Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Do the Rich Capture All the Gains from Economic Growth?

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 311 posts

Re: Do the Rich Capture All the Gains from Economic Growth?

#101

Post by mediaobs1 »

JAlexoid wrote: post #46
roymurdock wrote: post #37

The author Russ Roberts runs the EconTalk podcast and is a well respected economist/journalist/thinker in the field, definitely worth reading for a fair assessment. Here he presents a few studies that go against general economic consensus popularized mainly by Piketty in "Capital in the 21st century" and through papers/writing by Krugman, Saez, Zucman, Stiglitz, etc. that most of the economic gains in the past 100 ye…

He's a fellow at Stanford School of Economics and he's a typical academic... Which is to say, that his articles must be taken independently. His opinions on other issues are not discussed, so it's easy to build a strawman about his other opinions. That also means that we must point out the fact that this article is only a small subset of data, that really tells us only what the data was collected on.

Roberts is a fellow at the rightwing Hoover Institution, which like most rightwing think tanks gets significant funding from rightwing billionaires who have a particular ideological agenda.

Of all the academic types at rightwing think tanks like AEI, Heritage, Cato, Russ Roberts is probably the best. I like him. But this issue - wealth inequality- is core to rightwing interests.

Re: Do the Rich Capture All the Gains from Economic Growth?

#102

Post by amelius »

moduspol wrote: post #61
TangoTrotFox wrote: post #41

On top of the studies within the article, there are other really interesting papers. Some time back I was searching information on the chiseling out of the middle class, and I found this paper [1]. And the paper does describe that chiseling out. In 1979 the middle class controlled 46% of all income, and the upper/rich classes controlled 30%. Today (as of 2014) the rich and upper class control 63% with the middle clas…

> I don't understand the media motivations in choosing to omit these crucial, and greatly encouraging, data when writing on this topic. Surely you do understand them, though, right?

Question: would the numbers change if the media had a different stance? In what direction and by how much?

Re: Do the Rich Capture All the Gains from Economic Growth?

#103

Post by [deleted] »

corey_moncure wrote: post #76
old-gregg wrote: post #47

The gains have been looted by the healthcare providers. It is not uncommon for health coverage to exceed $2k/mo for a typical family of 4, that's $24k/year. The median US household income is $59k, so the total comp is $83k/year. See the gains now? This absurd amount is not reflected in a paycheck and one may think "my job pays for it" but that is still your money.

This is correct. I dropped my "Affordable" Care Act plan in January when BCBS quoted a monthly principal increase from $696 to over $2200 for the Silver level plan my family of four had been enrolled in. We are young and healthy. $2200 is monthly rent on a luxury condominium in Honolulu. I asked the agent on the phone if he had children, and if he could afford such a plan. He replied that he could not.

[deleted]

Re: Do the Rich Capture All the Gains from Economic Growth?

#104

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

old-gregg wrote: post #47

The gains have been looted by the healthcare providers. It is not uncommon for health coverage to exceed $2k/mo for a typical family of 4, that's $24k/year. The median US household income is $59k, so the total comp is $83k/year. See the gains now? This absurd amount is not reflected in a paycheck and one may think "my job pays for it" but that is still your money.

So do we see that in other countries without outrageous healthcare premiums? I don't know, but I'm sure there are examples of countries where a company won't be paying for that and causing one's wage to stagnate because of it.

Re: Do the Rich Capture All the Gains from Economic Growth?

#105

Post by bdamm »

hopefulengineer wrote: post #89
TheBeardKing wrote: post #31

This bullshit article tries to paint a rosy picture of the economy by dismissing proportional median income gains between quintiles and instead argues that absolute income gains of individuals over time is enough evidence to suggest everything is actually great. This chart [1] seems to be the crux of their argument, as in - Surprise! Over 30 years poor people gained an average of almost $30k in income! I sure fucking…

It's supply and demand 101, illegal immigration combined with offshoring lowers wages and increases profit margin for the wealthy. Low wage jobs are taken by illegal immigrants, forcing US citizens to take on debt to go to college, where wages are also lowered because there are now thousands of college grads desperate to pay off their debt that can't be eliminated through bankruptcy due to congress being lobbied. A w…

Eh.. it's not that obvious to me. H1B is a result of America having widespread problems producing well educated Americans.

Re: Do the Rich Capture All the Gains from Economic Growth?

#106

Post by ryandrake »

esotericn wrote: post #58

The problem with most economic analysis is that adjustments are generally based on arbitrary metrics like PPP or inflation. If a child (or couple) in Britain earns three times as much, in "real" terms, that their parent (or parents) did at that stage of life, they will probably have to live in a smaller house, further from the center of town, with a worse commute. Pretty much the biggest QoL improvements knocked out.…

Exactly. I probably earn 2X what my father made, inflation adjusted, when he was my age. Buuuut, I pay 5X what he paid for housing, 20X what he paid for healthcare, ∞X what he paid in student loans, have a commute 6X longer than his, live in a house 75% the size of his (he also had two houses at my age, by the way), work 1.25X his hours and have a crappy 401k rather than a nice defined-benefit pension. Comparing just salary misses the story.

Re: Do the Rich Capture All the Gains from Economic Growth?

#107

Post by eiaoa »

weberc2 wrote: post #69
rhacker wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the thing that is at odds with this attitude is that more and more prevalently "The people who receive employment from the steel mill." don't actually benefit from 500% growth. Instead they might have 6 additional months of job security with little to no raises. And that job security isn't a favor it's because that's the amount of time those workers are needed to get through whatever contract and not any furt…

It's not "shitting on" anyone; it's how (efficient) economics works. You don't earn more money unless you're producing more value. If a steel mill increases its output by way of some new automation, the accounting department and janitorial staff are unlikely to see a wage increase. The folks on the assembly line are also unlikely to see a wage increase because they're not more productive. The people who will be princ…

> It's not "shitting on" anyone; it's how (efficient) economics works. You don't earn more money unless you're producing more value. If a steel mill increases its output by way of some new automation, the accounting department and janitorial staff are unlikely to see a wage increase. The folks on the assembly line are also unlikely to see a wage increase because they're not more productive. The people who will be principally rewarded are the people who developed (including investing) the automation.

In your example, all the steel mill owners have to do to make more money is to passively own the steel mill while their employees work to improve it. If "efficient economics" works by compensating the people who create value, why are the passive owners getting most of the compensation? They're not creating any value. By your logic they probably should get less than the janitors and assembly line workers, who at least create some value.

Re: Do the Rich Capture All the Gains from Economic Growth?

#108

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #97
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I make less than I did as a junior engineer 18 years ago after accounting for inflation and COLA. Assuming my accumulated experience is worth nothing or I guess it apparently has negative value. Not all ships rise.

Was that large junior wage due to the 2000's cyber boom and was later readjusted to the new reality? Or has your wage actually remained stagnant / rose slower than inflation since that time?

I started at $55K in 2000. That was in line with normal and not part of the dotcom boom.

Re: Do the Rich Capture All the Gains from Economic Growth?

#109

Post by hopefulengineer »

bdamm wrote: post #105
hopefulengineer wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's supply and demand 101, illegal immigration combined with offshoring lowers wages and increases profit margin for the wealthy. Low wage jobs are taken by illegal immigrants, forcing US citizens to take on debt to go to college, where wages are also lowered because there are now thousands of college grads desperate to pay off their debt that can't be eliminated through bankruptcy due to congress being lobbied. A w…

Eh.. it's not that obvious to me. H1B is a result of America having widespread problems producing well educated Americans.

My point is that we should be offering citizenship to these people instead of H1B, which is glorified indentured servitude that only benefits giant corporations. Not to mention the blatant fraud in hiring practices companies use to justify more, ie: nobody in the US has 15 years of experience with ReactJS, tensorflow, or another technology that hasn't even existed that long, so we need more visas.

If it was actually about getting talent and not driving down wages we would be giving these people citizenship.

Re: Do the Rich Capture All the Gains from Economic Growth?

#110

Post by maxxxxx »

weberc2 wrote: post #69
rhacker wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the thing that is at odds with this attitude is that more and more prevalently "The people who receive employment from the steel mill." don't actually benefit from 500% growth. Instead they might have 6 additional months of job security with little to no raises. And that job security isn't a favor it's because that's the amount of time those workers are needed to get through whatever contract and not any furt…

It's not "shitting on" anyone; it's how (efficient) economics works. You don't earn more money unless you're producing more value. If a steel mill increases its output by way of some new automation, the accounting department and janitorial staff are unlikely to see a wage increase. The folks on the assembly line are also unlikely to see a wage increase because they're not more productive. The people who will be princ…

I have a problem with calling people that have a lot of money to invest with as value creating. We should give more respect to the people who do the work instead of funneling all the benefits to people who just happen to have money.
Post reply on HN