Income Inequality: So What?

[Woodsman]

Re: Income Inequality: So What?

re...

Up yours.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Income Inequality: So What?

And yet those same privileged elites got an historic tax cut and everyone else got nothing...

[geodrome]

Re: Income Inequality: So What?

Great to see you around here again geodrome. Do I detect a note of cynicism in your post?

Just a touch of sarcasm to highlight the fallacy :-)

[jk]

Re: Income Inequality: So What?

That's way too far a reach JK. And has nothing to do with the original meaning of the word, as we can see in Belinsky's background which you cite.

I see it the same way Woodsman did. A privileged elite not caring for the working class. Which describes perfectly why Trump won. The elites are too blind to look in the mirror.

as much as i disagree with many things you say, vt, i acknowledge your sincerity and goodwill. perhaps my reaction was informed by the amount of time i spent [in an earlier life] reading soviet history. otoh, if you google the phrase you'll see how the overwhelming majority of references interpret it.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Income Inequality: So What?

the real question is whether we can change course without a major war.

It would not surprise me to see debates about trade, immigration, the global elite, etc totally flushed away and replaced by war in the next 5 to 10 years.

118 degrees in Spain.
Norwegian motorist warned to look for reindeer in tunnels trying avoid the heat.
Price of grains, whiskey, and beer set to double due to crop failure after a one-in-a-150 year drought.
Drought or floods, starvation in Asia is a constant topic.

[vt]

Re: Income Inequality: So What?

Yes if you get in domestic political trouble just start a war or create a fake attack:

https://hotair.com/archives/2018/08/...ation-attempt/

Or if you lose an election that should have been a cake walk you blame it on Russian collusion

We can't let the working classes start to win over the ivory tower elites

[vt]

Re: Income Inequality: So What?

George Gilder's new book: "Life After Google"

http://manonthemargin.com/george-gil...e-book-review/

From page 88-

"The governments of the world, their money unmoored, favor finance over enterprise, shortening the time horizons of economic activity. Among fast traders the rhythms are reduced to seconds and the economy endures a hypertrophy of short-term finance."

Sounds like what EJ has been saying for years.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Income Inequality: So What?

That's a funny read. I agree with a lot of it. I'm less sanguine about 'the cryptocosm,' though. Not that I can't see there being uses for a lot of the tech that comes out of it. But I just don't see it going to way they do. Trust is at the center of human commerce--I mean real human commerce, not robots program trading against each other in cyber space, but 6 levels down, where the real commerce undergirding all the bets and slushy nonsense that sits on top of it--where the rubber hits the road, and a real person has to buy a real product from another real person. And you can't replace that trust with tech. You just can't. The thing that makes me prefer my visa or mastercard is not just ubiquity of vendors who take it and ease of use--although those are nice. It's that I trust that when something inevitably goes wrong and somebody tries to rob me through finding one or more security holes in their system, they will investigate it, eat the loss, and make the situation right. And sure enough, 3 different times at least I've had someone get ahold of a credit card account. One in the north of England in the UK. One in BC, Canada. Another in California. Every time, I've been made whole. Another time I was at an ATM where I went to take out $100 and it printed an error message, but still charged me the $100. I got that money back too. The point is that security systems are not perfect. They're never going to be. A thousand things you never even imagined yet are going to go wrong. The cornerstone has to be trust, not security.

[vt]

Re: Income Inequality: So What?

Yes there is income inequality because in some instances there is talent and work ethic towards higher more rewarding education in the sciences.
Think athletes, inventors, entrepreneurs, risk takers, innovators. Think doctors that spend till their mid thirties obtaining a specialist education. Think
individuals that have worked 12 hours a day, 6 days a week in difficult studies to achieve a goal.

None of this undervalues what middle class and blue collar workers do. They work exceptionally hard. A few take a risk and start a plumbing company
or a auto mechanic shop. They become a successful business and get rewarded for risk. My family came from farming and blue collar truck driving,
railroad engineers, etc. But he pusher their children to get educations, become nurses, teachers, even a couple of doctors.

But here's an interesting fact about what the top 1% of income owners do ($480,000 in 2015). They have a greater share on income, but the top 1% also pay more taxes then the bottom 90%.
So much for the fair share argument.


https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/9...3134340107.jpg

[dcarrigg]

Re: Income Inequality: So What?

VT, I'm not very much interested in why one person makes $40k per year and another makes $80k.

The truth is, all of them, anyone who works for a living, is losing to the people who don't. Let me repeat that: If you work for a living, you are losing. The data don't lie.

There is no job that pays $1,000,000,000 per year. The people earning it earn off capital. It has precisely zero to do with talent, education, or work ethic.

[vt]

Re: Income Inequality: So What?

Guess what? The 1% that pay 90% of the income taxes are actually paying more revenue to the Treasury in spite of lower tax rates:

"But individual income taxes increased by $104 billion, or 7.9%, despite the cut in individual tax rates. How could that be? CBO says one reason is that withholding from paychecks increased by $32 billion, which “largely reflects increases in wages and salaries.” In other words, a faster-growing economy employed more people who made more money." Today's WSJ

Welcome to the dynamic economy

The anti tax cut brigade has been proven wrong again. They live in a make negative world of "Static Economy".

[jk]

Re: Income Inequality: So What?

you forget that the highest incomes are not in the form of "wages and salaries."

also, for all that you celebrate this increase in withholding from high wage earners, somehow the deficits are getting worse. remarkably the deficits are getting worse even in the context of record low [officially measured - how many unhappy part timers?] unemployment, and stagnant wage growth for most workers. if deficits are growing even now, imagine what they'll look like in the next recession.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Income Inequality: So What?

The 1% that pay 90% of the income taxes are actually paying more revenue to the Treasury in spite of lower tax rates:

With income equality reaching all time highs, the top 1% should be paying a lot lot more than 90%. The median (50% of American households) are taking in 58,000 or less. Half of those are below or near the “poverty line.” Expecting these people to contribute more is absurd.

The income of the top 1% is obscene. Not so 40 years ago.

It is difficult to see America as an empire, but it is, and it's crumbling. The greed, corruption, political malfeasance wil be an asterisk at the bottom of the page. The wars and financial looting will be the lead.

[vt]

Re: Income Inequality: So What?

No. The income of the top one tenth of 1% may be obscene. The other nine tenths is likely physician specialists starting careers late, managers that have finally reached a high level of pay after decades of struggle, small business winners that may finally have a few good years, professional sports figures and actors that have a very short window of fame.

The envy and condemnation of hard working individual that may have succeeded while creating many jobs, saving lives, serving communities is disgusting.
Respect those who have made it honestly, who have given back many fold to their communities, who have built job creating companies.

Only condemn those that have stolen, have hurt, have cheated.

But work to have more and more reach success by removing excessive, unnecessary red tape.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-myt...s&page=1&pos=1

[geodrome]

Re: Income Inequality: So What?

No. The income of the top one tenth of 1% may be obscene...

+100

The fundamental distinction is not between the rich and the poor. It is between the state privileged and the non state privileged. See Oppenheimer's political means (coercion) and economic means (peaceful trade).

It's not only banksters, military industrial complex, big pharma etc. who operate via political means. Government teachers for example are also state privileged, but their share of the loot is much smaller. At the same time there are people who got rich via the economic means.

I do think there'd be much less income inequality on the free market, but income inequality per se is not the problem. The problem is the stealing and the looting via the state.