Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 694 posts

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#321

Post by esarbe »

What strikes me the most when looking at many of the comments here is the blatant disregard for human suffering that extreme inequality and the resulting poverty cause. The current economical status quo is accepted as a given and all the harm it causes is dismissed with the shrug of a shoulder.

"It can't be helped, the poor sods should have made better life choices to avoid ending up as janitor" is the attitude by which the matter is dismissed - as if requiring everyone to be a member of the educated elite just to be able earn a decent living.

There is so much wealth out there. This wealth is the product of society's common strive. Why not try to change the world instead of just submitting to the way things are?

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#322

Post by nnfy »

erentz wrote: post #302
nnfy wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I look forward to being barred from sharing the wealth that I've accumulated with my children and other loved ones. Why should they have any advantage, right? After all, you probably think I didnt do anything myself, right? Who are you to make that decision for someone? And, frankly, you're delusional if you think an estate tax is non distortive. The entire meaning of wealth would change for the elderly. One can…

This thought experiment isn't about looking at your neighbors plate, it's about incentives for us as a society. I think the question to answer for yourself is whether you think everyone should start with a fair playing field or not and the implications such a tax would have on how you structure society to ensure that everyone gets the same shots at a good life.

There is substantially more value for all of us in allowing more resources to be distributed to those who are able to do more with them.

And your definition of "fair playing field" is skewed because, again, you treat economics as a zero sum game. You are making the classic mistake of conflating equality of outcome with equality of opportunity.

In any case, this class warfare inspired policy of exhaustively taxing wealth won't fix a mismanaged budget or a broken scholarly culture. You are simply punishing the people who seem to have benefited most in the context of the system while ignoring merit.

Further, it is absolutely absurd to suggest that modern people in poverty dont live "good" lives. They have refrigeration, air conditioning, entertainment, access to the internet, emergency healthcare, they live like kings once did. Once again this is a problem of looking at other peoples' lives and concluding that only in comparison you deserve more for simply existing.

Taxation will not fix what is fundamentally a cultural problem.

Aside: Look at how absurd the entire argument is! We dont question in absolute terms how our poor are living, we focus entirely on the fact that the wealth is distributed unevenly. Like children complaining that their classmates have extra candy. The whole mindset is petty.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#323

Post by dionidium »

scarface74 wrote: post #64
mathiasben wrote: post #36

The underlying cause of this whole issue is the changes in tax policy instated in the Tax Reform Act of 1986, previously income was taxed at higher rates unless deductions were utilized which forced those earnings back into the economy creating jobs funding research, etc.. As it's become easier to retain more earnings there's little incentive not to optimize an entire corporation solely with the purpose of generating…

What incentive would anyone have in making more then 400K a year if you were going to be taxed at 90%?

The incentive to keep 10% of every dollar earned over $400k, obviously.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#324

Post by mnglkhn2 »

erentz wrote: post #286
conanbatt wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Taxation is both effective, and far less invasive to markets than many other solutions. I don't really agree with this. Taxes are distortive and doesn't necesarily help inequality. It might even make it worse. But also, there is taxation as a progressive system of government funding, as there is taxation as in "You will never own more than X, because the government will seize it". In terms of solutions, I'm not a p…

They don't have to be. A "death tax" for example that takes 100% of a persons estate at death would be both simple, non distortive, and in terms of equality level the playing field every generation.

With the assumption that the State is the best ward for your money. Do you fully trust the State to be willing and able to stamp out inequality?

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#325

Post by solidsnack9000 »

esarbe wrote: post #321

What strikes me the most when looking at many of the comments here is the blatant disregard for human suffering that extreme inequality and the resulting poverty cause. The current economical status quo is accepted as a given and all the harm it causes is dismissed with the shrug of a shoulder. "It can't be helped, the poor sods should have made better life choices to avoid ending up as janitor" is the attitude by wh…

As long as we accept the need for people to be janitors, we must accept that becoming a janitor is not a "mistake", it's a useful thing that we all want to see happen for some people. We can't on the one hand say, that we need people to do this job and on the other hand say, "tough luck" to those that do it.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#327

Post by TimPC »

choxi wrote: post #180

We should tax wealth, not income. [1] The majority of income the top 0.1% make is from investments and gets taxed as capital gains, only about 15% of their income is taxed as ordinary income. [2][3] We have an economic system where it's dramatically easier to make money the more money you already have. If you have $50M, you can park it in an index fund to get 4% returns and make $2M every year just off of your invest…

Taxing wealth is a deeply invasive bureaucratic nightmare. Having individuals be legally required to produce a balance sheet of all their assets for the government every year seems quite problematic. This would get into issues of having people be required to re-establish the fair price of all their collectables, etc. It's also a deeply dangerous attack on retirement. Instead of being taxed on the gains from your wealth, being taxed on the wealth itself requires much larger returns to live off the income from an investment. I think it might make sense to have a higher inheritance tax with fewer loopholes to resolve the issues of intergenerational wealth. It's probably very important to protect the mechanisms of retirement.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#328

Post by yorwba »

nnfy wrote: post #322
erentz wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This thought experiment isn't about looking at your neighbors plate, it's about incentives for us as a society. I think the question to answer for yourself is whether you think everyone should start with a fair playing field or not and the implications such a tax would have on how you structure society to ensure that everyone gets the same shots at a good life.

There is substantially more value for all of us in allowing more resources to be distributed to those who are able to do more with them. And your definition of "fair playing field" is skewed because, again, you treat economics as a zero sum game. You are making the classic mistake of conflating equality of outcome with equality of opportunity. In any case, this class warfare inspired policy of exhaustively taxing wea…

> There is substantially more value for all of us in allowing more resources to be distributed to those who are able to do more with them.

Don't you think that inheritance is a pretty bad way of achieving that? After all, traits like intelligence (which probably dominates the ability to use resources efficiently) are only about 50% heritable.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#329

Post by tiggybear »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #76
fatjokes wrote: post #35

It sounds like the real reason for inequality is that the pay for "janitorial work" has simply decreased. The article makes a point to say that the pay is the same, accounting for inflation, but it's disingenuous not to highlight total comp, which Ramos had significantly less of than Evans.

The reason for inequality is that people are not equal. The work they do produce is not equal in value. More people can do a janitor's job, and/or do without a janitor, so the value of a janitor's work is less. More supply, elastic demand, means lower price point. Through technology, some people are able to produce much more than others, so inequality is inevitable unless there is a balancing force (aka taxation).

Yes, but at some point people used to say "fuck this I'm not working 40 hours a week my whole life if I can't even buy a house and afford a few luxuries." And so that would restrict supply.

People don't do this anymore for various reasons, frankly it's been demonized in our society. Lots of companies (/most?) restrict supply to drive up costs (diamonds, agriculture, digital media, etc), they don't produce at maximum/flood the market. They restrict supply to maintain a healthy profit margin. And people call this good business, but what do we call workers who do the same?

I think their is a good argument to be made that our middle and lower classes have just been acting as bad business men and women and have been giving as much unrestricted supply as they've been asked for. It's bankrupting them, costing them their health, costing their children opportunities for good education and access to their parents bc they are working all the time. It's costing them the American Dream, if there ever was one.

I do believe it's time for people to unionize or something. Unions are a whole other argument, but we can make new ones with new rules to make them better. People have to realize their bosses view their "worth" more so as leverage than output. People can increase their output all they want (which they often have: more degrees, more work hours, etc), but without an increase in leverage they won't be paid that.

Further, this doesn't neccessarily mean anyone's boss is not paying them appropriately. It's possible the market at large needs to be adjusted to pay for these costs or more than likely a little of A and a little of B.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#330

Post by jordanb »

esarbe wrote: post #321

What strikes me the most when looking at many of the comments here is the blatant disregard for human suffering that extreme inequality and the resulting poverty cause. The current economical status quo is accepted as a given and all the harm it causes is dismissed with the shrug of a shoulder. "It can't be helped, the poor sods should have made better life choices to avoid ending up as janitor" is the attitude by wh…

The article describes how contractor culture is creeping up from facilities into the white collar workforce near the end. I think that's a buried lead.

You and I, maybe we made the right decisions. I'm doing pretty well for myself as a software engineer.

But when I see the misfortune of others -- people who saw the bottoms fall out of their careers -- let's just say it makes me hesitant to whistle past graveyards.

Post reply on HN