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Serious Income Inequality
- Thread starter BenTheDemon
- Start date
I'd just like to remind you guys that the "1%" do not stay the "1%" permanently and neither does the bottom 20%. I recall there being a study that showed that like half of the 1% of the 1990s were no longer in that income bracket and that the most of the bottom of the 20% rose out of that bracket and were more likely to be in the top 20% than stay in the bottom 20%
Oh and UmbreonDan, your picture would make much more sense if you replaced capitalism with communism. In communism, literally no one has anything except the leaders. That is TRUE inequality because the average person will never ever afford the luxuries and privileges that the leaders have.
Having parents coming from 2 different Latin American countries and living in Miami, I know a little bit about both communism and socialism and how it can drive a country to the ground. In fact, the hordes of Venezuelans appearing over here these days is just history repeating itself.
Capitalism isn't perfect but it's what has been proven to work best. Being a socialist or communist to me is like playing with your favorite pokemon even though they're outclassed in OU. You're going to take a lot more L's but uhhh, hey - whatever makes you happy.
Having parents coming from 2 different Latin American countries and living in Miami, I know a little bit about both communism and socialism and how it can drive a country to the ground. In fact, the hordes of Venezuelans appearing over here these days is just history repeating itself.
Capitalism isn't perfect but it's what has been proven to work best. Being a socialist or communist to me is like playing with your favorite pokemon even though they're outclassed in OU. You're going to take a lot more L's but uhhh, hey - whatever makes you happy.
Hey I'll have you know I used poliwrath and nidoking and registeel in OU in BW and I got plenty of W's, and I am a firm Pokemon Capitalist!
The free market took care of their flaws, imo
I agree with you but I find medical coverage far more necessary to life than television or even a car with insurance (depends whether you live somewhere with good public transport or not), and the state of medical care in the USA is an appalling manifestation of income inequality and the powerlessness and degradation of the poor.
As a welfare queen whose parents are unemployed and disabled: classist people have a particular way of expecting poor people to subsist in a way they would never find acceptable for their own standards of living and scrutinising/judging poor people for every choice they make while ignoring their own circumstances and generally hypocritical financial decisions. The myth of the welfare queen was exaggerated for political gain and to frighten such 'respectable' hard workers, and poor people (in my country, especially PoC) are increasingly deprived of autonomy and adulthood through paternalistic expenditure control policies. Naturally this results in further financial dependence.
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But now we have ObamaCare!
I agree with this 100% and have literally 0 issue with having my taxes raised to sustain universal healthcare. I'm not sure that this rendition (more bastardization) of ObamaCare is the solution, but we'll have to wait and see I guess. Honestly, I straight up don't understand how people can justify any taxes and not justify a tax to take care of our fellow man. Yes, corruption will occur but not sure why fear of a negative ever overshadows the potential of the positive.
Here is where I don't understand your points. The "classist people" is a gross generalization (literally the same as "omfg all feministsts!!111 but hey) but ignoring that, why does this matter at all, or better yet, why is this even remotely relevant? I'll play along with this generalization for now and speak from the perspective of these "classist people." It doesn't matter if X, making 120k a year with 20k bonus, wouldn't find it acceptable to live on a 30k salary. This boils back a bit to the first point, in that I believe taxing is justifiable to sustain a citizen's welfare, but not necessarily provide for that citizen's happiness. I could sustain myself on a 30k salary and I would not be happy (probably), or maximally happy. I'm not sure why this is relevant though? My job as a salaryman in capitalism isn't to ensure you welfare queens's happiness, but I am more than willing to help make sure you can live. I can accept you asking me to be empathetic to your plight and asking for assistance to survive. You wanting to take free money for me to sustain your happiness is honestly you asking for too much...(note I'm using I, me and you generally here).
Again, why does this matter? If I earn my dollar myself, I can spend it however I wish, whether on travel, food, or heroin. If X works 10 hours and makes 80 dollars, I will never question how he spends that 80 dollars, whether or rent, food, or heroin. However, if X decides not to work and gets free money from my taxes and spends his 80 dollars on heroin, why shouldn't I question that....even if I spend my own money on heroin??
I'm not sure what you mean exactly by own circumstances so you'll have to fill me in there.
I'm not going to argue the validity of this statement, only because I don't think it's necessary. I'm not sure what the impression poor people have of people in higher brackets is, but a lot of people in higher brackets don't have much of an issue with paying higher taxes to ensure the impovershed get healthcare, food, and shelter. The issue we have is when free money is given and spent on superfluous items (iphones or timberlands) instead of food and rent. And again, just because we buy iphones and Allen Edmonds dress shoes and Prada glass frames, this doesn't make us hypocritical because we are spending our earned money on these items, not freely given money.
Lol...no comment. Not sure why anyone would ever quote respectable when it is in front hard workers...
Please explain this in depth...I'm really curious to know what you mean by expenditure control and how it is "paternalistic" and how poor people are deprived of autonomy?
I don't know about your country but in the united states a poor person has outs to improve his life. They may not be easy, but they exist and can be taken full advantage of. For example, various welfare programs help with obtaining food, salary based rent, and money for education. Even if you don't qualify for money for education, community college is 70-130 bucks a credit, and you can work for a year or two before going to CC for 2 years and transfering to a state school (fully funded) for 2-3 more years to finish off your bachelor's. This option is available in nearly every state in the USA (I haven't found a state that doesn't provide this 2 year cc -> 2 year funded state school finish BS option).
I'm not sure how we terrible paternalistic higher bracket income people are supposed to spend our money but I think agreeing to raise our taxes to make sure the improvershed can eat, sleep, and go to school cheaply should count as enough?
Or do we have some unstated moral obligation based on some preconceived notions of empathy to make your paths to autonomy much much easier?
Again, can't speak for your country, but poor people have actual outs in the states. the 2 year cc -> 2 year state program is offered in nearly every state, and even if you can't afford 2 year cc initially, you can work for 1-3 years and save to be able to afford it. I won't say that a BS is a sure out but it is at least an improvement over complete poverty.
As for this topic, I will say whining about top company CEO salaries is so hilariously lacking in a basic understanding of not math but literal arithmetic that I want to cry. Let's say there is a small business owner and he is actually successful, with money exchanging hands from his business to and from his clients in the 50 - 200k level. Note I am specifically not mentioning gross or not profits because on a single year term, that doesn't matter. If this small business owner gives himself a 1k bonus for being able to handle this 50-200k money flow, there is literally no outcry. However, if say, Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan, which owns 2.3 trillion in assets and yearly has money exchange hands from business to customers on the level of 20+ billion dollars, gives himself a 30 million salary, there is a problem? 1k of 200k is .5%.... .5% of 20 billion dollars is 100 million dollars. That is merely the yearly money flow, not the overall assets owned and maintained.
Small business owners tend to, on relative terms, take bigger bonuses than the average CEO of the larger corporations (.5-5% bonuses of business costs + revenue, vs. much less for CEOs). You guys are aware that top level (executive level) management salaries as based on dollar value input, not simply "hey, your job is this" right? The actual outcry over CEO salaries is a politically motivated stunt if anything.
You can argue that the issue is big corporations existing...but big corporations employ the lower and middle class as well. Whether or not they do a great job of this is up for debate obviously, and things like raising the minimum wage might help (but lol, anyone who takes a basic macroeconomics class knows the issues with minimum wages), but I'd prefer that people realize that the issue with big business or big corporations isn't big business itself, but only the instances of big business.
That is a significant differentiation that people tend to not make when arguing the income inequality is due to big businesses.
It's annoying bc I wrote that from an ipad and I'm out of town but will respond and elaborate. Don't know anything much about US food stamps but the programs that have been tested here (in Aboriginal communities actually) are interesting to say the least and in response to LN's post (and as a further continuation on my initial response to LN's checklist), it was a reflection on what we consider acceptable living standards for diff. stratifications and how we justify/enforce them
Being someone who has gone to the doctor a grand total of maybe five times since the age of 16 it's easy for me to forget the importance / relevance of healthcare. I would agree that access to health insurance should be on the list of required things a minimum wage should pay for.
(I forgot it mostly because, due to the affordable healthcare act, I can be on my parents healthcare for another 3 years.)
And who is going to pay for it? Didn't any of you guys take economics in high school? Don't you know what raising the minimum wage and passing mandatory regulations like that would do? Do you think that employers just make money appear on command? Are you aware that the majority of business owners (in America) are small business owners and that these types of laws hurt them the most?
Aldaron I DO see a big difference here, and it does come down to just dollar amount. Even though a top CEO takes in hundreds or thousands of times more for themselves in bonuses, they cannot ever hope to spend that much money on consumables, where a small business CEO has a much higher chance of reintroducing that money back into the economy. Basically, CEOs cutting million-dollar-bonuses that wind up in offshore accounts just siphons money out of the country. This is horrible for everyone involved, obviously. An ideal market economy would keep all cash flowing through it, keeping the cycle going, but removing money from an economy is just bad. Putting more money back into an economy would require more money to be printed, which would lead to inflation.
Again, if you cannot afford to pay your employees livable wages, then you don't deserve to be an employer. Your business model is a fucked one if it relies on the underpayment of workers in order to turn a profit.
Along with what LN said in my brief years as a supervisor when one of my employees was sick/injured their Canada health insurance made sure they would be treated promptly so they could get back to work. Having sick or injured workers at work as it turns out is also not very good for business.
I don't know how many CEOs actually store their bonuses in off shore accounts (with the recent "opening" of Swiss bank doors, I have to imagine it is less than normal), so can't really comment here.
But still, just like the point about big business instances being the problem and not necessarily Big Business, if CEOs of solely domestic companies (this is important because many corporations are multinational now, meaning its tougher to define "offshore" for them) are siphoning off millions of dollars into off shore accounts, it is a problem with those specific CEOs, not with a concept of big CEO salaries.
Aldaron I agree, and unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a way to combat 1% greed without hurting other, modest business owners. I still think that probably the best way to level these bonuses is for people to be at least aware of where their money is going and change their willingness to buy expensive garbage at thousands of percent profit.
For the most part, yeah, "offshore" is indeed a term that's just been carried over, but money locked away in a personal safe anywhere, not getting spent, is money not being put into goods and services that are going to bolster a country's economy.
For the most part, yeah, "offshore" is indeed a term that's just been carried over, but money locked away in a personal safe anywhere, not getting spent, is money not being put into goods and services that are going to bolster a country's economy.
Well there goes all your credibility when discussing business and/or economics.
The reason profit exists and the reason that we generally allow a free market is to encourage innovation. That is, if you are reasonably innovative or intelligent in the way that you run your business, you deserve to profit.
A lazy profit incentive is one where you increase your profits by cutting the wages that you give your workers. If that is the business model that you rely on to stay afloat then you are neither innovative nor intelligent and as such don't deserve to be an employer, in the same way that an employer who can't make shutdown prices doesn't deserve to be an employer.
Moreover, one economy already has mechanisms like inflation that allow employers to exploit workers by lowering their real wages and also by reducing the real cost of investment. In light of all that, LN is right and you are the one with no credibility.
I don't actually believe any of that shit though, all wage labour is slavery.
A lazy profit incentive is one where you increase your profits by cutting the wages that you give your workers. If that is the business model that you rely on to stay afloat then you are neither innovative nor intelligent and as such don't deserve to be an employer, in the same way that an employer who can't make shutdown prices doesn't deserve to be an employer.
Moreover, one economy already has mechanisms like inflation that allow employers to exploit workers by lowering their real wages and also by reducing the real cost of investment. In light of all that, LN is right and you are the one with no credibility.
I don't actually believe any of that shit though, all wage labour is slavery.
Jesus Abra Kapocus , don't shorten to a "hyper-snip" and then proceed to out tl;dr my own post. Also. being pretentious (i.e. immediately prattling on about engaging well-written bullshit against your angsty masochistic tendencies, like anyone cares about your internal struggle) doesn't enhance your tone, it just makes you look insecure.
Starting with the top:
You do realize this is exactly what the Soviet Union and Communist China did (and psuedo-Communist China does today,) don't you? This was (is) literally their form of government: Rich Party Apparatichiks controlling the demand that the proles will be forced to produce in order to enrich The Party under The Plan.
Your immediately following CEO example is not an example of income inequality. It's an example of a CEO abusing their power. Even if the CEO was paid the same as everyone else, he'd still have the *authority* to do what he did. Governments do this too, Google stories for "Obamacare Waiver" and "Obamacare Mandate Delay."
We're also not really disagreeing that much on the source of the problem - the common thread in our complaints is *government* assisting these entities in covering up their misdeeds. You correctly identify it as corporatism - and I shall thank you for not going with "crony capitalism." In the absence of such covering they would be forced to deal with the public openly. This is exactly why I want a less powerful government. Government by its nature cannot produce revenues above its costs because of all its public functions (national defense, baseline infrastructure, overhead for proper contract enforcement, etc.), whereas businesses by their nature cannot succeed unless they produce revenues above their costs. You will never be able to make government strong enough or self-sufficient enough to be able to overpower the lobbying power of business. Taxes on work can never exceed the value added by the fruits of the work's actual value.
I also said poverty in the US has been basically eradicated, not outright eradicated. In a country as geographically large and diverse as the US, there will invariably be some ignored hovel somewhere that you can find someone living in third world conditions. Suffice it to say though, "mainstream poverty" as you called it in America is literally two worlds apart from "mainstream" third world poverty.
As to why I believe much of this cannot be resolved, it is because I start from the philosophical premise that man is inherently flawed, and born with the capacity for good but not the compulsion for it. There will never be a way to eradicate greed, avarice, or jealousy from humanity, and humans that amass control over other people through either effort or deceit will invariably exercise these vices on a sufficiently common enough basis that we must accept a world of trade-offs, not a world of ideals.
The World Health Organization's ratings score better if a system is entirely nationalized. It's like getting a low rating from the Internationalist Communist Party because your nation isn't Communist. What I do know is that when government provides insurance it doesn't guarantee expedient or proper care, and when government provides care directly you're literally as good as dead when the bureaucracy inevitably chokes the system even of the ability to change out bedpans and water bottles. Governments don't care about profit, but they don't care about costs either. And "cutting costs" is always measured in prematurely ending lives in such a system.
What I believe to be more "fucking sick" is this idea that a cure for, say, Bark Scorpion envenomation is not only expected to appear magically, the producer of the formula is also supposed to provide it for free after discovery. Altruism is a very good motivator for doing simple things. It's entirely unreasonable to assume someone is going to make a living off of providing complicated, years-long-to-develop-and-test medicines while charging nothing for the end product. And before you say "but the government can pay for it!" - the government only has money if it taxes someone else first. There is no such thing as a free lunch. No matter where you say government should focus the money, either on R&D or the actual product materials themselves, it must procure the coin of the realm in some fashion.
The easiest way to reduce income inequality would be to eliminate income-based taxes. It doesn't really matter if you make $50,000 more than someone else if you only keep, on net, $20,000 more because 60% of it is siphoned off between federal, state, and local taxes - and the government is still taking on debt that is spiraling out of control. "Unsustainable Government" is just as harmful as unsustainable everything else.
LonelyNess
Oh, and the minimum wage is an entry level wage. You aren't supposed to be able to live on it because it's where you're supposed to start, not where you're supposed to finish. Minimum wage is for people with no experience and no developed good work habits. Once you get experience and good work habits, you will naturally get a higher wage. Unless you suck and are completely unemployable by anyone who values competence.
How could any nation possibly afford a "living minimum wage" when you are guaranteed to be able to eat and live indoors whether you are a McDonald's fry cook or a rocket scientist? No one would choose to be a rocket scientist if they could get their staples being a fry cook. People do not expend effort if you give them a meager existence guaranteed, especially if someone else is paying for it and they feel like they are entitled to it just by drawing breath and having a pulse.
Actually, there is a way to have all your staples paid for by someone else no matter what value you provide for them.
It's called slavery.
EDIT: For a more practical example, here's the Grocer's Paradox:
You are a grocer, and you are required by law to ensure every single person working for you makes enough to purchase all of their staples. So are all of your vendors.
In order to pay them, you must sell enough food at a high enough price so that you can afford to keep your shelves stocked for your employees and all the shoppers. This means you need to make a profit in order to afford the overhead and inherent spoilage to stock your shelves.
But you cannot make a profit because if you increase your prices to the level required to do that (in part because of your vendor costs, your vendor being held to the same law), your employees and customers will not be able to afford their own staples, as required by the law.
The fact is, you can't mandate a baseline standard of living for no experience/no skill jobs, because invariably these people work in the places that require the lowest skills to perform, which are staple stores. You are basically making an infinite mandate to spiral up the cost of staple goods by making it impossible for profit to outstrip labor costs.
Starting with the top:
Abra Kapocus said:
You do realize this is exactly what the Soviet Union and Communist China did (and psuedo-Communist China does today,) don't you? This was (is) literally their form of government: Rich Party Apparatichiks controlling the demand that the proles will be forced to produce in order to enrich The Party under The Plan.
Your immediately following CEO example is not an example of income inequality. It's an example of a CEO abusing their power. Even if the CEO was paid the same as everyone else, he'd still have the *authority* to do what he did. Governments do this too, Google stories for "Obamacare Waiver" and "Obamacare Mandate Delay."
We're also not really disagreeing that much on the source of the problem - the common thread in our complaints is *government* assisting these entities in covering up their misdeeds. You correctly identify it as corporatism - and I shall thank you for not going with "crony capitalism." In the absence of such covering they would be forced to deal with the public openly. This is exactly why I want a less powerful government. Government by its nature cannot produce revenues above its costs because of all its public functions (national defense, baseline infrastructure, overhead for proper contract enforcement, etc.), whereas businesses by their nature cannot succeed unless they produce revenues above their costs. You will never be able to make government strong enough or self-sufficient enough to be able to overpower the lobbying power of business. Taxes on work can never exceed the value added by the fruits of the work's actual value.
I also said poverty in the US has been basically eradicated, not outright eradicated. In a country as geographically large and diverse as the US, there will invariably be some ignored hovel somewhere that you can find someone living in third world conditions. Suffice it to say though, "mainstream poverty" as you called it in America is literally two worlds apart from "mainstream" third world poverty.
As to why I believe much of this cannot be resolved, it is because I start from the philosophical premise that man is inherently flawed, and born with the capacity for good but not the compulsion for it. There will never be a way to eradicate greed, avarice, or jealousy from humanity, and humans that amass control over other people through either effort or deceit will invariably exercise these vices on a sufficiently common enough basis that we must accept a world of trade-offs, not a world of ideals.
The World Health Organization's ratings score better if a system is entirely nationalized. It's like getting a low rating from the Internationalist Communist Party because your nation isn't Communist. What I do know is that when government provides insurance it doesn't guarantee expedient or proper care, and when government provides care directly you're literally as good as dead when the bureaucracy inevitably chokes the system even of the ability to change out bedpans and water bottles. Governments don't care about profit, but they don't care about costs either. And "cutting costs" is always measured in prematurely ending lives in such a system.
What I believe to be more "fucking sick" is this idea that a cure for, say, Bark Scorpion envenomation is not only expected to appear magically, the producer of the formula is also supposed to provide it for free after discovery. Altruism is a very good motivator for doing simple things. It's entirely unreasonable to assume someone is going to make a living off of providing complicated, years-long-to-develop-and-test medicines while charging nothing for the end product. And before you say "but the government can pay for it!" - the government only has money if it taxes someone else first. There is no such thing as a free lunch. No matter where you say government should focus the money, either on R&D or the actual product materials themselves, it must procure the coin of the realm in some fashion.
The easiest way to reduce income inequality would be to eliminate income-based taxes. It doesn't really matter if you make $50,000 more than someone else if you only keep, on net, $20,000 more because 60% of it is siphoned off between federal, state, and local taxes - and the government is still taking on debt that is spiraling out of control. "Unsustainable Government" is just as harmful as unsustainable everything else.
LonelyNess
Oh, and the minimum wage is an entry level wage. You aren't supposed to be able to live on it because it's where you're supposed to start, not where you're supposed to finish. Minimum wage is for people with no experience and no developed good work habits. Once you get experience and good work habits, you will naturally get a higher wage. Unless you suck and are completely unemployable by anyone who values competence.
How could any nation possibly afford a "living minimum wage" when you are guaranteed to be able to eat and live indoors whether you are a McDonald's fry cook or a rocket scientist? No one would choose to be a rocket scientist if they could get their staples being a fry cook. People do not expend effort if you give them a meager existence guaranteed, especially if someone else is paying for it and they feel like they are entitled to it just by drawing breath and having a pulse.
Actually, there is a way to have all your staples paid for by someone else no matter what value you provide for them.
It's called slavery.
EDIT: For a more practical example, here's the Grocer's Paradox:
You are a grocer, and you are required by law to ensure every single person working for you makes enough to purchase all of their staples. So are all of your vendors.
In order to pay them, you must sell enough food at a high enough price so that you can afford to keep your shelves stocked for your employees and all the shoppers. This means you need to make a profit in order to afford the overhead and inherent spoilage to stock your shelves.
But you cannot make a profit because if you increase your prices to the level required to do that (in part because of your vendor costs, your vendor being held to the same law), your employees and customers will not be able to afford their own staples, as required by the law.
The fact is, you can't mandate a baseline standard of living for no experience/no skill jobs, because invariably these people work in the places that require the lowest skills to perform, which are staple stores. You are basically making an infinite mandate to spiral up the cost of staple goods by making it impossible for profit to outstrip labor costs.
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Yeah there should have never been an Industrial Revolution and we should never have moved to working for wages. I preferred it when humans had no form of social mobility and the leaders controlled all wealth. I preferred it when the majority of the world was shit eating peasants. We should have just stayed that way so we can all just be farmers, farming to get by and give any surplus to a local warlord.
You guys don't realize that the average human has never had a living standard this high before ever in human history. Well, at the least the folks in the 3rd world appreciate these jobs and higher standards of living while the people in the first world bitch and whine because they believe a burger flipper whos output is like 7 dollars an hour deserves 15 dollars an hour and an expensive health care plan.
Shockingly, most people in this thread are acquainted with history, something your comments on communism certainly raised questions about in your case.
What doesn't follow is that we have to be satisfied with the world in which we live. If the standard of improvement that you're willing to endorse is going from dying of starvation to just starving, then good on you buddy old pal. Most of the rest of us have a bit more compassion than that and think that people should be afforded the capacity to live a good life rather than just living a life, especially in the context of such vast income inequality.
What doesn't follow is that we have to be satisfied with the world in which we live. If the standard of improvement that you're willing to endorse is going from dying of starvation to just starving, then good on you buddy old pal. Most of the rest of us have a bit more compassion than that and think that people should be afforded the capacity to live a good life rather than just living a life, especially in the context of such vast income inequality.
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It's funny how you think mandating government take more of my money under penalty of fine and imprisonment in order to redistribute it to other individuals is "compassion."
I would call it greed. Taxing the productive into subsistence poverty so that all may share in that equal misery is not liberation.
I don't see how you can attempt to call me out not knowing history when you don't realize how horrible the vast majority of human history was. In just 20something years the people starving in the world was cut in half thanks to market forces. FYI Living > Dying.
I know a thing or two about the history of communism and I definitely know a thing or two about communism from talking to people who experienced it. At first I swore your privilege checker title was a joke but judging by your posts, you're really just a hardcore liberal/marxist.
You don't know how compassionate I am. I've witnessed real poverty via my family still living in the old countries. You have electricity they don't. You have mattresses, they don't. You have surplus food, they don't. You're the real privileged one. Latin American countries generally have a bunch of government involvement in their economy and socialist policies which show no correlation with improving the countries standard of living. These people are willing to risk their life to move to a country where market forces are present. The most prosperous country in that region is Chile which has low regulations and taxation. Then the poorest country in that region, Nicaragua, has heavy regulation and one of the most underemployed countries in the world. Life fucking sucks there.
Just because I have a different solution (and a proven one at that) than you do does not mean I lack compassion.
I know a thing or two about the history of communism and I definitely know a thing or two about communism from talking to people who experienced it. At first I swore your privilege checker title was a joke but judging by your posts, you're really just a hardcore liberal/marxist.
You don't know how compassionate I am. I've witnessed real poverty via my family still living in the old countries. You have electricity they don't. You have mattresses, they don't. You have surplus food, they don't. You're the real privileged one. Latin American countries generally have a bunch of government involvement in their economy and socialist policies which show no correlation with improving the countries standard of living. These people are willing to risk their life to move to a country where market forces are present. The most prosperous country in that region is Chile which has low regulations and taxation. Then the poorest country in that region, Nicaragua, has heavy regulation and one of the most underemployed countries in the world. Life fucking sucks there.
Just because I have a different solution (and a proven one at that) than you do does not mean I lack compassion.