Is hand-wringing over inequality a misplaced concern? Deep into these issues we get to the level of irreconcilable differences. I don't want to tread on already covered ground, so if there's a comment of yours you could point to I'd happily read it, but why is it that you feel that inequality as a social ill is an overstated position?My only gripe (aside from the obligatory hand-wringing over inequality)...
In my view, it is. Mine is a minority position, which may be a sign that I am incorrect. But I haven't been able to figure out what the irreconcilable differences are. I want to see people prosper, especially the poor. I think most people agree with this. I am opposed to coercion, unless there is strong justification for it. I think people agree with this too. The old saw is "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer." People sometimes hint at this, but they don't back it up. Articles like this show that today's poor in the United States are doing much better than they did in the past. The poor are getting richer. A lot of poor in this country immigrated from other countries, where they were even poorer. People suggest that the rich got their wealth by taking it from the poor. That strikes me as an odd explanation, but there is some truth in it. Most of the people wealthy enough to be famous got their money by creating things that millions of people, including the poor, enjoy and are willing to trade their money for. Rihanna enriches the masses with music while she enriches herself with money. Pundits sometimes use tortured logic to make the case against inequality. This doesn't mean a stronger argument can't be made, but I don't see much scrutiny of this sacred cow. People often point out that inequality messes up politics. I think that's a fair point against politics. It's not realistic to expect a dog to walk past a steak, and it's not realistic to expect wealthy people to refrain from trying to influence the power concentrated in government, or the human beings trusted with power to always resist influence. If these links haven't exhausted your patience, I have a favorite screed about oxygen.Is hand-wringing over inequality a misplaced concern?
If you only get a little rich providing oxygen, is that okay? At what point do you cross a line and meet too many peoples' needs, make too many lives better, and become a reviled capitalist?
I'm reading your links, so don't view this is a lazy retort. But I keep feeling that this two part video from Jon Stewart, Warren Buffett Vs. Wealthy Conservatives and The Poor's Free Ride is Over, speaks to your point of the "poor are getting richer." And as for your incredulity at the fact that the rich get richer at the expense of the poor, if it's not an outright theft, though lord knows some folks would argue that, it's at least that capitalists routinely overestimate how much of their wealth was a result of their individual ingenuity rather than a combination of their individual ingenuity, the privileges and opportunities afforded them by former generations agitating for a more equitable and fair society, and public investment into roads, hospitals, and a more educated workforce, the backs of whom break for the profit of those employing them. I'd like to see a little more hand-wringing when Oil Corporations receive $37 billion in tax subsidies in 2014 alone or when Corporate tax deductions for executive pay cost the US government $30.4 billion in lost revenue over the years 2007-10. Collect more from the poor? Jesus. "That's the problem with the poor... they still have some of their skin left."
Far from lazy, you pack a lot into a few paragraphs. I wish I could learn to be so concise. I agree with you that public policy is frequently harmful, enriching big business at the expense of the poor. Why do I get a tax break on my mortgage now, but not when I was renting and had much less income? Tax law is complex, and there is probably some benefit, or at least intended benefit, in promoting home ownership and domestic energy production. But it also seems as crooked as a barrel of snakes. Large, successful corporations spend vast amounts of money on advertising. They make this investment because advertising works; they know they will get something for their money. They also invest plenty of money in lobbying, often donating to both parties, reasonably expecting that they will get something in return. This is sad, and frustrating, but not surprising. Legislators are human beings, subject to the same self-interested incentives as anyone else. What surprises me is how often people hope that more, better legislation is the solution. It's true that corporations benefit from public infrastructure. Despite the loopholes, I suspect that successful corporations pay more in taxes than the poor. If you don't think they pay a fair share, but they pay according to the rules, I think your objection should be with the rules, not the corporations. Why would anyone sacrifice their back for Comcast, or General Electric? What's in it for the worker? There is a kind of vilification of the corporation that I find mysterious. Employees work for a salary. They are free to take any better option that is available. They may be obligated by harsh realities to work hard and sacrifice, but they aren't obligated by anyone who provides a job opportunity. If Walmart makes an offer to someone to exchange work for money, that's one more option they have available. It's more than I am doing for that person. (Same for consumers: we love to bash Verizon and Delta for crappy service, but we are free to discontinue giving them money, something not true of taxes. Poor California workers must pay their 1% paycheck tax, whether they use or know of the Paid Family Leave program it supports or not.) But we started by talking about inequality. My position is to not worry about it, because I can't find any victims. Jon Stewart is funny, and he does us a service by mocking the ridiculous things said on Fox News. I think he picks on easy targets, though. When Fox reports that 99.6 percent of poor households have a refrigerator, I am happy to celebrate that as good news. It is stupid and tactless for Fox to suggest that households with appliances aren't really poor, but what's the point in arguing with Fox News on the basis of tone and innuendo? The sample chapters of the book reviewed in this post describe what life was like before electric appliances, and it is absurd to deny that the poor are materially richer thanks to the prevalence of these machines. Maybe you can discover a way to get refrigerators into the majority of households that does not end up with people who sell the best appliances at the lowest prices making a lot of profit. Every person who buys a refrigerator gains, and I have no objection to General Electric receiving something in exchange. I don't see it as especially unequal: millions of people receive the benefit of an appliance, a small number of people receive money proportional to the benefit provided. Would we want to reduce inequality by reversing some of these transactions? In the Buffet video (at 3:00), Jon talks about income inequality specifically. The Gini Index measures inequality, so he shows the beginning of the CIA Gini Index list, with the most equal countries like Sweden (Gini 23) and Norway (25) at the top. After four seconds, before the audience might have spotted Albania (26.7) in ninth place, he quickly scrolls the list way, way down, ululating to keep the audience entertained as numbers zoom past, until he gets to the United States of America, shamefully nestled between Ivory Coast (44.6) and Uruguay (45.2). The USA is "worse than Cameroon" and we barely beat Jamaica (45.5) and Uganda (45.7). Television viewers had to take Jon's word for it, but if we pause the video and examine some of the intermediate entries, we find some strange neighbors. Italy and Spain, tied with Romania at 32. Canada and France adjacent to Mongolia and Tajikistan. Switzerland (33.7) "worse than Bangladesh" (33.2). At what point do we wonder if the Gini Index of inequality is perhaps not a very good indication of quality of life? On the CIA site, Ukraine and Belarus appear in the top ten. Hong Kong is among the "worst." What if someone told us that France, Japan, and New Zealand were all "worse" than Antarctica? I can't find good data but I suspect it is true; there are few homeless or billionaires in Antarctica. I don't think the Gini Index tells us anything useful about how people live, rich or poor. When I see the headline "San Francisco's income inequality is worse than Rwanda's" I think we would be better off rating places by how many letters they have in their names. There are millions of people waiting to immigrate to the Land of Inequality. A household in the United States has a 50% chance of enjoying annual income over $43,000, among the five highest countries. We have refrigerators for everybody. We have poverty too, and that's an issue I hope will continue to improve as it has for two hundred years, especially in places that welcome innovation and trade.the backs of whom break for the profit of those employing them
I don't even know where to begin with this. I see a pattern of you stating a seemingly uncontroversial premise, then building on it with an anti-government non-sequitur. • Campaign financing is a system of bad incentives, you got me, we're on the same page. But it's "surprising" to you that people think a solution ought to be more legislation? How do you suggest we change the rules? Ask nicely? Maybe we could publicly finance campaigns, enable officials to govern instead of spending half their time fundraising. Maybe we could even implement a campaign voucher system where citizens not only vote on their preferred candidate but also provide the sole legally allowed funds to the campaign via vouchers allotted to each citizen. Hell, there are a lot of ideas to fix the mess. But it would require passing legally binding statute. • You say corporations pay a lot in taxes... And then add the non-sequitur that they pay "more than the poor." Well, of course they do. The poor don't pay anything. They have nothing to pay. Do you believe part of the antidote to what ails the US is regressive taxation? If so, please clarify and advocate this position rather than obfuscate the point of taxation. Furthermore, I reserve the right to be very angry with corporations and not the rules of taxation simply because those rules were written and established by these corporations. To point to a rule as an excuse for unethical behavior is, at the very least, moral confusion, if not outright motivated evil. • You find the vilification of corporations mysterious? I'm perplexed by your lack of imagination. "Why do people give Walmart a hard time about their lousy working conditions if the condition of their servitude is voluntary" is, in my mind, an indistinct version of the argument of "why do we give garment factory owners a hard time for their lousy conditions if the job is voluntary?" At this point I'd argue for human dignity, workplace physical and mental safety, add in a touch of Marxist argument concerning the unchecked exploitation of the worker that goes on in an unregulated market, but I won't. I won't because I feel like it'd be a waste of time. This may be unfair of me, but I can't help but to connect the dots of your statements as a reflection of your values, which stately baldly is anti-governmentism in, apparently, every form. Which is one of the oldest arguments around. The fundamental difference between Federalists and Anti-Federalists, Democrats and Republicans, the alt-right and Bernie Supporters. If that's the fight you wanna have, have at it. But this is the irreconcilable difference I alluded to at the outset. People change their minds on this subject rarely. This conviction is almost at the level of belief, operating semi-consciously the way that a love for Jesus informs someone's behavior and attitude. So the already difficult conversation isn't served well by circumlocution.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. You make good points; I think my overlong comment mentioning so many subjects did not bring clarity to our discussion. You asked about inequality. Can we return to that subject? I've tried to explain why I don't think inequality is worth worrying about. I am concerned about poverty, but I don't see who is harmed by inequality. To use an imperfect analogy, there is some NBA team whose players have the greatest inequality of height. This doesn't mean anyone on that team is suffering from a lack of height. It's an entirely relative measure. When Albania and Norway get similar scores on inequality, or Spain and Romania, or the United States and Cameroon, I conclude that inequality doesn't tell us anything meaningful about quality of life. But some say inequality is the defining issue of our time. What am I missing?
It may not explicitly relate the material conditions on the ground, but it suggests a stratification that's unbecoming of an advanced country. To continue your basketball analogy: the basketball hoop is ten feet off the ground. So in addition to greater height enhancing your defensive skills when blocking and making you a manifestly safer target for passes because of your reach, height also contributes to your ability to dunk the ball because the net is an absolute, static height off the ground. You can figure that this ten foot high basket is analogous to the poverty level -- $24,300 for a family of four -- or the living wage ( $3-$7 above the federal minimum wage by location ) anualized per person. Or, if we're ambitious in our utopia, it's the $75,000 yearly income above which self-reports of emotional wellbeing stop rising (Kahneman and Deaton, 2010). A little income inequality isn't bad if it doesn't preclude those below a level of subsistence from moving up. (NB: We can argue about how arbitrary or valid those levels are, but I'm assuming we can agree that there is some level.) In fact, you can never eliminate inequality because some people are smarter than others and smart decisions accrue. Furthermore, a little inequality is probably a good thing, at least from a standpoint of capitalism, where envy is the great motivator. But here's the problem. We're not at a little bit of inequality. We're at a mind-boggling amount. I'm trying not to be hyperbolic, but it's more unequal than the gilded age. In 2010, the top 1% had 20%, the next 9% had 30%, and the bottom 50% of Americans had 20% of the income. We're at a point where, save for the 2014-2015 5.2% uptick in income, we've had stagnant income growth for the bottom 50% of wage-earners for the last 30 or so years. And I hate overloading an argument with statistics because I don't want to fatigue, I want to make a point. When people disparage income inequality, the unspoken modifier is the superlative income inequality. Moreover, it's the ongoing plundering of the working class, the despoiling of the planet. There's a lot to show for all the "growth of domestic product" in the jet-owning class, quite a lot less then in the public welfare, security, and health. I see real problems everywhere I look, complicated problems that require attention, painstaking patience, immense coordination and lots of resources. And it's utterly complicated by the concentration of all the income and attendant influence at the top, often if not always at the expense of the bottom. I'm sorry if I come off as short with you. It's a little discouraging to have to retread first principles, though I appreciate the practice of articulating something that may seem obvious to me but not as foregone a conclusion to another.When Albania and Norway get similar scores on inequality, or Spain and Romania, or the United States and Cameroon, I conclude that inequality doesn't tell us anything meaningful about quality of life.
I thought this would resolve the discussion. I only care about material conditions on the ground. I am willing to define this broadly, to include access to refrigeration, self-reported satisfaction, highway safety, life expectancy, beer consumption per year, whatever makes people happy. I am not much interested in the reputation or perceived decency of a country, which seems to me entirely a matter of opinion. But then you mentioned a number of material conditions on the ground, stuff I do care about: people moving above subsistence level, plundering of the working class, despoiling of the planet. Public welfare, security and health. "Real problems everywhere." You mention these real problems in abstract, non-specific language, without any explanation of how inequality is related, simply asserting that they are "utterly complicated" by concentrated wealth. What is the evidence that income inequality causes bad outcomes, apart from tarnishing the reputations of advanced countries? Your links sent me on a number of interesting rabbit trails. At the risk of complicating the conversation once more, I'll toss some back. The income study showed satiation around $75,000 for "emotional well being" but "life evaluation" continued to rise with additional income. After claiming that "inequality per se isn't a bad thing" b_b got me to read about the Gilded Age. It sounds to me like the best thing that ever happened to poor people: skyrocketing income, improvements in working conditions, new schools and hospitals. On the prospects of advancing out of poverty, I find encouragement in the Census report behind the NPR article b_b shared.It may not explicitly relate the material conditions on the ground, but it suggests a stratification that's unbecoming of an advanced country.
When plotted against log income, life evaluation rises steadily. Emotional well-being also rises with log income, but there is no further progress beyond an annual income of ~$75,000.
I dunno, maybe around the time you raise the price of your oxygen by 400%.
But this never* happens. Amazon, Walmart, Standard Oil, all reduced prices. New inventions invariably become cheaper, as producers become more efficient at producing, and respond to competition from other producers who release similar products and try to capture market share. *Except when it does, when a producer manages to get legal protection from competition. In that case, consumers are right to revile the crony gang, and government should stop interfering.