211–220 of 311 posts
But there is even a greater factor: the inflation-adjusted GDP per capita! In 1968 it was $24k; in 2008 it was $50k. Is the author really surprised that a lot of households make more than their parents?
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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.
Sorry dude, that's how economies work. Investors agree to buy shares in exchange for the right to sell those shares later. Employees agree to work in exchange for a salary; if they can find a larger salary elsewhere, they're free to pursue it. If employees want to buy some part of a company, they can do that as well (assuming they can persuade someone with shares to sell them) and then they'll earn (or lose) RoI just…
There is no natural law that says things have to be that way. The economy is man made and when you look a different countries you'll see that there is a lot variation. There is no natural reason that for example investment income should be taxed lower than employment income. You could come up with a law that requires a certain share of the company's profits to be distributed to employees instead everything going to shareholders.
There are lot of things that can be tweaked.
In general I object to the idea that people who have a lot of money (earned or inherited) create more value than the people working for them. Both sides play a role in this economy and deserve to be respected as value creator.
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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…
Aren't the people running the new machines creating more value because the machines make them more productive? If not, doesn't that suggest that it would be virtually impossible for average people to meaningfully improve their economic condition since any meaningful increases in productivity are almost certainly going to be a result of advances in technology?
Unfortunately, it is quite difficult to make your way into a technical career without a significant investment in education and (I would argue) a certain personality type. So we aren't seeing thousands of people moving away from low-skill jobs into technical careers. The supply of labor for jobs like "warehouse worker" simply hasn't declined enough to offset the decline in demand (due to increased automation, outsourcing, structural changes, or whatever). The result is that those workers see lower wages. At the same time, compensation in technical careers seems a bit ridiculous: $200k to write Python for 35 hours a week? I've heard numbers like that thrown around - but companies still complain of a lack of qualified workers for those roles.
This is all just to say that the owners of capital aren't going to pass excess profits on to labor out of the goodness of their hearts, just as labor isn't going to work harder than the bare minimum required to keep getting their paycheck. But they might be forced to pay higher wages if they can't find good workers. If the structure of the economy changes so that some sectors are more productive, then the supply and demand of labor should shift to keep things from getting out of whack. That hasn't been happening in recent decades.
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I have four kids and several friends with kids, and I can tell you that the amount of effort+time it takes to not get CPS called on you (depending on where you live) can be very substantial.
Out of curiosity, what does get CPS called on you in your area? Second question: how much of it is a need of the child and how much serves more of "social mores controll" function? For the record, I don't actually want to return to 1970 standards. However, I suspect that the extreme micromanagement has multiple reasons, but child's needs are not really the driver.
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That is not needed the way washing cloth and ironing was. Which is why the micromanagement trends are not domain of working classes as much as upper classes. Micromanaged kids don't need parent at home a lot of it is outsourced to schools and clubs. And parent at home wishing to be needed or useful may be contributing to the perceived need for micromanagement (plus those who want women at home for emotional or ideolo…
I have four kids and several friends with kids, and I can tell you that the amount of effort+time it takes to not get CPS called on you (depending on where you live) can be very substantial.
The reason I ask is that I hear this sentiment from parents a lot, and I got curious so I talked with actual CPS officials who laughed heartily at the things the parents thought.
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On the other hand, my medical supplies and devices fund in my IRA is way up
Not to get all Marxist - but using IRA's/401k's to get labor to go all-in on the stock-market was one hell of a judo move by the American capital class.
The whole point of much of this analysis (and the videos shown) is that household income can be very misleading. But most if not all of the analyses I report on are for individuals over time. So changes in the number of earners are actually more of a problem for most of the gloomy studies that look at households by quintile. Incredibly, the proportion of households with two earners is LOWER in 2014 than in 1980 becau…
Do you have any plans to explore wealth concentration in future essays?
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> 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 years have gone to a concentrated few owners of capital. > Basically - absolute mobility (how much people gain over time) is still decently healthy today in percenta…
Agreed. I think he was trying to write a controversial piece to break free from the status quo thinking of "inequality is growing" but totally missed the forest for the trees in his conclusion. Makes me wonder if he had an alternative agenda with this piece and question his economic analysis in general.
This reads like research sponsored by a tobacco company showing that cigarettes are actually not that harmful. I like how it frames the economy as this independent entity that we just sort of observe and hope for the best. Oh our divining rod produced these arbitrary statistics so the glass is half full guys! In reality, though, the forces of human nature driving the economy don't change. Since the dawn of the surplu…
> Since the dawn of the surplus, there have always been a handful of kings and many serfs, and there probably always will be. One thing is different though: the thralls of today possess costly devices that simultaneously entertain and surveil them, among other things. Past kings would never even have dreamed about that.