US income inequality at record high

[Lee Moses]

It is only jealousy that makes someone measure his income by its percentage to others' income.

 

[Unrepresented]

So we should handicap people's potential to earn?

We should handicap the ability to exploit.

 

[3star2nr]

So we should handicap people's potential to earn?

no I dont think he is arguing for that all hes asking for is a system with conditions that make it possible for anyone to get to that level if they want it. You dont have such a system right now but you could very easily.

1. Tax payer funded health care and education. Yes private institutions can still exist but what if their was an alternative that everyone had access to. That would remove the requirement for employers to cover workers and lower the cost of employment for american workers. It will also remove the burden of education costs and health care costs, and provide a system where anyone regardless of birth can get a good quality education and be the next steve jobs.

2. Passifist foreign policy, self explanatory

3. Fairer tax code. Some one who is a billionaire should pay a higher percentage of their net worth to the government thats just common sense.

4. public funding for medical research and other civillian scientific ventures

You would still have inequality in this system but you would improve the chances for social mobility which is all hes asking for and people on that side of the fence. None of that seems unreasonable to me and we already have the infrasstructure in place to impleent all of these policies. We just wont.

 

[fisticuffs]

I think Abe Lincoln put it well. I'm paraphrasing because I don't remember the exact words.

"You can not make a poor man rich by making a rich man poor."

It's too bad that's not at all the issue here. No one wants to make rich men poor. The reverse is true though. You can make a man poor by making yourself richer.

You can't boil down huge economic issues into bumper stickers and chain emails no matter how slick they sound. Actually you can't do much of anything with them.

 

[aborgman]

So... Tax the "rich" more, which will ultimately benefit the middle class and poor?

Based on historical data - it will ultimately benefit the middle class and poor... and the the rich whose taxes were increased.

 

[sloasdaylight]

I don't think any single graph is going to be able to provide causality, but it is evidence that's there is a bias in economic mobility.

I can't find anywhere in the pdf that information was sourced from how they adjusted for family size.

 

[fisticuffs]

It is only jealousy that makes someone measure his income by its percentage to others' income.

Really? No one here is comparing there own income to anyone else's. We are talking macro economics. There's bound to be some percentages and math involved and the reason for doing it is to solve problems. We have problems don't we? Does ignoring them or degrading those who give a crap fix them?

This line is soooooo tired and off-base.

 

[spade2you]

Really? No one here is comparing there own income to anyone else's. We are talking macro economics. There's bound to be some percentages and math involved and the reason for doing it is to solve problems. We have problems don't we? Does ignoring them or degrading those who give a crap fix them?

This line is soooooo tired and off-base.

How does one "fix" this particular problem?

 

[sloasdaylight]

How does one "fix" this particular problem?

Apparently higher taxes on the rich, and government funded health care and the like.

 

[jmattbassplaya]

Then stop shopping at Wal-Mart if you don't want them to profit so much. Simple as that. Start a campaign to get the poor to do the same. But before you start to campaign, please tell me how the poor would benefit if some of Wal-Mart's profits went to Food Lion and K-Mart rather than Wal-Mart. I would argue it wouldn't change a thing.

Also, while we're at it, where are the guys with guns forcing anyone to shop at Wal-Mart? The Waltons profit huge because they have figured out a way to provide goods and services for a better price than anyone else. But nobody has to shop there. "Vote with your wallet" as they say.

Here's an idea. If Wal-Mart pays their workers wages that can only afford to pay Wal-Mart prices for goods then where else can these workers shop? Is Wal-Mart not creating its own controllable market because few others can even compare with them at the low-cost business model?

We read an interesting case study in my ethics class several years ago about working situations/conditions in (I believe it was) Mexico. Regardless of where it was, it dealt with worker exploitation in third world countries. I bring this up because I can't help but see some similarities.

Many of these businesses (often factories) would pay crappy wages, but that was still better than not having any job at all (much like the situation we're currently facing in the US right now). These businesses would methodically drive out competition in the cities they located themselves in (often on the low-cost model, but sometimes through buy outs, intimidation, etc...) and would implement their own markets for their workers to buy goods from. In essence, they created their own mini economies in which they controlled the entire work-force, their salaries, their living arrangements, and the cost of commodities in the area.

They'd eventually raise prices, often to a point where their workers could no longer afford their rent or mortgages, and the businesses (being the humanitarians that they were) would put up shanties for their employees to live in that were connected to their factories. Long story short, it eventually was getting to the point where these businesses essentially owned the lives of the citizens in these areas because they could never afford to move away or even find another job. They'd even lock these people in these shanties at night so they couldn't run away, and they'd even have armed guards stationed to help maintain control of any potential revolt.

Will that happen in the US? Well, it has before if we check our history, and given current economic trends (such as the increasing inequality of wealth), which are beginning to mirror the Gilded Age of American history, it's not far fetched to believe similar things could slowly begin to crop up (especially if we legalize current illegal aliens while simultaneously doing away with the minimum wage - which some economists are pro for).

PS. I'll see if I can dig this article up because it was incredibly interesting, insightful, and informative.

 

[aborgman]

Yeah, I managed. Got me a sweet job 11 months ago. My folks ain't rich and I am only reasonably educated.

Yes... and folks win the lottery every day - but that doesn't make it a statistically intelligent earnings vehicle.

Statistics show that social/economic mobility is getting worse, and anecdotal exceptions don't change the overall data.

 

[fisticuffs]

How does one "fix" this particular problem?

I don't know. I know that tired lines about "jealousy" and tired quotes about workin' hard aren't going to cut it. The wealth has to trickle down somehow. Having it collected at the top isn't doing anybody any good even for the ones collecting it. Consumer driven economies don't do so well when consumers can't afford to consume.

 

[Lee Moses]

Really? No one here is comparing there own income to anyone else's. We are talking macro economics. There's bound to be some percentages and math involved and the reason for doing it is to solve problems. We have problems don't we?

Maybe. But the fact that there are discrepancies in income isn't one of them. It's an inescapable fact of a capitalistic economy; but a capitalistic economy is indisputably the best economy.

Does ignoring them or degrading those who give a crap fix them?

This line is soooooo tired and off-base.

Tired and off-base? That sounds degrading to me.

 

[jmattbassplaya]

I think Abe Lincoln put it well. I'm paraphrasing because I don't remember the exact words.

"You can not make a poor man rich by making a rich man poor."

No one is arguing making the rich poor; more like giving them a haircut

 

[aborgman]

Dude, if your educated opinion is that earning a Doctorate of Medicine automatically puts you into the 1% of income then I suggest you do some fact based research instead of guessing. In my profession, guessing and educated opinions get people killed.

If you're a working doctor, you aren't necessarily top 1% (~$370,000 income per HOUSEHOLD).

You're almost certainly in the top 5% though (~$186,000 income per HOUSEHOLD).

The lowest earning doctors are the family guys. Pediatricians and family practitioners make about $156,000 and $158,000, respectively. Internists and psychiatrists rank a notch above, at about $165,00 and $170,000, respectively.

Doctors’ earnings ranged from about $156,000 a year for pediatricians to about $315,000 for radiologists and orthopedic surgeons. The highest earners — orthopedic surgeons and radiologists — were the same as last year, followed by cardiologists who earned $314,000 and anesthesiologists who made $309,000.

 

[spade2you]

Higher taxes on the rich, and apparently government funded health care and the like.

Are there really enough rich people that we can tax enough to effectively solve these problems?

It's nice to think we can solve problems with simple solutions like this. I kinda doubt the reality of it working.

 

[Batmensch]

So we should handicap people's potential to earn?

That's already happening to the poor and the middle class. The rich have no such impediments to their getting richer, the middle class and the poor have all kinds of obstacles to their advancement.

 

[Unrepresented]

I can't find anywhere in the pdf that information was sourced from how they adjusted for family size.

I didn't author the study.

I searched for "economic mobility" and this was one of the graphs that focused on domestic comparisons as opposed to how we rank against Western Europe (hint: they're better).

 

[LiquidMidnight]

In my limited experience the harder you work the less money you make. All the jobs ive had where I made real money had me doing very litttle actual work. The reason for that is very simple.

Any idiot can do manual labor, hence the employer has more leverage to pay you less money, because any idiot can do your job there is more competition and less job security. Jobs that "seem" to need very specialised skills will always pay way more, because the employer is more concerenced about retaining good talent.

I say "Seem" because you can train any human being to do any task thats what makes us human the whole idea of needing a college degree for any job is a joke. but thats a different topic.

But...but...but...but...markets aren't tautological constructs in which value, except for some essential commodities, is socially created and is defined by aggregate demand. No, not at all. They're based upon intrinsic merit and hard work. Yes siree-bob. That's what my local politician told me when he was trying to win my blue-collar vote. It just blows my mind that a mainstream politician can be a Marxist. He must be a Marxist, because he's selling me on the labor theory of value. Why else would he be telling me that hard work is the road to financial prosperity? That other guy told me that my market worth was based upon the scarcity of my skills with relation to the demand of those skills; it had nothing to do with my actual labor power or any intrinsic merit I have. That's why Victor Wooten is the richest performer in the world and that Miley Cyrus chick is working at 7-11 during the week.

...oh wait.

 

[jmattbassplaya]

I don't know. I know that tired lines about "jealousy" and tired quotes about workin' hard aren't going to cut it. The wealth has to trickle down somehow. Having it collected at the top isn't doing anybody any good even for the ones collecting it. Consumer driven economies don't do so well when consumers can't afford to consume.

We've been running with this trickle down idea since the 80's and it obviously hasn't been working for the majority of Americans (although the wealthy certainly have benefited from it). Corporate profits and executive salaries are at all time highs while middle class salaries and below have remained relatively unchanged since the late 70's when adjusted for inflation.