31–40 of 245 posts
The economy is not a zero sum game. Even though inequality is counter-productive and undesirable, it does not mean that wealth has been "transferred" to the top 1%/10%. The poorest quantiles have become more wealthy over time as well, just at a slower rate. Here is some data on this:
https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2017/09/1...
I believe very strongly in equality of opportunity, and the liberal tendency to zone everything to prevent development and keep out the poors is a glaring example of hipocrisy. I don’t know if charter schools are the answer, but certainly letting the family choose where to stick their education dollars could alleviate the vast difference in K12 education that keeps the “9.9%” in continuous power.
Could you elaborate what you mean by this? Wouldn't the best course of action to give each school the same funding based on the number of pupils, and additional funding for troubled areas in need?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, it obfuscates class distinctions between those who control capital and policy versus those who just have money. I'm somewhat cynical but I think this is an intended obfuscation. It's important for petit bourgeois and wealthy skilled workers to understand their position in the class hierarchy, but calling a class whose power is dwarfed by the capitalist class an aristocracy is fluffy rhetoric.
> those who control capital and policy versus those who just have money Controlling policy is one thing. Who "just has money" and doesn't control capital? Anyone who has money actually has some sort of capital or an equivalently powerful financial instrument be it stocks, loans to other companies, government bonds, a house, etc.
1. The vast majority of middle class wealth is locked up in (non-investment) housing. That money provides a roof and access to quality education, but in almost all cases, it's not being efficiently deployed as capital.
2. Whatever remaining money that is deployed as capital, is not done so in a way that implies control over their chosen investments. Think "majority shareholder" vs. "just another investor". That's the difference between "controlling capital" and merely having a bit of skin in the game.
Class differentiation is the central meaning of life. The struggle is the point. You get up and wear nice clothes in the morning so that you're better than the slob that doesn't. Nobody wants to be the same as everyone else. If everyone was equal, then there would be no point in your existence. You become a bag of mostly water. Celebrate the fact that a few billionaires and royalty and celebrities exists. Life is mor…
It's possible for us to focus both on improving conditions at the very bottom and also trying to understand how a very small percentage at the very top is siphoning so much out of our shared system. I would argue that both issues are worth looking at.
So yes, we should focus on the lower end of the scale.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's possible for us to focus both on improving conditions at the very bottom and also trying to understand how a very small percentage at the very top is siphoning so much out of our shared system. I would argue that both issues are worth looking at.
We have people very rich, more than ever before. And that is just by itself something worth of careful examination. But a lot of that wealth is new. There are effective mechanisms to not being poor. More people can access to self-improvement tools than ever before. So yes, we should focus on the lower end of the scale.
Where is the "new" wealth coming from?
> There are effective mechanisms to not being poor.
That seems like a generalization to me that doesn't factor in location, race, access to good education, medical conditions, existing debt, etc.
> So yes, we should focus on the lower end of the scale.
Why not both?
"Every piece of the pie picked up by the 0.1 percent, in relative terms, had to come from the people below" The economy is not a zero sum game. Even though inequality is counter-productive and undesirable, it does not mean that wealth has been "transferred" to the top 1%/10%. The poorest quantiles have become more wealthy over time as well, just at a slower rate. Here is some data on this: https://www.advisorperspect…
I believe very strongly in equality of opportunity, and the liberal tendency to zone everything to prevent development and keep out the poors is a glaring example of hipocrisy. I don’t know if charter schools are the answer, but certainly letting the family choose where to stick their education dollars could alleviate the vast difference in K12 education that keeps the “9.9%” in continuous power.
> letting the family choose where to stick their education dollars could alleviate the vast difference in K12 education that keeps the “9.9%” in continuous power. Could you elaborate what you mean by this? Wouldn't the best course of action to give each school the same funding based on the number of pupils, and additional funding for troubled areas in need?
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/04/29/upshot/money-...
Some of the points about privilege might be accurate, but breaking economic status in to .1%, 9.9%, and 90% is arbitrary and misleading. The author tries to make the point that “the 9.9%” have the majority of the wealth and this issue is as big or bigger than the concentration of wealth at the very top. The problem is that this is largely an artifact of the division system. The distribution is highly skewed, and the…
What the article is trying to point out is that the 9.9% thinks he's not so wealthy, so he is against inequality, but he still, somehow, for his own comfort and merit belief system, likes his higher income.
Trying to talk about ranges of income, would it the top N%, is pointless.
You could strip out the hypocrisy like so: "I am not at the top, so I am still against inequality, but I am comfortable, but since I AM NOT AT THE TOP, YOU CANNOT BLAME ME, so blame the richest". This is the core problem about stretching inequality, because individualism makes people work for their own selves, and NEVER encourage anyone to "take one for the team". The whole story is about how people perceives their own selves. This is an important debate.
I'm sure those 9.9% would be very surprised they belong to the top 10%. The graph of income is always growing exponentially, yet for some reason people are throwing away the idea that they might be the ones to blame, because people will naturally find argument that they're not to blame. It's always the responsibility of someone else.
I personally have not lived the wealthiest life there is in term of income, but you know, at least I don't complain, because when I compare it to the rest of the world, being in the lower 50% or 60% or 30% in a modern and developed country is still a pretty good life.
Wait, so 10% of the county is millionaires (more or less, if 9.9% are 1.2-millionaires), and these people have such “good family, good health, and good jobs” that they might as well be a different species? If I tell you how “good” someone’s family or health is, you can tell me if they are a millionaire or not? I think the author’s intent was to acknowledge privilege, but the article is just making more weird caricatu…
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No, the article states that the average wealth of the 9.9% is 1.2m. This is of course heavily influenced by people at in the top 1%; people in the 10th percentile are not all millionaires.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And yet it's more than 90.1% of the population posesses... Interestingly, some estimates of (formal) Polish aristocracy in the 17th century place it around 10% of the population. Maybe this is just some natural distribution of socio-econo-political status of human groups.
As another comment here pointed out; 90.1% possess about 30% of the wealth. 9% possess another 30% of the wealth. The remaining 0.9% possess the rest. Is the 9% to blame for inequality?