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A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality

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Re: A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality

#171

Post by johnchristopher »

FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #7
fake-name wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best option is probably hackernews's boogeyman - government regulation. The issue is it has to be in place before money command structures have a chance to develop, so it's not something you can really implement now . Realistically, it may not be fixable without fixing capitalism, which no one has figured out how to do.

Capitalism is working quite as intended right now. The goal is to move more and more money to the capitalists, and that goal is increasingly faster being reached.

> Capitalism is working quite as intended right now.

But is it also working as advertised ?

Re: A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality

#172

Post by johnchristopher »

jeffdavis wrote: post #31
FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism is working quite as intended right now. The goal is to move more and more money to the capitalists, and that goal is increasingly faster being reached.

Not sure that all the money is moving to those who own the most capital/machines. It seems to be moving to those that have the most data . Mark Zuckerburg has very little of what I'd call "capital" that actually produces stuff, yet he makes tons of money.

Means of production.

Re: A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality

#173

Post by jahaja »

conanbatt wrote: post #168
jahaja wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm seeing this sentiment often. Some people seem to think that the storming of the Bastille would never have happened if the people would just have known how much better France's trading partners had progressed over the last decade or so.

I understand the interests as a nation and as a globe are different and sometimes antagonistic, but it pokes a massive hole in the idea that the rich are stealing and from the poor: if the rich are richer, and the poorer richer, the ones complaining are the ones in the middle. It would change the rhetoric from "poor vs rich" to "middle vs rich and poor".

Why aren't they? They're not doing it from altruistic reasons, they've just found people willing to work for less pay. Surely a king upon conquering even worse off subjects, which enables him to maintain and expand his wealthy lifestyle cheaper, can still be charged as an exploiter?

Re: A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality

#174

Post by RobertoG »

conanbatt wrote: post #167
RobertoG wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that idea (about economics) has been heavily, and successfully, pushed by interested parties: 'The economy' and 'the market' are sacred things that are disconnected from the dirty world, and work perfectly in their own if you don't bother them. No need for 'political economy' anymore, only 'economics'.

Gotta answer that last sentence. Free market advocates are the exact opposite of disconnected with the dirty world: they advocate for allowing the dirtyness of reality sort itself out, without a neat central order. The most significant advocate for free markets, Milton Friedman, literally wrote the book on the application of Positive Economics: seeing things how they really are, use empiric data, make falsifiable pre…

Well, if you start with the idea that markets exist in the void, you are certainly avoiding the dirty world.

For instance: assuming that property rights exist outside a political framework or power structures.

Re: A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality

#175

Post by beat »

0181109 wrote: post #117
beat wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've done XP. It was awesome. As for the two attempts to implement Marxism (assuming you're speaking of Russia and China here)... in Russia, you can't separate it from Leninism and Stalinism. Is Marxism the problem, or the authoritarian government? China is more interesting. China is still ostensibly a Marxist nation, right? Per World Bank data I just looked up, China's per capita GDP (in constant US dollars) was low…

It is much closer to state capitalism. The economy boomed when Mao died and Deng Xiaoping brought about economic reforms.

The economy boomed under Mao, too, if you think about it. China went from decades of war - Boxer Rebellion, civil war, Japanese occupation, civil war - to a famine that was entirely unsurprising considering the scope of what had happened in the previous 50 years. Mao ended that and put the country on the path to what they are today.

Re: A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality

#176

Post by darkerside »

maxxxxx wrote: post #51
darkerside wrote: post #34

Is there an inherent problem with income inequality? Would you rather live in: * World 1, where everybody has x, except one person has 100x * World 2, where everybody has .5x and is thus totally equal (I realize assets and income are not equal, but I think the point stands)

These are artificial choices that don't help. I think the last decades had most people in rich countries staying the same or going slightly negative while a few got much more. To me that's not desirable.

Keep in mind the alternative may have been even more people sliding into poverty. I think inequality is more misleading than my artificial choice. Why anchor on what the richest have, as opposed to what they poorest SHOULD have? The rich will always get richer. It's basically a law akin to gravity. You can shovel shit uphill fighting it, or you can accept it and use that force to make the whole world better.

Re: A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality

#177

Post by darkerside »

FabHK wrote: post #170
commandlinefan wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I think what he's saying (which I don't necessarily disagree with) is that if I have everything I need, what difference does it make to me - besides jealousy - if the guy down the street has more than he needs?

Lots. 1. We are social creatures, not homines oeconomici whose utility function only includes our own consumption. (In fact, I feel that the argument you (and others) make comes from this mistaken Econ 101 idea that the simplifying economics assumption of a utility function only including own consumption is has normative character (ie we should only look at that). But it has neither positive (descriptive) nor normati…

What's really disempowering is making utility a social responsibility instead of a personal one.

Re: A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality

#178

Post by beat »

merlincorey wrote: post #113
beat wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've done XP. It was awesome. As for the two attempts to implement Marxism (assuming you're speaking of Russia and China here)... in Russia, you can't separate it from Leninism and Stalinism. Is Marxism the problem, or the authoritarian government? China is more interesting. China is still ostensibly a Marxist nation, right? Per World Bank data I just looked up, China's per capita GDP (in constant US dollars) was low…

> There hasn't been large-scale political violence in China since the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. That ten-year period killed 5-10 million on the high end. Which is, of course, quite bad, but in comparison to the 50-80M that died in ostensibly capitalist Europe during WWII, it doesn't seem that outsized. > So for burden of proof, I think you need to argue that an alternative model would have resulted in l…

Famines were not exactly unusual in backwards agrarian nations recovering from 50 years of nonstop civil war and foreign occupation. European nations, before modernization, had famine problems, even without war. As Hans Rosling pointed out, famine killed much of the Swedish population in the late 19th century. From 1845-1850, Ireland lost a quarter of its population to famine and emigration to escape famine - 10-15% of the country starved to death under ostensible capitalist rule. And there are plenty more examples where that came from.

So blaming it on communism seems a little off to me. Matter of fact, one could easily argue that communist revolution is a consequence of capitalist failure, not a cause of failure on its own.

Re: A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality

#179

Post by merpnderp »

roenxi wrote: post #135
zanny wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the implication is that Reagan instituted broad and substantial tax reduction for the rich in combination with the institution of enormous federal deficit spending in order to offset rising oil consumption following two oil crisis the previous decade? We saw how oil turned out in the long run. Reagans policies, if anything, only gave dictatorships another two decades of unmitigated dominance in an industry we have…

The theme I'm replying to is 'Regan's stated policy objectives were implemented in the 70s and were probable causes of rising income inequality'. Maybe policy settings were twiddled, but the sudden stoppage of growth is probably linked to resource growth tapering off. In a counterfactual scenario where some other set of economic policies were in place, you'd probably have seen income growth trail off regardless. The…

But go deeper than even that and determine what is the crux of the unfairness. How are the rich securing a larger percentage of the growth unfairly? If everyone is getting richer, but the rich are doing it faster, what are they doing to capture that excess? Isn't the answer "investing in the economy?"

Re: A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality

#180

Post by darawk »

enraged_camel wrote: post #155
darawk wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because it's self-evident. People get rich by allocating capital effectively. QED.

What is self-evident is that you're just trolling, and have no interest in actual discourse. QED.

Do you not understand the issue? I'm not trolling. You become wealthy by allocating capital efficiently. This is econ 101. How hard is this to understand?
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