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Economic Inequality Is Worse Than We Think (2015)

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Economic Inequality Is Worse Than We Think (2015)

#51

Post by viridian »

bjourne wrote: post #19

I think everyone should read Nickel and Dimed ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_and_Dimed ) by Barbara Ehrenreich. She goes undercover and tries to survive working minimum wage jobs. I don't think I'm spoiling the book by revealing that she wasn't able to. After three months she were so deep in debt that she had to abort the experiment.

I wonder if this is just a lack of knowledge on how to survive while poor. I'm in a good economic position compared to most of the US and certainly most of the world, but I can't see myself having much of an issue with this. Growing up there were times where my family was homeless, and my first job I was a carpenter's apprentice, paid under the table, for less than minimum wage.

It's not that being poor is extremely difficult in the US in particular, but rather that those born wealthy who have never been poor, have no idea how to operate in that environment.

Re: Economic Inequality Is Worse Than We Think (2015)

#52

Post by bmmayer1 »

ryanbrunner wrote: post #40
awptimus wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because...

It all depends on what you want to optimize for. But for me, and I suspect a lot of people, the happiness of society seems like a decent starting point (let's assume for the moment that most Americans / 1st world citizens are at the point where base survival is not in question) The current rate of inequality is massively inefficient if you're trying to optimize happiness. The bottom 2 quintiles of Americans control s…

The bread analogy doesn't make any sense. Inequality is a relative metric, not an absolute one. If I only need one loaf of bread to survive, who cares if my neighbor has 100 or 1000?

Re: Economic Inequality Is Worse Than We Think (2015)

#53

Post by averagewall »

I can tell this article is preaching to the choir because it doesn't bother to explain why inequality is bad. It just assumes that we agree it is. So why is it bad? Especially since most Americans don't even know about it, how can it be hurting them? Two possibilities I can think of: A) Jealousy B) Risk of revolution

Re: Economic Inequality Is Worse Than We Think (2015)

#54

Post by eeZah7Ux »

golergka wrote: post #42
ngrilly wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you serious?

Absolutely. Why not? Having children is a very expensive thing for the family and the society, but people can easily make this decision foolishly and then offload costs onto everyone else. Having children is a luxury, we only need to start treating it like one. RESPONSES (THANKS FOR THE ANTI-SPAM, HN! IT MAKES IT SO MUCH EASIER TO HAVE MEANINGFUL CONVERSATIONS) > Why are you focusing only on the financial aspect and…

Why are you focusing only on the financial aspect and ignoring the parents education, general behavior and mental health, and living conditions, safety and so on?

Re: Economic Inequality Is Worse Than We Think (2015)

#55

Post by sambe »

DarkKomunalec wrote: post #29
trentnix wrote: post #5

I've never understood using income inequality as a measure of the health of a society. As Milton Friedman said, the only place where people are equal is in a prison and in the grave. Milton Friedman on greed and income inequality: https://youtu.be/RWsx1X8PV_A

That is a strawman - total equality (prison, grave) is not being advocated, merely reducing the current extreme inequality. And inequality is a good measure because the benefit of an extra N dollars is greater, the less money one already has. So, all else being equal, smaller inequality leads to greater average quality of life. Inequality is also a measure of for whose benefit a society is working - the benefit of th…

It's not a strawman. This topic is now so fashionable as a news item (regardless of your view) that people will target any kind of inquality in western democracies as inherently wrong.

What counts as extreme? Has much really changed in the last few years since this became something discussed daily? Why do such articles ignore payments in kind and fail to address subtleties to do with the different measures (personal income, household etc).

I don't personally consider the existing situation extreme, and the fact that people underestimate it doesn't change my view.

Re: Economic Inequality Is Worse Than We Think (2015)

#56

Post by eeZah7Ux »

majewsky wrote: post #33
oblio wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preventing some arbitrary part of the population from having children is basically eradicating that population, long term. I just used "kill", for simplicity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics

I find that equation of terms troubling. If I take that argument to its logical conclusion, we are all killers because we don't get as much children as previous generations. We're effectively killing our unborn offspring by refusing to procreate.

> We're effectively killing our unborn offspring by refusing to procreate.

This is a completely false definition of "killing"

Re: Economic Inequality Is Worse Than We Think (2015)

#57

Post by akvadrako »

trentnix wrote: post #5

I've never understood using income inequality as a measure of the health of a society. As Milton Friedman said, the only place where people are equal is in a prison and in the grave. Milton Friedman on greed and income inequality: https://youtu.be/RWsx1X8PV_A

Just consider the practical consequences of inequality:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality#Effects

There is a lot of information there along the general lines of inequality is bad, which shouldn't be surprising. If you spend $1m of raw resources on building a bigger house, there is no benefit to society; theoretically it might incentivise somebody, but it's probably just pure waste.

Re: Economic Inequality Is Worse Than We Think (2015)

#58

Post by [deleted] »

oblio wrote: post #18
ygaf wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point to the word "kill" in his post?

Preventing some arbitrary part of the population from having children is basically eradicating that population, long term. I just used "kill", for simplicity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics

[deleted]

Re: Economic Inequality Is Worse Than We Think (2015)

#59

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

trentnix wrote: post #5

I've never understood using income inequality as a measure of the health of a society. As Milton Friedman said, the only place where people are equal is in a prison and in the grave. Milton Friedman on greed and income inequality: https://youtu.be/RWsx1X8PV_A

Income inequality is probably not the best measure. The thing I'd really like to see is a good study of income mobility across 3 or more generations. But inequality can act as a proxy for mobility. Check this:

So now that we have organized our thinking, let us consider the empirical evidence. Most famously, it comes from the recent work of Miles Corak, building on previous studies by Gary Solon, Blunden, Gregg and Macmillan, Björklund and Jäntti and others. What these authors find is that there is a strong correlation between current and inter-generational inequality, or in other words, between inequality and low social mobility: the more unequal the society the less likely is the next generation to move upwards (or conversely, the less likely is the decline of the rich). So in terms of our simple diagram, Corak finds that societies are aligned along the diagonal: there are no outliers, whether the societies exhibiting the American dream or the guild-like ones.

The implication of that finding which was dubbed by Alan Krueger the Great Gatsby curve is that there is no American exceptionalism. The comforting picture of high inequality which does not impede mobility between generations turns out to be false. US does not behave any differently than other societies with high inequality. High income inequality today reinforces income differences between the generations and makes social mobility more difficult to achieve. This is also the point of my recent paper with Roy van der Weide. We use US micro data from 1960 to 2010 to show that poor people in US states with higher initial inequality experienced lower income growth in subsequent periods).

http://glineq.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-schumpeter-hotel-inco...

Re: Economic Inequality Is Worse Than We Think (2015)

#60

Post by phs318u »

bmmayer1 wrote: post #50
pharrlax wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we generally recognize that feudalism is bad, and therefore society becoming more feudalismesque is also bad?

How is society becoming more feudal? I've heard this from so many people and the evidence doesn't seem to support it. For example, ~64% of Americans own a home. What % of feudal peasants owned a shovel, let alone a home?

Really? 64% of Americans own a home debt free?
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