A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality • Hacker News Board

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

#21

Post by claudiawerner » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 9:51 PM UTC

jjoonathan wrote: post #9

WhompingWindows wrote: post #2

What's the best solution to this - if wealthy and high-income individuals get more power via political lobbying, they can then gain more wealth and higher incomes, gaining even more lobbying power. They can also flood the media with advertising money and propagandist messaging to convince voters to care more about less impactful issues. It feels like an endless cycle to me. Other than war or complete societal upheava…

I'm still amazed at how effectively we have collectively shunned thought along these lines by turning the founding father of the relevant branch of economical philosophy into a real life he-who-shall-not-be-named. Anyone who wants to talk about these problems either has to either re-invent the wheel or mention the unmentionable name and doom themselves to immediate dismissal as a kook.

Fortunately, though, it seems as though the movement-that-shall-not-be-named is gaining some traction through groups like DSA and Momentum, even if it is reformist. I think there's still some hope - he-who-shall-not-be-named is only as such in public discourse, and in the academic discourse (in particular political economy, sociology, critical theory, philosophy, literature and with a good dose in psychoanalysis) he is named by his true name.

I think we ignore him and his work (in favor of sound bites from supporters and detractors) at our peril. There is enough to be critical of in what he said, we don't need to rub out his name over what Badiou called the 20th c. experiments.

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

#22

Post by hockeybias » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 9:52 PM UTC

The wealthy tend not to stuff their dough under a mattress, but rather reinvest it. Might that not 'lift all boats'?

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

#23

Post by fromthestart » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 9:52 PM UTC

jchrisa wrote: post #5

WhompingWindows wrote: post #2

What's the best solution to this - if wealthy and high-income individuals get more power via political lobbying, they can then gain more wealth and higher incomes, gaining even more lobbying power. They can also flood the media with advertising money and propagandist messaging to convince voters to care more about less impactful issues. It feels like an endless cycle to me. Other than war or complete societal upheava…

A resource allocation system that didn't have this problem should out-compete one that suffers these information masking flaws. So we just need fully automated space communism* to arise once, and it will overwhelm the less effective resource allocation systems. * I'm not expressing an opinion on what this future more effective organization method would look like, just I'm pretty sure it wouldn't create incentives to…

>just I'm pretty sure it wouldn't create incentives to keep masses of people less effective than they'd otherwise be.

Self-interested authoritarians always have incentive to keep the population controlled, ignorant, and subdued, to preserve their status. The trouble is that in order to establish something like communism, the populace must cede all powers to an extremely authoritatian government, in which case it becomes inevitable that bad actors will co-opt the system for personal gain, which the "proletariat" will be powerless to legally resist, because of the restriction of rights necessary for centrally planned collectivist society.

See USSR, DPRK, China, Venuezuala, etc.

In becoming absolute arbiters of resource distribution, communism, and extreme socialism, can only exist by removing most of the freedoms that allow citizens to keep governments from being overly tyrannical. This is a sort of emergent progression, and it is a consequence of collective human nature.

Just a disclaimer, I'm not arguing that democratic capitalism is perfect either, especially because similar bad, selfish actors can take advantage of this system as well, especially with regulatory capture. However, at least under this system we theoretically have the ability to vote both by ballot and by wallet.

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

#24

Post by claudiawerner » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 9:53 PM UTC

digitalmaster wrote: post #8

So looks like the 80s is when things start going south (increased income inequality) so I looked up who was president during that time, then looked at their wiki page to see their economic policy and found this gem of a quote: "Soon after taking office, Reagan began implementing sweeping new political and economic initiatives. His supply-side economic policies, dubbed "Reaganomics", advocated tax rate reduction to sp…

David Harvey has a fantastic book on this, "A Brief History of Neoliberalism", it's quite a read but it's very well structured and I'd recommend it to anyone looking to investigate the recent (by this I mean second half of the 20th c.) trends in global capitalism and society.

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

#25

Post by CryoLogic » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 9:54 PM UTC

Another side of this to consider, is that low-skill many jobs today are literally not worth as much as they used to be.

In labor economic there is a very well established understanding that jobs requiring high levels of skill are typically harder to fill hence corporations must pay more to get those individuals.

But the reverse is true, low skill jobs are easy to fill so we don't have to pay as much.

But here's the kicker, many branches of economics focus on technology as a eliminator of work. Basically, two guys becomes one guy and a machine. Eventually a machine might replace both of the guys.

There is an intermediary between a job being automated entirely away though, where a physical human's work loses value. McDonalds for example has been rolling out automated ordering systems so that they don't have to employ as much "front-office" staff. If they keep those on payroll, there job brings much less value to the company than it did prior.

Technology creates skilled jobs (aka maintain the robot) and eliminated unskilled jobs. But technology can also reduce the value-add of another unskilled employee.

What I am getting at is the sad truth that it's totally possible unskilled labor is not worth as much as it used to be.

If we continue to base our salaries entirely capitalistically, maybe these gaps will widen as low skill employees become less and less valuable while high skill employees gain value but less of them are required.

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

#26

Post by vondur » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 9:55 PM UTC

digitalmaster wrote: post #8

So looks like the 80s is when things start going south (increased income inequality) so I looked up who was president during that time, then looked at their wiki page to see their economic policy and found this gem of a quote: "Soon after taking office, Reagan began implementing sweeping new political and economic initiatives. His supply-side economic policies, dubbed "Reaganomics", advocated tax rate reduction to sp…

From the graph it looks like it really took off in the 90's and then again around 2010.

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

#27

Post by jchanimal » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 9:56 PM UTC

fromthestart wrote: post #23

jchrisa wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A resource allocation system that didn't have this problem should out-compete one that suffers these information masking flaws. So we just need fully automated space communism* to arise once, and it will overwhelm the less effective resource allocation systems. * I'm not expressing an opinion on what this future more effective organization method would look like, just I'm pretty sure it wouldn't create incentives to…

>just I'm pretty sure it wouldn't create incentives to keep masses of people less effective than they'd otherwise be. Self-interested authoritarians always have incentive to keep the population controlled, ignorant, and subdued, to preserve their status. The trouble is that in order to establish something like communism, the populace must cede all powers to an extremely authoritatian government, in which case it beco…

Trying to stay out of my beliefs here, but I agree authoritarian communism is about as likely to help us as the Koch brothers.

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

#28

Post by Just_Smith » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 9:57 PM UTC

digitalmaster wrote: post #8

So looks like the 80s is when things start going south (increased income inequality) so I looked up who was president during that time, then looked at their wiki page to see their economic policy and found this gem of a quote: "Soon after taking office, Reagan began implementing sweeping new political and economic initiatives. His supply-side economic policies, dubbed "Reaganomics", advocated tax rate reduction to sp…

It looks as if it began mid-70s. You can see the red and blue start diverging then, though the line stroke width causes some overlap. The heavy divergence begins in the 80's, as you pointed out.

I think confirming your theory would be as simple as comparing the policies of "Reaganomics" with the policies that emerged in the 70's that caused the initial bump shown on the chart.

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

#29

Post by paulddraper » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 9:57 PM UTC

brandonmenc wrote: post #12

WhompingWindows wrote: post #2

What's the best solution to this - if wealthy and high-income individuals get more power via political lobbying, they can then gain more wealth and higher incomes, gaining even more lobbying power. They can also flood the media with advertising money and propagandist messaging to convince voters to care more about less impactful issues. It feels like an endless cycle to me. Other than war or complete societal upheava…

> Other than war or complete societal upheaval, what can actually be done to solve the problem? A wealth (not income) tax.

Gut feel: Repeating taxing someone more for living frugally is wrong.

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

#30

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 9:58 PM UTC

jjoonathan wrote: post #9

WhompingWindows wrote: post #2

What's the best solution to this - if wealthy and high-income individuals get more power via political lobbying, they can then gain more wealth and higher incomes, gaining even more lobbying power. They can also flood the media with advertising money and propagandist messaging to convince voters to care more about less impactful issues. It feels like an endless cycle to me. Other than war or complete societal upheava…

I'm still amazed at how effectively we have collectively shunned thought along these lines by turning the founding father of the relevant branch of economical philosophy into a real life he-who-shall-not-be-named. Anyone who wants to talk about these problems either has to either re-invent the wheel or mention the unmentionable name and doom themselves to immediate dismissal as a kook.

At least on HN, you can actually say “Karl Marx” in a non-negative context without automatic dismissal.