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What's your opinion on income inequality? It's future? Should it be fixed and will it be fixed? I ask that no lefties answer this question because I can guess your answers.
I would generally put myself in the lefty category, and I'll answer anyway because I find that offensive for one and secondly because I suspect my answer isn't what you guess and I also find your presumption offensive.
Income inequality is a good thing. We're higher than I would like to see but not by all that much. There's insufficient data. Growth in income inequality was really something that happened in the '80s and early '90s, and then stopped growing until the great recession in the United States. Personally, I find the Gini being around .5 to be troubling although there's no basis to say that it isn't an efficient level, and it's not clear that the recession was a second permanent shift in Gini or just a temporary effect of the recession.
Some economists call for policies that try to push the Gini back to around .4 instead of the .5 it's at currently, although what exactly those policies are is more open to question. I don't know that I do. I think where I'd feel more comfortable is the .4-.45 range but personally it's not an ends justify the means thing for me. Germany has higher income inequality than we do and doesn't seem to suffer from it. Rather I think we should look at why the bottom isn't doing well and pursue policies that increase equality of opportunity. I don't care about equality of outcome, but the opportunity should be there. Holding primary and secondary education accountable (both institutions AND students) and making vocational education and junior college accessible and accountable is where I'd say the emphasis should be. There's simply too much dead weight in education. It's totally unacceptable that we're socially promoting people such that 17% of high school graduates are functionally illiterate. That's basically 20% of the population that graduates isn't suitable for much of any job today. Then junior colleges have to do remedial education and deal with students who are products of that and who are just dead weight.
Then you get down to specifics that are present in American society that I don't know that they are in other societies. I'm now going to pick on black people. If that offends someone, so be it. They're simply the worst offenders although by no means is it anything unique to black people or about being black. There's plenty of whites and Hispanics and a smaller number of Asians that also fall into the same category. We're talking about generational marginal members of society. Partly is systemic and partly it's personal failings. I have absolutely no idea about what to do about that problem but something needs to change.
Once again, this is NOT a new problem and NOT a growing problem. The facts just do not support that despite the narrative being that class mobility is decreasing it actually isn't. We've done war on poverty, and it's stayed constant. We've done war on drugs, and it stayed constant. We've seen the nuclear family and marriage fall apart, and it stayed constant. A lot of those are overlapping to the point where regression analysis to attempt to determine causal relationships isn't possible plus the myriad of other factors. I applaud the attempts but we don't know why is the short of it. Lots of people with lots of agendas pushing agendas that are baseless. It just simply is a problem in this country that we've tried various approaches to address. Maybe intact families matter and you just have that working against the war on drugs (if you assume it's positive which many don't) and war on poverty. That's speculative. We're not good in this regard. Other countries do much better. Again, I don't particularly care about outcome. I only care in that outcome is a reflection of opportunity. What we have is most likely, based on nothing but my personal opinion, a mixture of a lack of opportunity and a relatively larger share of dregs of society that have just chosen to not try than some other countries have.
I remember Obama taking heat for talking about redistribution in 2008. Got it, redistribution is bad but why is it ok for income to get sucked up in the other direction?
One of the worst problems with "redistribution" is the source of the wealth. It is not the 1% that will be funding this; those at the top are above the fray and have legions of tax accountants and attorneys at the ready to protect them. But that was never the intention, anyway.
The redistributionists' eye has settled squarely on the middle class and upper middle-class as the source of the taxes and funding. Such groups have little in the way of protection from government grasp. Comparatively, they are still among 'the unwashed masses' compared to the 1%. Yet it is this group that has been chosen. These are our neighbors, the folks whose McMansions, BMW's, Armani suits, and private schools are so much on display. The real 1% are invisible, and impervious to the politicians' grasp.
I marvel that so few people are able to make this distinction. They don't realize whose pockets are being picked.
And just one thing to remember, Capitalism failed in 2008 and Government had to pick up the tab ever since bailing failed Capitalists, Wall Street and big corporations.
What we have today is Socialism for the Rich!!!!!
Capitalism did not fail. What failed was companies operated inefficiently. The issue is people expect their standard of living to progressively get better with no tolerance for setbacks, politicians play to this to get elected. The electorate has largely lost touch with reality. Instead of letting these setbacks play out, the government provides assistance. What happens is, instead of having market corrections to poor market decisions by people, we double down and try to fix those decisions with artificial mechanisms, creating unintended consequences and more inefficiency.
Income inequality comes into play when we are talking about absolute poverty, where a person's very existence is in danger. What people here in the US talks about is relative income inequality. There is this altruistic and arbitrary standard of living based on nothing more than an idea we are entitled to a certain standard of living, which may or may not be sustainable, although it's pretty much fact that you can not continually and consistently improve your standard of living without suffering setbacks, which, again, are intolerable by some in the electorate [both by conservatives (bring back manufacturing jobs) and liberals (can't let people lose the home they could not afford)] The objective and absolute standard of living compared with everyone (i.e. the world), not just some arbitrary selected subset of society, the US is so far ahead of the curve that income inequality arguments are absurd. There are not a lot of people starving to death, or suffering in the US and it's not even close to that.
By the way, the market is redistributing wealth away from the US and into previously absolutely poor populations.
One of the worst problems with "redistribution" is the source of the wealth. It is not the 1% that will be funding this; those at the top are above the fray and have legions of tax accountants and attorneys at the ready to protect them. But that was never the intention, anyway.
LOL.
Quote:
This year's Fortune 500 marks the 61st running of the list. In total, the Fortune 500 companies account for $12.5 trillion in revenues, $945 billion in profits, $17 trillion in market value and employ 26.8 million people worldwide. See our methodology and credits
You can tax the entire profit on the fortune 500 and it would only cover about a third of the federal budget.
What's your opinion on income inequality? It's future? Should it be fixed and will it be fixed? I ask that no lefties answer this question because I can guess your answers.
Capitalism is a Property Theory that addresses ownership of Capital. Since Capitalism is compatible with Centralized Planned Economies, your question makes no sense.
Perhaps you are referring to Free Marketeers who support the Free Market Economic System?
"Income inequality" is doublespeak.
Wages/salaries -- like prices --- are determined by Supply & Demand.
Those who are self-motivated will gravitate to jobs that are in high Demand and pay well. Those who lack motivation or desire will remain in jobs that are not in Demand and not be so rewarded.
There's nothing to fix.
People who make bad choices in life are reaping what they have sown.
I rather be david with 4 stocks than bob with 20 bucks...
no its because people think they should have a standard of living higher than they can afford... wages would be fine if people didn't consume so much disposable junk...
that's my answer as a "lefty", people should learn to budget what they earn. If they want more items, they can't work minimum wage jobs. If they are happy with it, then go ahead... but don't tell the minimum wage workers that they deserve to live like middle class people. This is why I disagree with the entire living wage movement, that is not a living wage that is a middle class wage. They should forcibly take away people's junk if they want to stay at a minimum wage job until they can afford it without debt. IF all they can afford is roommates and food, then that's all they get until they figure out that they need to move up the social ladder. I'd be happy just making a government programs to give people jobs cleaning high ways at minimum wage in place of the current "social welfare", if they want food stamps, they have to work for the food >.> or at least learn to put food first before their other junk like tv/phone/etc. yes it is extreme.. and I'm not a politician so I can be on the extreme left
So what evidence do you have that people are living at a higher standard then they can afford. Let me guess you saw someone use food stamps then get in there Mercedes Benz. Who said min wage should afford a middle class lifestyle? How do you know how they could of gotten their stuff they could had of afforded it at the time or someone could given it to them. Many people are not happy working min wage but that is all they are capable of doing or they can not find a higher paying job.I feel bad for you that something in your life must be bad or missing so you have to hate on people you see below you.
Capitalism is a Property Theory that addresses ownership of Capital. Since Capitalism is compatible with Centralized Planned Economies, your question makes no sense.
Perhaps you are referring to Free Marketeers who support the Free Market Economic System?
"Income inequality" is doublespeak.
Wages/salaries -- like prices --- are determined by Supply & Demand.
Those who are self-motivated will gravitate to jobs that are in high Demand and pay well. Those who lack motivation or desire will remain in jobs that are not in Demand and not be so rewarded.
There's nothing to fix.
People who make bad choices in life are reaping what they have sown.
No wage salaries are determined by whatever the business wants to pay. Show me a chart or some graph or something that shows that Supply and Demand determine wages. You can't because there is no evidence. Bad choices really so there is no such thing as people who are not smart. You do not know why they are in that situation you just assume it is their fault as people who have no idea what is going on tend to do.
I was born poor in Cleveland in 1952. We had nothing, but I was able to borrow money (which I paid off) and work 3 jobs and get myself through college. I came to California in 1976 and went from job to job trying to pay my bills. Often I worked 2 jobs. Finally, at 40, I started a business that suited me perfectly. I worked VERY hard and today I am somewhere in the upper 2%. I had no employees, I work alone. I didn't take advantage of or steal from anyone to get what I have, I WORKED. I resist the implication that I should now hand over any of what I have to someone who CHOSE not to work as hard as I have. So, the answer to your question is simple in my opinion. If you don't like how much money you're making, you need to work harder. That's it.
LAappraiser, your right and if your content being part of the lazy 99% then ok but you better pick yourself up by your boot straps to make it to the 1 percent. That's it.
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