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Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

vanityfair.com

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Re: Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

#51

Post by cheez »

stretchwithme wrote: post #42

Some people work very hard and are very creative. Those who produce more should get more. That isn't the entire picture of how people get wealthy in America, but it is the gist of it. Of course, America has an increasingly corrupt government and a great many people acquiring wealth by using government to scam the rest of us. And we should be railing against that. But the fact that wealth is distributed unevenly is in…

Your second paragraph is very interesting and reminded me of this talk here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmzZ8lCLhlk

Re: Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

#52

Post by stellar678 »

tesseract wrote: post #22
alnayyir wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>, and they probably can't afford a house. I moved to the bay area recently, and I'm an engineer. I was kind of wondering how people actually live out here. I came here from New York, so I get how people can rent for their whole lives, but I had thought that there'd be more reasonable home ownership in the bay area. Not so. :\

I'm a recent (last few months) migrant to the bay area. I have to say, for a city that hates capitalists, San Francisco sure is expensive. (hmm, maybe there's some causation there?)

Hates capitalists? This city was built on gold and the resulting necessary banking infrastructure. It's the financial center of the west coast!

Re: Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

#53

Post by stellar678 »

varjag wrote: post #30
hootmon wrote: post #26

Just consider this. Most tax money goes toward providing defense, Which is just a nice word for protecting the property of the wealthy. The more property you have, then the more value you receive, thus the more, not less, you should pay. Its called welfare for the rich. Our taxes go towards securing their position and goods. Say hello to that boot rushing down on you.

Perhaps that is taking defense too literally. In this day of age, there is very little threat to people's property from Mexico or Canada.

However, there is ever-present threat to the interests abroad of American individuals and companies.

Re: Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

#54

Post by [deleted] »

tesseract wrote: post #22
alnayyir wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>, and they probably can't afford a house. I moved to the bay area recently, and I'm an engineer. I was kind of wondering how people actually live out here. I came here from New York, so I get how people can rent for their whole lives, but I had thought that there'd be more reasonable home ownership in the bay area. Not so. :\

I'm a recent (last few months) migrant to the bay area. I have to say, for a city that hates capitalists, San Francisco sure is expensive. (hmm, maybe there's some causation there?)

[deleted]

Re: Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

#55

Post by tesseract »

stellar678 wrote: post #52
tesseract wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a recent (last few months) migrant to the bay area. I have to say, for a city that hates capitalists, San Francisco sure is expensive. (hmm, maybe there's some causation there?)

Hates capitalists? This city was built on gold and the resulting necessary banking infrastructure. It's the financial center of the west coast!

I'm thinking of the rent control, the seemingly extreme (compared to anywhere else I've experienced) adversity toward any kind of building or redevelopment, the ongoing Twitter dustup, and so forth.

Re: Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

#56

Post by hga »

Mz wrote: post #49
ladon86 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it's definitely not cost of housing, which is very expensive here. For the most part you can expect to pay a lot more for a much smaller house in the UK compared to the US. I'm not sure where it is that we make up the difference in costs, or if indeed we do.

As a guess: Healthcare. My understanding is that it is largely covered by the government in the UK but consumes somewhere in the neighborhood of 20% of US incomes (figure remembered off the top of my head -- I really want to say about 22% but that implies more accuracy than I feel confident implying). So that one item alone should make a quite large impact on actual outcomes.

But, assuming we've been talking about before tax incomes, the mechanism by which you pay for your health care doesn't matter for the purposes of this discussion, does it? I.e. the U.K. has higher individual tax rates in part to cover the NHS's expenses.

That said, the U.K. spends a lot less as a percentage of GDP on health care, but then they have a substantially lower per capita GDP.

ADDED: off the top of my head, U.K. health care spending is 6-7% of GDP, US is 17%.

Re: Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

#57

Post by yaks_hairbrush »

gentschev wrote: post #16

We all agree the article's dumb and pretty poorly written. Many lower income people pay no income taxes at all. I think that's rightly so, but it seems silly to write about a lack of redistribution in the US. In fact, the top 50% of households in income paid 97% of income taxes in 2008. What is troubling, and what the author ignores, is the changing distribution of returns in our economy. There's no point in trying t…

You get a pretty skewed version of the facts when you talk about income tax shares. Payroll taxes hurt quite a bit at lower income levels.

Re: Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

#59

Post by ciamac »

pg wrote: post #3

This is written more like a speech by a politician than as an attempt at analysis. The type of economic inequality that successful startups yield, and which accounts for a lot of the entries in the Forbes 400, is described merely as a theory cherished by the rich, and dismissed with evidence it would be a compliment to call anecdotal. And while there's a lot of talk about how the rich own the government, he doesn't e…

There is a lot of empirical evidence supporting the fact that the rich "own" government, or, more precisely, that politicians vote in ways that are more correlated with beliefs of high income voters than other voters, and that politicians are responsive to contributions. See, for example, the references herein:

http://econ-www.mit.edu/files/6348

Stiglitz is a serious economist and a Nobel laureate, there is data behind what he says, but bear in mind that he's writing this for Vanity Fair and not the American Economic Review.

Re: Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

#60

Post by tesseract »

ladon86 wrote: post #24
tesseract wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GBP 37k What is that percentile wise? As an American, I am perpetually shocked at how low UK salaries sound when I hear them, especially given that I know consumer goods are more expensive on your side of the pond. Is it made up for by comparatively lower cost of housing or other essential items or what? Or is there a huge transatlantic income gap that I never really hear about (mostly it's cost of living differenc…

Well it's definitely not cost of housing, which is very expensive here. For the most part you can expect to pay a lot more for a much smaller house in the UK compared to the US. I'm not sure where it is that we make up the difference in costs, or if indeed we do.

I know in some European countries (I'm thinking specifically of Germany) it's much more common for employees to be issued a company car than it is in the US. Is that true in the UK as well? Or are there other things commonly provided as in-kind employment benefits that would otherwise cost a lot of money?
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