In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up!
NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action.
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.
If you are a good business leader you don't hire people as part of some half-baked tax avoidance scheme.
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:
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
I'm not sure the graph should be showing a negative income increase for the bottom 90% for 2000 - 2006. Do you know what definition of income they're using? Pre-tax, pre-transfer taxable income?
As for your comment about the 1% benefiting more during the recovery, they also lost more during the recession. Their income is more volatile.
On November 13 2013 03:55 Sbrubbles wrote: [quote]
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.
If you are a good business leader you don't hire people as part of some half-baked tax avoidance scheme.
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:
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:
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:
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.
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?
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.
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.
I'm not sure the graph should be showing a negative income increase for the bottom 90% for 2000 - 2006. Do you know what definition of income they're using? Pre-tax, pre-transfer taxable income?
As for your comment about the 1% benefiting more during the recovery, they also lost more during the recession. Their income is more volatile.
They lost more in absolute terms but they had more to lose. Millions of "middle class" people lost substantial portion of a lifetime's worth of equity and millions other lost a sizable chunk of their pension. Plus the obvious asymmetric differences in unemployment between the two classes.
You say that as if you don't find it problematic that they are the only ones who are recovering. I don't really see what your point is by clarifying that.
It appears to be measuring "average real household income."
While both poverty and income have improved over the last few years, it is disappointing that despite low unemployment and strong productivity growth, these measures of living standards have yet to recover to their levels of the previous business cycle peak in 2000. In that year poverty was 11.3%, compared to 12.3% in 2006, an increase in the poverty rolls of 4.9 million persons, including 1.2 million children; median household income in 2006 was $48,201, about $1,000 dollars (-2.0 %) below its 2000 level (in 2006 dollars). In other words, economic growth over the last six years has totally bypassed the typical middle-class household.
I'm kind of surprised you are surprised by this Jonny. You should know by now that we stopped having recoveries that trickled down a long time ago.
On November 13 2013 04:56 JonnyBNoHo wrote: [quote] 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.
If you are a good business leader you don't hire people as part of some half-baked tax avoidance scheme.
On November 13 2013 12:46 IgnE wrote:
On November 13 2013 11:41 Danglars wrote:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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.
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?
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.
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.
I'm not sure the graph should be showing a negative income increase for the bottom 90% for 2000 - 2006. Do you know what definition of income they're using? Pre-tax, pre-transfer taxable income?
As for your comment about the 1% benefiting more during the recovery, they also lost more during the recession. Their income is more volatile.
They lost more in absolute terms but they had more to lose. Millions of "middle class" people lost substantial portion of a lifetime's worth of equity and millions other lost a sizable chunk of their pension. Plus the obvious asymmetric differences in unemployment between the two classes.
You say that as if you don't find it problematic that they are the only ones who are recovering. I don't really see what your point is by clarifying that.
While both poverty and income have improved over the last few years, it is disappointing that despite low unemployment and strong productivity growth, these measures of living standards have yet to recover to their levels of the previous business cycle peak in 2000. In that year poverty was 11.3%, compared to 12.3% in 2006, an increase in the poverty rolls of 4.9 million persons, including 1.2 million children; median household income in 2006 was $48,201, about $1,000 dollars (-2.0 %) below its 2000 level (in 2006 dollars). In other words, economic growth over the last six years has totally bypassed the typical middle-class household.
I'm kind of surprised you are surprised by this Jonny. You should know by now that we stopped having recoveries that trickled down a long time ago.
OK, yeah it comes from the Census Bureau so it is a narrow definition of income. If you look more broadly and include government and private benefits, you should see a rise in real incomes over that period iirc.
As for my comment about the 1%, that was a relative, not absolute statement. The rich lost more as a percent of income during the recession than the poor did (unless this graph is wrong XD):
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.
i have to concede the topic because I don't have time to engage. sorry. but the point is that worrying about long tail outliers is a red herring. the difference between the super-rich and the run of the mill bourgeoisie is not that important, so the forbes list is mostly irrelevant
i'm sorry you wrote that long post and I'm blowing you off - it's rude of me but my life is getting a bit busy
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.
If you are a good business leader you don't hire people as part of some half-baked tax avoidance scheme.
On November 13 2013 12:46 IgnE wrote:
On November 13 2013 11:41 Danglars wrote:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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.
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?
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.
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.
I'm not sure the graph should be showing a negative income increase for the bottom 90% for 2000 - 2006. Do you know what definition of income they're using? Pre-tax, pre-transfer taxable income?
As for your comment about the 1% benefiting more during the recovery, they also lost more during the recession. Their income is more volatile.
They lost more in absolute terms but they had more to lose. Millions of "middle class" people lost substantial portion of a lifetime's worth of equity and millions other lost a sizable chunk of their pension. Plus the obvious asymmetric differences in unemployment between the two classes.
You say that as if you don't find it problematic that they are the only ones who are recovering. I don't really see what your point is by clarifying that.
It appears to be measuring "average real household income."
While both poverty and income have improved over the last few years, it is disappointing that despite low unemployment and strong productivity growth, these measures of living standards have yet to recover to their levels of the previous business cycle peak in 2000. In that year poverty was 11.3%, compared to 12.3% in 2006, an increase in the poverty rolls of 4.9 million persons, including 1.2 million children; median household income in 2006 was $48,201, about $1,000 dollars (-2.0 %) below its 2000 level (in 2006 dollars). In other words, economic growth over the last six years has totally bypassed the typical middle-class household.
I'm kind of surprised you are surprised by this Jonny. You should know by now that we stopped having recoveries that trickled down a long time ago.
OK, yeah it comes from the Census Bureau so it is a narrow definition of income. If you look more broadly and include government and private benefits, you should see a rise in real incomes over that period iirc.
As for my comment about the 1%, that was a relative, not absolute statement. The rich lost more as a percent of income during the recession than the poor did (unless this graph is wrong XD):
Where's the graph of wealth lost? That graph also doesn't take into account the losses from unemployment. Going from income to no income isn't reflected. Nor is expected income pre-2008 for new graduates and young people entering the labor force against actual income.
On November 13 2013 05:33 JonnyBNoHo wrote: [quote] 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.
If you are a good business leader you don't hire people as part of some half-baked tax avoidance scheme.
On November 13 2013 12:46 IgnE wrote:
On November 13 2013 11:41 Danglars wrote:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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.
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?
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.
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.
I'm not sure the graph should be showing a negative income increase for the bottom 90% for 2000 - 2006. Do you know what definition of income they're using? Pre-tax, pre-transfer taxable income?
As for your comment about the 1% benefiting more during the recovery, they also lost more during the recession. Their income is more volatile.
They lost more in absolute terms but they had more to lose. Millions of "middle class" people lost substantial portion of a lifetime's worth of equity and millions other lost a sizable chunk of their pension. Plus the obvious asymmetric differences in unemployment between the two classes.
You say that as if you don't find it problematic that they are the only ones who are recovering. I don't really see what your point is by clarifying that.
It appears to be measuring "average real household income."
While both poverty and income have improved over the last few years, it is disappointing that despite low unemployment and strong productivity growth, these measures of living standards have yet to recover to their levels of the previous business cycle peak in 2000. In that year poverty was 11.3%, compared to 12.3% in 2006, an increase in the poverty rolls of 4.9 million persons, including 1.2 million children; median household income in 2006 was $48,201, about $1,000 dollars (-2.0 %) below its 2000 level (in 2006 dollars). In other words, economic growth over the last six years has totally bypassed the typical middle-class household.
I'm kind of surprised you are surprised by this Jonny. You should know by now that we stopped having recoveries that trickled down a long time ago.
OK, yeah it comes from the Census Bureau so it is a narrow definition of income. If you look more broadly and include government and private benefits, you should see a rise in real incomes over that period iirc.
As for my comment about the 1%, that was a relative, not absolute statement. The rich lost more as a percent of income during the recession than the poor did (unless this graph is wrong XD):
Where's the graph of wealth lost? That graph also doesn't take into account the losses from unemployment. Going from income to no income isn't reflected. Nor is expected income pre-2008 for new graduates and young people entering the labor force against actual income.
I don't have a graph of wealth lost. My guess would be that the poorest did OK, since they don't own many securities or houses. The middle class did bad since their leveraged ownership of housing did terrible. The rich did terrible during the crisis but sharply recovered with stock / bond markets.
Going from income to no income should be reflected, as much as it exists, in the bottom quintile. There shouldn't be much in terms of zero income, since someone unemployed should be receiving income via UI.
I'm not sure why we would want to look at "expected" vs actual income. Actual is what matters, regardless of expectations. Same goes for the wealthy's investment income. If an investment falls short of expectations, too bad, I'm not counting that as a loss.
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.
If you are a good business leader you don't hire people as part of some half-baked tax avoidance scheme.
On November 13 2013 12:46 IgnE wrote:
On November 13 2013 11:41 Danglars wrote:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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.
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?
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.
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.
I'm not sure the graph should be showing a negative income increase for the bottom 90% for 2000 - 2006. Do you know what definition of income they're using? Pre-tax, pre-transfer taxable income?
As for your comment about the 1% benefiting more during the recovery, they also lost more during the recession. Their income is more volatile.
They lost more in absolute terms but they had more to lose. Millions of "middle class" people lost substantial portion of a lifetime's worth of equity and millions other lost a sizable chunk of their pension. Plus the obvious asymmetric differences in unemployment between the two classes.
You say that as if you don't find it problematic that they are the only ones who are recovering. I don't really see what your point is by clarifying that.
It appears to be measuring "average real household income."
While both poverty and income have improved over the last few years, it is disappointing that despite low unemployment and strong productivity growth, these measures of living standards have yet to recover to their levels of the previous business cycle peak in 2000. In that year poverty was 11.3%, compared to 12.3% in 2006, an increase in the poverty rolls of 4.9 million persons, including 1.2 million children; median household income in 2006 was $48,201, about $1,000 dollars (-2.0 %) below its 2000 level (in 2006 dollars). In other words, economic growth over the last six years has totally bypassed the typical middle-class household.
I'm kind of surprised you are surprised by this Jonny. You should know by now that we stopped having recoveries that trickled down a long time ago.
OK, yeah it comes from the Census Bureau so it is a narrow definition of income. If you look more broadly and include government and private benefits, you should see a rise in real incomes over that period iirc.
As for my comment about the 1%, that was a relative, not absolute statement. The rich lost more as a percent of income during the recession than the poor did (unless this graph is wrong XD):
Where's the graph of wealth lost? That graph also doesn't take into account the losses from unemployment. Going from income to no income isn't reflected. Nor is expected income pre-2008 for new graduates and young people entering the labor force against actual income.
I don't have a graph of wealth lost. My guess would be that the poorest did OK, since they don't own many securities or houses. The middle class did bad since their leveraged ownership of housing did terrible. The rich did terrible during the crisis but sharply recovered with stock / bond markets.
Going from income to no income should be reflected, as much as it exists, in the bottom quintile. There shouldn't be much in terms of zero income, since someone unemployed should be receiving income via UI.
I'm not sure why we would want to look at "expected" vs actual income. Actual is what matters, regardless of expectations. Same goes for the wealthy's investment income. If an investment falls short of expectations, too bad, I'm not counting that as a loss.
You would look at expected vs actual income because that reflects increasing inequality, as the lower class lost their jobs, the middle class lost their equity, and the young lost their future earnings potential. Yeah, the top 1% had a dip in income and lost some stock value, but they have reaped almost all of the gains since 2008. Just as they reaped almost all of the gains after the dotcom bubble burst. And will continue to reap all of the gains for the foreseeable future.
The mere fact that we are talking about the bottom quintile bottoming out, so to speak, because even when they have no job they can still collect a welfare check which has held pretty steady, speaks volumes. The number of people at or near welfare-level income is only increasing as the middle class evaporates. But according to people like Danglars that's ok. In fact, we should stop providing them welfare at all. They should be picking cotton for 20k a year instead of sitting on their ass. Decreasing consumption? What?
On November 13 2013 13:40 IgnE wrote: While both poverty and income have improved over the last few years, it is disappointing that despite low unemployment and strong productivity growth, these measures of living standards have yet to recover to their levels of the previous business cycle peak in 2000. In that year poverty was 11.3%, compared to 12.3% in 2006, an increase in the poverty rolls of 4.9 million persons, including 1.2 million children; median household income in 2006 was $48,201, about $1,000 dollars (-2.0 %) below its 2000 level (in 2006 dollars). In other words, economic growth over the last six years has totally bypassed the typical middle-class household. I'm kind of surprised you are surprised by this Jonny. You should know by now that we stopped having recoveries that trickled down a long time ago.
OK, yeah it comes from the Census Bureau so it is a narrow definition of income. If you look more broadly and include government and private benefits, you should see a rise in real incomes over that period iirc.
As for my comment about the 1%, that was a relative, not absolute statement. The rich lost more as a percent of income during the recession than the poor did (unless this graph is wrong XD):
I kind of figured that was missing. 2000-2006 saw an average decrease of 4% for 90% of the US? A restricted view in what is family income could help explain it.
On November 13 2013 03:55 Sbrubbles wrote: [quote]
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.
If you are a good business leader you don't hire people as part of some half-baked tax avoidance scheme.
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:
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:
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:
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.
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?
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.
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.
I'm not sure the graph should be showing a negative income increase for the bottom 90% for 2000 - 2006. Do you know what definition of income they're using? Pre-tax, pre-transfer taxable income?
As for your comment about the 1% benefiting more during the recovery, they also lost more during the recession. Their income is more volatile.
Why not? pay 50 bucks, or pay 50 bucks and get more out of your company. easy choice.
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) said Tuesday that some of the pope's statements "sounded kind of liberal," but assured CNN's Jake Tapper that she wouldn't necessarily trust her ears nor the "lamestream media" until she did her "own homework" on the matter.
"Having read through media outlets, he's had some statements that to me sounded kind of liberal, has taken me aback, has kind of surprised me," the former Republican vice presidential nominee said on "The Lead with Jake Tapper." "But there again unless I really dig deep into what his messaging is, and do my own homework, I’m not going to just trust what I hear in the media."
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.
Actually, it would be implying there is a bunch of wealth movement, as it's suggesting those that accumulate vast amounts of wealth are willing to move it. If you've amassed 50 billion, then drop to 1 billion, you've done something with that money, meaning it wasn't static. Relativity does matter.
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.
Actually, it would be implying there is a bunch of wealth movement, as it's suggesting those that accumulate vast amounts of wealth are willing to move it. If you've amassed 50 billion, then drop to 1 billion, you've done something with that money, meaning it wasn't static. Relativity does matter.
Capital circulates. That's what it does. Capitalism would grind to a halt if it stopped moving. It only matters if it circulates amongst a large segment of the population. $50 billion moving from Citibank to AIG to Goldman and back again is totally irrelevant for discussions about class mobility. No one is arguing against what you've said.
On November 13 2013 07:59 JonnyBNoHo wrote: [quote] 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.
If you are a good business leader you don't hire people as part of some half-baked tax avoidance scheme.
On November 13 2013 12:46 IgnE wrote:
On November 13 2013 11:41 Danglars wrote:
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:
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:
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:
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.
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?
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.
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.
I'm not sure the graph should be showing a negative income increase for the bottom 90% for 2000 - 2006. Do you know what definition of income they're using? Pre-tax, pre-transfer taxable income?
As for your comment about the 1% benefiting more during the recovery, they also lost more during the recession. Their income is more volatile.
They lost more in absolute terms but they had more to lose. Millions of "middle class" people lost substantial portion of a lifetime's worth of equity and millions other lost a sizable chunk of their pension. Plus the obvious asymmetric differences in unemployment between the two classes.
You say that as if you don't find it problematic that they are the only ones who are recovering. I don't really see what your point is by clarifying that.
It appears to be measuring "average real household income."
While both poverty and income have improved over the last few years, it is disappointing that despite low unemployment and strong productivity growth, these measures of living standards have yet to recover to their levels of the previous business cycle peak in 2000. In that year poverty was 11.3%, compared to 12.3% in 2006, an increase in the poverty rolls of 4.9 million persons, including 1.2 million children; median household income in 2006 was $48,201, about $1,000 dollars (-2.0 %) below its 2000 level (in 2006 dollars). In other words, economic growth over the last six years has totally bypassed the typical middle-class household.
I'm kind of surprised you are surprised by this Jonny. You should know by now that we stopped having recoveries that trickled down a long time ago.
OK, yeah it comes from the Census Bureau so it is a narrow definition of income. If you look more broadly and include government and private benefits, you should see a rise in real incomes over that period iirc.
As for my comment about the 1%, that was a relative, not absolute statement. The rich lost more as a percent of income during the recession than the poor did (unless this graph is wrong XD):
Where's the graph of wealth lost? That graph also doesn't take into account the losses from unemployment. Going from income to no income isn't reflected. Nor is expected income pre-2008 for new graduates and young people entering the labor force against actual income.
I don't have a graph of wealth lost. My guess would be that the poorest did OK, since they don't own many securities or houses. The middle class did bad since their leveraged ownership of housing did terrible. The rich did terrible during the crisis but sharply recovered with stock / bond markets.
Going from income to no income should be reflected, as much as it exists, in the bottom quintile. There shouldn't be much in terms of zero income, since someone unemployed should be receiving income via UI.
I'm not sure why we would want to look at "expected" vs actual income. Actual is what matters, regardless of expectations. Same goes for the wealthy's investment income. If an investment falls short of expectations, too bad, I'm not counting that as a loss.
You would look at expected vs actual income because that reflects increasing inequality, as the lower class lost their jobs, the middle class lost their equity, and the young lost their future earnings potential. Yeah, the top 1% had a dip in income and lost some stock value, but they have reaped almost all of the gains since 2008. Just as they reaped almost all of the gains after the dotcom bubble burst. And will continue to reap all of the gains for the foreseeable future.
The mere fact that we are talking about the bottom quintile bottoming out, so to speak, because even when they have no job they can still collect a welfare check which has held pretty steady, speaks volumes. The number of people at or near welfare-level income is only increasing as the middle class evaporates. But according to people like Danglars that's ok. In fact, we should stop providing them welfare at all. They should be picking cotton for 20k a year instead of sitting on their ass. Decreasing consumption? What?
I'm still not sure why you are looking at expected. Inequality is in the actual numbers. But expectations matter too, so I'm not going to argue here.
The bottom quintile isn't bottoming out, at least not in an absolute sense. Real income for the bottom quintile has been rising, just at a slower rate relative to higher quintiles.
The middle class evaporation is a mixed bag. Some have risen above the middle class, some have lagged behind. Why they've lagged behind doesn't have a clear answer. There's some evidence of bad luck / social ills that redistribution can fix. There's also evidence welfare traps / poor incentives in the labor market, which require reforms to government assistance. There are also problems with savings rates, education, imprisonment and a whole host of social / economic issues that affect it. So it's complicated, and I don't think that one side has the full answer here.
On November 13 2013 04:56 JonnyBNoHo wrote: [quote] 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.
If you are a good business leader you don't hire people as part of some half-baked tax avoidance scheme.
On November 13 2013 12:46 IgnE wrote:
On November 13 2013 11:41 Danglars wrote:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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.
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?
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.
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.
I'm not sure the graph should be showing a negative income increase for the bottom 90% for 2000 - 2006. Do you know what definition of income they're using? Pre-tax, pre-transfer taxable income?
As for your comment about the 1% benefiting more during the recovery, they also lost more during the recession. Their income is more volatile.
Why not? pay 50 bucks, or pay 50 bucks and get more out of your company. easy choice.
Because that's not how the math works.
If you are discussing something like a property tax, hiring another employee will not reduce your tax burden. If you mean an income tax, then hiring the employee to be productive will result in more taxes owed.
Is inequality a problem because the poor are too poor or because the rich are too rich? There seems to be a disconnect as people seem to think it's self-evident that something is wrong with a society where some people are fantastically rich. But there doesn't seem to be any explicit reasoning why that's a bad thing, particularly in a mostly free market economy where we actively encourage people to seek wealth.
On November 13 2013 19:28 coverpunch wrote: Is inequality a problem because the poor are too poor or because the rich are too rich? There seems to be a disconnect as people seem to think it's self-evident that something is wrong with a society where some people are fantastically rich. But there doesn't seem to be any explicit reasoning why that's a bad thing, particularly in a mostly free market economy where we actively encourage people to seek wealth.
Yeah, it's not like giant inequalities have ever led directly into revolutions... Oh wait...
On November 13 2013 19:28 coverpunch wrote: Is inequality a problem because the poor are too poor or because the rich are too rich? There seems to be a disconnect as people seem to think it's self-evident that something is wrong with a society where some people are fantastically rich. But there doesn't seem to be any explicit reasoning why that's a bad thing, particularly in a mostly free market economy where we actively encourage people to seek wealth.
Free market economy is economy for noobies who needs quick and easy reasonning to help them understand.
In reality, inequalities have a number of bad effects on the economy. The economy of inequalities is a very fertile field in modern economy, but we are discovering year after year that a society with a lot of inequalities might be less mobile socially (it's the great gatsby curve see below), that a society with a lot of inequalities is more susceptible to be in a situation of crisis (that was one of the conclusion made by many economists after the subprime crisis), that a society with a lot of inequalities is also (it's a basic keynesian mecanism) potentially less productive or less innovative (more difficulty to finance an innovation in an inequitable environment for exemple). It's all a matter of discussion at the moment, partly because the US is full of people who refuse to see the obvious and partly because we don't really understand everything. We've made a lot of progress from the kuznets curve tho.
The great gadsby curve :
The Great Gatsby curve is a chart plotting the (positive) relationship between inequality and intergenerational social immobility in several countries around the world.
EPT![[image loading]](http://acivilamericandebate.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/us-income-inequality_uneven_prosperity1.gif?w=640)
![[image loading]](http://assets.motherjones.com/politics/2011/inequality-page25_actualdistribwithlegend.png)
![[image loading]](http://www.epi.org/page/-/old/images/20070828_income_fig_1.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.theblaze.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/change-in-after-income-tax.gif)
![[image loading]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/The_Great_Gatsby_Curve.png/590px-The_Great_Gatsby_Curve.png)
