The Only Thing, Historically, That's Curbed Inequality: Catastrophe (theatlantic.com) 516
ColdWetDog writes: The Atlantic has an interesting article on how societies have decreased economic equality. From the report: "Calls to make America great again hark back to a time when income inequality receded even as the economy boomed and the middle class expanded. Yet it is all too easy to forget just how deeply this newfound equality was rooted in the cataclysm of the world wars. The pressures of total war became a uniquely powerful catalyst of equalizing reform, spurring unionization, extensions of voting rights, and the creation of the welfare state. During and after wartime, aggressive government intervention in the private sector and disruptions to capital holdings wiped out upper-class wealth and funneled resources to workers; even in countries that escaped physical devastation and crippling inflation, marginal tax rates surged upward. Concentrated for the most part between 1914 and 1945, this 'Great Compression' (as economists call it) of inequality took several more decades to fully run its course across the developed world until the 1970s and 1980s, when it stalled and began to go into reverse. This equalizing was a rare outcome in modern times but by no means unique over the long run of history. Inequality has been written into the DNA of civilization ever since humans first settled down to farm the land. Throughout history, only massive, violent shocks that upended the established order proved powerful enough to flatten disparities in income and wealth. They appeared in four different guises: mass-mobilization warfare, violent and transformative revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic epidemics. Hundreds of millions perished in their wake, and by the time these crises had passed, the gap between rich and poor had shrunk."
Slashdot reader ColdWetDog notes: "Yep, the intro is a bit of a swipe at Trump. But this should get the preppers and paranoids in the group all wound up. Grab your foil! Run for the hills!"
Slashdot reader ColdWetDog notes: "Yep, the intro is a bit of a swipe at Trump. But this should get the preppers and paranoids in the group all wound up. Grab your foil! Run for the hills!"
Rose tinted glasses (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously this article makes it sound like life just after a devastating conflict is better than economic prosperity because most people are equally poor.
That's pretty fucked up, and I'm calling BS.
Re:Rose tinted glasses (Score:4, Interesting)
I imagine you might think that if you didn't read the article.
Re: (Score:2)
I imagine you might think that if you didn't read the article.
So you're telling me that we were all more equal before the civil rights era? Before gay marriage was a thing? Because that's what the article is saying.
Re: (Score:2)
So you're telling me that we were all more equal before the civil rights era? Before gay marriage was a thing? Because that's what the article is saying.
Please read the article before your next post. The very first sentence makes it clear it is referring to income inequality, not equality in general.
Re: (Score:2)
Please read the article before your next post. The very first sentence makes it clear it is referring to income inequality, not equality in general.
My very first post was specifically discussing quality of life, especially arguing that making everybody equally poor doesn't make for a better society. And that is in fact what GP was arguing against, though admittedly my second post did go on a tangent, but that was because of the few points the article makes about civil equality (i.e. mention of voting rights.)
Re:Rose tinted glasses (Score:5, Informative)
My very first post was specifically discussing quality of life, especially arguing that making everybody equally poor doesn't make for a better society. And that is in fact what GP was arguing against, though admittedly my second post did go on a tangent, but that was because of the few points the article makes about civil equality (i.e. mention of voting rights.)
I understand what your point was, but it was refuting a strawman argument no one made. The article does not state the world is better off because wars reduced income inequality. It merely states the wars reduced income inequality. It then goes on to say it will be much harder to reduce inequality in peaceful times than it was in the middle of the last century. It does not make any claims that we are worst off because of this, only that we will need to work harder to reduce inequality without outside factors which made it easier in the past.
Re:Rose tinted glasses (Score:5, Interesting)
You know what else we had coming out of the world wars? Incredible advancements in technology. Yes, technology levels the playing field. That's the /. nerd slant.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This is very true and also technology makes being poor much more tolerable. Unless you live in an area with a high cost of living it's very inexpensive to have a place to live with many creature comforts. Food is fairly inexpensive, you typically see all kinds of poor people who suffer from obesity. Not so much in places like Somalia. For around 50 grand I can buy a decent double-wide on 2 acres of land with Central A/C Heat Pump, Dishwasher, Double-Door Fridge with Icemaker and water/ice in the door.
Re: (Score:3)
"Food is fairly inexpensive, you typically see all kinds of poor people who suffer from obesity"
This does not mean what you seem to think it does. People can afford calories and processed foods easily. That yields health problems. The added cost of transporting and storing fresh foods makes it more expensive, and becomes a luxury.
If government housing came with a micro farm, and people accepted the idea of earning their food with a minimum daily effort, shared among the building or block, maybe you would ha
Re: Rose tinted glasses (Score:5, Informative)
I have internet in the stix. It's the only utility that goes as far as my house (not a trailer).
No electricity (solar works well for me), water (well) or sewer (septic tank). I live in a custom semi luxury house with every amenity of someone living in San Francisco would have. I have AC (thee of them actually, two window and a heat pump), a double refigerator and a Bosch dishwasher (hot water provided by popane). I have 30A/120v AC full sinewave power. If I didn't tell you that I was not connected to the grid, you would not know it. And it was done for less than $30,000 and 7 years of work. I have no debt and if need be, I could survive very well on minimum wage, as could many around me (I live near a hippie commune).
Re: Rose tinted glasses (Score:5, Insightful)
This is slashdot. They have no understanding of money. They think 80k is little and minimum wage is plenty. They think life is easy for people in rural areas and think being more than ten minutes from a major city is the rural life. Slashdot is a silly place with people that live in bubbles, unaware of how others even in their own country live.
Re:Rose tinted glasses (Score:5, Informative)
That fantasy land is Europe.
I'd invite you, but we already have far more than enough people who followed the invitation.
Re:Rose tinted glasses (Score:5, Insightful)
The World Wars may have level the playing field somewhat, but the biggest leveler in Western civilization was the Black Death of the 14th century. Before the plague, labor was plentiful and cheap, and land was valuable and held by the wealthy. But with a third of the population gone, labor became much more scarce and expensive, while the value of land plummeted, and fields were left fallow for a lack of farmers to tend them. There was a huge shift of wealth from the landowning class, toward farmers and craftsmen.
Re:Rose tinted glasses (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree and I'd like to add another historical perspective that explains why only disaster ever fixed anything.
What made early Roman society great was its strong plebs and the farmer / craftsman who fought for his country. But as the Roman state expanded and turned into an empire, the labour market was flooded by slave labour, the foundation of the societal pyramid lost its value and eventually all land and wealth passed into the hands of the by now proverbial one percent. Populist politicians, i.e. people who were trying to fix the situation, got murdered because wealth is power and the section of society that could afford to pay for murder and get away with it unsurprisingly didn't consider society as something needing to be fixed. Eventually this set the stage for a seemingly endless series of civil wars, which the rich won. A lot has been written about this, but in my opinion they won in large part because they were rich, which is depressing because that doesn't bide well for our future. A lot of the later civil wars, which severely weakened the Roman state, were essentially about the rich versus the poor, albeit not always about wealth redistribution per se. For example one of the bigger ones was about issues like the poor wanting safety from viking-like raids versus the rich wanting imperial control.
There are plenty of examples in history, where only independence wars or complete collapse of society (eventually) fixes the problem.
So in my view, the reason that only disaster ever fixes anything, is because so far every time people tried to fix it in another way, they were thwarted by the very powerful rich elite.
Re: (Score:3)
OTOH, after the black death came the first wage controls in the form of maximum wages as the rich tried to keep control, which led to peasant revolts all over Europe. The powerful were still powerful enough that not one of those revolts succeeded.
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World wars have a similar effect. Lots of people die, lots of work to be done, few people able to do it, price of labour goes up.
Actually, the total US deaths in WW1 and WW2 combined were about 522,000. Almost insignificant. Only slightly more than the Russian dead in the Battle of Stalingrad alone.
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Yes, and after the wars the US economy boomed on exports to countries with devastated labor forces. This drove up competition for labor in the US market, increasing prices and expanding the middle class.
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I don't think in North America the world wars reduced the number of people available in the workforce - remember that is also when women entered the workforce.
However, the governments started significant infrastructure investments after the wars, and had pumped a ton of money into industry building military equipment.
Technology Disruptive like Wars/Catastrophes (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, technology levels the playing field.
That is because, like major wars and catastrophes, it can devalue established wealth and power and empowers others to succeed based on their ability. The great thing about technology though is that it usually does this with far fewer people dying and it does not require wars to spur it on even though they often do.
Re:Rose tinted glasses (Score:4, Interesting)
Another thing you had was a huge body of men who'd been through a massive, life-changing experience together. One that took immense risk and sacrifice but ultimately ended in victory (at least for us Americans).
If you believe that people are capable at all of learning from experience, they must have brought something away from that.
Re:Rose tinted glasses (Score:5, Interesting)
There is another factor from which America gained huge benefit: German and Japanese industry had been decimated. Without funding from the US they likely could not have recovered at all - but for many decades US manufacturing had effectively no competition. Toyota and BMW were slowly rebuilding from nothing - a process that took decades. It's easy for your factories to get rich, and pay people well, when the only competition is from other companies in your own country with the exact same legal and economic situation as you have.
Then in the 1970s... something very bad happened. With a lot of help from the CIA one of the most brutal dictators of the 20th century came to power - his name was Pinochet. Pinochet was heavily influenced by the likes of Milton Friedman and Friederich Hayek who sold him on their (entirely devoid of evidence theory - that actually rejects the idea that theories need evidence) of how to create a successful economy.
And he followed their advice. It was a dark time - tens of thousands of people were brutally murdered, and twice that many starved to death as he implemented Milton's "shock therapy".
By 1978 though - the economy had gotten over the worst of the harm (if only because the poor people were mostly dead now) and suddenly the so-called Pinochet miracle happened. The economy grew at an astounding rate, for a while it had the highest GDP in the world ! Pinochet actually considered decoupling his currency from the dollar (something he had originally done to try and forceably destroy inflation) just because it was clearly worth so much more.
And while these figure were coming from Chile - that's when Friendman and Hayek started seeing western heads of state - at the height of the Chile boom in 1980 they sold their ideas very successfully to Thatcher and Reagan.
Neither implemented them fully - Thatcher told Hayek why: because it's not possible in a free country. The greatest libertarian economic experiment of all time - took a dictator to do, because it's impossible to get it all done WITHOUT one. Libertarians don't like to talk about that - but they know it's true. That's the real reason Peter Thiel funded Trump: he wanted America to get a dictator who would do what Pinochet did.
That was the beginning of the world we live in now - of the gradual destruction of wages and the working class, the ever growing gap - not just in wealth but in POWER between a small elite and the rest of society - and a world where nobody gets to raise their family with a modicum of financial security anymore.
And the worst part: the Chilean miracle was a lie. It never happened. Chile's amazing GDP ? It consisted ENTIRELY of currency trading, there was no actual productivity on the ground driving it. It was mathematical fiction which made a few Chilean elites very rich but had nothing real to back it up... by 1982 the lie was exposed, the Chilean economy collapsed entirely. Friedman and Hayek's disastrous grand experiment - having already killed tens of thousands of people, came to it's final, crashing failure.
But it was too - late the conservative politicians of the west had picked up the ball and started running with it, and they were not going to change course. They still haven't changed course - even after these same policies caused the biggest global recession since the great depression itself. Among the very first things they started doing when they got back into power last november was to dismantle the (meager) protections that was put in place after the crash in order to prevent another one. Because preventing such crashes doesn't suit them - not when the means to prevent them means bankers TODAY make ever so slightly less obscene profits.
Re:Rose tinted glasses (Score:5, Informative)
There is another factor from which America gained huge benefit: German and Japanese industry had been decimated. Without funding from the US they likely could not have recovered at all - but for many decades US manufacturing had effectively no competition. Toyota and BMW were slowly rebuilding from nothing - a process that took decades. It's easy for your factories to get rich, and pay people well, when the only competition is from other companies in your own country with the exact same legal and economic situation as you have.
No. WW2 ended in 1945. In the 1950's, Germany was already the second largest economy. A decimated, war torn country with no industry doesn't give you the second largest economy in the world. Germany's rebuilding took very little time considering the impact of the war, and the drain of intellectual value foisted on them by the US and UK governments, and it didn't take decades.
Japan took that second spot in 1968. That's 23 years to rebuild everything they lost, and become the second largest economy in the world. Between 1955 and 1973, they averaged 9% growth per year. That would be phenomenal for any country, much less one recovering from the impact of the war.
This notion that US industries simply had no competition for decades is simply very wrong.
Coming out of WW2, we gave veterans the GI Bill. Hundreds of thousands of people could now go to college who would never have been able to without that assistance. In 1956 the US would start the interstate highway system, which would be critical to moving goods around. And in 1961, Kennedy would give the country a direction with a decree to go to the moon.
We had the newly educated masses, the means for transportation, and a path forward. The innovation to come from that in electronics, material science, and miniaturization is what propelled the advances that most people today take for granted, everything from telecommunications to food preservation.
Now, unfortunately, we have people who revel in their stupidity, and no longer understand that we are better as a nation, instead of a mass of stupid idiots with no rhyme or reason.
Re:Rose tinted glasses (Score:5, Interesting)
That is technically correct, but not really the right way to look at it. The driving issue was that the US had huge amounts of surplus industrial capacity after the war. They simply produced more stuff than most economists thought the population could consume (this may not have been true, but I guess nobody imagined how crazy consumerism was going to get). The government's options were to let many of the factories shut down and hope that new businesses would sprout up to absorb the unemployed workers, or engage in a rather sneaky trick that would kill two birds with one stone. This trick involved selling the Germans and Japanese US products on credit. This kept the US factories busy, while also supplying war torn countries with the capital goods they needed to accelerate their recovery. By making it appear as altruism, they could sell this to the US public, when the reality was they just wanted to keep idle hands busy out of fear of another Great Depression.
In a more rational world, surplus industry capacity should just mean that everyone can work less and enjoy a more prosperous life. However, capitalism does not seem able to produce this as a stable outcome, so for now Neo-Mercantilism persists.
Re:Rose tinted glasses (Score:5, Insightful)
It's amazing how people who claim their philosophy is about freedom - seem so comfortable with giving the state, and the rich, near absolute power. They say they want government small - but they don't mean "staying out of people's personal lives" (hence their comfortable alliance with social conservatives), they just mean "not charging much tax". As if that's the only measure of of a government. As if how the tax is used doesn't count at all.
They say they care about freedom - but it doesn't involve freedom from losing everything you built up in a mortgage scam by a bank. It doesn't involve the freedom from bankruptcy just because your daughter got cancer - meaning you are now both childless and pennyless. Those are freedoms they don't care about- because it affects situations they never anticipate experiencing.
The automatic consequence of freedom of association and freedom of contract - which is unionization they deplore as a "distortion of the market". But apparently pooling your resources to negotiate better deals is ONLY a "distortion" if ordinary people do it, companies can do it all they want - up to and including colluding across entire industries and building monopoly cartells - since they argue companies should have "Freedom" from antitrust laws.
They always say that "fraud" should be illegal but I have no idea what the fuck they define as "fraud" except it isn't the definition everybody else uses - since the things they don't consider "fraud" (and actively defend) includes flagrantly lying to your customers about what your product can and cannot do, deceptive practices in contracts, deliberately hiding information from consumers. I've seen libertarian journalists writing articles denouncing the lies of homeopathy and calling homeopaths 'scam-artists' yet never making the logical leap that this implies they OUGHT to be liable for prosecution for fraud. Instead they defend these businesses from such scrutiny by law.
And undermining democratically elected governments to put a business friendly dictator in place is, somehow, never morally unacceptable to them. A long history in which Brazil right now is just the latest chapter (and indeed, they've done it to that country twice before. Each time - after decades of suffering and hardship the Brazilians win back their freedom in the end, and then choose liberal leaders because they are a liberal people - and each time within a few years... these champions of 'freedom' goes full out to destroy their choice).
It seems flagrantly obvious that the one thing libertarians have NEVER given a flying fuck about is liberty. But it does sound better than saying "I want other people to pay my taxes for me and when I rob them I don't want to be punished".
Re:Rose tinted glasses (Score:4, Funny)
Did a libertarian straw man kill your parents or something?
Re: (Score:3)
Mostly it would be the libertarians Friedman and Hayek.And even the libertarian Pinochet - he was libertarian through and through on everything libertarians ever actually talk about: inflation, taxes and regulations. Learn your history.
Re:Rose tinted glasses (Score:4, Informative)
The numbers come from a 2006 article about the 1970's protests against Friedman at his own University - which I had used as a reference to prove the no-platforming is decidedly NOT an millennial invention - the boomers started it (and while I defend no-platforming as BEING rather than attacking free speech, the boomers probably didn't qualify in the same way because they crossed a line millennials have generally refused to go near in protesting to demand the firing of a tenured professor - there's a huge difference between being selective of what outside speakers you want to welcome on campus outside of class, and protesting which TEACHERS are allowed to teach there).
Either way, the numbers on Chile were largely mentioned in passing, as the article was mostly focussed on the role of Friedman and Hayek - and their subsequent influence on the Reagan and Thatcher administrations (it was so funny to see a libertarian declare Reagan an evil that libertarians fought against... when the REASON they fought him was not being libertarian enough after missing my original point: it's impossible for any non-dictator to actually DO all the libertarians want, it cannot be done because in a democracy you can never convince THAT MANY people to sacrifice themselves on the altars of the moneyed gods). Reagan got protested by libertarians because of what checks and balances PREVENTED him from doing.
Anyway, it's quite possible I misread a number, or just remembered one wrong, or the article could have had a typo. As I said my reading of it was for a different purpose and the focus of the article itself was on a different aspect of that history. So I'm happy to concede I may have had that number wrong.
That the Chilean economic 'miracle' never happened however is beyond dispute. It looked great on paper but it never represented any actual growth.
You can contrast that with the Argentinian miracle - arguably the greatest vindication of anarcho-socialist philosophy since the Andalusia. The economy collapsed and the capitalists fled with their cash. Then the workers just showed up and kept running the abandoned businesses as democratic coops... and in the same economic conditions where the capitalists had given up and fled while they still had money... these coops thrived, their profit-sharing meant everybody was also earning more - so they could buy things, which meant the success of every coop guaranteed the success of the others by providing a steady supply of customers who could afford to buy the goods they made. Today these coops provide over 80% of Argentinian employment with the remainder being mostly civil servants and a small number working for overseas companies that have since returned. On paper, Argentina's economy is in dire straits - in PRACTICE it's one of the most successful in the world. The elites aren't making money, the usual measurements are showing terrible declines as a result - but the PEOPLE are living the highest quality of life in their history and funding it with genuine productivity. The exact opposite of how Chile ended up. And thus, very unlikely to experience a similar crash (it's been going on ten years now and no dangerous crash-like signs are showing).
What's interesting is that this form of workers-own-the-means-of-production socialism happened with no statism, no state involvement in fact, and no violence or revolution either. Which probably explains why the outcome has been so positive -since the things that destroyed Soviet-style communism (the authoritarian all-powerful state) was absent from the equation and it retained the best aspects of the free market. These independent businesses still compete with each other in an open market, it's just that in the successful ones the profit actually goes to the people who created it.
Yup (Score:2)
False equivalency. The push for equality is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. Conflicts after the Civil war are just as likely to have quelled movements toward equality as well as helped them.
Re: (Score:2)
False equivalency. The push for equality is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. Conflicts after the Civil war are just as likely to have quelled movements toward equality as well as helped them.
Please define "enshrined", because the declaration of independence isn't a legally binding document within the scope of US law. Also see my post below.
Re:Yup (Score:5, Informative)
The Declaration may not be "Law", but it is _the_ single most important document in American History. The Declaration of Independence is what founded the country. The document provides both the reason for discarding rule from England
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
And the principles that the Country should, and would, have.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
I'd recommend reading the whole Document. [constitution.org] The Constitution is the Law used to protect the rights declared.
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The Declaration may not be "Law", but it is _the_ single most important document in American History.
No, it's not. The document that guides literally every single law in this country is the constitution, so it is quite measurably more important. And in case you didn't notice, the constitution specifically mentions that some people only count as 3/5ths of a person, so it even codified inequality.
Re:Yup (Score:5, Informative)
Have you ever wondered why? It's because they were trying to reduce the influence of slaveholders. A default position of counting slaves as a full person for representation purposes would have led to the slaveholders (who actually voted for representation, not the slaves) controlling the federal government based on the number of slaves they held.
So the 3/5ths compromise as well as granting the power to restrict or prohibit the importation of slaves (also in the Constitution) were the Nation's first two anti-slavery measures, passed over opposition from the slave-holding States. They'd have done more, but then the slave-holding States wouldn't have ratified the Constitution in the first place, making any restrictions in it pointless.
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Why worship a document so clearly penned by hypocrisy - several owned slaves.
Let me educate you on a little US history.
1. Slavery was instituted in the US many decades before any of the 'Founding Fathers' were born.
2. The first slave owner, and the person who argued it through the courts to make it legal, was a black man named Anthony Johnson.
3. Anthony Johnson's first slave, John Casor, and most of the others he ended up owning, were white.
4. Thomas Jefferson, the most-oft cited slave-owning Founder, never bought nor sold a single slave. He inherited them from his in-laws and kept
Re: Yup (Score:5, Insightful)
You should look in to that education thing yourself as you seemed to have skipped quite a bit. On a side-note, if liberalism needs a police state, why does your ideology of choice need lying?
Re: Yup (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, we are calling you a liar, because, as your own source points out, John Casor was of African descent. He was not a white man. You are lying.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Being described as "Negro servant, John Casor," doesn't make him sound overly white.
Re: Yup (Score:4, Insightful)
Did you even read the articles you linked? Some of the "facts" you state are directly refuted in the article. For example you wrote:
3. Anthony Johnson's first slave, John Casor, and most of the others he ended up owning, were white.
But the article you linked says:
Anthony Johnson himself was an indentured servant, just like John Casor, the only difference was that Casor was determined to have a lifetime indenture rather than a limited time like Johnson. A huge number of early colonists were in the US as indentured servants, they just didn't have the capital to move across an ocean and set themselves up without indenturing themselves.
5. Jefferson could not free his slaves as under the laws of the time, he would have been hanged.
Citation needed. You are claiming manumission in Virginia was a capital crime? Sounds like massive bullshit. Reading the Wikipedia article on manumission [wikipedia.org] it specifically mentions laws being passed in Virginia to explicitly allow manumission, exactly what timeframe are you claiming it was a capital crime? Virginia did pass a law requiring a person to get the permission of the government to free a slave in 1723, but that was repealed in 1782:
Heck, he could have freed them even earlier than that, since the 1723 law required permission from the Governor and from 1779-1780 he was the Governor.
4. Thomas Jefferson, the most-oft cited slave-owning Founder, never bought nor sold a single slave. He inherited them from his in-laws
Not completely true, he first inherited 52 slaves from his father, in 1767. He didn't inherit slaves from his in-laws until 1773. Also, Jefferson did free some of his slaves in his lifetime, from this page [wikipedia.org]
I'm not even going to bother with the rest of your claims, are you just making this shit up or do you have an actual source for any of your assertions?
Troll (Score:2, Insightful)
You are the only one that mentioned equality of outcome, which is an anti-American theme. The only way to ensure equality of outcome is to violate other people's rights.
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If you are prosperous, the government won't tax you down to the level of a welfare recipient, and conversely if you are a welfare recipient the government won't subsidise you to the level of a prosperous entrepreneur. Your explanation is so black and white it's lost all value, as reality lies somewhere in between, which your argument ignores entirely.
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Oh and to add to that: The postwar era was also the pre-civil rights era, and now we're less equal?
Furthermore, the rise of big businesses has more or less enforced civil equality, and overall good citizen conduct way more than any laws have. While the government was still debating gay marriage, big corporations were already pushing their health insurance (and other benefit providers) to recognize domestic partnerships as an enticement for them to work there. HR departments in all big companies often over-r
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More seriously, you have it wrong, the catastrophes make for more opportunities and freedom, as the mechanisms of oppression and exploitation are disrupted.
North Korea must be a swell place to live then.
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Give them a nice Civil War to break up their grip on power, and we'll have some data points.
Because Korea obviously hasn't had a civil war in its past, right?
Black Death (Score:2, Informative)
Wages in Europe were extremely low before the Black Death due to massive overpopulation versus amount of available jobs. After the Black Death there were more jobs than people to work them. Not only that there were less competition for limited resources like land. It could be argued Renaissance would not have happened without the Black Death. Families like the Medici would not have succeeded without some upending of the old world order.
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Seriously this article makes it sound like life just after a devastating conflict is better than economic prosperity because most people are equally poor.
The article says nothing of the sort. It makes no contention that we are better off because wars reduced income inequality. It only contends that without similar struggles it will be far more difficult to reduce this inequality. That is a completely different viewpoint then the one you attribute to the article.
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French revolution, which the article surprisingly glosses over, had a number of factors, one of which was inequality. I suspect that's the case in all these examples. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I call bs on anything that uses words like 'The only thing....'
This isn't a TV show, so simplification becomes an exercise in cherry picking to prove your point.
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Best recent example is the Arab spring. Those protests were "against the dictator" (who else) but they weren't "because" of the dictators who had been in power for decades. It wa
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Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands. Not Cuba or Venezuela. Dunno why you'd think that.
Re:Rose tinted glasses (Score:5, Insightful)
Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands.
These countries (nor the ones GP listed) aren't socialist. Socialism is when the government owns the means of production. This means that the workers work directly for the government, and the government sells goods and services directly to consumers. Cuba is almost completely socialist, so is North Korea. Venezuela is mostly socialist, but not quite as much as those two. USSR was completely socialist, along with the warsaw pact nations.
These countries do have a few economic sectors that are socialist, such as their health care systems (i.e. the doctors work for and are paid by the government,) and in the US very few socialist systems exist but they can include things like municipal water, trash, emergency, and fire services. However when the government buys from the private sector and gives to the public, that isn't socialism, that's welfare. For example, food stamps are welfare (essentially, the government buys food and gives it to the poor, but doesn't make the food.)
And then there's communism, which in all cases has never lasted more than a few years. Although USSR identified itself as communist, it was in fact socialist.
Re:Rose tinted glasses (Score:4, Informative)
Although USSR identified itself as communist,
They didn't, though. It's even in the name, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. They had a communist party, whose goal was to achieve communism, but they were fully aware they hadn't gotten there yet.
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That is a tough problem but capitalism does not solve it effectively, as it preferentially allocates resources to those who already have a surplus of them and away from those with a defecit of them, precisely the opposite of an effective solution.
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Let me politically educate you!
In USSR, up until the 1922, reds were collecting all taxes. Then they explicitly permitted private companies in between 22-25 and gave quite good tax perks.
In 1925 all companies except luxury goods producers were nationalised. Luxury goods firms were in private hands up until the death of Stalin.
During the middle of Khrushev's term, they first tried to unscrew the economy by autonomising companies, following the idea "shit floats". Only the biggest companies remained instituti
USSR from parallel universe (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe, I grew up in a different USSR. What "luxury goods"? Name one private label, that existed in USSR in 1952...
They were called "collective farms" and weren't "private" at all. Though ostensibly the farm's chairman was elected, in reality the sole candidate was introduced by the Communist Party's representative for the members of the collective to rubber-stamp. Whatever they collectively farmed could only be sold to the government as well.
Neither Coca-Cola nor Pepsi owned anything — USSR-owned factories were producing the drinks under license.
Nope. Some Soviet models tried to emulate foreign cars, but Fiat didn't own any stake in the factories.
Re:USSR from parallel universe (Score:4, Interesting)
I am not sure, what your background is, but you are confusing things. "Kolhoz" was ostensibly collectively-owned ("kol" for "Kolletive"), although in reality the government exercised full control. The bona-fide government farming enterprises were named "sovhoz" ("sov" for "Soviet"). There was nothing else...
"Cooperative" was a way to obtain an apartment — for lots of money and additional labor — it had nothing to do with means of production.
Re: USSR from parallel universe (Score:5, Insightful)
I did some more research. Yes, i was wrong here
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These countries (nor the ones GP listed) aren't socialist. Socialism is when the government owns the means of production.
Like in the military, schools, medicine, roads, rail, fire brigade, garbage collection, national parks etc you mean?
Pretty much all western nations (incl the US) are socialist to some extent. This may not gel with your ideology, but all of these things are socialist.
Re:Rose tinted glasses (Score:5, Informative)
The main difference is that there is a group of health insurers called Gesetzliche Krankenkassen (health insurers according to law), which are heavily regulated and whose service offerings are governmentally controlled. If you earn less than a specified amount of money as an employee, you are required to get coverage from such an institution. Which institution is up to you, it just has to offer you the contract according to law. There are about 100 different health insurers in Germany, which offer coverage according to law, and most of them operate through the whole of Germany. You are free to buy additional insurance if you want more or better services. If you are on social security, you are automatically insured by a Gesetzliche Krankenkasse. If you are self employed, operate your own business or earn more than the limit, you are completely free in your choice of health insurance.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands.
These countries (nor the ones GP listed) aren't socialist. Socialism is when the government owns the means of production. This means that the workers work directly for the government, and the government sells goods and services directly to consumers.
Whilst you're correct about these countries not being socialist, you're wrong about what socialism is. What you have described is fascism, the merger of corporate and state power. Socialism is not government ownership, but democratic ownership, where people get more of a say in what a service does. Socialism de-emphasises others owning things over you. Communism is state ownership, but not state corporatism.
To use a simple cow analogy,
Fascism = You have two cows, the government takes both and sells
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Whilst you're correct about these countries not being socialist, you're wrong about what socialism is.
No, actually you've got this backwards. I'll explain in detail below.
What you have described is fascism, the merger of corporate and state power.
No, it's not. Fascism (a term coined by Benito Mussolini) specifically references a bundle making a stronger whole. It's not an economic system so much as it is a governing system, so it's pretty much irrelevant to this discussion. Also, a tangentially fun fact, (because a lot of people, including yourself, misunderstand these terms) racism employed by the Nazi party is not central to fascism. Mussolini thought of racism as a distraction,
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It all depends on what your view of "better" is. Some people equate better with a particular population as a whole having a significantly lower chance of starving to death or perishing from a commonly curable disease on any given day. Other assign higher value to the percentages of the population realizing varying, generally accepted as realistically achievable under contemporary circumstances, tiers of material gain.
By every single measurement you've listed, we're doing better. Really, we are, even by that last one. Remember during the 80's when only rich people had 55" TVs in their house? Well, those TVs have shit quality compared to even bigger ones that I've seen poor people with. Oh, and remember car phones? Well, now poor people carry phones in their pocket with far better service availability at much lower service fees, never mind having it tethered to their car.
Re:Rose tinted glasses (Score:5, Insightful)
Doing better than when? Sure during the 80s the poor couldn't afford 55" projection systems for their homes, and now they can afford 55" LCDs! -- for other peoples' homes because poor people have trouble affording real estate anymore, especially in the larger cities, and are stuck renting for most or all of their lives whereas in the 80s it was still relatively expected that you'd own a home by your early-to-mid 30s and back in the 50s during the post-war boom it was just taken as a near guarantee that you'd get your white picket fences (at least if you were a white male or married to one, but discrimination is a whole other issue I'll leave alone for now.)
Income inequality in the US and other western countries is only really starting to get bad enough to be noticed and cautioned about. We're nowhere near the kind of stories you hear about the Middle East and Africa where warlords and kings are among the wealthiest people in the entire world while their country starves around them.
But just because we aren't there yet doesn't mean we shouldn't follow the trends and try to predict what the future will look like, and its not looking good for anyone who isn't in the 1%. Sure we may have a good century or more before it gets unsustainably bad, but its coming (presuming no new major wars or such to act as the reset switch again.)
Unfortunately like global warming, its not something you can immediately point to and say "look! Its a guarantee! We must do something right away!" And like global warming, the people best in position to curtail the issue are the same people who most benefit from keeping the status quo.
How Not To Start A Conversation (Score:3)
If you want to have constructive conversation, you don't try to get people "wound up" and you don't start it with insulting them, either. I'm sure it wasn't intentional, but it does come off as the kind of smug crap that I see everywhere these days.
Whew! (Score:5, Insightful)
Income inequality is an indirect, at best, and irrelevant at worst, measurement.
One cares about the average health, wealth, and longevity of a population. That continues to skyrocket as much of the third world becomes modernized due to economic freedom, the one measurement directly proportional to such measurements.
This continues to improve in the west, too. Their health is stalling, but due to too much cheap food and a lack of needing to physically labor.
Both of these are historically novel "problems", where most places and all other time periods, dollars per calorie and dollars per nutrition were the limiting factor to average health and longevity.
I don't care about the average (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe if you're in Europe things are getting better. Here in the States millennials make 20% less than boomers adjusted for inflation. We're losing ground while our ruling class is gaining. Those aren't feelings. Those are cold, hard facts. 20 minutes in google will prove that.
I want Americans to stop settling for less. I want us to stop fighting among ourselves while the ruling class take everything. Everything you just wrote and every sentiment you just expressed makes it that much less likely that they will.
Re:I don't care about the average (Score:5, Insightful)
doesn't have academic or athletic scholarships
How many of those to you think exist? A few hundred per school perhaps. Maybe a couple thousand for the big schools. Likely around 1-2% of any college campus is filled with students that managed to get scholarships.
try an alternative method to adulthood; vocational training
Which is fine if you really love plumbing or welding or whatever vocation you happen to get into (and I know people who do!) But its not for everybody.
Though I suppose doing a job you like (or at least don't hate) is also "entitlement" by your apparently very conservative world view, but hey we're all granted the right to pursuit of happiness and if she doesn't like trades work then she should be free to exercise that right.
the idea that your daughter is entitled to college, and a career afterwards
No, more like structured around the fact that college or equivalent is pretty much a requirement if you plan on having a career more in-depth than burger flipping or toilet scrubbing.
without having any distinguishing characteristics at all
That's rather the problem. The ability to get through college is no longer considered "distinguishing." Its considered "expected" for even relatively low-level jobs and if you don't have it you're at a serious disadvantage with respect to your peers who do, which is a large portion of the population now.
enlist her in the army... get a big fat enlistment check... a steady career, steady pay, cut and dry promotional requirements
All true. She'll also get the opportunity to shoot and be shot at by people who she has no grudge against because Donny boy says something stupid about some other world leader somewhere. Instead of working to enrich the already rich (at least not so directly,) she'll get the chance to murder and/or die for them. Improvement!
You can call it entitlement if you want, but the exact same argument you're putting forward regarding college level education could just as easily be put forward for K-12 as well. Why bother educating our kids at all? Just send them to the smithy when they turn 13 and there you go! Life solved! I mean it worked for the first few thousand years of human history.
Oh that's a shit life that nobody wants? Well sorry.. you weren't lucky enough to be born into a wealthy family so shut up and quit acting entitled! Just imagine.. poor kids learning how to read. What a stupid concept.
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but the exact same argument you're putting forward regarding college level education could just as easily be put forward for K-12 as well.
If a college education is as important as you make it, then why not have high school diploma accommodate what is needed for the average citizen to be competitive in the work force? We have free education and it's called high school. University is higher education that is not for everyone.
Originally, it was thought that reading, writing, and arthritic was necessary for citizens to participate in a modern society. What does a college provide that is necessary to participate? If you stay STEM or the like then
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But earning 4 times the national average is clearly not equal.
You're leaving out half the story here. If two people given similar opportunities make different choices, and as a result one of them ends up earning four times as much as the other, that isn't inequality. They each had an equal chance at earning that income; one took advantage of that opportunity and the other did not. The thing we should be striving for is equal opportunity, not equality of outcome. It is only natural that someone who takes the long view and makes difficult choices should end up better of
Re:Whew! (Score:4, Insightful)
A thousand people pack into a conference hall: Bill Gates plus 999 homeless people. "Average wealth" says that the average person there is a multi-millionaire. Is that an appropriate measurement to use?
A week later msoft's stock has a major uptick, and "average wealth" says the average person there gained 15% . Still a right measurement?
Re:Whew! (Score:4, Insightful)
Different kinds of averages: Mean = what you did. Median = the guy in the exact middle. Mode = the rank that has the most people.
In your example, Bill gates + 999 homeless, the Mean = muilti-millionaire, Median = homeless, and Mode = homeless.
In other words, your problem is caused entirely by choice of the type of average. The Median average is the kind we need to use for this type of problem.
Article advocates red terror (Score:3, Insightful)
I have read the original article at the Atlantic. This is a horrific horrific article, written by the sympathizers and apologists of the red terror in France, Soviet regimes (China and Soviet Union). Article also says that reduction of the number of the workers was a factor increasing the income the working class and decreased inequality.
First, it casually mentions Soviet and Chinese revolutions with their confiscation and redistribution. Article fails to mention, that such changes were followed by the civil wars against peasantry and the workers, the use of chemical weapons against insurgents, massive red terror, massive incarcerations, loss of the academic, scientific, professional, business and cultural elite by both troika death sentences and emigrations. Don't try to mention this "equality measure" in Russia, for you risk to be roughed up by those who hate communism. Also, article fails to mention, that these revolutions created a super-elite class which keeps most of the wealth in these countries, basically brainy yet criminally dishonest former communist party members who got filthy rich.
Secondly the article mentions confiscatory rate as the solution. Author simply fails to mention that if a marginal rate exceeds 50% people are less likely to try to make more money, and, most importantly, marginal income tax rate does not touch the principle, which is rarely if ever taxed.
This topic of inequality has been covered ad nauseum by Austrian economists, with the one and only conclusion: it is the excessive government regulation that is causing inequality. Here are some basic examples:... medical profession is completely regulated in the USA. The number of medical school graduates is strictly regulated in order not to produce surplus professionals. Many other factors, such as regulations and, for example, requirement to a have malpractice insurance, do add up to the medical practice costs and, subsequently, to the prices. As such, even now with Obamacare in effect, healthcare is un-affordable luxury for many, and some people are suffering from lack of it. If the profession is completely unregulated, and would allow unlimited immigration of medical specialists from anywhere in the world, combined with loosened importation of medications, malpractice reform, would seriously give death blow to the healthcare industry, which does not provide a meaningful increase in the longevity of lives of Americans compared to the countries such as Costa Rica or Albania.
Finally article fails to mention that there are countries where catastrophe was not required to have exceedingly high standard for their citizens. Switzerland. Super low federal taxes, most of the decisions are done locally by the cantons, historically libertarian governmental approach by the Government. There was never a catastrophe in Switzerland, but their living standard is one of the highest in the world. Also, inequality is not considered an issue, there are plenty of rich people, who live there with many regular Swiss minding their own business and not worrying about inequality: why would they?
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Today's angry paranoid crypto-fascist needs to be ranting about Moooslims, Mexicans, gays etc, and the perennial favorite, Jews. No one is so old school these days to waste any time on Commies. It doesn't even rate any nostalgia points.
You can't fully participate in the destruction of American civil society if you stick with these old fashioned attitudes. Ruining our economic system and destroying our world leadership is a big task,
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FYI: Today's 'crypto fascists' call themselves 'anti-fascists'.
Re:Article advocates red terror (Score:4, Informative)
Switzerland looks after its own internally and does not let many random people just wonder in and become Swiss.
People can find a job or are supported if a person cant get work or will never work at the very local, canton level. No fraud, no cheating i.e. no illegals can hide in a vast federal system. Any gov support payments are kept at a normal rate per normal population size. Work is encouraged and rewarded. Nice car, nice house, holidays, or own business. Education gets people ready for work. Some military service then ensures every generation knows how to work together and what their nation has to offer. A few days in the mud, cold, in the back of a truck, up a mountain, been in a bunker gets different people talking and helps build a nation.
The ranks of the unemployable are not allowed to rise every generation by inviting lots of unemployable people in.
The medical profession globally is protected to ensure only the best in any nation can work on a citizen in need of help.
Any medical expert on duty should be the best a nation can educate or have passed the same exams.
No wealthy citizen wants to wake up in their own nation and be told some "medical specialist from anywhere in the world" on duty did not have the skills needed to ensure a normal recovery. So most nations are very aware of who they allow to practice medicine. Only the best get to pass tests and practice.
If a nation wants to save its citizens after a crash or in some emergency it can be very simple.
Have great ambulance crews with real skills and the national support they need. Allow helicopters, aircraft to fly in all weather, at night and bring back patients to only the very best hospitals. Most normal nations can fly helicopters at night in 2017 to get people to a fully equipped hospital.
Teams of the best doctors on duty selected only on merit then get to care for citizens. Not a citizen? Have that travel insurance ready.
No student, work or tourist visa without full cover medial insurance.
The same goes for education. Test the students and only support the very best. Ensure the best get to university.
The Soviet and Chinese experiments soon run of free cash and have to export their way back into hard currency.
China today is investing globally but its own people know of all the corruption, lack of free speech and pollution.
The confiscatory rate is going to get very interesting with EU/NATO nations. How to support vast numbers of people moving in illegally and expecting generations of free gov support. Housing, schools, medical, dental for millions of new people with no new tax rates?
Governments could take on more debt to cover welfare costs
Which Article did you read? (Score:5, Insightful)
Article *never* does a good vs evil judgement. Never advocates anything.
Article simply states: "Inequality was only curbed by catastrophe. Even in the title, it calls all of those events *Catastrophes*!
The point of the Article is to say that constant, mild and progressive policies have seldom had any impact vs catastrophes. The article calls the chinese and soviet revolutions "bloody affairs" and "murderous mechanisms"
Makes you wonder why you're
Why would you hand pick only one school out of inequality when there are many other economists in other countries producing more investigations that we could take into consideration? Many of them have also investigated inequality as a cause and an effect of market failures, that is, failure by the market to maximize the value creation (ie: an inefficient economy).
Switzerland benefited quite a lot from the influx of foreign wealth, not produced by the swiss economy itself. During some of the catastrophes talked about in the article, a lot of the spoils were transferred to Switzerland, and it has a place in the world economy as the most famous tax haven were the beneficiaries of inequality elsewhere stored their wealth. Also, its economy is *far* from unregulated, not quite a libertarian utopia. You will be able to find many more countries with less industrial, environmental, labor and even financial regulations, why didn't you choose one of those instead?
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yeah, equally bad (Score:2)
Yes, you see it here in S.E. Asia (Score:5, Interesting)
So I'm very familiar with two countries, Vietnam and Thailand.
Vietnam, as you all know, went through a difficult occupation by the French, then the Americans, before having their country divided in two and then suffering a devastating civil war which killed millions of people (4 million?) before unification. The result? Everyone, more or less, started out very poor (during the late 70s and early 80s starvation was a real fear). So everyone was equal. Now though, inequality is climbing (fast) as the winners have "capitalized" (ironic comment intended on the supposedly communist country) on their ability to extract a greater and greater portion of the country's rising wealth. Still, for a time, society was remarkably fluid and anyone could be anyone (for example the ex-prime minister came from humble beginnings).
Thailand has not been conquered by a foreign power (ever?), certainly not by the westerners who did so to every other country in S.E. Asia. (That was due to the astuteness of their past king(s) who played the foreigners off against each other). So the power structures in Thailand have remained static for hundreds of years. In the last century, because of the great increase in wealth coming from modernization and technology, much of it was captured by the ruling class. Thus you have an urban elite that was (until recently) running the show from Bangkok (the "Hi So" or High Society) and getting richer and richer in the process. A populist (yet corrupt) billionaire politician used this great divide to sweep himself into power (sound familiar) only to be ultimately blocked by the military (acting on behest of the existing power structures).
Re:Yes, you see it here in S.E. Asia (Score:4, Interesting)
Certainly if you hit Thai history with a big enough hammer, you can shrink it down to a paragraph. That said, you really went off the rails at the end on the politics. It isn't a rich/poor split, it is a Central (Thai) Thai vs ethnic Laos/Khmer. Poor people nearer to Bangkok mostly support the traditional power structures. In the north and east regions that only have a few hundred years of being part of the country, they support the corrupt populists.
If you see the movie "The King and I," (any version) the character of the young prince, in real life he grew up and banished slavery and the old system of numerical social status. It used to be that everybody had an assigned numerical value that they wore pinned to their shirt. It was like that for a long time, generations, and most of the working class were valueless (literal) slaves. It was changed simply by decree; not in response to a social movement or unrest or anything, simply because the King was well educated and told people another way of doing things. So they don't have the same history that most of the world has, of people struggling for rights and freedoms. Rights and freedoms have generally been thrust on them unrequested. And so they do not really have functioning politics.
Oh dear (Score:4, Interesting)
Attempting to analyze the causes and effects of war on Economies would require a rhetorical eloquence no less than those that authored the Federalist Papers, and, at the very least, the same volume of words. Fudging it all down to something as small as your typical The Atlantic commentary read is proportionally equal to asking a five year old to draft their own theories of government.
But, let's at least have a little fun with this, and perhaps attempt at sharing something of insight. Here goes:
A brief study of the history of the United States economy would generally yield a result looking no different in approximation than an increasing sine wave, generally increasing at an exponential rate. While there are upward trends and downward trends, of more-or-less of equal duration of time, the economy has been trending upwards since its inception. As for why it's continually trending upwards, no matter how complex the argument, it generally boils down to one simple word:
Balance.
Our country maintains a relative balance between free market and regulation; between public and private sector; between state and federal governments; between taxable income and disposable income...and so on and so forth.
Naturally, given the general liberties our citizens possess, we from time to time will express our displeasure with the existing status quo. Displeasure among a proportion of the populace is inevitable. We all come from different walks of life and form opinions and biases preferring a bias against the balance in the direction of some extremism. As passionate citizens, we may attempt to swing the pendulum hard in a particular direction, as others naturally try to swing it in the opposite. We exercise this through electing representatives who share our views, posting our views online, speaking out at public meetings, attending rallies, drafting petitions, etc, etc. While these motions are a natural result of the state of government that presently exists, they generally do not threaten the state of government itself.
But, occasionally, it does. And it does, because factions within our society generate enough power among the citizens to disrupt the balance in favor of their zealous points of view. Thankfully, the founding fathers created a system of government that generally impedes factions. (To see a much more thorough and more eloquent analysis of this argument, please see Federalist Papers 9 & 10.)
I'm concerned that we may be living in one of those times. Our country is very unbalanced in its political view right now, and the inflammatory rhetoric from a zealous self-righteous minority faction is pouring fuel onto the fire. To make matters worse, one of those zealots is none other than our president. But, I digress.
When it comes to tax policies, balance is key. The United States economy fared very well following both wars, because both wars were funded by high income taxes. The United States economy also fared very well in the 20's, in the 90's, and before 2008, because income tax rates were very low, freeing up vast amounts of investment capital. And then the economies after all these booms crashed hard, much in part due to deregulation and poor investing. My point being this: Creating economic policies that directly reflect the present conditions with the intention of returning to a balanced economy are the keys to success. A zealous application of a tax policy for the sake of the tax policy alone will not contribute to economic success.
Kill everyone (Score:2)
Many ways to go (Score:2)
What will it be, fires?, floods?, pestilence?, mass riots?, Trump?
Yay, we're equal (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, after the war, everyone in Germany was equal. Equally broke, equally without a job, equally without a stable home, equally without a stable government, equally...
Equality wealth != progress (Score:3)
What the article is discussing is bringing the successful down to the level of the unsuccessful. Not finding solutions for why some people don't become successful. Things like free government money and housing reducing the incentive to make one's own way.
The establishment of equal wealth does not elevate the low skilled, unmotivated people. It reduces the efforts of the highly skilled, motivated people. Eventually, the highly skilled, motivated people will rise above once again.
Just as they always have done throughout history.
Instead of treating the successful with disdain, diminishing their accomplishments, and complaining about how they have everything, it's better to strive to be more successful. Or, instead of blaming others for your poor decisions, learn from them and move on.
It's one thing to give people a leg up when times are difficult and expect them to grow. It's another to make entire segments of a population dependent upon other people and and instill a sense of defeat in them.
The later is what many government assistance programs do and why they are drains on an economy instead of growing it. I've known a few people that were very happy to collect their unemployment checks until they were in danger of losing them. Interesting how a timeline of decreasing benefits can be an incentive to try and be successful.
No one cares about 'inequality' ... (Score:3)
... whatever that may be in specific cases.
Every person needs to feel loved and needs to feel competent, preferably by doing useful work they can handle and is thankfully recieved by their community while being and feeling mentally and physically healthy. With food, shelter, security, fulfilment and good regular sex at the foundation. Aside from that, hardly anyone really cares how rich the next guys is vis-a-vis himself.
If I can have all that, I seriously couldn't care less if everyone else was a billionaire but me. And I suspect it's like that for most people.
Bottom line:
Equality != Quality of life inside a society.
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What changes? Change for change's sake is rarely beneficial. Which political actions? Who requires them? Who really benefits? Education that makes people learn and 'internalize' ideas? Which ideas would that be? Internalize is the key word there, isn't it? Sounds more like propaganda to me. Propagandizing is not education of any kind.
I really hope your post is just a really good trolling.
Re:Why is income equality necessarily good? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think most people argue that income inequality is bad on two accounts.
At the upper end, they argue based on a kind of labor theory of income. They ask, if a certain CEO makes 1000x the income of the average worker, is their work really 1000x as difficult, or 1000x as laborious? The answer is obviously no, but that's not the way our economy works. You could ask the same of movie stars or professional athletes. I don't think this is a useful argument. People at this income level get paid what they can negotiate.
At the other end, they argue that it isn't right for some to be so desperately poor. That's why raising the floor of income (perhaps by a Universal Basic Income) is the other part of the argument. To this I'm much more sympathetic. I live in Los Angeles and don't have to go very far in any direction to find a tent city. People are hurting and they need help.
In my opinion, it's not income inequality that is the real problem, but wealth concentration. The concentration of wealth into fewer hands is bad for the economy. If there is less wealth for most people, then there are less purchasers for an economy's output. It's a deflationary scenario where less available money means businesses have to lower prices to sell, making profits smaller and debts harder to pay off. Bill Gates is only going to buy so many TVs, cars, and houses. Doubling his wealth is not going to change his spending habits. If that amount of wealth was placed in the hands of a thousand people, then there would be a thousand new customers for TVs, cars, and houses. This more distributed kind of customer base can sustain an economy.
From this perspective, extreme income inequality is bad because it leads to catastrophic wealth concentration. The small number of very rich can only be customers to a small number of luxury businesses. Every other business relies on the existence of a much larger customer base that can actually afford their wares. If wealth is too concentrated, there's not enough money in enough hands for most businesses to operate. Businesses suffer and lay off their employees, leading to greater unemployment, leading to even fewer customers, leading to worse business, and on down the vicious cycle.
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Absolute equality is probably just as bad as extreme concentration. I don't think anybody is seriously proposing that we target perfect equality, except Marxist ideologues.
The problem with absolute equality is the enforcement mechanism and the way it tends to crush the spirit of anybody who desires to achieve.
The problem with wealth concentration in the upper tiers is that it leads to *power* concentration in the upper tiers--government by the wealthy, ie, oligarchy.
I think it's often the case that the op
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Rich people used to build things. Now they scavage. They take all the things that greater men built and tear them apart for profit.
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We could call it Bastille Day.
Re:wars destroy wealth (Score:4, Insightful)
Having most of the wealth concentrated in a few hands is stifling to the economy. There are only so many TVs and cars and houses and food one person can buy.
Having more people with disposable income (even if there is less total wealth) is what grows an economy.
If you give 1 man 1 million dollars, he will spend it on something silly like a yacht, but give 1 million people 1 dollar, and most of them will spend it on groceries or rent.
Which stimulates an economy more, yachts or groceries?
Re:wars destroy wealth (Score:5, Insightful)
Consumption is a trivial consequence of production
This is your big fallacy. Consumption is hardly a "trivial" consequence of production. You're right (sort of..) that production stimulates the economy.. at least in so much as we measure GDP by dollars worth of goods produced (you could argue that that's a poor measurement but I won't right now.)
But consumption stimulates production. Nobody produces anything that someone else doesn't want to consume (or at least they don't produce it for long..) A working economy has to be (close to) a balanced equation: Too much production and things get left out to rot (draining value from the economy) and too much consumption can't be sustained (everything will get used up.) There's of course a little leeway in there, especially when you allow for international trade such that you can use imports and exports to shore up whichever side you're lacking, but overall the two have to remain in balance or your economy collapses.
To put it another way, the economy works at the point where supply equals demand. If demand was irrelevant as you claim, we'd only ever need to look at the supply curve.
Economy is all production and exchange of produced goods/services
No, that's GDP. Which is a measure of economic health but its just a number -- its not an economy in itself.
USA cannot stimulate the economy by any extra level of spending because it lives on borrowed money
That's actually the most irrelevant thing in your entire post. The US (and every other country) attempts to control its borrowing to avoid going broke just like any normal person, but just like any normal person can potentially borrow a bit more if things go down the shitter, so can the US. Certainly there is an upper limit on how far you can take that but we're nowhere near the level where they can't stimulate the economy in various ways. Have you forgotten the gigantic corporate bailout from a few years ago? That's exactly the kind of thing you're saying they can't do and recent history proves you wrong.
A million people with 1 dollar each is wealth dissipation, it will do nothing to improve the economy
I suppose you've never heard of those things called "corporations?" They're pretty cool. The came into existence precisely because people wanted to do things that no one person could afford on their own, so they pooled their money (via share distribution) and voila.
the dollar came from the theft of taxation
What the hell does that have to do with anything? But to respond anyway.. taxation is your payment for services rendered by your government. Army, police force, road maintenance, infrastructure. Your taxes pay for all that shit. And if you really want to bitch about welfare, you can consider that the "service" of keeping beggars off the streets and out of your sight/way.
And before you start saying its not a true transaction because you didn't choose what to "buy" well sorry but you did -- via your elected representatives. You can argue that the price is too high or whatever, or that your representatives are choosing to "buy" the wrong services or whatever, but calling it theft is rather disingenuous at best.
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And just to clarify the reasoning behind that big caveat about how this is not an argument in practice against taxation:
- States are just gangs, and taxation is just theft
- Gangs tend to spring up spontaneously in any power vacuum
- Most of them don't know any other way to fund their activity besides theft, though there might in fact be better ways
- Some gangs are better than others (for the people in their turf), and the kind that spontaneously arise are usually the worst; established gangs sometimes in tim
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Now that I know you are from Russia, I can start to understand your viewpoint. You saw the absolute worst-case scenario for how communism could turn out, so it's only natural you would embrace the exact opposite of the spectrum.
The real joke of it all is that the US is the worst-case scenario for capitalism.
All the evils you saw in communism growing up, I see those same evils in capitalism. Both systems served to enrich the powerful at the expense of the weak, the only difference was the particular lie they
Re:wars destroy wealth (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:wars destroy wealth (Score:5, Insightful)
It might be a bit hyperbolic, but its far from delusional -- especially the part about bribes. Bribes are and have always been a tactic of the wealthy to get their way regardless of the cost to anyone else.
Murder is certainly more rare, at least in the Western world (Russia might have a different take on that.) Financial fuckery isn't as much. You occasionally hear of companies selling their product under cost in order to drive the competition out of business.
And depending on how loose you want to read the term "fuckery," you could consider the 2008 market crash as a high-end version of such -- rich people doing rich people things that screw the rest of us over and we've got basically no say in it because dollars speak louder than words in many cases.
Re:wars destroy wealth (Score:5, Insightful)
A poor person gets stuck with a public defender, a rich person gets an amazing lawyer. That means an innocent person without money is more likely to go to prison than an innocent rich person. Or do you seriously think OJ would have gotten off if he was poor and Johnnie Cochran and his team were replaced with a court-appointed public defender? Because if you don't think that's the case, you agree with the person you condemned and owe them an apology.
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The more forward thinking recognized, about a decade ago, that the poor weren't that poor, and that the intelligent weren't buying their bullshit power grab anymore.
Your right, those homeless people you see begging for money on the street corners are totally paid actors sponsored by the evil left. And those Detroit/NYC/Philly slums they show on TV are all movie sets.
A cardboard box is still technically a roof over their head, and the leftovers from the local dumpster is technically food, so why should they have the right to demand more?
As long as we have a nice house and a nice car, why should we care about anyone else? We got ours. /s