The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me. (Congress, generation)
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I believe billionaires will fight tooth and nail to keep their fortunes in pretty underhanded ways. And perhaps working class people will fight back with violence if it comes to it (see French Revolution, American Civil War etc). Maybe not though. I truly have no idea what's going to happen. At the very least, I expect more severe supply chain disruptions and various economic aberrations. I'm not an expert, but history tells me that big change usually ain't pretty.
It's completely uncharted territory especially here in the Information Age. Internet and automation technologies are wild cards, no one has any notion where this is going to take us. For example we know that fewer and fewer workers are required to produce goods and services here in 2021 compared to just a decade or two ago. As an engineer I have witnessed enormous shifts in my lifetime. A product that 30 years ago required 10 engineers to get a design to market today might require 2. This is due to the continuously improving efficiency of automated design and analysis software. It's the same thing with office automation - for example, very few companies these days need administrative assistants.
As far as I can tell no one is prepared for the societal changes that will take place in the next couple of decades as automation continues its exponential growth. No one really knows where this will lead us, but it is hard to understand how any of these new technologies will benefit the average person. One possible outcome is a permanent expansion of the lower class, as the demand for labor at all levels, unskilled and professional continues to decrease. The one remaining area of demand are the trades and services that cannot be easily automated.
Sort of off topic from the original thread - which was about income inequality. But the point is that the ultimate income inequality comes about when jobs/vocations/professions disappear due to enterprise automation.
Location: Was Midvalley Oregon; Now Eastside Seattle area
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I am relatively new in this region (one of USA's wealthier municipalities). I discovered the local church having a weekly "open kitchen" and this was relatively good way to meet some people. I also discovered that you can eat pretty well (low threshold taste buds, but fairly sophisticated palate). It's very easy to get a regional transportation pass that is free to minimal cost. Don't know about housing and utilities other than all new buildings must allocate a minimum number of units for subsidized or reduced rent housing.
{We do give to the Church}
Plenty of entry level jobs or parttime jobs here.
Also recognize societal shifts. Young women are more accomplished and driven than men and will be another contentious point.
Agree with many posters here.
Last edited by leastprime; 10-26-2021 at 05:08 PM..
There is so much talk these days about income inequality per capita, income inequality along protected characteristics and how income for the rich should be handled.
It seems odd that often these appear to be linked.
Should doctors and warehouse workers make the same?
If Google and 7-Eleven franchises both have cashier jobs, should they pay the same?
Does the CEO pay of either Google or 7-Eleven have any bearing on setting the wages for the other employees?
Why are these items linked?
The premise for this debate is looking at characteristics of when people should be paid the same. Namely should the difference be based upon company title and whether one influences the other?
The Gini Coefficient Index measures income inequality around the world. It's a very revealing number. And thus it's no surprise that all the biggest trumpeters of income inequality... rarely if ever cite the Gini Index as a factoid. But there are no nations that have 100 percent equality. Or even 80 percent equality.
There is so much talk these days about income inequality per capita, income inequality along protected characteristics and how income for the rich should be handled.
It seems odd that often these appear to be linked.
Should doctors and warehouse workers make the same?
If Google and 7-Eleven franchises both have cashier jobs, should they pay the same?
Does the CEO pay of either Google or 7-Eleven have any bearing on setting the wages for the other employees?
Why are these items linked?
The premise for this debate is looking at characteristics of when people should be paid the same. Namely should the difference be based upon company title and whether one influences the other?
If someone is concerned about inequality, does it automatically follow one must think everyone should be equal in relation to everything? That is an absurd conclusion in my view.
A good framework for this general debate about inequality is provided by the two differing viewpoints of the American philosophers Robert Nozick and John Rawls.
They were both contemporaries at Harvard in the late 20th Century. They both died in 2002 though Rawls was about 15 years older than Nozick.
Rawls wrote his seminal "A Theory of Justice" in 1971 and Nozick wrote his award winning "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" in 1974. Nozick's position leans more toward what I'll term a libertarian view but you can easily google his work for his general arguments.
I think Rawls makes the better arguments which go something like this:
- Rawls aimed to resolve the seemingly competing claims of freedom and equality. His intent was to show that notions of freedom and equality could be integrated into a seamless unity he called justice as fairness.
-The way to create the rules for a just society is to first imagine everyone in an “original position” behind a pre-birth “veil of ignorance” where no one knows what their own natural traits will be: whether they will be rich or poor; beautiful, ugly or plain; smart or not smart; talented or not; healthy or blind or wheel chair bound, etc. Then you could debate what sort of social order people would agree in advance was fair, if they couldn’t know what place they started from.
-In other words, Rawls argues we would choose principles that ensured that if there were inequalities, they existed only to make the situation of the worst off as best as they could be. But this "difference" principle didn't pre-suppose a system of perfect equality. It recognizes that there could be differences of some kind...that the brain surgeon will make more than a cashier.
Market-based economies across the globe (e.g., Canada, the USA, Australia, Germany, Denmark, Japan, South Korea, etc.) make accommodations for the poor and those who are less advantaged. They do this through various means including progressive income taxes. We can debate how much and what is the most effective means for making those accommodations.
But the idea seems pretty well settled despite the incursions of the Nozick's of the world who in my view lost this debate about 75 to 100 years ago. Though I think it is also clear from history that some form of private ownership with incentives is a beneficial system. The issue is how does a society balance justice as fairness within a framework of incentives.
Last edited by Astral_Weeks; 10-27-2021 at 05:02 AM..
The Gini Coefficient Index measures income inequality around the world. It's a very revealing number. And thus it's no surprise that all the biggest trumpeters of income inequality... rarely if ever cite the Gini Index as a factoid. But there are no nations that have 100 percent equality. Or even 80 percent equality.
My biggest problem with the Gini Coefficient Index is that it takes a snapshot in time and preserves it as if continuance was all but certain. Income can come and go quickly. My wife and I are doing very well this year, but did terrible the year before.
When people speak of the 1% doing better....they often forget that the makeup of the 1% is always changing. Really all the number is saying is that ever growing concentrations of income are getting larger.
My biggest problem with the Gini Coefficient Index is that it takes a snapshot in time and preserves it as if continuance was all but certain. Income can come and go quickly. My wife and I are doing very well this year, but did terrible the year before.
When people speak of the 1% doing better....they often forget that the makeup of the 1% is always changing. Really all the number is saying is that ever growing concentrations of income are getting larger.
The Gini Coefficient is just a snapshot in time.
Still, numerous studies/research on this issue has shown an increase income inequality since the 1970's. That is, income disparity actually narrowed in the period roughly from 1940 to 1970. And it has widened or increased since.
Finally, social mobility isn't so fluid that there is actually significant movement between the lower rung to the top rung, etc. Raj Chetty, an economist at Harvard, is one good source for research/studies of this issue.
Still, numerous studies/research on this issue has shown an increase income inequality since the 1970's. That is, income disparity actually narrowed in the period roughly from 1940 to 1970. And it has widened or increased since.
Finally, social mobility isn't so fluid that there is actually significant movement between the lower rung to the top rung, etc. Raj Chetty, an economist at Harvard, is one good source for research/studies of this issue.
Aye, but it truly measures the winners of the day and the spread of incomes. People then take it and make rules for the 1%. With all due respect to Mr. Chetty, his comparative approach is based upon an individual and the generation before them....with relative feeling...and then attempts to back that in with their own definition of inflation.
This also ignores marked shifts that are most paramount in terms of wealth, especially in regards to using tax returns as a basis. The primary drivers of wealth are ownership of business, real estate and investments, advanced degree employment or marriage/inheritance.
One of the biggest explosions in the United States has been the availability of making stock investments. Today one can acquire and trade shares for free, whereas as late as the 90's a single trade would have cost hundreds of dollars in commissions.
Real estate, especially in terms of loans, are much more attainable now than they were the generation before. Access to leverage must always be hinged with an ability to use debt correctly, but the cost of debt has never been cheaper.
Small businesses, while more competitive, have also never been easier to open and operate. Any fool from their home that makes a product can gain instant marketplace access via Amazon or Ebay. Software can back a service provider to fill in the necessary components needed to run a business. If the drive is there to provide a service that is valued by others, the marketplace is willing to accept.
What the Gini Coefficient is truly measuring is how much more the winners win. There is a balance to be sure, but in not overly crystalizing this statistic it leads us to go into more detail. What are those differences? Why do they exist? Are they temporary or permanent? A permanently fixed group would indeed be problematic if it was rigidly locked. A relatively poor person in Communist USSR, despite a lower Gini Coefficient, truly had no necessary legal freedoms to improve their lot in life....save moving to a free country where they start from an even lower lot in life, but can use their knowledge for their own gain. I have met several such real life people that have done exactly that.
Hence bringing us back to the original questioning....perhaps with a twist. What should be equal, or more equal in terms of pay. Certainly a cashier of Google will face different circumstances (if not already automated) than that of a corner convenience store. Their shared title may not reflect these differences. Undoubtedly Larry Page will earn more than the 7-11 owner as well. Does either owner's earnings bear anything in tangent to what a cashier makes. All work hard. It's not a question of one slacks off and the other doesn't. It's just there are different circumstances.
Really, I would argue the recent angst on income equality should really only matter if the population is fixed to a role. If there is no opportunity for someone to improve themselves into a better paid role....not by virtue of artificially creating wage ceilings or floors, but by virtue of freedom of movement. If I cannot move into a better paying role because those are only held out for certain sex or race demographics. Or I'm not allowed access to the training I need and otherwise could complete for some reason other than my own efforts.
In any economy, in any time, we will always have those first pioneers that are breaking new ground. They are inventing something nobody else has before. They are taking risks that previously have not been overcome successfully. This is a good thing, and the encouragement tends to be rewarded financially. Page/Brin brought the world information electronically...for free...while our libraries acquired more encyclopedias. Musk took electric vehicles from a college project done each year by universities throughout and made it happen, despite the known long odds of a new automaker of any kind being successful. Smaller, if you look at the service providers of the smaller companies in your hometown....someone built the team and tools it takes to deliver a service to you. Some of them are not tremendously intelligent. Sometimes that's a favorable attribute. I know how to do this, I'm going to do this.
We will always have the pioneers, the self starters and most people that are content with making a living and allowing others to figure out how it all works out in the greater scheme of things. So long as we are free to cast our own lot...can we truly hope for anything else?
There is a knee-jerk tendency to blame this inequality issue on politics or on political parties or as pandering for votes. This is just a tail-chasing exercise. This topic is all part of a much larger scenario of change in America over the past forty years. Unless you are an economist, demographer or a sociologist studying these changes you might not recognize them -- most of America is too young. The Baby Boomers might recognize some changes but they are passing out of the productive age range and most of what they see or speak out on is falling on deaf ears. They are also arguing from different perspectives without a unified message. Major economic changes were set in place in the 1980s, either unwittingly or with a surreptitiously greedy intent. Both political parties were acquiescent and supportive. You can look at profits and productivity and tax rates and the demise of the middle class and destruction of labor unions over the ensuing years and see that the country has been on an accelerated path toward income and wealth inequality. All of that has come home to roost. Pretending that it is some sort of fake news or one party or the other pandering for votes is a distraction and a con.
Aye, but it truly measures the winners of the day and the spread of incomes. People then take it and make rules for the 1%. With all due respect to Mr. Chetty, his comparative approach is based upon an individual and the generation before them....with relative feeling...and then attempts to back that in with their own definition of inflation.
This also ignores marked shifts that are most paramount in terms of wealth, especially in regards to using tax returns as a basis. The primary drivers of wealth are ownership of business, real estate and investments, advanced degree employment or marriage/inheritance.
What the Gini Coefficient is truly measuring is how much more the winners win. There is a balance to be sure, but in not overly crystalizing this statistic it leads us to go into more detail. What are those differences? Why do they exist? Are they temporary or permanent? A permanently fixed group would indeed be problematic if it was rigidly locked. A relatively poor person in Communist USSR, despite a lower Gini Coefficient, truly had no necessary legal freedoms to improve their lot in life....save moving to a free country where they start from an even lower lot in life, but can use their knowledge for their own gain. I have met several such real life people that have done exactly that.
As the late great George Carlin once said, "They call it the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it."
Numerous studies have shown that it is better to be born rich than smart in America and that mobility between classes is far more limited than myth would have you believe.
Just to name one study done by Georgetown's Center on Education and the Workforce:
-The study found that children with low test scores from high-income families have a 71 percent chance of being affluent adults by the age of 25, compared to only a 31 percent chance for poor children with high test scores.
-Why? The safety nets that well-off students have that keep them on track and these are nets that poor kids lack. So when poor kids fall behind, they stay behind.
Are the so called "winners" of today so much better than the "winners" in past decades? I have a hard time believing CEO's in 2021 are actually 300 to 400 times better than the CEO's circa 1965 when the average multiple of CEO pay to the typical worker was only about 20 to 30 times. Today that ratio is about 300 to 400 times the typical worker pay.
Meritocracy is greatly exaggerated. It becomes a way to justify a professional credentialing game where certain categories of workers are able to carve out high rents for themselves.
Many people first make the false assumption that individual merit or individual talent and effort is the main factor in production, and often it is not. Most human economic activities depend far more importantly on the degree of cooperation that people are able to establish between themselves: cooperation within firms, cooperation between firms in a marketplace, and cooperation in a society at large in terms of having standards of trust, reasonable laws, and so on.
People make these false assumptions about a virtuous meritocracy precisely because the inequality exists and they are seeking a morally satisfying justification for the large gaps in income and wealth. Then, they make the further false assumption that the variation in human merit is actually THAT tremendous. That is truly astonishing. I have no problem with recognizing differences among people and in economic outcomes. But it’s completely false to think that those differences are great enough to explain the kind of variation that we see in the economy of the last few decades.
Last edited by Astral_Weeks; 10-30-2021 at 11:53 PM..
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