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That mobility is raped in practice. But from an academic and policy perspective, I stand by what I said.
Do you and your family make at least $51,000 a year?
If so, that makes you "rich" as half the population makes less than you do.
And in a democracy, that half can vote to take the money from YOU since you are relatively rich compared to them.
Welcome to USA 2011.
That mobility is raped in practice. But from an academic and policy perspective, I stand by what I said.
I don't think the evidence supports that, but do you think it results in too-narrow concentration of wealth and increased inequality?
An interesting question that raises another question: does increased (or decreased, if you are on that side of the curve) income equality lead to an increased quality of life, does an increased quality of life lead to increased (or decreased, if you are on that side of the curve) income equality, or is there some other factor that is the cause and the other two are correlated effects?
I don't have that answer.
Academic, fine. But why from a policy perspective if that, as you admit, is not reality?
Then we should have a debate about the evidence and what it means.
As for the second question, I don't know if unfettered capitalism necessarily results in too-narrow concentrations of wealth (I also don't know how narrow too narrow is). But given that I'm not concerned with inequality, I'm not so sure I'd care about wealth's concentration. I'd want a better view of the picture before commenting.
I think the alternatives are worse.
You're supposer to have all the answers
Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but how has Japan achieved low inequality while also maintaining low taxes?
Has unfettered capitalism ever been tried, in your opinion?
I haven't thought enough about the goal you set forth, so I can't really say what (my opinion of) the right system for that would be - but I would it's a great first ste to set that goal ("if I'm playing social engineer"). Those who fail to do so are just throwing darts and hoping there is a dart board somewhere in the room.
Apologies if I've misunderstand your second paragraph, but if you are saying that "a system that maximizes the most opportunity for any person to increase their wealth relative to others" is a natural occurence, so we don't need to engineer a system that does that for us... I disagree.
Some parts of the necessary system are in place and we all agree on them: you can't murder all your rivals to capture their wealth, for example. And maybe, in some ways, those "self-evident" parts of the system we've put in place necessitate more parts of the system. Since we can't kill our rivals, and those rivals have used their vast resources to restrict our mobility, then what recourse are we left with?
One project I'd like to do, but I haven't figured out the right way to gather, analyze and report the data, is a "mobility heatmap". Industrialized nations, and especially the United States offer a lot of mobility within certain ranges. While possible, the game is not rigged to allow mobility from the absolute bottom to the absolute top of rung. Mobility is restricted by existing parts of the system. Should we go about removing those restrictions (my opinion is yes), and if so, how do we do it (I don't have a concise opinion on this)?
If we value income mobility (which I very much do), it is important to note that greater income inequality makes income mobility more difficult, but the nature of the distance between rungs on the social ladder.
In my classes, I always define an economic community like a piece of taffy. It's very flexible and you can stretch it quite a bit before it breaks. But eventually, it will break if you weaken the middle enough. This is a fantastic illustration of income equality. We stretch the taffy because we don't want to eat a dense lump of taffy, but we don't want our taffy breaking into a bunch of little pieces either.
Would you agree the US has less relative mobility than other industrialized nations?
I guess I don't understand why you're not concerned with inequality if you agree that too-narrow concentration of wealth and increased inequality is harmful to a society.
In some respects yes, in some no.
Well, part of the problem might be that I don't think increased inequality is necessarily harmful to society. In other words, I don't think economic inequality is a bad thing. And I'm not concerned with inequality for several reasons, one of which is its not being harmful to society (imo).
And we'd need to dig deeper into what cons utes a narrow-concentration of wealth before I'd feel comfortable commenting on that point one way or another.
As for the mobility question - truthfully, I don't know. My gut would tell me its average to above average, but I'm willing to be proven wrong.
I don't know the answer to that one either. They are a country that falls at the peak of the "equality v. quality of life" curve. But which is the chicken, and which is the egg... or is there some kind of Chicken God that made them both appear at the same time?You're supposer to have all the answers
Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but how has Japan achieved low inequality while also maintaining low taxes?
Thanks for the response. Only thing I'll say is that the way I worded that second paragraph was piss-poor, so just ignore it.
That more resembles the description of an answer than an actual answer. Can you be more specific?
IMO, closing the tax loopholes is more important than raising the tax rate. If the loopholes still exist, raising the rates won't have as much effect as the super rich jsut employ their accountants to keep what they actually pay low.
Much like healthcare should focus on lowering the costs as a seperate issue. Just mandating everyone have healthcare will not bring down the rates and the poor will still have issues dealing with the high deductibles that come with the affordable monthly payments.
It is natural for wealth and influence to concentrate. It is also a natural process than the rich surrender power when their blood runs in the streets or, at least, when the threat seems real enough. I am not sure if the use of force is less moral than the use of coercion (the use of capital and influence to expand the wealth of a few at a cost to the majority). The electoral process is so fixed now that the masses only real solution may be the use of force; especially with corporations being legal people and all. In that respect it could be considered moral.
It is not something that I expect will happen soon maybe not even for another generation but we will have events that mirror the 1880-90’s. Just as the income disparity is beginning to mirror those times.
I am only addressing the morality of the use of force to address wrongs and fight influence not the hypothetical percentages you offer since your 51/49% has no correlation to the current situation.
Last edited by byrontx; 10-28-2011 at 11:37 PM.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner...-daniel-fosterIn any event these are complex issues that conservative wonks should care about. Just as conservative wonks should care about massively disproportionate income gains. It’s (tautologically) true that putting money in the hands of job-creators create jobs. But is a 275-percent gain in income for the top one percent of households required to create that 40 percent gain in income for the middle classes? Is all that ac ulated cash likely to be reinvested, or tucked away? Are there free-market-based policies that help channel gains to middle class investors and would-be entrepreneurs, e.g. to those who are most likely to put the marginal dollar to good economic use? Like I said, I’m too dumb to know the answers. But I know we should care about them.
So yes, to my commenter, conservatives should care about the CBO report on income inequality. But there’s another major finding of that report of which liberals should take careful note. Namely:Government Transfers and Federal Taxes Became Less RedistributiveThat’s right, according to that same CBO study, the share of government transfer payments going to the poorest 20 percent of Americans has declined from 50 percent to 35 percent. And the share of those payments going to the wealthiest 80 percent has risen from 50 to 65 percent. In other words, the en lement state is ever less about keeping the poor out of des ution, and ever more about subsidizing the health care and retirement benefits of the likes of Warren Buffett. Liberals are likely to use the CBO report to buttress the case for taxing “the rich” more. But they ought to think instead about subsidizing them less.
Would anyone prefer we were all less wealthy, as long as the gap was reduced?
I have actually often thought about this, though not in those terms. The way I have framed it is "would I accept slower overall growth as long as it was stable and sustainable".
I go back and forth on this. Does slow and steady win the race, or does the world benefit more from country after country flying far too high far too fast then burning out quickly.
Also, yes, I realize that this is not the same question as you posed, but maybe a different way to look at things. I guess you may want to ask the wealthy your question since their concentration of power and wealth is unsustainable and it would seem that ultimately, one way or another, things would have to revert back to a more justifiable distribution of wealth.
Last edited by Drachen; 10-29-2011 at 11:28 AM.
On the contrary, the 51/49 ratio is extremely relevant if you morally support taking from the haves to give to the have nots. When the have nots (many by their own choice) become the majority ALL the working/producing minority will have targets on their backs.
Income inequality as such isn't the problem. The problem is that (too many) people don't have enough and that very many people think the system is unfair/corrupt.
Not what I am saying at all.
I am saying that your average employee has no clue whatsoever how much the CEO and the executives of their business elect to pay themselves, especially relative to how much those executives decide to allot to paying non-executives.
The faulty assumptions you are operating under is that free markets systems never suffer distortions that mask the true interplay of supply and demand.
There is a segment of the population that worships the "free market" as if it is a infallible God of some sort, incapable of doing wrong.
To these dogmatics, less than optimal outcomes of free market activies like monopolies or cartels don't seem to exist. They are as incapable of admitting that capitalism might lead to immoral or distorted outcomes, as any religious fanatic would admit that their version of God might be fallible.
Answer this question:
If executives of corporations decided to take a 10% paycut, and use the money to pay for higher salaries for employees, what would happen to the salary of your average employee?
Japanese CEO pay relative to their own workers is far lower than that in the US. They tend to view such excess as shameful.
They have achieved the outcome of less wealth inequality through social norms somewhat unique to their culture.
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