What gets me is the job holders in the upper 20% who actively support a system that benefits the non-working (or don't need to work) top 1%.
I make a pretty high wage compared to a cashier at a store, but my interests align with them a lot more than a Walton. Yet my peers are convinced that because they have the trappings of the petite bourgeoisie and a well funded 401k that they have more in common with a Koch.
I'm not familiar with a society that experienced such high inequality and did not have very disruptive upheaval afterwards. One would think the wealthy would advocate for universal health care, education and safety nets as a small price to pay for their own self preservation. On the other hand, they haven't had much to fear from the lower classes for a long time now.
Old article but probably still relevant today: 39% of Americans think they either are (19%) or one day will be (20%) among the top 1% incomes [1]. You can’t get someone to oppose enriching the richest if that person thinks he’s one of them!
Because there has been a successful campaign to vilify the 1%. When you look at income levels, the 1% includes doctors, lawyers, lots of small business owners, and even many software engineers that got good stock grants in Silicon Valley.
So picking 1% as the threshold was very ill-conceived because now it includes many expert professionals and small business owners. So it's very easy to relate to them if you are also an expert or small business owner.
Indeed. The advocacy for Universal Basic Income for the top 1% has always struck me as a wealth insurance move on their behalf. Sustain the status quo and the great unwashed won't sack your property portfolio.
Why do you think so many 1%ers are advocating for Universal Basic Income? It's not due to some altruistic notion that everyone should be able to follow their dream. It's out of fear of a populist revolt. Their backup plan is New Zealand based prepper compounds.
That's exactly what happens in Brazil. The middle class fears the introduction of inheritance tax more than the lack of universal health care or good public schools.
> What gets me is the job holders in the upper 20% who actively support a system that benefits the non-working (or don't need to work) top 1%.
It's not a zero sum game. Just because the 1% benefit from a particular policy, it doesn't mean other non-1% people supporting it don't benefit as well.
This is in keeping with a long term trend in which the standard of living for the median American has been allowed to stagnate for a long time. The male median wage has been stagnant or declining since 1973. This was previously discussed on Hacker News:
Median wage is a bad metric in a world where health insurance costs (and thus non-wage benefits) are rapidly rising. Median household wage is doubly bad in a world of changing household composition.
The statistics for gender are misleading. If you're just comparing the average wage of men and women then of course women are going to earn less: they work less than men on average. If you control for age and whether women have children the gap shrinks a lot (in some areas it reverses).
And an increasing share of wages going to the top income brackets isn't in itself cause for concern, only if the members of the top income brackets are largely static does it matter (since it means income is going to a small group of individuals, rather than a broader group of individuals who are swapped in and out of the top income groups).
So these statistics are hardly "disturbing", though they do merit further research to see how much of a problem these things actually are.
>And an increasing share of wages going to the top income brackets isn't in itself cause for concern, only if the members of the top income brackets are largely static does it matter (since it means income is going to a small group of individuals, rather than a broader group of individuals who are swapped in and out of the top income groups).
Actually I have to disagree, a bifurcation in income is reason to worry in itself. In a society where everything is commodified this wealth gap allows the rich to opt out of normal civil society. A society where a small few can buy their way out of a crap education system, out of a crap healthcare system, etc. isn't just no matter how well we swap people in and out of that group.
Will I believe you or will I believe the secretary-general for the OECD?
“We have reached a tipping point. Inequality can no longer be treated as an afterthought. We need to focus the debate on how the benefits of growth are distributed. Our report ‘In it Together’ and our work on inclusive growth have clearly shown that there doesn’t have to be a trade-off between growth and equality. On the contrary, the opening up of opportunity can spur stronger economic performance and improve living standards across the board!” OECD Secretary-General
> And an increasing share of wages going to the top income brackets isn't in itself cause for concern, only if the members of the top income brackets are largely static does it matter
Cant they control democracy via increase access to speech though wealth.
>And an increasing share of wages going to the top income brackets isn't in itself cause for concern, only if the members of the top income brackets are largely static does it matter (since it means income is going to a small group of individuals, rather than a broader group of individuals who are swapped in and out of the top income groups).
So a society in which there's competition to be among a handful of feudal lords, but where everyone else suffers tenuous and desperation is unconcerning? How so?
We've been through this in American history. It was called the Gilded Age and it was a nightmare for all but a handful of robber barons, resulted in widespread social and political instability, and violence.
> If you control for age and whether women have children the gap shrinks a lot (in some areas it reverses).
I generally agree with this line of thought, but you're also missing the higher level question: why, in our society, do we have to control for women who have children, but we don't have to control for men who have children?
The same could be said for the racial-based statistics, since race might be tied to cultural opinions which could impact how many hours a week or years in a lifetime someone works.
Wage inequality is just a labor aristocracy, divide the masses tactic. We should also be looking at non-wage income i.e. dividends, interest, and capital gains. The untold story: non-wage income in the US is increasing as a share of total income, and the richest of the rich pay the lowest in taxes
What do you mean by "the lowest"? Percentage wise? Because I'm sure they pay millions or even billions in some cases. I agree that the rich might not pay the same percentage that you pay, but that's not even the real problem.
The real problem is that we don't have equal opportunities. That gives the rich people a huge advantage when it comes to earning more money. We don't need to tax the rich more, that doesn't really help you when you're poor. We need to wisely use the money that we already have to create more opportunities for everyone.
These stats are pretty ridiculous. Not all advanced degrees are more valuable than a bachelor's. In my own company, we definitely have men with a BS in computer science earning lots more than women with master's degrees in English and education, but you can hardly blame the wage difference on their genders.
What would you rather have?
1) Perfect income equality (1:1 poorest:richest), but everyone is starving and most don't live out of childhood
2) Perfect income inequality (1:~infinity poorest:richest)), but the poorest in the world have a much higher standard of living and that standard is going up 3-5% a year.
The point I'm driving at here is that income equality, by itself, isn't automatically desirable if the cost is a worse standard of living for the poor.
It makes perfect sense that income inequality would increase due to globalization. The economic ramifications of "correct" business decisions are amplified by orders of magnitude when compared to mercantilist economies a few hundred years ago.
Fallacy of the excluded middle much? We can (and should!) aim for a situation between the two you have described. And in any case, your proposed model isn't working: everyone else has had stagnant real wages since the 1970s.
And income inequality actually is a problem even in and of itself, even without reference to absolute living standards. There's an increasing body of research that higher inequality in a society lowers happiness and increases resentment, ultimately undermining social cohesion and trust in government.
Those that are okay, with this are 'temporarily embarrassed millionaires' who don't have millions yet. Fact, remains only people that love capitalism are capitalists themselves. for the rest of us we're doomed, if we don't embrace BI, Unions and a massive welfare state. Also full 100% inheritance tax.
I disagree, I happen to love capitalism though I'm just a student. Its brought about incredible changes, and raised the standard of living for billions across the world. I've lived in post-soviet countries, and I've lived in the west and I'd much rather live within a capitalist system. Socialism and its derivatives do little to replace inequality as they merely replace trackable, earn-able financial capital with an amorphous social capital. One gets jobs based on who they know, who their parents are or perhaps what tribe they come from. No one can reasonably aspire to the the child of the nomenclatura. One can reasonably push toward the middle class, or upper middle class. Further within a racially stratified country, it seems likely that ethnic class-difference would be reinforced rather than alleviated.
I know that the "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" rhetoric is supposed to frighten or shame me into supporting liberal causes (most notably wealth redistribution), but although you're absolutely correct that I don't have millions and likely never will, when I compare how I grew up to what I've been able to carve out for myself by just educating myself and doing the best job I could against what I see in places like Venezuela, I continue to be more concerned by people like you than people like, say, the Koch brothers. It's a shame that traditionally left-wing causes like humane working conditions get bound up in really dangerous suggestions like universal basic income and single-payer healthcare, because there are a lot of areas where America could stand to improve if only we could stop being so back-biting and divisive.
I don't think I will ever be as rich as Bill Gates but I would still rather live in a capitalist country as a middle class person than in a communist country as a rich person.
I'm not a capitalist (if you define that as someone who makes the majority of their income from investments). I in no way feel "doomed". I was able to lift myself from poverty by dedicating my life to a craft I love (software development). The system we inhabit in the West allowed that to happen. Quite the opposite of doomed.
Everytime I see this proposal it's of the "burning bridges" type. To ensure that everyone starts at the same crappy starting position. There are never any considerations what to actually use the tax revenue on. It's only intended purpose is to take away money from the "evil" rich parents. The justification is that the income is unearned but the flaw with this type of justification is that the parents clearly earned the money and paid taxes on it.
So far I haven't seen any proposals to redistribute the money to actually decrease inequality other than by making everyone equally poor. How about distributing that money back either in form of a UBI or some kind of trust fund that children can withdraw from at the age of 18. I haven't seen anything like that and therefore I'm against a 100% inheritance tax.
[+] [-] LarryDarrell|8 years ago|reply
I make a pretty high wage compared to a cashier at a store, but my interests align with them a lot more than a Walton. Yet my peers are convinced that because they have the trappings of the petite bourgeoisie and a well funded 401k that they have more in common with a Koch.
I'm not familiar with a society that experienced such high inequality and did not have very disruptive upheaval afterwards. One would think the wealthy would advocate for universal health care, education and safety nets as a small price to pay for their own self preservation. On the other hand, they haven't had much to fear from the lower classes for a long time now.
[+] [-] ryandrake|8 years ago|reply
1: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/12/opinion/the-triumph-of-hop...
[+] [-] hueving|8 years ago|reply
So picking 1% as the threshold was very ill-conceived because now it includes many expert professionals and small business owners. So it's very easy to relate to them if you are also an expert or small business owner.
[+] [-] jeffdavis|8 years ago|reply
You may disagree, but many people do have priciples that include private property rights, limited government, and flatter tax schemes.
[+] [-] l33tbro|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joejerryronnie|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forinti|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RickJWag|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kermittd|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] malvosenior|8 years ago|reply
It's not a zero sum game. Just because the 1% benefit from a particular policy, it doesn't mean other non-1% people supporting it don't benefit as well.
[+] [-] athenot|8 years ago|reply
http://www.epi.org/publication/the-state-of-american-wages-2...
The Bloomberg article didn't even mention whether the changes were adjusted for inflation (they are).
[+] [-] sokoloff|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lkrubner|8 years ago|reply
http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/do-men-become-warlike...
Also, consider that, when it comes to death-by-childbirth, the USA is among the very worst developed countries:
https://maternityneighborhood.com/the-case-for-care-model-in...
[+] [-] rory096|8 years ago|reply
https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/the-region/where...
[+] [-] 39d3493I93|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jeffreyrogers|8 years ago|reply
And an increasing share of wages going to the top income brackets isn't in itself cause for concern, only if the members of the top income brackets are largely static does it matter (since it means income is going to a small group of individuals, rather than a broader group of individuals who are swapped in and out of the top income groups).
So these statistics are hardly "disturbing", though they do merit further research to see how much of a problem these things actually are.
[+] [-] gameswithgo|8 years ago|reply
Yes it is, history teaches us that it leads to dissastisfaction and in some cases violent revolution.
[+] [-] frgtpsswrdlame|8 years ago|reply
Actually I have to disagree, a bifurcation in income is reason to worry in itself. In a society where everything is commodified this wealth gap allows the rich to opt out of normal civil society. A society where a small few can buy their way out of a crap education system, out of a crap healthcare system, etc. isn't just no matter how well we swap people in and out of that group.
[+] [-] igravious|8 years ago|reply
“We have reached a tipping point. Inequality can no longer be treated as an afterthought. We need to focus the debate on how the benefits of growth are distributed. Our report ‘In it Together’ and our work on inclusive growth have clearly shown that there doesn’t have to be a trade-off between growth and equality. On the contrary, the opening up of opportunity can spur stronger economic performance and improve living standards across the board!” OECD Secretary-General
http://www.oecd.org/social/inequality.htm
Hmm, I wonder ;-)
edit: We know that the USA ranks lower than almost every other OECD country in terms of social mobility, see pages 4 and 5 of this slide deck: https://www.oecd.org/eco/growth/NERO-22-June-2015-income-ine...
[+] [-] dominotw|8 years ago|reply
Cant they control democracy via increase access to speech though wealth.
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] knuththetruth|8 years ago|reply
So a society in which there's competition to be among a handful of feudal lords, but where everyone else suffers tenuous and desperation is unconcerning? How so?
We've been through this in American history. It was called the Gilded Age and it was a nightmare for all but a handful of robber barons, resulted in widespread social and political instability, and violence.
[+] [-] sbov|8 years ago|reply
I generally agree with this line of thought, but you're also missing the higher level question: why, in our society, do we have to control for women who have children, but we don't have to control for men who have children?
[+] [-] netfire|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 12312390123|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] opportune|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Flavius|8 years ago|reply
The real problem is that we don't have equal opportunities. That gives the rich people a huge advantage when it comes to earning more money. We don't need to tax the rich more, that doesn't really help you when you're poor. We need to wisely use the money that we already have to create more opportunities for everyone.
[+] [-] milkshakes|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BadCookie|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qwerty2020|8 years ago|reply
https://erikrood.com/Posts/consumer_expenditures.html
[+] [-] d357r0y3r|8 years ago|reply
The point I'm driving at here is that income equality, by itself, isn't automatically desirable if the cost is a worse standard of living for the poor.
It makes perfect sense that income inequality would increase due to globalization. The economic ramifications of "correct" business decisions are amplified by orders of magnitude when compared to mercantilist economies a few hundred years ago.
[+] [-] Analemma_|8 years ago|reply
And income inequality actually is a problem even in and of itself, even without reference to absolute living standards. There's an increasing body of research that higher inequality in a society lowers happiness and increases resentment, ultimately undermining social cohesion and trust in government.
[+] [-] plandis|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] opportune|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mieses|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dzonga|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thrden|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] commandlinefan|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akkat|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] malvosenior|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imtringued|8 years ago|reply
Everytime I see this proposal it's of the "burning bridges" type. To ensure that everyone starts at the same crappy starting position. There are never any considerations what to actually use the tax revenue on. It's only intended purpose is to take away money from the "evil" rich parents. The justification is that the income is unearned but the flaw with this type of justification is that the parents clearly earned the money and paid taxes on it.
So far I haven't seen any proposals to redistribute the money to actually decrease inequality other than by making everyone equally poor. How about distributing that money back either in form of a UBI or some kind of trust fund that children can withdraw from at the age of 18. I haven't seen anything like that and therefore I'm against a 100% inheritance tax.