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US income inequality at record high

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#41
Some simple phrases:

"Sit down and shut up"
"Hey, you have a job, stop complaining!"
"You know how many people would kill to have your job right now?"

Theres a fundamental flaw here. The blind and ignorant and cold hearted do not see it.

Many of us that do see it, are too beaten down with whats been called " everyday life" that we do nothing about it except watch a documentary of someone else trying to do it.

1927...wasn't there a big union fight involving police, the national guard, Ford Motor and whomever else around that time? Maybe it was later.
 
#42
Floyd Eye said:
Oh jeez. Here's a solution. All the poor people should do what all those rich people did to make their money. Beats watching all these "Income equality" people sitting around all jealous like they are owed something by the people that actually didn't smoke reefer all the way through school because they were too busy studying, so they could get a degree, so they could make a decent living.
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You should check out this video and perhaps even show it to your wife to get her opinion on it. It's 6 minutes long and helps explain how/why income inequality (after a certain point - we're not talking complete equality here) negatively affects an entire economy. It's more than people feeling entitled to more money, which is something you have argued in the past. It's about helping the market be able to spark demand for products/services because they actually have money to buy goods, which in turn means there's need to hire more workers to help meet demand, which in turn fixes the unemployment rate and helps make the whole economy healthier and the working citizens all the more prosperous wealthy.

 
#43
duff beer said:
The vast majority of "occupiers" are in the top 1% of world income when you account for what their parent's and society (working people) provide for them.

What I do find funny is that many of them have never worked a day in their life...they live in their parent's basement and take "social" courses at university (mostly paid for by working people's tax dollar), and then think that they have all the answers.
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Woo Hoo!

Now when I'm busily occupying my bathroom and reading my Bike magazine, I can also be in the top 1% of world income and not work a day in my life?:hyper:

This whole thing just keeps getting better all the time. Except the part about living in my parent's basement. Eww.
 
#44
Many of the top earners have a lot more schooling than those at the bottom. Many others at the top of the scale are athletes and entertainers, which means they have talents that most don't. People who prefer to escape reality in some way, rather than work on improving themselves, won't find themselves at the top of the wage scale. Those who drop out of school won't, either. Those who have no ambition, and this country has tens of millions, won't go very far and the masses somewhere in the middle don't have the connections to get ahead of where they are.

Then, there are those who try to keep up with the Jones's, spending more than they have. I saw a commercial for a debt consolidation company with a happy couple, where the guy looks at the camera and says "We paid off our credit cards and bought a boat!". Banks try to get people to borrow against their equity so they can take a vacation. The problem is that many people do this and they have nobody to blame but themselves when they find themselves with nothing.
 
#45
Many of those top earners could afford the schooling because mommy and daddy paid for it. And mommy and daddy paid for with jobs that did not get outsourced. Or they had the money because their mommy and daddy had it. Old money.

I agree that there are poor people who are lazy. But it does not mean the rich are all good and wholesome.
 
#46
Another thread about a problem without a Talkbass solution.
Cue a thread full of axes to grind.
I'm gonna pick Kawai's side and get back something/anything else. I hope you all walk away friends although I predict not so much.
 
#47
LiquidMidnight said:
I disagree with the fanciful metanarrative that all wealth creation takes is to work hard and do what the rich people do?
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There's also an equally widely held opinion that the economy is a zero-sum game and all wealth is the result of theft rather than value creation, or that resource allocation and organisation do not have value.

Not saying that that's your view, but my observation is that both strands of nonsense seem equally common. The interesting question being "how much does one's preference of one worldview or the other affect one's outcomes vs. one's outcomes affecting one's preferred worldview?"
 
#49
1958Bassman said:
Many of the top earners have a lot more schooling than those at the bottom. Many others at the top of the scale are athletes and entertainers, which means they have talents that most don't. People who prefer to escape reality in some way, rather than work on improving themselves, won't find themselves at the top of the wage scale. Those who drop out of school won't, either. Those who have no ambition, and this country has tens of millions, won't go very far and the masses somewhere in the middle don't have the connections to get ahead of where they are.
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According to this chart, those with higher education do earn more per week on average than those with less education; Invalid Link Removed

Those with professional degrees earn slightly more than those with doctorates, which is probably confounded by law degrees being included in the professional degree category. I assume we'll see a greater discrepancy between the earnings of those holding doctorates and professional degrees as more universities staff their classrooms with adjuncts and create less tenure-track faculty positions, since a great deal of the respondents in the doctorate category most likely work in the higher-education sector.

What the chart doesn't describe, though, is how educational breakdown is for those who are the most wealthy in the country. We're talking about a different population when it comes to those statistics. My educated guess is the majority of the "1%" probably hold MBAs or law degrees. The others hold medical degrees or some may have four-year engineering degrees who found their way into executive level positions at Fortune 500 companies. I'm not sure where those statistics are or if they've ever been collected and analyzed.
 
#50
UncleFluffy said:
There's also an equally widely held opinion that the economy is a zero-sum game and all wealth is the result of theft rather than value creation, or that resource allocation and organisation do not have value.

Not saying that that's your view, but my observation is that both strands of nonsense seem equally common. The interesting question being "how much does one's preference of one worldview or the other affect one's outcomes vs. one's outcomes affecting one's preferred worldview?"
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I tend to agree with you. I don't see it as a zero-sum game, but wealth creation, for the most part, is the result of ownership and investment of capital. It is rarely if ever created through wages and salaries. I do own investments. However, I make a huge philosophical distinction between the money I make through my own labor and the money I make through other people's labor (and I include both the rank-and-file and the salaried management of that second category). Again, I'm not anti-capitalist and I think investment is a great way to help people get some upward mobility. But make no mistake, I never kid myself into thinking I "worked hard" for the money I accumulate through the latter category. I was just educated enough to invest.
 
#51
LiquidMidnight said:
Disagree with me? How can you say that when you don't even know my viewpoint other than I disagree with the fanciful metanarrative that all wealth creation takes is to work hard and do what the rich people do? I am a capitalist and I'm not an Occupier, but the idea that all we have to do is work hard (or become educated as you alluded to) isn't supported by any classical, neoclassical, Ricardian, Austrian, Chicago, Marxist, or Keynesian economic theory that I know of. It's a little more complicated than that, but we live in world of soundbites and reductionist answers to complicated problems.

And for the record, we're all biased; all researchers in the social sciences work from axioms and different ontologies, which are often times ideologically-based in economics and sociology, that inform their world view, and; my significant other is a detox technician and I don't pretend to understand her field just because she's my significant other.
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I really like this reply. Thank you.
 
#53
chicago_mike said:
I agree that there are poor people who are lazy. But it does not mean the rich are all good and wholesome.
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That's my thought as well.

It's interesting how one side of this debate will often argue that it's the poor who are greedy and wanting more than they deserve, but isn't there even a slight chance that some rich people can be just as greedy and wanting of more than they deserve? The only difference is that rich people can lobby for their interests and help bring about change and policy that can directly benefit them; they can also invest their enormous wealth and potentially live off of or supplement their income on their returns. Even people in the upper middle class can't do these things, but the rich can do this while simultaneously making incredible salaries with awesome benefits and generous stock options.

Again, I'll agree some poor are lazy, unmotivated, or simply unskilled, but there are a lot of hard working middle class and poor Americans who are simply stuck because of the combination of stagnating wages and increased living costs. How can a person or family grow their wealth if they're living pay check to pay check and can't afford to save or invest for their future or their children's future? It's simply mathematically impossible. They definitely aren't putting more money into the economy either since they don't have any additional income to buy more goods or services than the bare necessities. As the gentleman in the video I linked stated, "Even though I'm 10, 100, or maybe even 1,000 times wealthier than the average American I do not buy 10, 100, or anywhere near 1,000 times more stuff than one... I buy a few shirts and slacks a year, we only own three cars, and will occasionally go out for dinner with friends." In other words, the wealthy do not add more into the economy just because they are wealthy. The extra wealth only benefits the individual and not the whole economy. Helping spread the wealth more evenly, however, can spur demand, increasing the number of goods and services needed, and thus create more jobs to help meet said demand.
 
#54
Wow...

I don't believe the rich should share their wealth with everyone ,also known as redistributing wealth.

I do believe a lot of people are willing to perform services for to little .

This opens all kinds of doors which I will not get into .

Its like an endless maze.


For the most part we all are in a class society.



So ,I'll take my decent salary and enjoy my life the best I can .

You see ,I've been poor and could do it again if I had to . Money doesnt guarantee happiness
 
#55
Plutocracy.

Anybody read the Citigroup memo?

One problem we had / have is when one major employer employs half the damn town. Then they decide to close shop and move it to Mexico. And in their defense...They feel they don't owe anything to the town. However they very well knew they screwed the town over.

If you don't think this has ever been done, theres a city in Michigan that would like to discuss some recent history with you.
 
#56
eyeballkid said:
do you mean we should pillage peoples retirements, destroy their family wealth with outrageous costs of end of life care, lower what we pay people to help us and "downsize" or outsource any loyal helper who gets too expensive?
or should we be white collar crooks that rig the system and never get prosecuted?
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That is what your elected representatives are for.
 
#58
smeet said:
Unfortunately, the way the system works is that the richer you are, the easier it is to become even richer. Viewed another way, the poorer you are, the harder it is to get less poor. The result is that those who need it most, get it the least.

It should be the other way around obviously. It should be VERY easy to move from homelessness to poor, quite easy to move from poor to middle class, harder to move from middle to upper class, quite difficult to get from upper class to really wealthy, and very difficult to get from really wealthy to obscenely wealthy.

Those would be the characteristics of a humanitarian system, but also based on merit. As it is now, the wealthy make the laws, so guess who benefits?
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Post of the thread so far, imo.

It has become harder over the last generation or so for Americans to move up the economic ladder. Economic mobility is in decline.

The "anybody can just pull themselves up by the bootstraps" mantra just isn't supported by the data.
 
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