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You didn't read the article. In fact most people who commented didn't. The article isn't about reparations at all.
Not a smidgen...
“'The reason black people are so far behind now is not because of now,' Clyde Ross told me. 'It’s because of then...' ... More important than any single check cut to any African American, the payment of reparations would represent America’s maturation out of the childhood myth of its innocence into a wisdom worthy of its founders." - part of the concluding wrap up, from 7th and 5th paragraphs from the end of the very long article.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jade408
If your premise is based on exceptions, you'll never see the true reality. We can't judge success by how the tallest trees grow, we need to base it on what happens to the average trees in the forest.
If we all see life through the lens of victim-hood, that is all we will ever find. And that grievance will rule our lives, and create unresolvable animosity against each other.
America IS the exception.
I ask again...show me a country that does it better, as of 2014? I'm not looking for perfection. I'm not saying there are not problems. I just want to know, if it isn't the USA, which country seems to be giving their citizens the opportunity to reach high, perhaps becoming super wealthy, perhaps becoming their President?
As for the average trees, not just the tallest ones, that is where America shines brightest...
There is no collective wealth. Wealth is created and owned by individuals. If you want some, it is up to you to generate it through personal competence and personal excellence and individual achievement. Your success and income are up to you.
So, there is no income inequality. Or opportunity inequality. There is you, your problems, and the solutions you implement to address them.
The "collective wealth" in America is the sum of all the money taken in by government for the purpose of managing the federal infrastructure that has been utilized by all those "donors". We all know that money is "created" not by individuals but by our government (currency origination) and the path it takes from printer to public is one that should be looked at by those think of money only as a trade medium or a reward for "personal excellence".
Your position is one that has taken root from the moralizing standpoint of economics, and because of that you see money as a kind of reward for personal achievement, a kind of meritocracy if you will. I see this kind of thinking as a false view of something that is very complex and not well understood by most of our countrymen. Many many people have put their best foot forward in search of success and failed simply because your mantra of personal achievement doesn't do justice to the truth of things.
Simplistic platitudes regarding complex economic constructs seems a bit out of place in a discussion of US economics, it's easy to dismiss those who haven't been compensated well for their labor as being a group of individuals who have somehow failed themselves. It's another thing to take a good long look at the way in which the upper class has controlled the gates to wealth from the beginnings of America. Exclusion is the name of the game in most nations with a severe gap between those who have nothing and those who appear to have everything.
To think that this gap is the result of too many people being unwilling to accept prosperity in their lives is just incredibly naive at best and at worst it smacks of an elitist world view. The millions of Americans who are currently out of work are simply pawns in the game, they did nothing to exacerbate their misfortune, they went to college, they lived frugally, they saved and invested, they took part in their communities, and lastly they are guilty of that one sin you have harped on incessantly, and I hope someday you will get the opportunity to tell them they didn't try hard enough...
it needs to be addressed by those who are suffering from it.
it needs to be addressed in their own personal lives. do they have job skills. are those job skills appreciated where they live? if not are they willing to go where they are appreciated.
let me translate that.
if you lean a trade skill in a few months and get an air ticket to dubai or saudi arabia most of your problem will evaporate.
Many many people have put their best foot forward in search of success and failed simply because your mantra of personal achievement doesn't do justice to the truth of things.
Don't think anyone is saying that everyone is not going to have one (or several) setback. Life is uncertain. We all make decisions and have to run with that given the cards we are dealt.
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Originally Posted by jertheber
Simplistic platitudes regarding complex economic constructs seems a bit out of place in a discussion of US economics, it's easy to dismiss those who haven't been compensated well for their labor as being a group of individuals who have somehow failed themselves. It's another thing to take a good long look at the way in which the upper class has controlled the gates to wealth from the beginnings of America. Exclusion is the name of the game in most nations with a severe gap between those who have nothing and those who appear to have everything.
What seems a simplistic platitude is to blame setbacks and failure on some group who have the control and ability to oppress everyone else. True maybe in Iran, or Venezuela, etc. Not true in aggregate in the US.
"The other thing is that most people who are in the top 1% in income are there only one year. Over a period of about a decade the IRS tracked these people by Social Security numbers. Something like two-thirds of the people who were in the top 1% during that decade were in there one time. Only 13% were in there two years. Pundits talk about these income brackets as if they are enduring classes of people when they are simply transient snapshots of people who happen to be there right now." Thomas Sowell Part 3: Income Inequality And Economic Myths
"... the very opposite conclusion arises in studies that follow actual flesh-and-blood individuals over time, most of whom move up across the various income brackets with the passing years. Most working Americans who were initially in the bottom 20 percent of income-earners, rise out of that bottom 20 percent. More of them end up in the top 20 percent than remain in the bottom 20 percent." Economic Mobility - Thomas Sowell - Page full
"Discussions of income distribution are inherently misleading in one fundamental respect: Income is not distributed, it is earned. This fact, while obvious, is often overlooked .... most families with high incomes contain no corporate chief executives or professional baseball players, much less lottery winners. ... Most upper-income American families simply work more jobs and longer hours than their neighbors. It is fair to question whether the fact that harder work is typically rewarded with higher incomes really constitutes "inequality." The Truth About Income Inequality | Center of the American Experiment
Where, outside of the USA, do people have a better opportunity to rise?
“'The reason black people are so far behind now is not because of now,' Clyde Ross told me. 'It’s because of then...' ... More important than any single check cut to any African American, the payment of reparations would represent America’s maturation out of the childhood myth of its innocence into a wisdom worthy of its founders." - part of the concluding wrap up, from 7th and 5th paragraphs from the end of the very long article.
The article, hardly makes any references to reparations, but does outline thoroughly all of the ways equal opportunity wasn't very equal. It doesn't even bother trying to claim amounts, who qualifies or anything. It leaves with, based on all the things we have done maybe we should think about it. The takeaway isn't, "we need to have reparations." The takeaway is "wow, we screwed up in a lot of ways and caused this problem we are currently in."
But it is a lot faster to just pick and choose paragraphs to support your point instead of spending time analyzing the article with the perspective of digesting it in its entirety.
Quote:
If we all see life through the lens of victim-hood, that is all we will ever find. And that grievance will rule our lives, and create unresolvable animosity against each other.
America IS the exception.
I ask again...show me a country that does it better, as of 2014? I'm not looking for perfection. I'm not saying there are not problems. I just want to know, if it isn't the USA, which country seems to be giving their citizens the opportunity to reach high, perhaps becoming super wealthy, perhaps becoming their President?
As for the average trees, not just the tallest ones, that is where America shines brightest...
Measuring "purchasing power" is a pretty America-centric way of viewing "quality of life." You can buy more stuff, so you are doing well! If the goal to be really rich or to have a good life. If the bar is that some people can become super rich, well that is a very American ideal, for those tall trees, but I think China is catching up pretty quick on that metric. Nigeria too.
Here is another index from the Economist:
Quote:
Its quality-of-life index links the results of subjective life-satisfaction surveys—how happy people say they are—to objective determinants of the quality of life across countries. Being rich helps more than anything else, but it is not all that counts; things like crime, trust in public institutions and the health of family life matter too. In all, the index takes 11 statistically significant indicators into account. They are a mixed bunch: some are fixed factors, such as geography; others change only very slowly over time (demography, many social and cultural characteristics); and some factors depend on policies and the state of the world economy.
The idiotic statements on Capitalism that we see on this forum are a direct result of the fact that high school graduates are pretty much uniformly the equivalent of financial retards.
If my high school economics teacher (an avowed socialist) was representative of the whole, then it's no wonder high school graduates have no idea how capitalism works, and thus repeat the anti-capitalist cliches they were taught.
Business is in a dominant position over our government, that is common knowledge today, the corporate rulers have this government kowtowing to it's demands and that alone accounts for the fact of a widening disparity of well being
Oh, so that's why the government is constantly cranking out new regulations that hinder profitability by increasing the cost of compliance.
If my high school economics teacher (an avowed socialist) was representative of the whole, then it's no wonder high school graduates have no idea how capitalism works, and thus repeat the anti-capitalist cliches they were taught.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Slowpoke_TX
Oh, so that's why the government is constantly cranking out new regulations that hinder profitability by increasing the cost of compliance.
Perhaps you should listen to your high school economics teacher.
Capitalism has always failed. The end result is one man on top and everyone else poor. Our regulations exist to correct the abuse the common man suffered at the hands of capitalism. Most of our regulations are geared towards that - worker rights, labor conditions, child labor, minimum wage, anti-trust, environmental regulations, safety regulations, 5-day work week, etc.
Without those regulations, we warp back in time another 100 years.. where we have children working in sweat shops for a few cents per day. Don't blink your eyes; cheap labor is the ultimate goal of the elites. Capitalism is a pyramid scheme.
With that being said, capitalism has its positives. That is why capitalism and socialism have been blended to the superior "mixed" economy we see today in advanced countries.
But it is a lot faster to just pick and choose paragraphs to support your point instead of spending time analyzing the article with the perspective of digesting it in its entirety.
Look, if in the concluding part of the article it says what I quoted, it is pretty clear the implication of what the take away the author wants us to have. People can read the article themselves.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jade408
Measuring "purchasing power" is a pretty America-centric way of viewing "quality of life." You can buy more stuff, so you are doing well! If the goal to be really rich or to have a good life. If the bar is that some people can become super rich, well that is a very American ideal, for those tall trees, but I think China is catching up pretty quick on that metric. Nigeria too.
No you cannot have it both ways. You go from PPP which is in reference to the measurements for the "average tree" then say the "bar is" the tallest trees.
No. Those graphs compare the US with various countries. It clearly shows that those in the bottom decile economically are not helped much, if at all, by government redistributive efforts.
The gap between the incomes of Americans vs other countries only widens as they move up each decile from there (i.e. their efforts are better rewarded). Hardly expect to see something like this if opportunity is so widely suppressed as folks seem to be saying in this thread.
Interesting. But, isn't the question, "(in 2014) ... Does income inequality in the USA need to be addressed?" That suggests a financial basis of comparison. Income is a big factor on quality of life.
I respect the Economist and have seen several other similar indexes. I've also seen "happiness" indexes that show the US in the middle of the pack. The problem with all of these indexes is objectivity. They rely heavily on a judgement call on the weightings of the input factors. Using figures, like those behind the analysis I provided links to (e.g. PPP on income), is an order of magnitude more objective.
Also, the follow up would be, "So what should be done about quality of life?" No doubt it would involve a change of laws aimed at redistribution, in one form or another, of some of that income.
If you wish to start a thread on quality of life and how it should be measured, be my guest, but please don't shift the debate.
Obviously there is income inequality in the USA. Some may claim the gab is getting bigger.
The main point I am considering is whether the government should take steps to address the income equality or NOT?
I guess it would depend on how this "income inequality" was arrived at. Ex. If it's gangs who have money from selling drugs, or the mafia who has ill-gotten gains from money people are forced to pay them, or criminals who have money from robbing banks, etc then my answer is yes, their wealth needs to be distributed "equally" (not necessary to the public, but to victims).
If it's someone who worked their butt off and became ridiculously rich, or if it's someone who hardly did anything but had this amazing idea and became ridiculously rich, then no their wealth is their own, and no one has any right it it but the people who worked for it.
Allow me to give you one more example. A very close friend of mine and her husband believe that life is meant to be fun all the time. The believe they need to be out spending money every weekend, and doing expensive, fun things. I on the other hand, while I love having fun, I believe in saving for a rainy day, and I KNOW that rainy day is coming. So I'm not out there maxing out my credit cards, and buying designer purses and shoes and eating at fancy restaurants, however I do have fun, and I do shop at some upper-end stores that I like (mostly grocery stores because I like organic produce, etc) yet I don't believe in shopping til I drop for stuff like clothing, and shoes, etc. I'm not rich yet, but someday I will be because that's one of my goals in life. So it pisses me off when my close friend (mentioned above) talks about income inequality in the US. I've asked her who has a higher level of spending when you compare the two of us, and she admits that it's her, yet she tells me that she believes that "Wealth should be distributed equally."
Why ? Why should those who choose to spend all their money, and have fun now be rewarded for not working hard, and for being careless about not saving for their future ? If homeless kids living in shelters can work hard and even end up going to college, why can't other people work for their own money ? How do you think that (formerly) homeless kid will feel when someone tells him that there is income inequality so he needs to give up the $100,000 he has in the bank (which btw he worked very hard for) ?
It's easy to talk about income inequality, and how we should all share the wealth, etc. but let's talk about those who sit around and do nothing, those who choose to spend their money on beer and cigarettes every week, and those who drive fancy cars they can't afford, etc. Are we asking those people to give us a share of their "wealth" ?
The whole income inequality thing in my opinion is more of "we want everything but we don't want to work hard for it," or rather a case of WANTITIS - I WANT, I WANT, I WANT (but I don't want to get off my butt and work for it!!)
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