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US Income Inequality: All for the Top 1%

nytimes.com

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Re: US Income Inequality: All for the Top 1%

#31

Post by scarmig »

PeachPlum wrote: post #6

If everyone gets 2x as much tomorrow as today, income inequality rises. Ask people if they would support everyone getting 2x their income tomorrow.

I'm pretty sure that's not true, at least by the most common measure of inequality, the Gini index. It's scale invariant. Doubling everyone's income wouldn't be reflected in it one way or another.

More to your actual point, the imagined choice isn't between doubling incomes for everyone or stagnation. It's between shared growth and the top 1% quadrupling their income, the next 50% growing slowly, and the rest dog paddling or getting poorer.

Re: US Income Inequality: All for the Top 1%

#33

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

arcanus wrote: post #2

Real title was, 'Our Broken Economy, in One Simple Chart'. Despite some of the recent coverage, this chart indicates that gains are not going to the top 20%: they are going to top 1%, and particularly To be clear, this is not many programmers: "In 1980, the top 1% of adult earners in the U.S. made $420,000 a year, on average (before taxes and measured in 2014 dollars) — 27 times as much as the average for the bottom…

I'm not sure we can just blame this on the tiny minority of mega-rich at the top. The whole inversion of the curve is cause for alarm. The chart is great but it seems like everyone's eye is catching on that crazy portion on the far right. Not only do we have to bring that down, we need to grab the line at 5% and start yanking it up. That's probably going to require policies and taxes that not just the 1% but the 20% as well don't like.

EDIT: I'd also like to plug this really great article on regional inequality which is a huge problem but usually goes unmentioned in these sorts of discussions: http://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/novdec-2015/bloom-and-...

Re: US Income Inequality: All for the Top 1%

#34

Post by spo81rty »

dvdhnt wrote: post #9
gallerdude wrote: post #3

It's an interesting question. Most of peoples incomes are rising, it's just whose incomes are rising more than others. Is that still fair?

Personally, I think it is blatantly unfair. It's like if we had a big bad of skittles and every time I took 1 skittle, you took 10 skittles.

Except when it comes to wealth there is no limit. Ones success does not mean another's demise. If I mine for Bitcoin and make millions, who did I steal wealth from to get mine?

Your Skittles analogy does not work.

Re: US Income Inequality: All for the Top 1%

#35

Post by elsewhen »

autokad wrote: post #14

It looks to me that QE3 was a huge part of that later uptick. its no surprise to me that if you juice the markets and inflate asset prices (mostly stock), that the richest benefit most. what was surprising to me is how bad actually making stuff did. I understand that juicing the markets might not benefit that, but it seemed as though QE3 actually hurt producing tangible things.

This article and the accompanying chart is specifically about _income_, not capital gains.

Re: US Income Inequality: All for the Top 1%

#36

Post by dsacco »

js8 wrote: post #28
logicchains wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like, if we had a big patch of strawberries and every day I picked 100 and you picked 1000, why should I get to take yours?

Because you're cheating - I saw some Mexicans picking them for you.

Why is that cheating?

Re: US Income Inequality: All for the Top 1%

#37

Post by nsebban »

humanrebar wrote: post #30

It's my understanding that there is some churn in the top 1% of earners. If the economy transitioned to a place where people had big spikes and dips in their annual income, couldn't the graph look the same? Doesn't that sound like a "gig economy"? In other words, why graph income and not wealth?

> In other words, why graph income and not wealth?

I think it's because people's wealth is really hard to estimate. The border between people's assets and their companies', foundations' and what not are usually blurry enough that you would get a graph that shows no insight.

Although income is not a great KPI, at least there are reliable methods to figure it out, or at least make estimates with a quite acceptable precision.

Re: US Income Inequality: All for the Top 1%

#38

Post by mariushn »

arcanus wrote: post #2

Real title was, 'Our Broken Economy, in One Simple Chart'. Despite some of the recent coverage, this chart indicates that gains are not going to the top 20%: they are going to top 1%, and particularly To be clear, this is not many programmers: "In 1980, the top 1% of adult earners in the U.S. made $420,000 a year, on average (before taxes and measured in 2014 dollars) — 27 times as much as the average for the bottom…

Personal opinion: it's also harder to grow or get investment on a startup which competes or might compete with a big corporation in future, just because bigCorp might go into that area as well, or add a "feature" which represents your entire business.

How do you tackle this?

Re: US Income Inequality: All for the Top 1%

#39

Post by dsacco »

dvdhnt wrote: post #9
gallerdude wrote: post #3

It's an interesting question. Most of peoples incomes are rising, it's just whose incomes are rising more than others. Is that still fair?

Personally, I think it is blatantly unfair. It's like if we had a big bad of skittles and every time I took 1 skittle, you took 10 skittles.

But the economy is not zero sum, like that bag. If I have a process that increases the total number of skittles in the bag, is it still unfair for me to take more skittles from it?

Re: US Income Inequality: All for the Top 1%

#40

Post by kukx »

It is difficult for American workers to compete with Chinese or Indian people wages. The good thing is that the global inequality is declining.[0] My guess is that when the incomes in low-wage exporter countries get closer to the developed countries, then we may see a wage increase again.

[0] - https://ourworldindata.org/global-economic-inequality

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