending as a percentage of gdp vs the inequality gap. Secondly, assuming that the "inequality gap" is necessarily a bad thing, which I don't think anyone has shown... Why do you assume that higher taxation will decrease the income inequality…

- Secondly, assuming that the "inequality gap" is necessarily a bad thing, which I don't think anyone has shown Actually they have. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-05/osu-iil050812... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ7LzE3u7Bw In face increasing Gini coefficient for 0.01 increases mortality in state for 122% after 12 years. Yes, it is a bad thing in almost all recorded metrics. - First of all, doesn't any…

> Actually they have.

I found the youtube to be more compelling than the OSU study. The OSU study contradicted lots of other studies that found nothing conclusive for nearly the same hypothesis. The author of the study managed to fit a curve that he was apparently looking for by allowing for enormous flexibility on the time axis. That's like finding pictures in clouds. You can see what you want to see if you look at something from enough angles. To be meaningful, you would need to apply those findings to lots of other data sets to see if you're just seeing what you want to see or if there's a real likelihood of a pattern. Science isn't finding one occurrence of something that you were looking for. Science is predicting where and how you'll find something and then having others find you're right over and over.

On the Youtube lecture: The statistics seem to show correlation, but causation? Is the inequality the cause of a lack of trust? Or is it the other way around? Furthermore, I saw lots of other correlations in the data they showed. Graph homogeneity of the population's ethnical background vs trust. Look at the states and countries that scored high trust. At a glance, they seemed to be the highly ethnically/religiously/culturally unified ones.

> Nope. I think revenue spending isn't really good metric of government power

Okay, what would you suggest... Watts?

> I'd wager that there is quite a bit of income inequality if your gov. revenue is low but they spend a lot of money.

Wait, your conjecture agrees with me. Spending is high and inequality is high. The gov. revenue is almost a non-factor in terms of government power. For the part of the curve where the currency hasn't been completely devalued because of over-borrowing and printing money, the amount the government spends is all that your really need to describe government power. Lack of revenue to back it up is just a ginormous credit card bill that no one seems to remember is out there.

Re: Too Hot for TED: Income Inequality

#209

Post by grn »

ClHans wrote: post #149
gadders wrote: post #18

Inequality is a stupid measure. What matters is absolute poverty. If I have a comfortable standard of living, what do I care if Bill Gates has a million times more money than me?

You, as an individual, may not care. Unfortunately, historical evidence and social science evidence suggests that (bearing in mind that you as an individual may not care) when income inequality grows too great, other parts of society begin to suffer and eventually break down. This even affects things like the average health outcomes for the people living in the unequal the society. There's a strong correlation that i…

I'd say it's the other way round: the greater the suffering of a society (poor health outcomes, higher crime etc.) the greater the inequality. Your ability to protect yourself grows with your income. Therefore those who earn less are more likely to loose which widens inequality.

Re: Too Hot for TED: Income Inequality

#210

Post by neuro »

Americans tax payers are a trampoline for globalizing these corporations through subsidizing their R&D, bailing them out and soldiering their resources abroad. These corporations have global consumers now, the health of the American consumer isn’t a priority.
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