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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%

#91

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

cristianpascu wrote: post #55
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%…

If the inequality is artificial, it might be that an artificial intervention will reverse it. If it's not, than so God help us. A democratically "elected" Robin Hood will probably just take a lot from the rich and give a little to the poor to keep being "elected" democratically. On another side of life, the moment people have enough to pay the bill, anything more will not make them any happier. Leveling the income or…

What is "artificial" in your mind?

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

#92

Post by AstralStorm »

cristianpascu wrote: post #55
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%…

If the inequality is artificial, it might be that an artificial intervention will reverse it. If it's not, than so God help us. A democratically "elected" Robin Hood will probably just take a lot from the rich and give a little to the poor to keep being "elected" democratically. On another side of life, the moment people have enough to pay the bill, anything more will not make them any happier. Leveling the income or…

The actual problem is working long hours when you could be working short hours for the same pay, freeing time for both enjoyment, well being and creativity.

Rich can also afford to hire servants and employees to do things for them. They can also afford expensive extra things or medical procedures without getting bankrupted. Capital such as factories, research facilities. Teams to manipulate both common people (marketing) and politicians (lobbyists).

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

#93

Post by AstralStorm »

dsacco wrote: post #82
mattmanser wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on your view point. You could argue that the process was never really "yours" in the first place. Society, our laws, our armies and natural resources, our roads, bridges, power lines, telecoms structure, are 99% of that process and you added 1%. You simply took advantage of a lot of luck, a little bit of hard work and probably a bunch of your parents' money to end up owning it. Maybe you should get a chunk of…

How would you propose we make a more meritocratic system that doesn't allow for as much luck-based success?

I suppose you want some incorruptible and relatively unbiased jury to manage it as well?

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

#94

Post by AstralStorm »

mcguire wrote: post #79
bendmorris wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so simple. Wealth can be used to gain access to limited resources such as land. Greater wealth inequality means a small segment of the population can afford to buy up all of the housing, driving up prices and blocking others (who may not otherwise be any worse off than they ever were) from owning land. They can then perpetually rent out this land, creating an effortless income for themselves and siphoning va…

You are not thinking big enough. Wealth is about power. Siphoning value is a distant second order to commanding the peons to trim your lawn with nail scissors.

Both feed back into one another if used well. Rich can buy power to stay rich and keep their progeny rich until some major levelling drift catches them. (Say a catastrophe of dumb successor or major misfortune.)

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

#95

Post by AstralStorm »

elsewhen wrote: post #44
spo81rty wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To be pedantic, is not the "skittles" part that is the problem but ratherthe "bag" part of the analogy, since it implies a fixed amount. If the OP somehow weaved a skittles factory into the analogy, the analogy could be spared.

There are no truly open systems in the whole universe if physicists are correct. Much less on Earth alone. Entropy is a thing.

About three only abundant energy resource we have is the Sun and it is quite hard to extract it's output.

Then there are certain biological restrictions like having to eat - a chemical input. Arable land is worth quite a lot, fertile much more still. It is not evenly distributed over Earth. (Similar with fertile paths of the oceans and seas.)

Dense energy sources are yet more scarce.

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

#96

Post by elsewhen »

lorenzhs wrote: post #46
elsewhen wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Income includes capital gains, not only wages. "Income is the sum of all the wages, salaries, profits, interests payments, rents, and other forms of earnings received... in a given period of time." Case, K. & Fair, R. (2007). Principles of Economics, p. 54.

none of those things in the list you supplied are capital gains.

when i buy a stock at $100/share and i sell it later at $110/share, that gain is not a wage, salary, profit, interest, rent or any other form of earning - it is called a "capital gain".

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

#97

Post by mcguire »

dsacco wrote: post #80
mcguire wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you end up with a mountain of skittles that you can use to crush anyone who irritates you while everyone else is eating all the skittles they get in order to survive, then yes, that might be a problem.

But does this actually describe the current state of affairs? If not, how would we get there? That seems like a cognitive jump from people taking unequal amounts of skittles.

I dunno. How do you feel about the political power wielded by the wealthy? Too much? Not enough? What would it take to be too much?

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

#98

Post by maxerickson »

elsewhen wrote: post #96
lorenzhs wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Income includes capital gains, not only wages. "Income is the sum of all the wages, salaries, profits, interests payments, rents, and other forms of earnings received... in a given period of time." Case, K. & Fair, R. (2007). Principles of Economics, p. 54.

none of those things in the list you supplied are capital gains. when i buy a stock at $100/share and i sell it later at $110/share, that gain is not a wage, salary, profit, interest, rent or any other form of earning - it is called a "capital gain".

Capital gains are considered income.

In some jurisdictions they receive special tax treatment, but they are income nonetheless.

For example, for the US, they are included in the "Adjusted Gross Income" calculated on a 1040 tax form, but the amount of tax on the income due to capital gains is calculated differently than the tax on wages.

If you look at section 3 of the paper (which goes over their methodology), they explicitly talk about capital income:

http://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/PSZ2017.pdf

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

#99

Post by KZeillmann »

tomtemplate wrote: post #72
KZeillmann wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's literally in the preceding paragraph. Notes about how the proposed healthcare law was essentially a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, how the proposed tax cuts mainly benefit the richest Americans, and plans to cut school funding.

"how the proposed tax cuts mainly benefit the richest Americans" Did you gather this view from reading the tax reform? https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/trump-tax-reform.pdf

End of the estate tax, end of the AMT, moving the top tax bracket from 39.6% to 25%, to start.

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

#100

Post by rafiki6 »

dsacco wrote: post #41
rafiki6 wrote: post #17

When inequality grows, empires shrink and eventually disappear: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/feb/05/inequality-... And let's not kid ourselves. Those on top intend on staying there by growing the gap.

I don't really understand how that article by the Guardian supports your thesis that, "when inequality grows, empires shrink and eventually disappear." What do you mean?

What's not clear...it's even in the title. Inequality leads to economic collapse. Here's the end of the article "An economic model that allows the richest members of society to accumulate a larger and larger share of the cake will eventually self-destruct. It is a lesson that is yet to be learned." Generally any state, nation or empire is heavily dependent on a having a strong and healthy economy to remain stable...
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