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On November 13 2013 05:10 Roe wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2013 04:56 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 13 2013 03:55 Sbrubbles wrote:On November 12 2013 23:10 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 12 2013 16:32 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 16:15 Danglars wrote:On November 12 2013 15:07 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 14:55 Danglars wrote:On November 12 2013 12:26 sam!zdat wrote:
there's no opportunity to advance, civilization is just settling back into its usual pattern of tiny elites and massive underclass, after the anomalous interlude of large american middle class which is basically just a historical oddity On November 12 2013 13:21 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 12:23 Danglars wrote:
[quote]
I have to accept something less than utopia. Utopia is not for this world. Income and standard of life inequality must exist at some level if the community is not entirely in grinding poverty. To create the the fastest increase in standards of life for the lowest in society, we have capitalist markets.
Why? Without capitalism and the notions of price signalling and profits, you condemn the poor to their pitiable state by depriving them of opportunity to advance. Without the same there will not be a sufficiently prosperous society to provide the wealth necessary to help the truly destitute, unless you want a generalized decrease in living standards across the board. I argue for a safety net of sorts, as much as that construction is abused, to keep that extreme poverty far away and to help the aged and disabled that lack the resources for their own care.
Now, I simplify your revolution in class structure to the natural progressive urges present in capitalist societies. As much as the problem with the related communist society is the communists, the problem with capitalist society is the capitalists. Unwilling to accept that other forms would not lead to an increase in poverty rather than a decrease, they agitate for it -- particularly the richest. When, however, the help for impoverished persons transforms into a lifestyle with heavy disincentives for an exit (a welfare trap), then we have a perversion of a good thing and a moral need to reform it. We are not conquering the basic human attribute of envy that commands so much political power nowadays, but we are limiting its destructive and self-defeating economic policies with a healthy dose of reason and historical proof. Not sure what the bolded sentence means. Seems like you are missing an antecedent. You misunderstand human beings. They are not rational actors who respond to financial incentives like you think they do. And no one would prefer living in poverty with an iphone to a wealthy life without one. Perhaps I jumped too far with the phrase prior for those that have never heard it. It's no matter. And it isn't only financial incentives, it's the lack of financial disincentives in almost equal portion. Your mythical irrational actors, unconcerned with a better life for themselves and their family, slavishly working on despite government telling them that jobs are risky but welfare is bedrock, are not to be found in any great number on this earth. Impoverishing the country is how you create opportunity and jobs. Condemning the poor to their lot is your compassion. There you have it. I can only dream of raising up as many straw men as you have in the past 50 pages, but dream on I shall. I say it is unfair to the poor for their would-be representatives to continually seek to keep them that way claiming compassion every step of the way. That is the first thing that enters my mind when I hear Sam talking about this or that "exacerbat[ing] social inequality" or these expansionist conceptions of the welfare state. I know this is a difficult concept for you to understand, since you would love to work part time and collect food stamps while making 18k a year, but most people who are on welfare would rather have a well-paying job. Maybe you do understand this, but your definition of "well-paying" is $2 for 16 hours of labor a day to make Nike shoes while living in corporate owned housing with bunk beds next to your coworkers. It's unclear at this point. So what's the main driving force of inequality in the country/world at large right now? Welfare increasing the inequality gap according to you? I really don't understand your position. You seem to say that inequality is a problem and that if only we had freer markets it would take care of itself. Inequality at its extreme is a problem. I don't see that in America today. I do see a political party more concerned with beating the rich down into submission than the actual plight of the poor. They're fine with the entire country less prosperous, if the poor maintains their lot in life, as long as net inequality goes down. I believe the opposite ... that inequality taken alone tells very little and the poorest societies can be those with the lowest inequality. It's a misplaced focus as much as it is a disgusting political tactic. Exacerbate envy for political purposes. I find the people having your views are exactly those intent on policies that ensure the poor person on welfare will never be able to find a job with his skills. From taxation to regulation to minimum wage, the crusade is counterproductive to poverty. I brought up the welfare trap in regards to sam's conception of the welfare state, not on the topic of inequality. On November 12 2013 15:32 HunterX11 wrote:On November 12 2013 15:07 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 14:55 Danglars wrote:On November 12 2013 12:26 sam!zdat wrote:
there's no opportunity to advance, civilization is just settling back into its usual pattern of tiny elites and massive underclass, after the anomalous interlude of large american middle class which is basically just a historical oddity On November 12 2013 13:21 IgnE wrote:
[quote]
Not sure what the bolded sentence means. Seems like you are missing an antecedent.
You misunderstand human beings. They are not rational actors who respond to financial incentives like you think they do. And no one would prefer living in poverty with an iphone to a wealthy life without one. Perhaps I jumped too far with the phrase prior for those that have never heard it. It's no matter. And it isn't only financial incentives, it's the lack of financial disincentives in almost equal portion. Your mythical irrational actors, unconcerned with a better life for themselves and their family, slavishly working on despite government telling them that jobs are risky but welfare is bedrock, are not to be found in any great number on this earth. Impoverishing the country is how you create opportunity and jobs. Condemning the poor to their lot is your compassion. There you have it. I can only dream of raising up as many straw men as you have in the past 50 pages, but dream on I shall. I say it is unfair to the poor for their would-be representatives to continually seek to keep them that way claiming compassion every step of the way. That is the first thing that enters my mind when I hear Sam talking about this or that "exacerbat[ing] social inequality" or these expansionist conceptions of the welfare state. I know this is a difficult concept for you to understand, since you would love to work part time and collect food stamps while making 18k a year, but most people who are on welfare would rather have a well-paying job. Maybe you do understand this, but your definition of "well-paying" is $2 for 16 hours of labor a day to make Nike shoes while living in corporate owned housing with bunk beds next to your coworkers. It's unclear at this point. So what's the main driving force of inequality in the country/world at large right now? Welfare increasing the inequality gap according to you? I really don't understand your position. You seem to say that inequality is a problem and that if only we had freer markets it would take care of itself. Remember that people believe that welfare queens are a thing in real life and not just a dogwhistle racism campaign tactic. The race card has served your cause well. In the absence of a debate on ideas, insinuate your opponents are racists. Keep creating the very same poverty you decry. Keep hounding those in society actually concerned with welfare reform. So this graph doesn't bother you: + Show Spoiler +That's not extreme inequality or you, personally, just don't see it out in your travels? Which political party is the one beating down the poor rich people into submission? The one led by the neoliberals or the other one led by the neoliberals? So according to you, if we had less welfare and fewer taxes the people collecting welfare right now could at least be earning $4 an hour picking oranges in Florida and apples in California. Do you not see the disconnect there? Your argument is that taxation and regulation makes it prohibitive to hire people who want to work, so if we removed those socialist barriers, we could get people currently on welfare out in the fields picking cotton instead of immigrants or people in the third world. How does that not result in higher inequality than the already egregious inequality seen in the above graph? Wealth inequality is really hard to deal with. I don't recall any plausible ideas out of the left to deal with that (mostly they seem to be concerned with income / consumption inequality). If you can think of any, remind me, it could be a good discussion. And to both your and Danglars' concerns - yes we need to put resources into helping the poor, but we also need to be concerned about how we deploy those resources. And many options for using those resources exist. Let's not box ourselves into either blindly throwing money at the problem or not trying at all. I agree that politicians generally focus on income inequality as a opposed to wealth inequality, but inheritance tax and land tax are two leftist (very broadly speaking) ideas related to it. Sort of. That's a tax on wealth, so it could potentially reduce the value of it, but it does nothing to increase the amount of wealth on the lower end. By taxing wealth, employers will simply avoid that tax and boost productivity, giving wealth to the lower end. If they're going to pay that money anyway, they'll use it instead to increase productivity of their company. edit: income, wealth, bleh w/e
How do you avoid the tax by boosting productivity?
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On November 13 2013 04:17 corumjhaelen wrote:
sam!, don't you think there's a hard contradiction to surmont between the fact that "radical emancipatory politics" would (at least in my mind) tend to toward a very local form of organization and the high interdependance between states nowadays ? We need the revolution everywhere I fear.
Yeah that's the central problem of our epoch imo
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On November 13 2013 05:33 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2013 05:10 Roe wrote:On November 13 2013 04:56 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 13 2013 03:55 Sbrubbles wrote:On November 12 2013 23:10 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 12 2013 16:32 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 16:15 Danglars wrote:On November 12 2013 15:07 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 14:55 Danglars wrote:On November 12 2013 12:26 sam!zdat wrote:
there's no opportunity to advance, civilization is just settling back into its usual pattern of tiny elites and massive underclass, after the anomalous interlude of large american middle class which is basically just a historical oddity On November 12 2013 13:21 IgnE wrote:
[quote]
Not sure what the bolded sentence means. Seems like you are missing an antecedent.
You misunderstand human beings. They are not rational actors who respond to financial incentives like you think they do. And no one would prefer living in poverty with an iphone to a wealthy life without one. Perhaps I jumped too far with the phrase prior for those that have never heard it. It's no matter. And it isn't only financial incentives, it's the lack of financial disincentives in almost equal portion. Your mythical irrational actors, unconcerned with a better life for themselves and their family, slavishly working on despite government telling them that jobs are risky but welfare is bedrock, are not to be found in any great number on this earth. Impoverishing the country is how you create opportunity and jobs. Condemning the poor to their lot is your compassion. There you have it. I can only dream of raising up as many straw men as you have in the past 50 pages, but dream on I shall. I say it is unfair to the poor for their would-be representatives to continually seek to keep them that way claiming compassion every step of the way. That is the first thing that enters my mind when I hear Sam talking about this or that "exacerbat[ing] social inequality" or these expansionist conceptions of the welfare state. I know this is a difficult concept for you to understand, since you would love to work part time and collect food stamps while making 18k a year, but most people who are on welfare would rather have a well-paying job. Maybe you do understand this, but your definition of "well-paying" is $2 for 16 hours of labor a day to make Nike shoes while living in corporate owned housing with bunk beds next to your coworkers. It's unclear at this point. So what's the main driving force of inequality in the country/world at large right now? Welfare increasing the inequality gap according to you? I really don't understand your position. You seem to say that inequality is a problem and that if only we had freer markets it would take care of itself. Inequality at its extreme is a problem. I don't see that in America today. I do see a political party more concerned with beating the rich down into submission than the actual plight of the poor. They're fine with the entire country less prosperous, if the poor maintains their lot in life, as long as net inequality goes down. I believe the opposite ... that inequality taken alone tells very little and the poorest societies can be those with the lowest inequality. It's a misplaced focus as much as it is a disgusting political tactic. Exacerbate envy for political purposes. I find the people having your views are exactly those intent on policies that ensure the poor person on welfare will never be able to find a job with his skills. From taxation to regulation to minimum wage, the crusade is counterproductive to poverty. I brought up the welfare trap in regards to sam's conception of the welfare state, not on the topic of inequality. On November 12 2013 15:32 HunterX11 wrote:On November 12 2013 15:07 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 14:55 Danglars wrote:
[quote]
[quote]
Perhaps I jumped too far with the phrase prior for those that have never heard it. It's no matter. And it isn't only financial incentives, it's the lack of financial disincentives in almost equal portion. Your mythical irrational actors, unconcerned with a better life for themselves and their family, slavishly working on despite government telling them that jobs are risky but welfare is bedrock, are not to be found in any great number on this earth. Impoverishing the country is how you create opportunity and jobs. Condemning the poor to their lot is your compassion.
There you have it. I can only dream of raising up as many straw men as you have in the past 50 pages, but dream on I shall. I say it is unfair to the poor for their would-be representatives to continually seek to keep them that way claiming compassion every step of the way. That is the first thing that enters my mind when I hear Sam talking about this or that "exacerbat[ing] social inequality" or these expansionist conceptions of the welfare state. I know this is a difficult concept for you to understand, since you would love to work part time and collect food stamps while making 18k a year, but most people who are on welfare would rather have a well-paying job. Maybe you do understand this, but your definition of "well-paying" is $2 for 16 hours of labor a day to make Nike shoes while living in corporate owned housing with bunk beds next to your coworkers. It's unclear at this point. So what's the main driving force of inequality in the country/world at large right now? Welfare increasing the inequality gap according to you? I really don't understand your position. You seem to say that inequality is a problem and that if only we had freer markets it would take care of itself. Remember that people believe that welfare queens are a thing in real life and not just a dogwhistle racism campaign tactic. The race card has served your cause well. In the absence of a debate on ideas, insinuate your opponents are racists. Keep creating the very same poverty you decry. Keep hounding those in society actually concerned with welfare reform. So this graph doesn't bother you: + Show Spoiler +That's not extreme inequality or you, personally, just don't see it out in your travels? Which political party is the one beating down the poor rich people into submission? The one led by the neoliberals or the other one led by the neoliberals? So according to you, if we had less welfare and fewer taxes the people collecting welfare right now could at least be earning $4 an hour picking oranges in Florida and apples in California. Do you not see the disconnect there? Your argument is that taxation and regulation makes it prohibitive to hire people who want to work, so if we removed those socialist barriers, we could get people currently on welfare out in the fields picking cotton instead of immigrants or people in the third world. How does that not result in higher inequality than the already egregious inequality seen in the above graph? Wealth inequality is really hard to deal with. I don't recall any plausible ideas out of the left to deal with that (mostly they seem to be concerned with income / consumption inequality). If you can think of any, remind me, it could be a good discussion. And to both your and Danglars' concerns - yes we need to put resources into helping the poor, but we also need to be concerned about how we deploy those resources. And many options for using those resources exist. Let's not box ourselves into either blindly throwing money at the problem or not trying at all. I agree that politicians generally focus on income inequality as a opposed to wealth inequality, but inheritance tax and land tax are two leftist (very broadly speaking) ideas related to it. Sort of. That's a tax on wealth, so it could potentially reduce the value of it, but it does nothing to increase the amount of wealth on the lower end. By taxing wealth, employers will simply avoid that tax and boost productivity, giving wealth to the lower end. If they're going to pay that money anyway, they'll use it instead to increase productivity of their company. edit: income, wealth, bleh w/e How do you avoid the tax by boosting productivity?
Because you've hired someone, you've spend the money and thus aren't taxed.
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On November 13 2013 05:46 sam!zdat wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2013 04:17 corumjhaelen wrote:
sam!, don't you think there's a hard contradiction to surmont between the fact that "radical emancipatory politics" would (at least in my mind) tend to toward a very local form of organization and the high interdependance between states nowadays ? We need the revolution everywhere I fear. Yeah that's the central problem of our epoch imo
Ok, brb solving this shit, let me put that into equations !
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On November 13 2013 04:26 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2013 04:25 naastyOne wrote:On November 13 2013 04:18 WhiteDog wrote:On November 13 2013 04:10 naastyOne wrote:On November 13 2013 00:49 WhiteDog wrote:On November 13 2013 00:43 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 13 2013 00:22 WhiteDog wrote:On November 12 2013 23:10 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 12 2013 16:32 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 16:15 Danglars wrote:
[quote]
Inequality at its extreme is a problem. I don't see that in America today. I do see a political party more concerned with beating the rich down into submission than the actual plight of the poor. They're fine with the entire country less prosperous, if the poor maintains their lot in life, as long as net inequality goes down. I believe the opposite ... that inequality taken alone tells very little and the poorest societies can be those with the lowest inequality. It's a misplaced focus as much as it is a disgusting political tactic. Exacerbate envy for political purposes.
I find the people having your views are exactly those intent on policies that ensure the poor person on welfare will never be able to find a job with his skills. From taxation to regulation to minimum wage, the crusade is counterproductive to poverty. I brought up the welfare trap in regards to sam's conception of the welfare state, not on the topic of inequality.
[quote]
The race card has served your cause well. In the absence of a debate on ideas, insinuate your opponents are racists. Keep creating the very same poverty you decry. Keep hounding those in society actually concerned with welfare reform. So this graph doesn't bother you: + Show Spoiler +That's not extreme inequality or you, personally, just don't see it out in your travels? Which political party is the one beating down the poor rich people into submission? The one led by the neoliberals or the other one led by the neoliberals? So according to you, if we had less welfare and fewer taxes the people collecting welfare right now could at least be earning $4 an hour picking oranges in Florida and apples in California. Do you not see the disconnect there? Your argument is that taxation and regulation makes it prohibitive to hire people who want to work, so if we removed those socialist barriers, we could get people currently on welfare out in the fields picking cotton instead of immigrants or people in the third world. How does that not result in higher inequality than the already egregious inequality seen in the above graph? Wealth inequality is really hard to deal with. I don't recall any plausible ideas out of the left to deal with that (mostly they seem to be concerned with income / consumption inequality). If you can think of any, remind me, it could be a good discussion. I don't know what's the best answer to that : "lol", "really ?" or a simple "what ?". How about fiscal redistribution ? Just consider america's history : in 1964, the marginal tax rate for richest people was at 91%, 70% in the 70s and now only around 25%. It is pretty easy to fight wealth inequalities, you just have to do something against it. Redistributing wealth is tricky because you need the wealth to stay wealth, otherwise the inequality persists. So you can't just redistribute, you need some mechanism to prevent the poor from selling the wealth to fund consumption. Otherwise you are dealing with income / consumption inequality, not wealth inequality. Comparing taxes from 1964 to today requires more than just looking at the top marginal rates. FYI, the top federal rate now is 39.6%, not 25%. Don't nitpick, and stop bullshitting me. Inequality persist because you... NO. Please, no. Please. Comparing taxes from 1964 to today requires more than just looking at the top marginal rates. And what does it needs more ? You can't deny the fact that most countries have higher marginal taxation rates, and the higher the marginal taxation rate is, the lower inequalities are (50% in northern european countries, 45% in France, etc.). Also, if you put a high marginal taxation rate on wages, you prevent firms from giving too big salaries as they will try to minimize taxation. Not to mention your argument means nothing because if the poor actually consume most of the surplus they gain because of the redistribution and even if this money actually goes back in the hand of the rich, the rich will again be taxed and thus the money will go back to the poor : it's a circuit, of course rich gain money from poor's consumption, the goal is not to minimize this flux (because it is beneficial to the economy), but to minimize the accumulation of flux (saving rate, patrimony, etc.) and this is entirely possible if you tax enough. On November 13 2013 00:43 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 13 2013 00:22 WhiteDog wrote:On November 12 2013 23:10 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 12 2013 16:32 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 16:15 Danglars wrote:
[quote]
Inequality at its extreme is a problem. I don't see that in America today. I do see a political party more concerned with beating the rich down into submission than the actual plight of the poor. They're fine with the entire country less prosperous, if the poor maintains their lot in life, as long as net inequality goes down. I believe the opposite ... that inequality taken alone tells very little and the poorest societies can be those with the lowest inequality. It's a misplaced focus as much as it is a disgusting political tactic. Exacerbate envy for political purposes.
I find the people having your views are exactly those intent on policies that ensure the poor person on welfare will never be able to find a job with his skills. From taxation to regulation to minimum wage, the crusade is counterproductive to poverty. I brought up the welfare trap in regards to sam's conception of the welfare state, not on the topic of inequality.
[quote]
The race card has served your cause well. In the absence of a debate on ideas, insinuate your opponents are racists. Keep creating the very same poverty you decry. Keep hounding those in society actually concerned with welfare reform. So this graph doesn't bother you: + Show Spoiler +That's not extreme inequality or you, personally, just don't see it out in your travels? Which political party is the one beating down the poor rich people into submission? The one led by the neoliberals or the other one led by the neoliberals? So according to you, if we had less welfare and fewer taxes the people collecting welfare right now could at least be earning $4 an hour picking oranges in Florida and apples in California. Do you not see the disconnect there? Your argument is that taxation and regulation makes it prohibitive to hire people who want to work, so if we removed those socialist barriers, we could get people currently on welfare out in the fields picking cotton instead of immigrants or people in the third world. How does that not result in higher inequality than the already egregious inequality seen in the above graph? Wealth inequality is really hard to deal with. I don't recall any plausible ideas out of the left to deal with that (mostly they seem to be concerned with income / consumption inequality). If you can think of any, remind me, it could be a good discussion. I don't know what's the best answer to that : "lol", "really ?" or a simple "what ?". How about fiscal redistribution ? Just consider america's history : in 1964, the marginal tax rate for richest people was at 91%, 70% in the 70s and now only around 25%. It is pretty easy to fight wealth inequalities, you just have to do something against it. Edit: responding to the graph, the change in effective tax rate on the top earners is no where near as dramatic as the change in marginal tax rates. The tax brackets were lowered and loopholes / deductions were eliminated, which partially offset the decline in marginal rates: ![[image loading]](http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/assets_c/2013/01/Average_Federal_Tax_Rates_Top_1_Percent-thumb-615x480-109671.png) Link You know why your graph is irrelevant right ? Because even if the average tax rate didn't move, the 1% then (in 1979) and now (in 2010) is not the same and doesn't posses the same share of the national income. So, your graph actually proves my argument is right if you add to it a graph comparing the share of the national income of the top 1% in 1979 to today : because the marginal taxation rate was lowered, it didn't limited the rising of inequalities (which is, the fact that the top 1% from 1979 to today posses an increasing part of the national income). If you think Scandinavia is a good example, you would see, how much the way how wealth is redistributed, matters. Universal kindergarden, good public schools system, public Universities, a Well managed single payer healthcare, high goverment transperency, that lowers the danger of public spending going to private pockets. However, as you can see, the model is not as much focused on just "making rich poor", as much as creating a wellfare state that provides highly-educated, high-quality, and high-payed labour force, and boosting it`s participation in politics. High-tech export based economy, that heavilly rely on capital-intencive productions, is simply impossible without huge private capital to invest in it. Goverment invests into labour thrugh public services, Private sector invests into jobs. Not a lot of free handouts for the poor are left. You're wrong, I never said scandinavian are the best exemple, I just pointed out the empiric evidence that with higher marginal taxation rate you have less inequalities. And having a high marginal taxation rate is not focussed on making rich poor. Your impirical evidence is not supported by fact, since it doesn`t take into account who will get the public money. If the system is corrupt, marginal tax rate is irrelevant. High marginal tax rates is focused on making rich less rich. You argue the level, not principle. No and no. ![[image loading]](http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1159884/original.jpg) http://www.nber.org/papers/w19075There is a quick review of this study here http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/28/income-inequality-study_n_3346073.htmlGuess why the UK do even better than the US despite a bigger change in top marginal rate? Because their marginal taxation rate is still bigger (50% to 35%).
To be fair, correlation != causation
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On November 13 2013 06:14 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2013 04:26 WhiteDog wrote:On November 13 2013 04:25 naastyOne wrote:On November 13 2013 04:18 WhiteDog wrote:On November 13 2013 04:10 naastyOne wrote:On November 13 2013 00:49 WhiteDog wrote:On November 13 2013 00:43 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 13 2013 00:22 WhiteDog wrote:On November 12 2013 23:10 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 12 2013 16:32 IgnE wrote:[quote] So this graph doesn't bother you: + Show Spoiler +That's not extreme inequality or you, personally, just don't see it out in your travels? Which political party is the one beating down the poor rich people into submission? The one led by the neoliberals or the other one led by the neoliberals? So according to you, if we had less welfare and fewer taxes the people collecting welfare right now could at least be earning $4 an hour picking oranges in Florida and apples in California. Do you not see the disconnect there? Your argument is that taxation and regulation makes it prohibitive to hire people who want to work, so if we removed those socialist barriers, we could get people currently on welfare out in the fields picking cotton instead of immigrants or people in the third world. How does that not result in higher inequality than the already egregious inequality seen in the above graph? Wealth inequality is really hard to deal with. I don't recall any plausible ideas out of the left to deal with that (mostly they seem to be concerned with income / consumption inequality). If you can think of any, remind me, it could be a good discussion. I don't know what's the best answer to that : "lol", "really ?" or a simple "what ?". How about fiscal redistribution ? Just consider america's history : in 1964, the marginal tax rate for richest people was at 91%, 70% in the 70s and now only around 25%. It is pretty easy to fight wealth inequalities, you just have to do something against it. Redistributing wealth is tricky because you need the wealth to stay wealth, otherwise the inequality persists. So you can't just redistribute, you need some mechanism to prevent the poor from selling the wealth to fund consumption. Otherwise you are dealing with income / consumption inequality, not wealth inequality. Comparing taxes from 1964 to today requires more than just looking at the top marginal rates. FYI, the top federal rate now is 39.6%, not 25%. Don't nitpick, and stop bullshitting me. Inequality persist because you... NO. Please, no. Please. Comparing taxes from 1964 to today requires more than just looking at the top marginal rates. And what does it needs more ? You can't deny the fact that most countries have higher marginal taxation rates, and the higher the marginal taxation rate is, the lower inequalities are (50% in northern european countries, 45% in France, etc.). Also, if you put a high marginal taxation rate on wages, you prevent firms from giving too big salaries as they will try to minimize taxation. Not to mention your argument means nothing because if the poor actually consume most of the surplus they gain because of the redistribution and even if this money actually goes back in the hand of the rich, the rich will again be taxed and thus the money will go back to the poor : it's a circuit, of course rich gain money from poor's consumption, the goal is not to minimize this flux (because it is beneficial to the economy), but to minimize the accumulation of flux (saving rate, patrimony, etc.) and this is entirely possible if you tax enough. On November 13 2013 00:43 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 13 2013 00:22 WhiteDog wrote:On November 12 2013 23:10 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 12 2013 16:32 IgnE wrote:[quote] So this graph doesn't bother you: + Show Spoiler +That's not extreme inequality or you, personally, just don't see it out in your travels? Which political party is the one beating down the poor rich people into submission? The one led by the neoliberals or the other one led by the neoliberals? So according to you, if we had less welfare and fewer taxes the people collecting welfare right now could at least be earning $4 an hour picking oranges in Florida and apples in California. Do you not see the disconnect there? Your argument is that taxation and regulation makes it prohibitive to hire people who want to work, so if we removed those socialist barriers, we could get people currently on welfare out in the fields picking cotton instead of immigrants or people in the third world. How does that not result in higher inequality than the already egregious inequality seen in the above graph? Wealth inequality is really hard to deal with. I don't recall any plausible ideas out of the left to deal with that (mostly they seem to be concerned with income / consumption inequality). If you can think of any, remind me, it could be a good discussion. I don't know what's the best answer to that : "lol", "really ?" or a simple "what ?". How about fiscal redistribution ? Just consider america's history : in 1964, the marginal tax rate for richest people was at 91%, 70% in the 70s and now only around 25%. It is pretty easy to fight wealth inequalities, you just have to do something against it. Edit: responding to the graph, the change in effective tax rate on the top earners is no where near as dramatic as the change in marginal tax rates. The tax brackets were lowered and loopholes / deductions were eliminated, which partially offset the decline in marginal rates: Link You know why your graph is irrelevant right ? Because even if the average tax rate didn't move, the 1% then (in 1979) and now (in 2010) is not the same and doesn't posses the same share of the national income. So, your graph actually proves my argument is right if you add to it a graph comparing the share of the national income of the top 1% in 1979 to today : because the marginal taxation rate was lowered, it didn't limited the rising of inequalities (which is, the fact that the top 1% from 1979 to today posses an increasing part of the national income). If you think Scandinavia is a good example, you would see, how much the way how wealth is redistributed, matters. Universal kindergarden, good public schools system, public Universities, a Well managed single payer healthcare, high goverment transperency, that lowers the danger of public spending going to private pockets. However, as you can see, the model is not as much focused on just "making rich poor", as much as creating a wellfare state that provides highly-educated, high-quality, and high-payed labour force, and boosting it`s participation in politics. High-tech export based economy, that heavilly rely on capital-intencive productions, is simply impossible without huge private capital to invest in it. Goverment invests into labour thrugh public services, Private sector invests into jobs. Not a lot of free handouts for the poor are left. You're wrong, I never said scandinavian are the best exemple, I just pointed out the empiric evidence that with higher marginal taxation rate you have less inequalities. And having a high marginal taxation rate is not focussed on making rich poor. Your impirical evidence is not supported by fact, since it doesn`t take into account who will get the public money. If the system is corrupt, marginal tax rate is irrelevant. High marginal tax rates is focused on making rich less rich. You argue the level, not principle. No and no. http://www.nber.org/papers/w19075There is a quick review of this study here http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/28/income-inequality-study_n_3346073.htmlGuess why the UK do even better than the US despite a bigger change in top marginal rate? Because their marginal taxation rate is still bigger (50% to 35%). To be fair, correlation != causation
To be fair, evidence trumps the phrase 'correlation != causation' when the phrase isn't accompanied by any analysis. For example you could point out confounding variables and explain why the relationship isn't indicative of a causal relationship.
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On November 13 2013 04:56 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2013 03:55 Sbrubbles wrote:On November 12 2013 23:10 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 12 2013 16:32 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 16:15 Danglars wrote:On November 12 2013 15:07 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 14:55 Danglars wrote:On November 12 2013 12:26 sam!zdat wrote:
there's no opportunity to advance, civilization is just settling back into its usual pattern of tiny elites and massive underclass, after the anomalous interlude of large american middle class which is basically just a historical oddity On November 12 2013 13:21 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 12:23 Danglars wrote:On November 12 2013 11:36 sam!zdat wrote:
you don't get it. a fully private healthcare system would just exacerbate social inequality and make even more obvious the gap between the haves and have nots. there's no politically feasible way to allow that to happen without also revolutionizing the relations of production and solving the deeper contradictions in the class structure of american society. government intervention in healthcare is part of the social democratic compromise that is the only thing holding the fabric of capitalist society together. the only possible capitalist state is the welfare state - if you don't like the welfare state (i hate it) you are going to have to start thinking about alternatives to capitalism. I have to accept something less than utopia. Utopia is not for this world. Income and standard of life inequality must exist at some level if the community is not entirely in grinding poverty. To create the the fastest increase in standards of life for the lowest in society, we have capitalist markets. Why? Without capitalism and the notions of price signalling and profits, you condemn the poor to their pitiable state by depriving them of opportunity to advance. Without the same there will not be a sufficiently prosperous society to provide the wealth necessary to help the truly destitute, unless you want a generalized decrease in living standards across the board. I argue for a safety net of sorts, as much as that construction is abused, to keep that extreme poverty far away and to help the aged and disabled that lack the resources for their own care. Now, I simplify your revolution in class structure to the natural progressive urges present in capitalist societies. As much as the problem with the related communist society is the communists, the problem with capitalist society is the capitalists. Unwilling to accept that other forms would not lead to an increase in poverty rather than a decrease, they agitate for it -- particularly the richest. When, however, the help for impoverished persons transforms into a lifestyle with heavy disincentives for an exit (a welfare trap), then we have a perversion of a good thing and a moral need to reform it. We are not conquering the basic human attribute of envy that commands so much political power nowadays, but we are limiting its destructive and self-defeating economic policies with a healthy dose of reason and historical proof. Not sure what the bolded sentence means. Seems like you are missing an antecedent. You misunderstand human beings. They are not rational actors who respond to financial incentives like you think they do. And no one would prefer living in poverty with an iphone to a wealthy life without one. Perhaps I jumped too far with the phrase prior for those that have never heard it. It's no matter. And it isn't only financial incentives, it's the lack of financial disincentives in almost equal portion. Your mythical irrational actors, unconcerned with a better life for themselves and their family, slavishly working on despite government telling them that jobs are risky but welfare is bedrock, are not to be found in any great number on this earth. Impoverishing the country is how you create opportunity and jobs. Condemning the poor to their lot is your compassion. There you have it. I can only dream of raising up as many straw men as you have in the past 50 pages, but dream on I shall. I say it is unfair to the poor for their would-be representatives to continually seek to keep them that way claiming compassion every step of the way. That is the first thing that enters my mind when I hear Sam talking about this or that "exacerbat[ing] social inequality" or these expansionist conceptions of the welfare state. I know this is a difficult concept for you to understand, since you would love to work part time and collect food stamps while making 18k a year, but most people who are on welfare would rather have a well-paying job. Maybe you do understand this, but your definition of "well-paying" is $2 for 16 hours of labor a day to make Nike shoes while living in corporate owned housing with bunk beds next to your coworkers. It's unclear at this point. So what's the main driving force of inequality in the country/world at large right now? Welfare increasing the inequality gap according to you? I really don't understand your position. You seem to say that inequality is a problem and that if only we had freer markets it would take care of itself. Inequality at its extreme is a problem. I don't see that in America today. I do see a political party more concerned with beating the rich down into submission than the actual plight of the poor. They're fine with the entire country less prosperous, if the poor maintains their lot in life, as long as net inequality goes down. I believe the opposite ... that inequality taken alone tells very little and the poorest societies can be those with the lowest inequality. It's a misplaced focus as much as it is a disgusting political tactic. Exacerbate envy for political purposes. I find the people having your views are exactly those intent on policies that ensure the poor person on welfare will never be able to find a job with his skills. From taxation to regulation to minimum wage, the crusade is counterproductive to poverty. I brought up the welfare trap in regards to sam's conception of the welfare state, not on the topic of inequality. On November 12 2013 15:32 HunterX11 wrote:On November 12 2013 15:07 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 14:55 Danglars wrote:On November 12 2013 12:26 sam!zdat wrote:
there's no opportunity to advance, civilization is just settling back into its usual pattern of tiny elites and massive underclass, after the anomalous interlude of large american middle class which is basically just a historical oddity On November 12 2013 13:21 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 12:23 Danglars wrote:
[quote]
I have to accept something less than utopia. Utopia is not for this world. Income and standard of life inequality must exist at some level if the community is not entirely in grinding poverty. To create the the fastest increase in standards of life for the lowest in society, we have capitalist markets.
Why? Without capitalism and the notions of price signalling and profits, you condemn the poor to their pitiable state by depriving them of opportunity to advance. Without the same there will not be a sufficiently prosperous society to provide the wealth necessary to help the truly destitute, unless you want a generalized decrease in living standards across the board. I argue for a safety net of sorts, as much as that construction is abused, to keep that extreme poverty far away and to help the aged and disabled that lack the resources for their own care.
Now, I simplify your revolution in class structure to the natural progressive urges present in capitalist societies. As much as the problem with the related communist society is the communists, the problem with capitalist society is the capitalists. Unwilling to accept that other forms would not lead to an increase in poverty rather than a decrease, they agitate for it -- particularly the richest. When, however, the help for impoverished persons transforms into a lifestyle with heavy disincentives for an exit (a welfare trap), then we have a perversion of a good thing and a moral need to reform it. We are not conquering the basic human attribute of envy that commands so much political power nowadays, but we are limiting its destructive and self-defeating economic policies with a healthy dose of reason and historical proof. Not sure what the bolded sentence means. Seems like you are missing an antecedent. You misunderstand human beings. They are not rational actors who respond to financial incentives like you think they do. And no one would prefer living in poverty with an iphone to a wealthy life without one. Perhaps I jumped too far with the phrase prior for those that have never heard it. It's no matter. And it isn't only financial incentives, it's the lack of financial disincentives in almost equal portion. Your mythical irrational actors, unconcerned with a better life for themselves and their family, slavishly working on despite government telling them that jobs are risky but welfare is bedrock, are not to be found in any great number on this earth. Impoverishing the country is how you create opportunity and jobs. Condemning the poor to their lot is your compassion. There you have it. I can only dream of raising up as many straw men as you have in the past 50 pages, but dream on I shall. I say it is unfair to the poor for their would-be representatives to continually seek to keep them that way claiming compassion every step of the way. That is the first thing that enters my mind when I hear Sam talking about this or that "exacerbat[ing] social inequality" or these expansionist conceptions of the welfare state. I know this is a difficult concept for you to understand, since you would love to work part time and collect food stamps while making 18k a year, but most people who are on welfare would rather have a well-paying job. Maybe you do understand this, but your definition of "well-paying" is $2 for 16 hours of labor a day to make Nike shoes while living in corporate owned housing with bunk beds next to your coworkers. It's unclear at this point. So what's the main driving force of inequality in the country/world at large right now? Welfare increasing the inequality gap according to you? I really don't understand your position. You seem to say that inequality is a problem and that if only we had freer markets it would take care of itself. Remember that people believe that welfare queens are a thing in real life and not just a dogwhistle racism campaign tactic. The race card has served your cause well. In the absence of a debate on ideas, insinuate your opponents are racists. Keep creating the very same poverty you decry. Keep hounding those in society actually concerned with welfare reform. So this graph doesn't bother you: + Show Spoiler +That's not extreme inequality or you, personally, just don't see it out in your travels? Which political party is the one beating down the poor rich people into submission? The one led by the neoliberals or the other one led by the neoliberals? So according to you, if we had less welfare and fewer taxes the people collecting welfare right now could at least be earning $4 an hour picking oranges in Florida and apples in California. Do you not see the disconnect there? Your argument is that taxation and regulation makes it prohibitive to hire people who want to work, so if we removed those socialist barriers, we could get people currently on welfare out in the fields picking cotton instead of immigrants or people in the third world. How does that not result in higher inequality than the already egregious inequality seen in the above graph? Wealth inequality is really hard to deal with. I don't recall any plausible ideas out of the left to deal with that (mostly they seem to be concerned with income / consumption inequality). If you can think of any, remind me, it could be a good discussion. And to both your and Danglars' concerns - yes we need to put resources into helping the poor, but we also need to be concerned about how we deploy those resources. And many options for using those resources exist. Let's not box ourselves into either blindly throwing money at the problem or not trying at all. I agree that politicians generally focus on income inequality as a opposed to wealth inequality, but inheritance tax and land tax are two leftist (very broadly speaking) ideas related to it. Sort of. That's a tax on wealth, so it could potentially reduce the value of it, but it does nothing to increase the amount of wealth on the lower end.
Well, tax is only half of the equation. It goes without saying that the other half is progressive spending or straight up redistribution.
I think the problem you're refering to is that lower-income households consume more and save less than high-income households, so if you transfer wealth to them it will be more consumed instead of saved when compared to high-income households, but that's a problem that has no solution. I don't think there exists a single policy that can alter saving/consumption incentives so that low-income households save more than high-income households. It's simply impossible. At most cultural changes (and maybe a few select policies) can make those saving rates come closer or affect them both one way or another.
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On November 13 2013 06:06 Roe wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2013 05:33 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 13 2013 05:10 Roe wrote:On November 13 2013 04:56 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 13 2013 03:55 Sbrubbles wrote:On November 12 2013 23:10 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 12 2013 16:32 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 16:15 Danglars wrote:On November 12 2013 15:07 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 14:55 Danglars wrote:
[quote]
[quote]
Perhaps I jumped too far with the phrase prior for those that have never heard it. It's no matter. And it isn't only financial incentives, it's the lack of financial disincentives in almost equal portion. Your mythical irrational actors, unconcerned with a better life for themselves and their family, slavishly working on despite government telling them that jobs are risky but welfare is bedrock, are not to be found in any great number on this earth. Impoverishing the country is how you create opportunity and jobs. Condemning the poor to their lot is your compassion.
There you have it. I can only dream of raising up as many straw men as you have in the past 50 pages, but dream on I shall. I say it is unfair to the poor for their would-be representatives to continually seek to keep them that way claiming compassion every step of the way. That is the first thing that enters my mind when I hear Sam talking about this or that "exacerbat[ing] social inequality" or these expansionist conceptions of the welfare state. I know this is a difficult concept for you to understand, since you would love to work part time and collect food stamps while making 18k a year, but most people who are on welfare would rather have a well-paying job. Maybe you do understand this, but your definition of "well-paying" is $2 for 16 hours of labor a day to make Nike shoes while living in corporate owned housing with bunk beds next to your coworkers. It's unclear at this point. So what's the main driving force of inequality in the country/world at large right now? Welfare increasing the inequality gap according to you? I really don't understand your position. You seem to say that inequality is a problem and that if only we had freer markets it would take care of itself. Inequality at its extreme is a problem. I don't see that in America today. I do see a political party more concerned with beating the rich down into submission than the actual plight of the poor. They're fine with the entire country less prosperous, if the poor maintains their lot in life, as long as net inequality goes down. I believe the opposite ... that inequality taken alone tells very little and the poorest societies can be those with the lowest inequality. It's a misplaced focus as much as it is a disgusting political tactic. Exacerbate envy for political purposes. I find the people having your views are exactly those intent on policies that ensure the poor person on welfare will never be able to find a job with his skills. From taxation to regulation to minimum wage, the crusade is counterproductive to poverty. I brought up the welfare trap in regards to sam's conception of the welfare state, not on the topic of inequality. On November 12 2013 15:32 HunterX11 wrote:On November 12 2013 15:07 IgnE wrote:
[quote]
I know this is a difficult concept for you to understand, since you would love to work part time and collect food stamps while making 18k a year, but most people who are on welfare would rather have a well-paying job. Maybe you do understand this, but your definition of "well-paying" is $2 for 16 hours of labor a day to make Nike shoes while living in corporate owned housing with bunk beds next to your coworkers. It's unclear at this point.
So what's the main driving force of inequality in the country/world at large right now? Welfare increasing the inequality gap according to you? I really don't understand your position. You seem to say that inequality is a problem and that if only we had freer markets it would take care of itself. Remember that people believe that welfare queens are a thing in real life and not just a dogwhistle racism campaign tactic. The race card has served your cause well. In the absence of a debate on ideas, insinuate your opponents are racists. Keep creating the very same poverty you decry. Keep hounding those in society actually concerned with welfare reform. So this graph doesn't bother you: + Show Spoiler +That's not extreme inequality or you, personally, just don't see it out in your travels? Which political party is the one beating down the poor rich people into submission? The one led by the neoliberals or the other one led by the neoliberals? So according to you, if we had less welfare and fewer taxes the people collecting welfare right now could at least be earning $4 an hour picking oranges in Florida and apples in California. Do you not see the disconnect there? Your argument is that taxation and regulation makes it prohibitive to hire people who want to work, so if we removed those socialist barriers, we could get people currently on welfare out in the fields picking cotton instead of immigrants or people in the third world. How does that not result in higher inequality than the already egregious inequality seen in the above graph? Wealth inequality is really hard to deal with. I don't recall any plausible ideas out of the left to deal with that (mostly they seem to be concerned with income / consumption inequality). If you can think of any, remind me, it could be a good discussion. And to both your and Danglars' concerns - yes we need to put resources into helping the poor, but we also need to be concerned about how we deploy those resources. And many options for using those resources exist. Let's not box ourselves into either blindly throwing money at the problem or not trying at all. I agree that politicians generally focus on income inequality as a opposed to wealth inequality, but inheritance tax and land tax are two leftist (very broadly speaking) ideas related to it. Sort of. That's a tax on wealth, so it could potentially reduce the value of it, but it does nothing to increase the amount of wealth on the lower end. By taxing wealth, employers will simply avoid that tax and boost productivity, giving wealth to the lower end. If they're going to pay that money anyway, they'll use it instead to increase productivity of their company. edit: income, wealth, bleh w/e How do you avoid the tax by boosting productivity? Because you've hired someone, you've spend the money and thus aren't taxed.
Not following. If you mean property tax you'll still owe it. If you mean income tax, reducing profit to avoid tax is a money losing prospect and would be the opposite of increasing productivity. If you mean hire someone to boost profits to offset the tax you should be doing that regardless.
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On November 13 2013 07:59 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2013 06:06 Roe wrote:On November 13 2013 05:33 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 13 2013 05:10 Roe wrote:On November 13 2013 04:56 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 13 2013 03:55 Sbrubbles wrote:On November 12 2013 23:10 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 12 2013 16:32 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 16:15 Danglars wrote:On November 12 2013 15:07 IgnE wrote:
[quote]
I know this is a difficult concept for you to understand, since you would love to work part time and collect food stamps while making 18k a year, but most people who are on welfare would rather have a well-paying job. Maybe you do understand this, but your definition of "well-paying" is $2 for 16 hours of labor a day to make Nike shoes while living in corporate owned housing with bunk beds next to your coworkers. It's unclear at this point.
So what's the main driving force of inequality in the country/world at large right now? Welfare increasing the inequality gap according to you? I really don't understand your position. You seem to say that inequality is a problem and that if only we had freer markets it would take care of itself. Inequality at its extreme is a problem. I don't see that in America today. I do see a political party more concerned with beating the rich down into submission than the actual plight of the poor. They're fine with the entire country less prosperous, if the poor maintains their lot in life, as long as net inequality goes down. I believe the opposite ... that inequality taken alone tells very little and the poorest societies can be those with the lowest inequality. It's a misplaced focus as much as it is a disgusting political tactic. Exacerbate envy for political purposes. I find the people having your views are exactly those intent on policies that ensure the poor person on welfare will never be able to find a job with his skills. From taxation to regulation to minimum wage, the crusade is counterproductive to poverty. I brought up the welfare trap in regards to sam's conception of the welfare state, not on the topic of inequality. On November 12 2013 15:32 HunterX11 wrote:
[quote]
Remember that people believe that welfare queens are a thing in real life and not just a dogwhistle racism campaign tactic. The race card has served your cause well. In the absence of a debate on ideas, insinuate your opponents are racists. Keep creating the very same poverty you decry. Keep hounding those in society actually concerned with welfare reform. So this graph doesn't bother you: + Show Spoiler +That's not extreme inequality or you, personally, just don't see it out in your travels? Which political party is the one beating down the poor rich people into submission? The one led by the neoliberals or the other one led by the neoliberals? So according to you, if we had less welfare and fewer taxes the people collecting welfare right now could at least be earning $4 an hour picking oranges in Florida and apples in California. Do you not see the disconnect there? Your argument is that taxation and regulation makes it prohibitive to hire people who want to work, so if we removed those socialist barriers, we could get people currently on welfare out in the fields picking cotton instead of immigrants or people in the third world. How does that not result in higher inequality than the already egregious inequality seen in the above graph? Wealth inequality is really hard to deal with. I don't recall any plausible ideas out of the left to deal with that (mostly they seem to be concerned with income / consumption inequality). If you can think of any, remind me, it could be a good discussion. And to both your and Danglars' concerns - yes we need to put resources into helping the poor, but we also need to be concerned about how we deploy those resources. And many options for using those resources exist. Let's not box ourselves into either blindly throwing money at the problem or not trying at all. I agree that politicians generally focus on income inequality as a opposed to wealth inequality, but inheritance tax and land tax are two leftist (very broadly speaking) ideas related to it. Sort of. That's a tax on wealth, so it could potentially reduce the value of it, but it does nothing to increase the amount of wealth on the lower end. By taxing wealth, employers will simply avoid that tax and boost productivity, giving wealth to the lower end. If they're going to pay that money anyway, they'll use it instead to increase productivity of their company. edit: income, wealth, bleh w/e How do you avoid the tax by boosting productivity? Because you've hired someone, you've spend the money and thus aren't taxed. Not following. If you mean property tax you'll still owe it. If you mean income tax, reducing profit to avoid tax is a money losing prospect and would be the opposite of increasing productivity. If you mean hire someone to boost profits to offset the tax you should be doing that regardless.
Huh? O.o You spend the money you would have spent on taxes, on hiring people for productivity.
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On November 13 2013 08:33 Roe wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2013 07:59 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 13 2013 06:06 Roe wrote:On November 13 2013 05:33 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 13 2013 05:10 Roe wrote:On November 13 2013 04:56 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 13 2013 03:55 Sbrubbles wrote:On November 12 2013 23:10 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 12 2013 16:32 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 16:15 Danglars wrote:
[quote]
Inequality at its extreme is a problem. I don't see that in America today. I do see a political party more concerned with beating the rich down into submission than the actual plight of the poor. They're fine with the entire country less prosperous, if the poor maintains their lot in life, as long as net inequality goes down. I believe the opposite ... that inequality taken alone tells very little and the poorest societies can be those with the lowest inequality. It's a misplaced focus as much as it is a disgusting political tactic. Exacerbate envy for political purposes.
I find the people having your views are exactly those intent on policies that ensure the poor person on welfare will never be able to find a job with his skills. From taxation to regulation to minimum wage, the crusade is counterproductive to poverty. I brought up the welfare trap in regards to sam's conception of the welfare state, not on the topic of inequality.
[quote]
The race card has served your cause well. In the absence of a debate on ideas, insinuate your opponents are racists. Keep creating the very same poverty you decry. Keep hounding those in society actually concerned with welfare reform. So this graph doesn't bother you: + Show Spoiler +That's not extreme inequality or you, personally, just don't see it out in your travels? Which political party is the one beating down the poor rich people into submission? The one led by the neoliberals or the other one led by the neoliberals? So according to you, if we had less welfare and fewer taxes the people collecting welfare right now could at least be earning $4 an hour picking oranges in Florida and apples in California. Do you not see the disconnect there? Your argument is that taxation and regulation makes it prohibitive to hire people who want to work, so if we removed those socialist barriers, we could get people currently on welfare out in the fields picking cotton instead of immigrants or people in the third world. How does that not result in higher inequality than the already egregious inequality seen in the above graph? Wealth inequality is really hard to deal with. I don't recall any plausible ideas out of the left to deal with that (mostly they seem to be concerned with income / consumption inequality). If you can think of any, remind me, it could be a good discussion. And to both your and Danglars' concerns - yes we need to put resources into helping the poor, but we also need to be concerned about how we deploy those resources. And many options for using those resources exist. Let's not box ourselves into either blindly throwing money at the problem or not trying at all. I agree that politicians generally focus on income inequality as a opposed to wealth inequality, but inheritance tax and land tax are two leftist (very broadly speaking) ideas related to it. Sort of. That's a tax on wealth, so it could potentially reduce the value of it, but it does nothing to increase the amount of wealth on the lower end. By taxing wealth, employers will simply avoid that tax and boost productivity, giving wealth to the lower end. If they're going to pay that money anyway, they'll use it instead to increase productivity of their company. edit: income, wealth, bleh w/e How do you avoid the tax by boosting productivity? Because you've hired someone, you've spend the money and thus aren't taxed. Not following. If you mean property tax you'll still owe it. If you mean income tax, reducing profit to avoid tax is a money losing prospect and would be the opposite of increasing productivity. If you mean hire someone to boost profits to offset the tax you should be doing that regardless. Huh? O.o You spend the money you would have spent on taxes, on hiring people for productivity.
Hiring people doesn't increase productivity, and the report from taxes to production is not proved empirically.
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On November 13 2013 06:14 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2013 04:26 WhiteDog wrote:On November 13 2013 04:25 naastyOne wrote:On November 13 2013 04:18 WhiteDog wrote:On November 13 2013 04:10 naastyOne wrote:On November 13 2013 00:49 WhiteDog wrote:On November 13 2013 00:43 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 13 2013 00:22 WhiteDog wrote:On November 12 2013 23:10 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 12 2013 16:32 IgnE wrote:[quote] So this graph doesn't bother you: + Show Spoiler +That's not extreme inequality or you, personally, just don't see it out in your travels? Which political party is the one beating down the poor rich people into submission? The one led by the neoliberals or the other one led by the neoliberals? So according to you, if we had less welfare and fewer taxes the people collecting welfare right now could at least be earning $4 an hour picking oranges in Florida and apples in California. Do you not see the disconnect there? Your argument is that taxation and regulation makes it prohibitive to hire people who want to work, so if we removed those socialist barriers, we could get people currently on welfare out in the fields picking cotton instead of immigrants or people in the third world. How does that not result in higher inequality than the already egregious inequality seen in the above graph? Wealth inequality is really hard to deal with. I don't recall any plausible ideas out of the left to deal with that (mostly they seem to be concerned with income / consumption inequality). If you can think of any, remind me, it could be a good discussion. I don't know what's the best answer to that : "lol", "really ?" or a simple "what ?". How about fiscal redistribution ? Just consider america's history : in 1964, the marginal tax rate for richest people was at 91%, 70% in the 70s and now only around 25%. It is pretty easy to fight wealth inequalities, you just have to do something against it. Redistributing wealth is tricky because you need the wealth to stay wealth, otherwise the inequality persists. So you can't just redistribute, you need some mechanism to prevent the poor from selling the wealth to fund consumption. Otherwise you are dealing with income / consumption inequality, not wealth inequality. Comparing taxes from 1964 to today requires more than just looking at the top marginal rates. FYI, the top federal rate now is 39.6%, not 25%. Don't nitpick, and stop bullshitting me. Inequality persist because you... NO. Please, no. Please. Comparing taxes from 1964 to today requires more than just looking at the top marginal rates. And what does it needs more ? You can't deny the fact that most countries have higher marginal taxation rates, and the higher the marginal taxation rate is, the lower inequalities are (50% in northern european countries, 45% in France, etc.). Also, if you put a high marginal taxation rate on wages, you prevent firms from giving too big salaries as they will try to minimize taxation. Not to mention your argument means nothing because if the poor actually consume most of the surplus they gain because of the redistribution and even if this money actually goes back in the hand of the rich, the rich will again be taxed and thus the money will go back to the poor : it's a circuit, of course rich gain money from poor's consumption, the goal is not to minimize this flux (because it is beneficial to the economy), but to minimize the accumulation of flux (saving rate, patrimony, etc.) and this is entirely possible if you tax enough. On November 13 2013 00:43 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 13 2013 00:22 WhiteDog wrote:On November 12 2013 23:10 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 12 2013 16:32 IgnE wrote:[quote] So this graph doesn't bother you: + Show Spoiler +That's not extreme inequality or you, personally, just don't see it out in your travels? Which political party is the one beating down the poor rich people into submission? The one led by the neoliberals or the other one led by the neoliberals? So according to you, if we had less welfare and fewer taxes the people collecting welfare right now could at least be earning $4 an hour picking oranges in Florida and apples in California. Do you not see the disconnect there? Your argument is that taxation and regulation makes it prohibitive to hire people who want to work, so if we removed those socialist barriers, we could get people currently on welfare out in the fields picking cotton instead of immigrants or people in the third world. How does that not result in higher inequality than the already egregious inequality seen in the above graph? Wealth inequality is really hard to deal with. I don't recall any plausible ideas out of the left to deal with that (mostly they seem to be concerned with income / consumption inequality). If you can think of any, remind me, it could be a good discussion. I don't know what's the best answer to that : "lol", "really ?" or a simple "what ?". How about fiscal redistribution ? Just consider america's history : in 1964, the marginal tax rate for richest people was at 91%, 70% in the 70s and now only around 25%. It is pretty easy to fight wealth inequalities, you just have to do something against it. Edit: responding to the graph, the change in effective tax rate on the top earners is no where near as dramatic as the change in marginal tax rates. The tax brackets were lowered and loopholes / deductions were eliminated, which partially offset the decline in marginal rates: Link You know why your graph is irrelevant right ? Because even if the average tax rate didn't move, the 1% then (in 1979) and now (in 2010) is not the same and doesn't posses the same share of the national income. So, your graph actually proves my argument is right if you add to it a graph comparing the share of the national income of the top 1% in 1979 to today : because the marginal taxation rate was lowered, it didn't limited the rising of inequalities (which is, the fact that the top 1% from 1979 to today posses an increasing part of the national income). If you think Scandinavia is a good example, you would see, how much the way how wealth is redistributed, matters. Universal kindergarden, good public schools system, public Universities, a Well managed single payer healthcare, high goverment transperency, that lowers the danger of public spending going to private pockets. However, as you can see, the model is not as much focused on just "making rich poor", as much as creating a wellfare state that provides highly-educated, high-quality, and high-payed labour force, and boosting it`s participation in politics. High-tech export based economy, that heavilly rely on capital-intencive productions, is simply impossible without huge private capital to invest in it. Goverment invests into labour thrugh public services, Private sector invests into jobs. Not a lot of free handouts for the poor are left. You're wrong, I never said scandinavian are the best exemple, I just pointed out the empiric evidence that with higher marginal taxation rate you have less inequalities. And having a high marginal taxation rate is not focussed on making rich poor. Your impirical evidence is not supported by fact, since it doesn`t take into account who will get the public money. If the system is corrupt, marginal tax rate is irrelevant. High marginal tax rates is focused on making rich less rich. You argue the level, not principle. No and no. http://www.nber.org/papers/w19075There is a quick review of this study here http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/28/income-inequality-study_n_3346073.htmlGuess why the UK do even better than the US despite a bigger change in top marginal rate? Because their marginal taxation rate is still bigger (50% to 35%). To be fair, correlation != causation
This graph is worse than correlation != causation. It's a correlation with itself. If you drop the top marginal tax rate, then the top earners have more net income. Uh, yeah, that's the whole point of dropping the top marginal tax rate, which only affects the rich.
The bigger question is what effects tax cuts have on growth rates and whether growth rates have as large or a larger correlation with inequality. America's inequality over the last 30 years may be the result of its high growth, not its tax policies. The harder question is whether we can still have strong growth but legislate inequality away through taxes. I don't think there are many good examples of that out there.
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On November 13 2013 08:51 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2013 08:33 Roe wrote:On November 13 2013 07:59 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 13 2013 06:06 Roe wrote:On November 13 2013 05:33 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 13 2013 05:10 Roe wrote:On November 13 2013 04:56 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 13 2013 03:55 Sbrubbles wrote:On November 12 2013 23:10 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 12 2013 16:32 IgnE wrote:[quote] So this graph doesn't bother you: + Show Spoiler +That's not extreme inequality or you, personally, just don't see it out in your travels? Which political party is the one beating down the poor rich people into submission? The one led by the neoliberals or the other one led by the neoliberals? So according to you, if we had less welfare and fewer taxes the people collecting welfare right now could at least be earning $4 an hour picking oranges in Florida and apples in California. Do you not see the disconnect there? Your argument is that taxation and regulation makes it prohibitive to hire people who want to work, so if we removed those socialist barriers, we could get people currently on welfare out in the fields picking cotton instead of immigrants or people in the third world. How does that not result in higher inequality than the already egregious inequality seen in the above graph? Wealth inequality is really hard to deal with. I don't recall any plausible ideas out of the left to deal with that (mostly they seem to be concerned with income / consumption inequality). If you can think of any, remind me, it could be a good discussion. And to both your and Danglars' concerns - yes we need to put resources into helping the poor, but we also need to be concerned about how we deploy those resources. And many options for using those resources exist. Let's not box ourselves into either blindly throwing money at the problem or not trying at all. I agree that politicians generally focus on income inequality as a opposed to wealth inequality, but inheritance tax and land tax are two leftist (very broadly speaking) ideas related to it. Sort of. That's a tax on wealth, so it could potentially reduce the value of it, but it does nothing to increase the amount of wealth on the lower end. By taxing wealth, employers will simply avoid that tax and boost productivity, giving wealth to the lower end. If they're going to pay that money anyway, they'll use it instead to increase productivity of their company. edit: income, wealth, bleh w/e How do you avoid the tax by boosting productivity? Because you've hired someone, you've spend the money and thus aren't taxed. Not following. If you mean property tax you'll still owe it. If you mean income tax, reducing profit to avoid tax is a money losing prospect and would be the opposite of increasing productivity. If you mean hire someone to boost profits to offset the tax you should be doing that regardless. Huh? O.o You spend the money you would have spent on taxes, on hiring people for productivity. Hiring people doesn't increase productivity, and the report from taxes to production is not proved empirically.
If you're a good business leader hiring people definitely increases productivity. And we were talking about whether in principle it would occur.
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On November 13 2013 09:31 coverpunch wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2013 06:14 Acrofales wrote:On November 13 2013 04:26 WhiteDog wrote:On November 13 2013 04:25 naastyOne wrote:On November 13 2013 04:18 WhiteDog wrote:On November 13 2013 04:10 naastyOne wrote:On November 13 2013 00:49 WhiteDog wrote:On November 13 2013 00:43 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 13 2013 00:22 WhiteDog wrote:On November 12 2013 23:10 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
[quote]
Wealth inequality is really hard to deal with. I don't recall any plausible ideas out of the left to deal with that (mostly they seem to be concerned with income / consumption inequality). If you can think of any, remind me, it could be a good discussion. I don't know what's the best answer to that : "lol", "really ?" or a simple "what ?". How about fiscal redistribution ? Just consider america's history : in 1964, the marginal tax rate for richest people was at 91%, 70% in the 70s and now only around 25%. It is pretty easy to fight wealth inequalities, you just have to do something against it. Redistributing wealth is tricky because you need the wealth to stay wealth, otherwise the inequality persists. So you can't just redistribute, you need some mechanism to prevent the poor from selling the wealth to fund consumption. Otherwise you are dealing with income / consumption inequality, not wealth inequality. Comparing taxes from 1964 to today requires more than just looking at the top marginal rates. FYI, the top federal rate now is 39.6%, not 25%. Don't nitpick, and stop bullshitting me. Inequality persist because you... NO. Please, no. Please. Comparing taxes from 1964 to today requires more than just looking at the top marginal rates. And what does it needs more ? You can't deny the fact that most countries have higher marginal taxation rates, and the higher the marginal taxation rate is, the lower inequalities are (50% in northern european countries, 45% in France, etc.). Also, if you put a high marginal taxation rate on wages, you prevent firms from giving too big salaries as they will try to minimize taxation. Not to mention your argument means nothing because if the poor actually consume most of the surplus they gain because of the redistribution and even if this money actually goes back in the hand of the rich, the rich will again be taxed and thus the money will go back to the poor : it's a circuit, of course rich gain money from poor's consumption, the goal is not to minimize this flux (because it is beneficial to the economy), but to minimize the accumulation of flux (saving rate, patrimony, etc.) and this is entirely possible if you tax enough. On November 13 2013 00:43 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 13 2013 00:22 WhiteDog wrote:On November 12 2013 23:10 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
[quote]
Wealth inequality is really hard to deal with. I don't recall any plausible ideas out of the left to deal with that (mostly they seem to be concerned with income / consumption inequality). If you can think of any, remind me, it could be a good discussion. I don't know what's the best answer to that : "lol", "really ?" or a simple "what ?". How about fiscal redistribution ? Just consider america's history : in 1964, the marginal tax rate for richest people was at 91%, 70% in the 70s and now only around 25%. It is pretty easy to fight wealth inequalities, you just have to do something against it. Edit: responding to the graph, the change in effective tax rate on the top earners is no where near as dramatic as the change in marginal tax rates. The tax brackets were lowered and loopholes / deductions were eliminated, which partially offset the decline in marginal rates: Link You know why your graph is irrelevant right ? Because even if the average tax rate didn't move, the 1% then (in 1979) and now (in 2010) is not the same and doesn't posses the same share of the national income. So, your graph actually proves my argument is right if you add to it a graph comparing the share of the national income of the top 1% in 1979 to today : because the marginal taxation rate was lowered, it didn't limited the rising of inequalities (which is, the fact that the top 1% from 1979 to today posses an increasing part of the national income). If you think Scandinavia is a good example, you would see, how much the way how wealth is redistributed, matters. Universal kindergarden, good public schools system, public Universities, a Well managed single payer healthcare, high goverment transperency, that lowers the danger of public spending going to private pockets. However, as you can see, the model is not as much focused on just "making rich poor", as much as creating a wellfare state that provides highly-educated, high-quality, and high-payed labour force, and boosting it`s participation in politics. High-tech export based economy, that heavilly rely on capital-intencive productions, is simply impossible without huge private capital to invest in it. Goverment invests into labour thrugh public services, Private sector invests into jobs. Not a lot of free handouts for the poor are left. You're wrong, I never said scandinavian are the best exemple, I just pointed out the empiric evidence that with higher marginal taxation rate you have less inequalities. And having a high marginal taxation rate is not focussed on making rich poor. Your impirical evidence is not supported by fact, since it doesn`t take into account who will get the public money. If the system is corrupt, marginal tax rate is irrelevant. High marginal tax rates is focused on making rich less rich. You argue the level, not principle. No and no. http://www.nber.org/papers/w19075There is a quick review of this study here http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/28/income-inequality-study_n_3346073.htmlGuess why the UK do even better than the US despite a bigger change in top marginal rate? Because their marginal taxation rate is still bigger (50% to 35%). To be fair, correlation != causation This graph is worse than correlation != causation. It's a correlation with itself. If you drop the top marginal tax rate, then the top earners have more net income. Uh, yeah, that's the whole point of dropping the top marginal tax rate, which only affects the rich.
That's the thing about explaining the obvious. It does sound a bit trivial.
The real question is how you can say something like: "Prove that the decrease in the highest marginal tax rate has anything to do with increasing inequality" and still be taken seriously.
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On November 13 2013 09:43 Roe wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2013 08:51 WhiteDog wrote:On November 13 2013 08:33 Roe wrote:On November 13 2013 07:59 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 13 2013 06:06 Roe wrote:On November 13 2013 05:33 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 13 2013 05:10 Roe wrote:On November 13 2013 04:56 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 13 2013 03:55 Sbrubbles wrote:On November 12 2013 23:10 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
[quote]
Wealth inequality is really hard to deal with. I don't recall any plausible ideas out of the left to deal with that (mostly they seem to be concerned with income / consumption inequality). If you can think of any, remind me, it could be a good discussion.
And to both your and Danglars' concerns - yes we need to put resources into helping the poor, but we also need to be concerned about how we deploy those resources. And many options for using those resources exist. Let's not box ourselves into either blindly throwing money at the problem or not trying at all. I agree that politicians generally focus on income inequality as a opposed to wealth inequality, but inheritance tax and land tax are two leftist (very broadly speaking) ideas related to it. Sort of. That's a tax on wealth, so it could potentially reduce the value of it, but it does nothing to increase the amount of wealth on the lower end. By taxing wealth, employers will simply avoid that tax and boost productivity, giving wealth to the lower end. If they're going to pay that money anyway, they'll use it instead to increase productivity of their company. edit: income, wealth, bleh w/e How do you avoid the tax by boosting productivity? Because you've hired someone, you've spend the money and thus aren't taxed. Not following. If you mean property tax you'll still owe it. If you mean income tax, reducing profit to avoid tax is a money losing prospect and would be the opposite of increasing productivity. If you mean hire someone to boost profits to offset the tax you should be doing that regardless. Huh? O.o You spend the money you would have spent on taxes, on hiring people for productivity. Hiring people doesn't increase productivity, and the report from taxes to production is not proved empirically. If you're a good business leader hiring people definitely increases productivity. And we were talking about whether in principle it would occur.
or...you could have less people do more work...
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On November 13 2013 06:33 Jormundr wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2013 06:14 Acrofales wrote:On November 13 2013 04:26 WhiteDog wrote:On November 13 2013 04:25 naastyOne wrote:On November 13 2013 04:18 WhiteDog wrote:On November 13 2013 04:10 naastyOne wrote:On November 13 2013 00:49 WhiteDog wrote:On November 13 2013 00:43 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 13 2013 00:22 WhiteDog wrote:On November 12 2013 23:10 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
[quote]
Wealth inequality is really hard to deal with. I don't recall any plausible ideas out of the left to deal with that (mostly they seem to be concerned with income / consumption inequality). If you can think of any, remind me, it could be a good discussion. I don't know what's the best answer to that : "lol", "really ?" or a simple "what ?". How about fiscal redistribution ? Just consider america's history : in 1964, the marginal tax rate for richest people was at 91%, 70% in the 70s and now only around 25%. It is pretty easy to fight wealth inequalities, you just have to do something against it. Redistributing wealth is tricky because you need the wealth to stay wealth, otherwise the inequality persists. So you can't just redistribute, you need some mechanism to prevent the poor from selling the wealth to fund consumption. Otherwise you are dealing with income / consumption inequality, not wealth inequality. Comparing taxes from 1964 to today requires more than just looking at the top marginal rates. FYI, the top federal rate now is 39.6%, not 25%. Don't nitpick, and stop bullshitting me. Inequality persist because you... NO. Please, no. Please. Comparing taxes from 1964 to today requires more than just looking at the top marginal rates. And what does it needs more ? You can't deny the fact that most countries have higher marginal taxation rates, and the higher the marginal taxation rate is, the lower inequalities are (50% in northern european countries, 45% in France, etc.). Also, if you put a high marginal taxation rate on wages, you prevent firms from giving too big salaries as they will try to minimize taxation. Not to mention your argument means nothing because if the poor actually consume most of the surplus they gain because of the redistribution and even if this money actually goes back in the hand of the rich, the rich will again be taxed and thus the money will go back to the poor : it's a circuit, of course rich gain money from poor's consumption, the goal is not to minimize this flux (because it is beneficial to the economy), but to minimize the accumulation of flux (saving rate, patrimony, etc.) and this is entirely possible if you tax enough. On November 13 2013 00:43 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 13 2013 00:22 WhiteDog wrote:On November 12 2013 23:10 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
[quote]
Wealth inequality is really hard to deal with. I don't recall any plausible ideas out of the left to deal with that (mostly they seem to be concerned with income / consumption inequality). If you can think of any, remind me, it could be a good discussion. I don't know what's the best answer to that : "lol", "really ?" or a simple "what ?". How about fiscal redistribution ? Just consider america's history : in 1964, the marginal tax rate for richest people was at 91%, 70% in the 70s and now only around 25%. It is pretty easy to fight wealth inequalities, you just have to do something against it. Edit: responding to the graph, the change in effective tax rate on the top earners is no where near as dramatic as the change in marginal tax rates. The tax brackets were lowered and loopholes / deductions were eliminated, which partially offset the decline in marginal rates: Link You know why your graph is irrelevant right ? Because even if the average tax rate didn't move, the 1% then (in 1979) and now (in 2010) is not the same and doesn't posses the same share of the national income. So, your graph actually proves my argument is right if you add to it a graph comparing the share of the national income of the top 1% in 1979 to today : because the marginal taxation rate was lowered, it didn't limited the rising of inequalities (which is, the fact that the top 1% from 1979 to today posses an increasing part of the national income). If you think Scandinavia is a good example, you would see, how much the way how wealth is redistributed, matters. Universal kindergarden, good public schools system, public Universities, a Well managed single payer healthcare, high goverment transperency, that lowers the danger of public spending going to private pockets. However, as you can see, the model is not as much focused on just "making rich poor", as much as creating a wellfare state that provides highly-educated, high-quality, and high-payed labour force, and boosting it`s participation in politics. High-tech export based economy, that heavilly rely on capital-intencive productions, is simply impossible without huge private capital to invest in it. Goverment invests into labour thrugh public services, Private sector invests into jobs. Not a lot of free handouts for the poor are left. You're wrong, I never said scandinavian are the best exemple, I just pointed out the empiric evidence that with higher marginal taxation rate you have less inequalities. And having a high marginal taxation rate is not focussed on making rich poor. Your impirical evidence is not supported by fact, since it doesn`t take into account who will get the public money. If the system is corrupt, marginal tax rate is irrelevant. High marginal tax rates is focused on making rich less rich. You argue the level, not principle. No and no. http://www.nber.org/papers/w19075There is a quick review of this study here http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/28/income-inequality-study_n_3346073.htmlGuess why the UK do even better than the US despite a bigger change in top marginal rate? Because their marginal taxation rate is still bigger (50% to 35%). To be fair, correlation != causation To be fair, evidence trumps the phrase 'correlation != causation' when the phrase isn't accompanied by any analysis. For example you could point out confounding variables and explain why the relationship isn't indicative of a causal relationship.
The graph had no evidence, it showed a correlation between the dropping the top marginal tax rate and the change in income share of the top 1%. That's great and all, and needs explaining. It's possible that that IS the explanation, but if you want confounding factors, how about:
1. A better social security system
2. Tax reforms in general
3. General economic growth between 1960 and whenever the endpoint was
And a whole flood of economic factors that could confuse and confundle the simple picture this graph tells.
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On November 12 2013 16:33 sam!zdat wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2013 14:55 Danglars wrote:
That is the first thing that enters my mind when I hear Sam talking about this or that "exacerbat[ing] social inequality" or these expansionist conceptions of the welfare state. I wish you would listen to me
I read every word and haven't been convinced yet. Frankly, you fly from subject to subject and argument to argument so fast in such little time that its hard to summarize what I've found out about your position. Granted, we've covered a lot of subject in the last hundred pages or so, so maybe some of it gets muddled in my mind. Just to grab a couple that concerned me:
there's no opportunity to advance, civilization is just settling back into its usual pattern of tiny elites and massive underclass, after the anomalous interlude of large american middle class which is basically just a historical oddity
you don't get it. a fully private healthcare system would just exacerbate social inequality and make even more obvious the gap between the haves and have nots. there's no politically feasible way to allow that to happen without also revolutionizing the relations of production and solving the deeper contradictions in the class structure of american society. government intervention in healthcare is part of the social democratic compromise that is the only thing holding the fabric of capitalist society together. the only possible capitalist state is the welfare state - if you don't like the welfare state (i hate it) you are going to have to start thinking about alternatives to capitalism.
No on both counts for the reasons I stated. I might also add at this time that there will be political cost for politicians ok for the rich to keep their earned money and spend it on expensive yachts. They will appear to be no friends to the poor, even as much as that was an argument I saw surface when Romney was angling for the presidency. I'm saddened that you don't understand my position on class structure, claiming I haven't read what you said. With good swaths of individual freedom still preserved, there is no rigid class structure ... look no farther than the shifting lists of Forbes's richest people or longitudinal studies from census data and social sciences research groups. On a side note that you already know, I advocate policies I understand to be helpful in removing obstacles to income/class mobility etc. I'm not going along with your pessimistic attitude, not because of its pessimism (and in fact I hold a few of those attitudes even in the realm of eSports) but because of how I analyze it against reality.
On November 12 2013 16:32 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2013 16:15 Danglars wrote:On November 12 2013 15:07 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 14:55 Danglars wrote:On November 12 2013 12:26 sam!zdat wrote:
there's no opportunity to advance, civilization is just settling back into its usual pattern of tiny elites and massive underclass, after the anomalous interlude of large american middle class which is basically just a historical oddity On November 12 2013 13:21 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 12:23 Danglars wrote:On November 12 2013 11:36 sam!zdat wrote:
you don't get it. a fully private healthcare system would just exacerbate social inequality and make even more obvious the gap between the haves and have nots. there's no politically feasible way to allow that to happen without also revolutionizing the relations of production and solving the deeper contradictions in the class structure of american society. government intervention in healthcare is part of the social democratic compromise that is the only thing holding the fabric of capitalist society together. the only possible capitalist state is the welfare state - if you don't like the welfare state (i hate it) you are going to have to start thinking about alternatives to capitalism. I have to accept something less than utopia. Utopia is not for this world. Income and standard of life inequality must exist at some level if the community is not entirely in grinding poverty. To create the the fastest increase in standards of life for the lowest in society, we have capitalist markets. Why? Without capitalism and the notions of price signalling and profits, you condemn the poor to their pitiable state by depriving them of opportunity to advance. Without the same there will not be a sufficiently prosperous society to provide the wealth necessary to help the truly destitute, unless you want a generalized decrease in living standards across the board. I argue for a safety net of sorts, as much as that construction is abused, to keep that extreme poverty far away and to help the aged and disabled that lack the resources for their own care. Now, I simplify your revolution in class structure to the natural progressive urges present in capitalist societies. As much as the problem with the related communist society is the communists, the problem with capitalist society is the capitalists. Unwilling to accept that other forms would not lead to an increase in poverty rather than a decrease, they agitate for it -- particularly the richest. When, however, the help for impoverished persons transforms into a lifestyle with heavy disincentives for an exit (a welfare trap), then we have a perversion of a good thing and a moral need to reform it. We are not conquering the basic human attribute of envy that commands so much political power nowadays, but we are limiting its destructive and self-defeating economic policies with a healthy dose of reason and historical proof. Not sure what the bolded sentence means. Seems like you are missing an antecedent. You misunderstand human beings. They are not rational actors who respond to financial incentives like you think they do. And no one would prefer living in poverty with an iphone to a wealthy life without one. Perhaps I jumped too far with the phrase prior for those that have never heard it. It's no matter. And it isn't only financial incentives, it's the lack of financial disincentives in almost equal portion. Your mythical irrational actors, unconcerned with a better life for themselves and their family, slavishly working on despite government telling them that jobs are risky but welfare is bedrock, are not to be found in any great number on this earth. Impoverishing the country is how you create opportunity and jobs. Condemning the poor to their lot is your compassion. There you have it. I can only dream of raising up as many straw men as you have in the past 50 pages, but dream on I shall. I say it is unfair to the poor for their would-be representatives to continually seek to keep them that way claiming compassion every step of the way. That is the first thing that enters my mind when I hear Sam talking about this or that "exacerbat[ing] social inequality" or these expansionist conceptions of the welfare state. I know this is a difficult concept for you to understand, since you would love to work part time and collect food stamps while making 18k a year, but most people who are on welfare would rather have a well-paying job. Maybe you do understand this, but your definition of "well-paying" is $2 for 16 hours of labor a day to make Nike shoes while living in corporate owned housing with bunk beds next to your coworkers. It's unclear at this point. So what's the main driving force of inequality in the country/world at large right now? Welfare increasing the inequality gap according to you? I really don't understand your position. You seem to say that inequality is a problem and that if only we had freer markets it would take care of itself. Inequality at its extreme is a problem. I don't see that in America today. I do see a political party more concerned with beating the rich down into submission than the actual plight of the poor. They're fine with the entire country less prosperous, if the poor maintains their lot in life, as long as net inequality goes down. I believe the opposite ... that inequality taken alone tells very little and the poorest societies can be those with the lowest inequality. It's a misplaced focus as much as it is a disgusting political tactic. Exacerbate envy for political purposes. I find the people having your views are exactly those intent on policies that ensure the poor person on welfare will never be able to find a job with his skills. From taxation to regulation to minimum wage, the crusade is counterproductive to poverty. I brought up the welfare trap in regards to sam's conception of the welfare state, not on the topic of inequality. On November 12 2013 15:32 HunterX11 wrote:On November 12 2013 15:07 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 14:55 Danglars wrote:On November 12 2013 12:26 sam!zdat wrote:
there's no opportunity to advance, civilization is just settling back into its usual pattern of tiny elites and massive underclass, after the anomalous interlude of large american middle class which is basically just a historical oddity On November 12 2013 13:21 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 12:23 Danglars wrote:On November 12 2013 11:36 sam!zdat wrote:
you don't get it. a fully private healthcare system would just exacerbate social inequality and make even more obvious the gap between the haves and have nots. there's no politically feasible way to allow that to happen without also revolutionizing the relations of production and solving the deeper contradictions in the class structure of american society. government intervention in healthcare is part of the social democratic compromise that is the only thing holding the fabric of capitalist society together. the only possible capitalist state is the welfare state - if you don't like the welfare state (i hate it) you are going to have to start thinking about alternatives to capitalism. I have to accept something less than utopia. Utopia is not for this world. Income and standard of life inequality must exist at some level if the community is not entirely in grinding poverty. To create the the fastest increase in standards of life for the lowest in society, we have capitalist markets. Why? Without capitalism and the notions of price signalling and profits, you condemn the poor to their pitiable state by depriving them of opportunity to advance. Without the same there will not be a sufficiently prosperous society to provide the wealth necessary to help the truly destitute, unless you want a generalized decrease in living standards across the board. I argue for a safety net of sorts, as much as that construction is abused, to keep that extreme poverty far away and to help the aged and disabled that lack the resources for their own care. Now, I simplify your revolution in class structure to the natural progressive urges present in capitalist societies. As much as the problem with the related communist society is the communists, the problem with capitalist society is the capitalists. Unwilling to accept that other forms would not lead to an increase in poverty rather than a decrease, they agitate for it -- particularly the richest. When, however, the help for impoverished persons transforms into a lifestyle with heavy disincentives for an exit (a welfare trap), then we have a perversion of a good thing and a moral need to reform it. We are not conquering the basic human attribute of envy that commands so much political power nowadays, but we are limiting its destructive and self-defeating economic policies with a healthy dose of reason and historical proof. Not sure what the bolded sentence means. Seems like you are missing an antecedent. You misunderstand human beings. They are not rational actors who respond to financial incentives like you think they do. And no one would prefer living in poverty with an iphone to a wealthy life without one. Perhaps I jumped too far with the phrase prior for those that have never heard it. It's no matter. And it isn't only financial incentives, it's the lack of financial disincentives in almost equal portion. Your mythical irrational actors, unconcerned with a better life for themselves and their family, slavishly working on despite government telling them that jobs are risky but welfare is bedrock, are not to be found in any great number on this earth. Impoverishing the country is how you create opportunity and jobs. Condemning the poor to their lot is your compassion. There you have it. I can only dream of raising up as many straw men as you have in the past 50 pages, but dream on I shall. I say it is unfair to the poor for their would-be representatives to continually seek to keep them that way claiming compassion every step of the way. That is the first thing that enters my mind when I hear Sam talking about this or that "exacerbat[ing] social inequality" or these expansionist conceptions of the welfare state. I know this is a difficult concept for you to understand, since you would love to work part time and collect food stamps while making 18k a year, but most people who are on welfare would rather have a well-paying job. Maybe you do understand this, but your definition of "well-paying" is $2 for 16 hours of labor a day to make Nike shoes while living in corporate owned housing with bunk beds next to your coworkers. It's unclear at this point. So what's the main driving force of inequality in the country/world at large right now? Welfare increasing the inequality gap according to you? I really don't understand your position. You seem to say that inequality is a problem and that if only we had freer markets it would take care of itself. Remember that people believe that welfare queens are a thing in real life and not just a dogwhistle racism campaign tactic. The race card has served your cause well. In the absence of a debate on ideas, insinuate your opponents are racists. Keep creating the very same poverty you decry. Keep hounding those in society actually concerned with welfare reform. So this graph doesn't bother you: ![[image loading]](http://assets.motherjones.com/politics/2011/inequality-page25_actualdistribwithlegend.png) That's not extreme inequality or you, personally, just don't see it out in your travels? Which political party is the one beating down the poor rich people into submission? The one led by the neoliberals or the other one led by the neoliberals? So according to you, if we had less welfare and fewer taxes the people collecting welfare right now could at least be earning $4 an hour picking oranges in Florida and apples in California. Do you not see the disconnect there? Your argument is that taxation and regulation makes it prohibitive to hire people who want to work, so if we removed those socialist barriers, we could get people currently on welfare out in the fields picking cotton instead of immigrants or people in the third world. How does that not result in higher inequality than the already egregious inequality seen in the above graph?
You are right that that graph does not bother me, nor do I consider it extreme income inequality (and it is wealth in your graph and not income inequality). Just because one man earns an extra dollar does not mean that another must necessarily earn a dollar less. Just because the gap looks like that on the scale of wealth owned not income earned does not make the bottom of the barrel no different than the grinding poverty you can find in areas of Africa, for instance. Does the average rich man fly in million dollar vacations and the average poor man have no food, water, shelter and languish until death? No.
On November 12 2013 23:10 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2013 16:32 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 16:15 Danglars wrote:On November 12 2013 15:07 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 14:55 Danglars wrote:On November 12 2013 12:26 sam!zdat wrote:
there's no opportunity to advance, civilization is just settling back into its usual pattern of tiny elites and massive underclass, after the anomalous interlude of large american middle class which is basically just a historical oddity On November 12 2013 13:21 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 12:23 Danglars wrote:On November 12 2013 11:36 sam!zdat wrote:
you don't get it. a fully private healthcare system would just exacerbate social inequality and make even more obvious the gap between the haves and have nots. there's no politically feasible way to allow that to happen without also revolutionizing the relations of production and solving the deeper contradictions in the class structure of american society. government intervention in healthcare is part of the social democratic compromise that is the only thing holding the fabric of capitalist society together. the only possible capitalist state is the welfare state - if you don't like the welfare state (i hate it) you are going to have to start thinking about alternatives to capitalism. I have to accept something less than utopia. Utopia is not for this world. Income and standard of life inequality must exist at some level if the community is not entirely in grinding poverty. To create the the fastest increase in standards of life for the lowest in society, we have capitalist markets. Why? Without capitalism and the notions of price signalling and profits, you condemn the poor to their pitiable state by depriving them of opportunity to advance. Without the same there will not be a sufficiently prosperous society to provide the wealth necessary to help the truly destitute, unless you want a generalized decrease in living standards across the board. I argue for a safety net of sorts, as much as that construction is abused, to keep that extreme poverty far away and to help the aged and disabled that lack the resources for their own care. Now, I simplify your revolution in class structure to the natural progressive urges present in capitalist societies. As much as the problem with the related communist society is the communists, the problem with capitalist society is the capitalists. Unwilling to accept that other forms would not lead to an increase in poverty rather than a decrease, they agitate for it -- particularly the richest. When, however, the help for impoverished persons transforms into a lifestyle with heavy disincentives for an exit (a welfare trap), then we have a perversion of a good thing and a moral need to reform it. We are not conquering the basic human attribute of envy that commands so much political power nowadays, but we are limiting its destructive and self-defeating economic policies with a healthy dose of reason and historical proof. Not sure what the bolded sentence means. Seems like you are missing an antecedent. You misunderstand human beings. They are not rational actors who respond to financial incentives like you think they do. And no one would prefer living in poverty with an iphone to a wealthy life without one. Perhaps I jumped too far with the phrase prior for those that have never heard it. It's no matter. And it isn't only financial incentives, it's the lack of financial disincentives in almost equal portion. Your mythical irrational actors, unconcerned with a better life for themselves and their family, slavishly working on despite government telling them that jobs are risky but welfare is bedrock, are not to be found in any great number on this earth. Impoverishing the country is how you create opportunity and jobs. Condemning the poor to their lot is your compassion. There you have it. I can only dream of raising up as many straw men as you have in the past 50 pages, but dream on I shall. I say it is unfair to the poor for their would-be representatives to continually seek to keep them that way claiming compassion every step of the way. That is the first thing that enters my mind when I hear Sam talking about this or that "exacerbat[ing] social inequality" or these expansionist conceptions of the welfare state. I know this is a difficult concept for you to understand, since you would love to work part time and collect food stamps while making 18k a year, but most people who are on welfare would rather have a well-paying job. Maybe you do understand this, but your definition of "well-paying" is $2 for 16 hours of labor a day to make Nike shoes while living in corporate owned housing with bunk beds next to your coworkers. It's unclear at this point. So what's the main driving force of inequality in the country/world at large right now? Welfare increasing the inequality gap according to you? I really don't understand your position. You seem to say that inequality is a problem and that if only we had freer markets it would take care of itself. Inequality at its extreme is a problem. I don't see that in America today. I do see a political party more concerned with beating the rich down into submission than the actual plight of the poor. They're fine with the entire country less prosperous, if the poor maintains their lot in life, as long as net inequality goes down. I believe the opposite ... that inequality taken alone tells very little and the poorest societies can be those with the lowest inequality. It's a misplaced focus as much as it is a disgusting political tactic. Exacerbate envy for political purposes. I find the people having your views are exactly those intent on policies that ensure the poor person on welfare will never be able to find a job with his skills. From taxation to regulation to minimum wage, the crusade is counterproductive to poverty. I brought up the welfare trap in regards to sam's conception of the welfare state, not on the topic of inequality. On November 12 2013 15:32 HunterX11 wrote:On November 12 2013 15:07 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 14:55 Danglars wrote:On November 12 2013 12:26 sam!zdat wrote:
there's no opportunity to advance, civilization is just settling back into its usual pattern of tiny elites and massive underclass, after the anomalous interlude of large american middle class which is basically just a historical oddity On November 12 2013 13:21 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 12:23 Danglars wrote:On November 12 2013 11:36 sam!zdat wrote:
you don't get it. a fully private healthcare system would just exacerbate social inequality and make even more obvious the gap between the haves and have nots. there's no politically feasible way to allow that to happen without also revolutionizing the relations of production and solving the deeper contradictions in the class structure of american society. government intervention in healthcare is part of the social democratic compromise that is the only thing holding the fabric of capitalist society together. the only possible capitalist state is the welfare state - if you don't like the welfare state (i hate it) you are going to have to start thinking about alternatives to capitalism. I have to accept something less than utopia. Utopia is not for this world. Income and standard of life inequality must exist at some level if the community is not entirely in grinding poverty. To create the the fastest increase in standards of life for the lowest in society, we have capitalist markets. Why? Without capitalism and the notions of price signalling and profits, you condemn the poor to their pitiable state by depriving them of opportunity to advance. Without the same there will not be a sufficiently prosperous society to provide the wealth necessary to help the truly destitute, unless you want a generalized decrease in living standards across the board. I argue for a safety net of sorts, as much as that construction is abused, to keep that extreme poverty far away and to help the aged and disabled that lack the resources for their own care. Now, I simplify your revolution in class structure to the natural progressive urges present in capitalist societies. As much as the problem with the related communist society is the communists, the problem with capitalist society is the capitalists. Unwilling to accept that other forms would not lead to an increase in poverty rather than a decrease, they agitate for it -- particularly the richest. When, however, the help for impoverished persons transforms into a lifestyle with heavy disincentives for an exit (a welfare trap), then we have a perversion of a good thing and a moral need to reform it. We are not conquering the basic human attribute of envy that commands so much political power nowadays, but we are limiting its destructive and self-defeating economic policies with a healthy dose of reason and historical proof. Not sure what the bolded sentence means. Seems like you are missing an antecedent. You misunderstand human beings. They are not rational actors who respond to financial incentives like you think they do. And no one would prefer living in poverty with an iphone to a wealthy life without one. Perhaps I jumped too far with the phrase prior for those that have never heard it. It's no matter. And it isn't only financial incentives, it's the lack of financial disincentives in almost equal portion. Your mythical irrational actors, unconcerned with a better life for themselves and their family, slavishly working on despite government telling them that jobs are risky but welfare is bedrock, are not to be found in any great number on this earth. Impoverishing the country is how you create opportunity and jobs. Condemning the poor to their lot is your compassion. There you have it. I can only dream of raising up as many straw men as you have in the past 50 pages, but dream on I shall. I say it is unfair to the poor for their would-be representatives to continually seek to keep them that way claiming compassion every step of the way. That is the first thing that enters my mind when I hear Sam talking about this or that "exacerbat[ing] social inequality" or these expansionist conceptions of the welfare state. I know this is a difficult concept for you to understand, since you would love to work part time and collect food stamps while making 18k a year, but most people who are on welfare would rather have a well-paying job. Maybe you do understand this, but your definition of "well-paying" is $2 for 16 hours of labor a day to make Nike shoes while living in corporate owned housing with bunk beds next to your coworkers. It's unclear at this point. So what's the main driving force of inequality in the country/world at large right now? Welfare increasing the inequality gap according to you? I really don't understand your position. You seem to say that inequality is a problem and that if only we had freer markets it would take care of itself. Remember that people believe that welfare queens are a thing in real life and not just a dogwhistle racism campaign tactic. The race card has served your cause well. In the absence of a debate on ideas, insinuate your opponents are racists. Keep creating the very same poverty you decry. Keep hounding those in society actually concerned with welfare reform. So this graph doesn't bother you: + Show Spoiler +That's not extreme inequality or you, personally, just don't see it out in your travels? Which political party is the one beating down the poor rich people into submission? The one led by the neoliberals or the other one led by the neoliberals? So according to you, if we had less welfare and fewer taxes the people collecting welfare right now could at least be earning $4 an hour picking oranges in Florida and apples in California. Do you not see the disconnect there? Your argument is that taxation and regulation makes it prohibitive to hire people who want to work, so if we removed those socialist barriers, we could get people currently on welfare out in the fields picking cotton instead of immigrants or people in the third world. How does that not result in higher inequality than the already egregious inequality seen in the above graph? Wealth inequality is really hard to deal with. I don't recall any plausible ideas out of the left to deal with that (mostly they seem to be concerned with income / consumption inequality). If you can think of any, remind me, it could be a good discussion. And to both your and Danglars' concerns - yes we need to put resources into helping the poor, but we also need to be concerned about how we deploy those resources. And many options for using those resources exist. Let's not box ourselves into either blindly throwing money at the problem or not trying at all.
Wholeheartedly agree. Throwing money at the problem has not helped the problem. The War on Poverty arguably increased poverty. In 2011 we spent $19k on means-tested benefits (welfare) for every lower-income person (lowest third based on income). Heck, if you just cut that in a direct check it would be enough to lift every one to 200% of federal poverty level (see for example here).
I don't really even see the point of talking about wealth inequality unless you are proposing a wealth tax similar to France. And yes, Republicans do support the EITC (in particular a real negative income tax), particularly if it was used as a replacement for existing direct aid welfare schemes. It is pretty counter productive when you observe prior to such plans that many people faced marginal tax rates in excess of 100% if they left the dole for a low-wage job. Talk about an adverse economic incentive!
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I don't see what the forbes list has to do with class structure.
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On November 13 2013 11:41 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2013 16:33 sam!zdat wrote:On November 12 2013 14:55 Danglars wrote:
That is the first thing that enters my mind when I hear Sam talking about this or that "exacerbat[ing] social inequality" or these expansionist conceptions of the welfare state. I wish you would listen to me I read every word and haven't been convinced yet. Frankly, you fly from subject to subject and argument to argument so fast in such little time that its hard to summarize what I've found out about your position. Granted, we've covered a lot of subject in the last hundred pages or so, so maybe some of it gets muddled in my mind. Just to grab a couple that concerned me: Show nested quote +there's no opportunity to advance, civilization is just settling back into its usual pattern of tiny elites and massive underclass, after the anomalous interlude of large american middle class which is basically just a historical oddity Show nested quote +you don't get it. a fully private healthcare system would just exacerbate social inequality and make even more obvious the gap between the haves and have nots. there's no politically feasible way to allow that to happen without also revolutionizing the relations of production and solving the deeper contradictions in the class structure of american society. government intervention in healthcare is part of the social democratic compromise that is the only thing holding the fabric of capitalist society together. the only possible capitalist state is the welfare state - if you don't like the welfare state (i hate it) you are going to have to start thinking about alternatives to capitalism. No on both counts for the reasons I stated. I might also add at this time that there will be political cost for politicians ok for the rich to keep their earned money and spend it on expensive yachts. They will appear to be no friends to the poor, even as much as that was an argument I saw surface when Romney was angling for the presidency. I'm saddened that you don't understand my position on class structure, claiming I haven't read what you said. With good swaths of individual freedom still preserved, there is no rigid class structure ... look no farther than the shifting lists of Forbes's richest people or longitudinal studies from census data and social sciences research groups. On a side note that you already know, I advocate policies I understand to be helpful in removing obstacles to income/class mobility etc. I'm not going along with your pessimistic attitude, not because of its pessimism (and in fact I hold a few of those attitudes even in the realm of eSports) but because of how I analyze it against reality. Show nested quote +On November 12 2013 16:32 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 16:15 Danglars wrote:On November 12 2013 15:07 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 14:55 Danglars wrote:On November 12 2013 12:26 sam!zdat wrote:
there's no opportunity to advance, civilization is just settling back into its usual pattern of tiny elites and massive underclass, after the anomalous interlude of large american middle class which is basically just a historical oddity On November 12 2013 13:21 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 12:23 Danglars wrote:On November 12 2013 11:36 sam!zdat wrote:
you don't get it. a fully private healthcare system would just exacerbate social inequality and make even more obvious the gap between the haves and have nots. there's no politically feasible way to allow that to happen without also revolutionizing the relations of production and solving the deeper contradictions in the class structure of american society. government intervention in healthcare is part of the social democratic compromise that is the only thing holding the fabric of capitalist society together. the only possible capitalist state is the welfare state - if you don't like the welfare state (i hate it) you are going to have to start thinking about alternatives to capitalism. I have to accept something less than utopia. Utopia is not for this world. Income and standard of life inequality must exist at some level if the community is not entirely in grinding poverty. To create the the fastest increase in standards of life for the lowest in society, we have capitalist markets. Why? Without capitalism and the notions of price signalling and profits, you condemn the poor to their pitiable state by depriving them of opportunity to advance. Without the same there will not be a sufficiently prosperous society to provide the wealth necessary to help the truly destitute, unless you want a generalized decrease in living standards across the board. I argue for a safety net of sorts, as much as that construction is abused, to keep that extreme poverty far away and to help the aged and disabled that lack the resources for their own care. Now, I simplify your revolution in class structure to the natural progressive urges present in capitalist societies. As much as the problem with the related communist society is the communists, the problem with capitalist society is the capitalists. Unwilling to accept that other forms would not lead to an increase in poverty rather than a decrease, they agitate for it -- particularly the richest. When, however, the help for impoverished persons transforms into a lifestyle with heavy disincentives for an exit (a welfare trap), then we have a perversion of a good thing and a moral need to reform it. We are not conquering the basic human attribute of envy that commands so much political power nowadays, but we are limiting its destructive and self-defeating economic policies with a healthy dose of reason and historical proof. Not sure what the bolded sentence means. Seems like you are missing an antecedent. You misunderstand human beings. They are not rational actors who respond to financial incentives like you think they do. And no one would prefer living in poverty with an iphone to a wealthy life without one. Perhaps I jumped too far with the phrase prior for those that have never heard it. It's no matter. And it isn't only financial incentives, it's the lack of financial disincentives in almost equal portion. Your mythical irrational actors, unconcerned with a better life for themselves and their family, slavishly working on despite government telling them that jobs are risky but welfare is bedrock, are not to be found in any great number on this earth. Impoverishing the country is how you create opportunity and jobs. Condemning the poor to their lot is your compassion. There you have it. I can only dream of raising up as many straw men as you have in the past 50 pages, but dream on I shall. I say it is unfair to the poor for their would-be representatives to continually seek to keep them that way claiming compassion every step of the way. That is the first thing that enters my mind when I hear Sam talking about this or that "exacerbat[ing] social inequality" or these expansionist conceptions of the welfare state. I know this is a difficult concept for you to understand, since you would love to work part time and collect food stamps while making 18k a year, but most people who are on welfare would rather have a well-paying job. Maybe you do understand this, but your definition of "well-paying" is $2 for 16 hours of labor a day to make Nike shoes while living in corporate owned housing with bunk beds next to your coworkers. It's unclear at this point. So what's the main driving force of inequality in the country/world at large right now? Welfare increasing the inequality gap according to you? I really don't understand your position. You seem to say that inequality is a problem and that if only we had freer markets it would take care of itself. Inequality at its extreme is a problem. I don't see that in America today. I do see a political party more concerned with beating the rich down into submission than the actual plight of the poor. They're fine with the entire country less prosperous, if the poor maintains their lot in life, as long as net inequality goes down. I believe the opposite ... that inequality taken alone tells very little and the poorest societies can be those with the lowest inequality. It's a misplaced focus as much as it is a disgusting political tactic. Exacerbate envy for political purposes. I find the people having your views are exactly those intent on policies that ensure the poor person on welfare will never be able to find a job with his skills. From taxation to regulation to minimum wage, the crusade is counterproductive to poverty. I brought up the welfare trap in regards to sam's conception of the welfare state, not on the topic of inequality. On November 12 2013 15:32 HunterX11 wrote:On November 12 2013 15:07 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 14:55 Danglars wrote:On November 12 2013 12:26 sam!zdat wrote:
there's no opportunity to advance, civilization is just settling back into its usual pattern of tiny elites and massive underclass, after the anomalous interlude of large american middle class which is basically just a historical oddity On November 12 2013 13:21 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 12:23 Danglars wrote:On November 12 2013 11:36 sam!zdat wrote:
you don't get it. a fully private healthcare system would just exacerbate social inequality and make even more obvious the gap between the haves and have nots. there's no politically feasible way to allow that to happen without also revolutionizing the relations of production and solving the deeper contradictions in the class structure of american society. government intervention in healthcare is part of the social democratic compromise that is the only thing holding the fabric of capitalist society together. the only possible capitalist state is the welfare state - if you don't like the welfare state (i hate it) you are going to have to start thinking about alternatives to capitalism. I have to accept something less than utopia. Utopia is not for this world. Income and standard of life inequality must exist at some level if the community is not entirely in grinding poverty. To create the the fastest increase in standards of life for the lowest in society, we have capitalist markets. Why? Without capitalism and the notions of price signalling and profits, you condemn the poor to their pitiable state by depriving them of opportunity to advance. Without the same there will not be a sufficiently prosperous society to provide the wealth necessary to help the truly destitute, unless you want a generalized decrease in living standards across the board. I argue for a safety net of sorts, as much as that construction is abused, to keep that extreme poverty far away and to help the aged and disabled that lack the resources for their own care. Now, I simplify your revolution in class structure to the natural progressive urges present in capitalist societies. As much as the problem with the related communist society is the communists, the problem with capitalist society is the capitalists. Unwilling to accept that other forms would not lead to an increase in poverty rather than a decrease, they agitate for it -- particularly the richest. When, however, the help for impoverished persons transforms into a lifestyle with heavy disincentives for an exit (a welfare trap), then we have a perversion of a good thing and a moral need to reform it. We are not conquering the basic human attribute of envy that commands so much political power nowadays, but we are limiting its destructive and self-defeating economic policies with a healthy dose of reason and historical proof. Not sure what the bolded sentence means. Seems like you are missing an antecedent. You misunderstand human beings. They are not rational actors who respond to financial incentives like you think they do. And no one would prefer living in poverty with an iphone to a wealthy life without one. Perhaps I jumped too far with the phrase prior for those that have never heard it. It's no matter. And it isn't only financial incentives, it's the lack of financial disincentives in almost equal portion. Your mythical irrational actors, unconcerned with a better life for themselves and their family, slavishly working on despite government telling them that jobs are risky but welfare is bedrock, are not to be found in any great number on this earth. Impoverishing the country is how you create opportunity and jobs. Condemning the poor to their lot is your compassion. There you have it. I can only dream of raising up as many straw men as you have in the past 50 pages, but dream on I shall. I say it is unfair to the poor for their would-be representatives to continually seek to keep them that way claiming compassion every step of the way. That is the first thing that enters my mind when I hear Sam talking about this or that "exacerbat[ing] social inequality" or these expansionist conceptions of the welfare state. I know this is a difficult concept for you to understand, since you would love to work part time and collect food stamps while making 18k a year, but most people who are on welfare would rather have a well-paying job. Maybe you do understand this, but your definition of "well-paying" is $2 for 16 hours of labor a day to make Nike shoes while living in corporate owned housing with bunk beds next to your coworkers. It's unclear at this point. So what's the main driving force of inequality in the country/world at large right now? Welfare increasing the inequality gap according to you? I really don't understand your position. You seem to say that inequality is a problem and that if only we had freer markets it would take care of itself. Remember that people believe that welfare queens are a thing in real life and not just a dogwhistle racism campaign tactic. The race card has served your cause well. In the absence of a debate on ideas, insinuate your opponents are racists. Keep creating the very same poverty you decry. Keep hounding those in society actually concerned with welfare reform. So this graph doesn't bother you: That's not extreme inequality or you, personally, just don't see it out in your travels? Which political party is the one beating down the poor rich people into submission? The one led by the neoliberals or the other one led by the neoliberals? So according to you, if we had less welfare and fewer taxes the people collecting welfare right now could at least be earning $4 an hour picking oranges in Florida and apples in California. Do you not see the disconnect there? Your argument is that taxation and regulation makes it prohibitive to hire people who want to work, so if we removed those socialist barriers, we could get people currently on welfare out in the fields picking cotton instead of immigrants or people in the third world. How does that not result in higher inequality than the already egregious inequality seen in the above graph? You are right that that graph does not bother me, nor do I consider it extreme income inequality (and it is wealth in your graph and not income inequality). Just because one man earns an extra dollar does not mean that another must necessarily earn a dollar less. Just because the gap looks like that on the scale of wealth owned not income earned does not make the bottom of the barrel no different than the grinding poverty you can find in areas of Africa, for instance. Does the average rich man fly in million dollar vacations and the average poor man have no food, water, shelter and languish until death? No. Show nested quote +On November 12 2013 23:10 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 12 2013 16:32 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 16:15 Danglars wrote:On November 12 2013 15:07 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 14:55 Danglars wrote:On November 12 2013 12:26 sam!zdat wrote:
there's no opportunity to advance, civilization is just settling back into its usual pattern of tiny elites and massive underclass, after the anomalous interlude of large american middle class which is basically just a historical oddity On November 12 2013 13:21 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 12:23 Danglars wrote:On November 12 2013 11:36 sam!zdat wrote:
you don't get it. a fully private healthcare system would just exacerbate social inequality and make even more obvious the gap between the haves and have nots. there's no politically feasible way to allow that to happen without also revolutionizing the relations of production and solving the deeper contradictions in the class structure of american society. government intervention in healthcare is part of the social democratic compromise that is the only thing holding the fabric of capitalist society together. the only possible capitalist state is the welfare state - if you don't like the welfare state (i hate it) you are going to have to start thinking about alternatives to capitalism. I have to accept something less than utopia. Utopia is not for this world. Income and standard of life inequality must exist at some level if the community is not entirely in grinding poverty. To create the the fastest increase in standards of life for the lowest in society, we have capitalist markets. Why? Without capitalism and the notions of price signalling and profits, you condemn the poor to their pitiable state by depriving them of opportunity to advance. Without the same there will not be a sufficiently prosperous society to provide the wealth necessary to help the truly destitute, unless you want a generalized decrease in living standards across the board. I argue for a safety net of sorts, as much as that construction is abused, to keep that extreme poverty far away and to help the aged and disabled that lack the resources for their own care. Now, I simplify your revolution in class structure to the natural progressive urges present in capitalist societies. As much as the problem with the related communist society is the communists, the problem with capitalist society is the capitalists. Unwilling to accept that other forms would not lead to an increase in poverty rather than a decrease, they agitate for it -- particularly the richest. When, however, the help for impoverished persons transforms into a lifestyle with heavy disincentives for an exit (a welfare trap), then we have a perversion of a good thing and a moral need to reform it. We are not conquering the basic human attribute of envy that commands so much political power nowadays, but we are limiting its destructive and self-defeating economic policies with a healthy dose of reason and historical proof. Not sure what the bolded sentence means. Seems like you are missing an antecedent. You misunderstand human beings. They are not rational actors who respond to financial incentives like you think they do. And no one would prefer living in poverty with an iphone to a wealthy life without one. Perhaps I jumped too far with the phrase prior for those that have never heard it. It's no matter. And it isn't only financial incentives, it's the lack of financial disincentives in almost equal portion. Your mythical irrational actors, unconcerned with a better life for themselves and their family, slavishly working on despite government telling them that jobs are risky but welfare is bedrock, are not to be found in any great number on this earth. Impoverishing the country is how you create opportunity and jobs. Condemning the poor to their lot is your compassion. There you have it. I can only dream of raising up as many straw men as you have in the past 50 pages, but dream on I shall. I say it is unfair to the poor for their would-be representatives to continually seek to keep them that way claiming compassion every step of the way. That is the first thing that enters my mind when I hear Sam talking about this or that "exacerbat[ing] social inequality" or these expansionist conceptions of the welfare state. I know this is a difficult concept for you to understand, since you would love to work part time and collect food stamps while making 18k a year, but most people who are on welfare would rather have a well-paying job. Maybe you do understand this, but your definition of "well-paying" is $2 for 16 hours of labor a day to make Nike shoes while living in corporate owned housing with bunk beds next to your coworkers. It's unclear at this point. So what's the main driving force of inequality in the country/world at large right now? Welfare increasing the inequality gap according to you? I really don't understand your position. You seem to say that inequality is a problem and that if only we had freer markets it would take care of itself. Inequality at its extreme is a problem. I don't see that in America today. I do see a political party more concerned with beating the rich down into submission than the actual plight of the poor. They're fine with the entire country less prosperous, if the poor maintains their lot in life, as long as net inequality goes down. I believe the opposite ... that inequality taken alone tells very little and the poorest societies can be those with the lowest inequality. It's a misplaced focus as much as it is a disgusting political tactic. Exacerbate envy for political purposes. I find the people having your views are exactly those intent on policies that ensure the poor person on welfare will never be able to find a job with his skills. From taxation to regulation to minimum wage, the crusade is counterproductive to poverty. I brought up the welfare trap in regards to sam's conception of the welfare state, not on the topic of inequality. On November 12 2013 15:32 HunterX11 wrote:On November 12 2013 15:07 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 14:55 Danglars wrote:On November 12 2013 12:26 sam!zdat wrote:
there's no opportunity to advance, civilization is just settling back into its usual pattern of tiny elites and massive underclass, after the anomalous interlude of large american middle class which is basically just a historical oddity On November 12 2013 13:21 IgnE wrote:On November 12 2013 12:23 Danglars wrote:On November 12 2013 11:36 sam!zdat wrote:
you don't get it. a fully private healthcare system would just exacerbate social inequality and make even more obvious the gap between the haves and have nots. there's no politically feasible way to allow that to happen without also revolutionizing the relations of production and solving the deeper contradictions in the class structure of american society. government intervention in healthcare is part of the social democratic compromise that is the only thing holding the fabric of capitalist society together. the only possible capitalist state is the welfare state - if you don't like the welfare state (i hate it) you are going to have to start thinking about alternatives to capitalism. I have to accept something less than utopia. Utopia is not for this world. Income and standard of life inequality must exist at some level if the community is not entirely in grinding poverty. To create the the fastest increase in standards of life for the lowest in society, we have capitalist markets. Why? Without capitalism and the notions of price signalling and profits, you condemn the poor to their pitiable state by depriving them of opportunity to advance. Without the same there will not be a sufficiently prosperous society to provide the wealth necessary to help the truly destitute, unless you want a generalized decrease in living standards across the board. I argue for a safety net of sorts, as much as that construction is abused, to keep that extreme poverty far away and to help the aged and disabled that lack the resources for their own care. Now, I simplify your revolution in class structure to the natural progressive urges present in capitalist societies. As much as the problem with the related communist society is the communists, the problem with capitalist society is the capitalists. Unwilling to accept that other forms would not lead to an increase in poverty rather than a decrease, they agitate for it -- particularly the richest. When, however, the help for impoverished persons transforms into a lifestyle with heavy disincentives for an exit (a welfare trap), then we have a perversion of a good thing and a moral need to reform it. We are not conquering the basic human attribute of envy that commands so much political power nowadays, but we are limiting its destructive and self-defeating economic policies with a healthy dose of reason and historical proof. Not sure what the bolded sentence means. Seems like you are missing an antecedent. You misunderstand human beings. They are not rational actors who respond to financial incentives like you think they do. And no one would prefer living in poverty with an iphone to a wealthy life without one. Perhaps I jumped too far with the phrase prior for those that have never heard it. It's no matter. And it isn't only financial incentives, it's the lack of financial disincentives in almost equal portion. Your mythical irrational actors, unconcerned with a better life for themselves and their family, slavishly working on despite government telling them that jobs are risky but welfare is bedrock, are not to be found in any great number on this earth. Impoverishing the country is how you create opportunity and jobs. Condemning the poor to their lot is your compassion. There you have it. I can only dream of raising up as many straw men as you have in the past 50 pages, but dream on I shall. I say it is unfair to the poor for their would-be representatives to continually seek to keep them that way claiming compassion every step of the way. That is the first thing that enters my mind when I hear Sam talking about this or that "exacerbat[ing] social inequality" or these expansionist conceptions of the welfare state. I know this is a difficult concept for you to understand, since you would love to work part time and collect food stamps while making 18k a year, but most people who are on welfare would rather have a well-paying job. Maybe you do understand this, but your definition of "well-paying" is $2 for 16 hours of labor a day to make Nike shoes while living in corporate owned housing with bunk beds next to your coworkers. It's unclear at this point. So what's the main driving force of inequality in the country/world at large right now? Welfare increasing the inequality gap according to you? I really don't understand your position. You seem to say that inequality is a problem and that if only we had freer markets it would take care of itself. Remember that people believe that welfare queens are a thing in real life and not just a dogwhistle racism campaign tactic. The race card has served your cause well. In the absence of a debate on ideas, insinuate your opponents are racists. Keep creating the very same poverty you decry. Keep hounding those in society actually concerned with welfare reform. So this graph doesn't bother you: + Show Spoiler +That's not extreme inequality or you, personally, just don't see it out in your travels? Which political party is the one beating down the poor rich people into submission? The one led by the neoliberals or the other one led by the neoliberals? So according to you, if we had less welfare and fewer taxes the people collecting welfare right now could at least be earning $4 an hour picking oranges in Florida and apples in California. Do you not see the disconnect there? Your argument is that taxation and regulation makes it prohibitive to hire people who want to work, so if we removed those socialist barriers, we could get people currently on welfare out in the fields picking cotton instead of immigrants or people in the third world. How does that not result in higher inequality than the already egregious inequality seen in the above graph? Wealth inequality is really hard to deal with. I don't recall any plausible ideas out of the left to deal with that (mostly they seem to be concerned with income / consumption inequality). If you can think of any, remind me, it could be a good discussion. And to both your and Danglars' concerns - yes we need to put resources into helping the poor, but we also need to be concerned about how we deploy those resources. And many options for using those resources exist. Let's not box ourselves into either blindly throwing money at the problem or not trying at all. Wholeheartedly agree. Throwing money at the problem has not helped the problem. The War on Poverty arguably increased poverty. In 2011 we spent $19k on means-tested benefits (welfare) for every lower-income person (lowest third based on income). Heck, if you just cut that in a direct check it would be enough to lift every one to 200% of federal poverty level ( see for example here). I don't really even see the point of talking about wealth inequality unless you are proposing a wealth tax similar to France. And yes, Republicans do support the EITC (in particular a real negative income tax), particularly if it was used as a replacement for existing direct aid welfare schemes. It is pretty counter productive when you observe prior to such plans that many people faced marginal tax rates in excess of 100% if they left the dole for a low-wage job. Talk about an adverse economic incentive!
Do you think the income inequality graph looks much different from the wealth inequality graph?
![[image loading]](http://acivilamericandebate.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/us-income-inequality_uneven_prosperity1.gif?w=640)
90% of the population on the far left. And it's only gotten worse since 2008. The vast majority of the rebound from the crash has gone entirely to the top 1%. But at least they aren't at African poverty level status with swollen bellies, malaria, and AIDS.
http://www.brookings.edu/about/projects/bpea/latest-conference/2013-spring-permanent-inequality-panousi
Class mobility is a lie. The opportunities to advance are shrinking rapidly.
Although the increase in inequality over the last two decades has been extensively documented in the economics and policy literature, the authors find that this inequality largely constituted an increase in permanent inequality. Using a large panel of income data from U.S. federal tax returns for the period 1987-2009, the authors show that for men’s labor earnings, the increase in inequality was entirely permanent (100 percent), while for total household income, roughly three-quarters of the increase in inequality was permanent. They estimate that the permanent variance for men’s earnings roughly doubled in the 20 years between 1987 and 2009, while the permanent variance of total household income increased by about 50 percent over the same period.
And it's only going to get worse as the lost earnings for the generation of 20-somethings who graduated during and after the crash are going to continue long into the future, resulting in significant losses in total lifetime earnings.
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On November 13 2013 12:09 sam!zdat wrote:
I don't see what the forbes list has to do with class structure.
Any other troubles with my response? I'm kind of interested why you take issue with that part on its lonesome. If there is considerable shift between incomes, where is the problem with classes? If the top 1% change ever year so much that only a third stay at that top rung after five years, is that really a useful criticism of the capitalist system? Is your business dividing society into static income brackets and examining them in the abstract? Politically, if movement between them slowed, would you ever critically examine your policies as potentially to blame for them?
I guess you might have to point out clearly what you believe class structure is in America and then what's bad about it. I'll try not to limit my reply to just one sentence out of that post, I promise.
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On November 13 2013 13:02 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2013 12:09 sam!zdat wrote:
I don't see what the forbes list has to do with class structure. Any other troubles with my response? I'm kind of interested why you take issue with that part on its lonesome. If there is considerable shift between incomes, where is the problem with classes? If the top 1% change ever year so much that only a third stay at that top rung after five years, is that really a useful criticism of the capitalist system? Is your business dividing society into static income brackets and examining them in the abstract? Politically, if movement between them slowed, would you ever critically examine your policies as potentially to blame for them?
I guess you might have to point out clearly what you believe class structure is in America and then what's bad about it. I'll try not to limit my reply to just one sentence out of that post, I promise.
Well they don't so . . . You seem to live in a fantasy world where there is high class mobility. Going from a billionaire to a 50 billionaire and back over the course of 20 years is not really very important is it. You still have 999 million more dollars than most (i.e. 99%) people accumulate over their entire life.
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EPT
