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Economic Inequality: It’s Far Worse Than You Think

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Economic Inequality: It’s Far Worse Than You Think

#91

Post by RodericDay »

dandare wrote: post #78
dbpatterson wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So where did their wealth come from? Most likely, they made it through 'business' - which usually means, through benefiting from the work of other, significantly less paid workers. The fact that our economic and political system permits this (and to the extent that it does) is not some natural phenomenon.

Workers are paid significantly less because that is the value of their work on the free market. Anyway, the important thing is whether they have equal opportunity to leave their shitty jobs and start business themselves and earn more through their genius (or loose their savings in free competition on the market). Our economic and political system (mixed market capitalism) may not be natural phenomenon (what is?) but…

> majority of voters prefer it to other systems

The whole point of the article is that if "the majority of voters" were informed, they'd vote differently.

Re: Economic Inequality: It’s Far Worse Than You Think

#93

Post by RodericDay »

totalrobe wrote: post #88
RodericDay wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you believe in equality of opportunity, parents should not be the main source of provision for children. Every time someone mentions "who will provide for your children if you don't leave an inheritance behind?" I immediately have to ask, "what about all the children whose parents are not able to leave them an inheritance (ie: most of them)?" It seems that it is you who have not really thought it out. Here's Adam…

Equality of Opportunity as defined legally has nothing to do with taking care of the children. 1) n. a right supposedly guaranteed by both federal and many state laws against any discrimination in employment, education, housing or credit rights due to a person's race, color, sex (or sometimes sexual orientation), religion, national origin, age or handicap. Most human cultures are built on the nuclear family.. especia…

>> Most human cultures are built on the nuclear family

>> Adam Smith lived in the clouds

>> Family structures of one married couple and their children were present in Western Europe and New England in the 17th century, influenced by church and theocratic governments.[5] With the emergence of proto-industrialization and early capitalism, the nuclear family became a financially viable social unit.[6] The term nuclear family first appeared in the early twentieth century. [...] The concept that a narrowly defined nuclear family is central to stability in modern society has been promoted by familialists who are social conservatives in the United States, and has been challenged as historically and sociologically inadequate to describe the complexity of actual family relations.[8]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_family

Is this some kind of joke?

Re: Economic Inequality: It’s Far Worse Than You Think

#94

Post by gkop »

warfangle wrote: post #75
Retric wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of things can temporarily boost your income by consolidating several years’ income into one big payment. Sell a flower shop you built up over 40 years for 150k and you are clearly not doing that well. Gamboling can be a net loss over someone’s lifetime and give them one very good year. Even just swapping jobs and seeing getting a few months of saved vacation in one big chunk. The point is for the 88% of American…

Wait, where can you save vacation and receive that time as paid as one big chunk?

California state law.

Re: Economic Inequality: It’s Far Worse Than You Think

#95

Post by happyscrappy »

metaphorm wrote: post #61
happyscrappy wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are certainly in the richest 1 percent worldwide.

irrelevant. the discussion here is about wealth and equality within the United States.

You could not peacefully sustain such a disparity in wealth if the citizens were not living comfortably.

Re: Economic Inequality: It’s Far Worse Than You Think

#96

Post by crusso »

strommen wrote: post #43

Wow, the "ideal" wealth distribution based on what people want is simply nuts. If top quintile owns 35% and bottom two own 25% (perhaps 15% and 10%, respectively)...that means the richest would own 3.5x more than the poorest, on average. (If you think this makes any sense at all, consider the median American has a net worth of about $45K. Having 3.5x that amount wouldn't allow you to retire, or even own a 3BR house i…

That's the problem I had with the article as well. You might as well ask the average person what his ideal LDL to HDL cholesterol ratio would be.

I'm not prepared to accept the importance of the intuition of the average person in society on wealth distribution any more than I am to accept it on belief in god or taste in music.

Re: Economic Inequality: It’s Far Worse Than You Think

#97

Post by vasilipupkin »

At least some inequality is the result of our choices. Meaning, Google's new CFO is going to make 70 mln. But, how many people would like to be CFOs? CFOs work crazy hours and have insane amount of responsibility - many people wouldn't want that tradeoff. So, should we somehow normalize inequality numbers for this phenomenon ?

Re: Economic Inequality: It’s Far Worse Than You Think

#98

Post by nwah1 »

dandare wrote: post #46
anon1385 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The fact that someone is rich does not mean he took anything from you Of course it does. That's the definition of private property - if they claim to own it then you can't freely use it anymore. The creation of private property involves taking land that nobody owned and anybody could use, and using force to prevent anybody except the owner using it.

Wealth can be created, economy is not a zero sum game. Also you are confusing private property with land, 99% of wealth these days is created without the use of land.

Locations, the electromagnetic spectrum, minerals... these are all still very important, and all of these are land in an economics sense. If land isn't important anymore, I'll happily accept any donations of Silicon Valley land titles.

Re: Economic Inequality: It’s Far Worse Than You Think

#99

Post by ryandrake »

dandare wrote: post #4

The fact that someone is rich does not mean he took anything from you, no matter how poor you are. Statements like "If poor people knew how rich rich people are, there would be riots in the streets" are not only stupid but also dangerous.

Gentrification as a counter-argument

If my income remained the same, and suddenly all of my neighbors doubled their incomes, I would indeed be economically worse off. Everything would start costing more: Housing, groceries, health care, education--anything priced by a market, because "what the market will bear" has increased.

While they're not technically "taking anything from you", when someone else gets richer, you indeed get poorer.

Re: Economic Inequality: It’s Far Worse Than You Think

#100

Post by icebraining »

ryandrake wrote: post #85
fullwedgewhale wrote: post #11

The point of the article is that the meritocratic system in this country is broken. In part this is because we have systematically transferred wealth out of the bottom to the top. For example, focusing on tax cuts that benefit high income individuals while cutting support for public colleges. These two things are usually done at different times with tax cuts usually to stimulate the economy and spending cuts coming t…

I'd build on that to point out that the systematic transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top is not something that "we're doing", but simply the natural product of capitalism. It doesn't require an evil mustache twirler sitting in a dimly list room scheming about how he's going to systematically conduct a massive wealth transfer. Wealth transfer is the natural result of any system that rewards the deployment of c…

Wealth transfer is the natural result of any system that rewards the deployment of capital with more capital.

That's not what capitalism does, otherwise the Webvan investors would be massively wealthy.

It rewards effective deployment of capital with more capital. And it often rewards ineffective deployment of capital with less of it. So you can have massive transfers of wealth from "side to side", not necessarily from bottom to top.

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