"Democracy for the rich"

[Audie]

The median income figure is an average, and requires interpretation. For example, what is the median cost of living? 59K in NYC or most of California won't even pay your rent. Constructive ideas on what to do? Increase the marginal tax rate back to what it was 1950-1970.

I was asking for an interpretation.

I do think those who are rightly or otherwise
concerned that there are "so many with so little"
should spend a bit of time in the third world,
for perspective.

I think there are few in the USA with "so little"
as to be kind of tragic are in that situaiton
for reasons other than that they did not,
or could not, try harder.

Do you want to tax the rich and rive to the poor
and call that a solution?

 

[Mindmaster]

It is an absolute myth that "anyone can make it". You have a bigger chance at being struck by lightning that you do going from the bottom to the top of society. And it requires hard work, and LUCK. Simple luck, which is why it is so rare. Social class mobility in the US is declining, and the current generation will be less well off that their parents. This isn't because they are lazy, it's because the cost of living has risen since the 1970s and wages have stagnated at remained at 1970s levels. It has a real human cost, and the reality of life is that it takes money, connections, and luck to get ahead, and it's hard to acquire those if you aren't born with them.

Some recommended reading: https://www.amazon.com/Evicted-Pove...icted+poverty+and+profit+in+the+american+city

I'm pretty sure anyone can make it, but yeah, if you want to be the next Jeff Bezos that is like winning the lottery -- few people do that well, even IF they are doing well.

I guess the other argument I'd posit is, what is stopping you? School is basically "pay for it later", but even that isn't the only avenue -- you could start side businesses, or even just be really careful with saving money and investing. I did some calculations with saving when I was younger and it's basically impossible to not be a millionaire in this country -- all you have to do is save 20% of your pay. That's not even investing, just putting money aside. If you were making an average salary of 40-50k up until retirement socking away 10k/year into a managed IRA. Without the IRA, it'd still be 300,000 -- you'd certainly not be poor in retirement. Mind you, I'm talking a _really_ stable type of investment that gives you about 12-17% a year. How many jobs that you do when you go to college pay that much? Almost all of them. It's very attainable. If your salary goes up, you'd reach that even sooner. But, I'm assuming you work 30 years total for this conversation.

You have to accept that there is a class as a fundamental point of argument, but really there is only a division by "sense and laziness". If you're not saving 20% of your pay, you're not being sensible and that's why you're never going to be rich. It's nothing about opportunities being denied to you.

 

[Revoltingest]

Yeah, somehow I don't think that will help anyone's outcome. But, the other bit is it's not a lie.

Sure, you have to be picky about career selection and whether what you've invested in otherwise leads to a payoff. But, that doesn't mean you can't get what you want if you try with all of the effort you can muster.

I agree.
But I'm reminded of a Henry Ford quote which goes something like this....
"Whether you think you can, or think you can't...you're right."
The 1st half is advisory.
The 2nd half is prologue.

You aren't going to get rich being a fast food server, or a janitor. You just aren't. But, you could use the income from that to develop another opportunity. I've found most of the people complaining about these sorts of things settle at some level, and since it's easier to *****, they do. They probably make enough to pay the rent and eat, but that's all they're willing to work for. Of course, that's all you NEED to work for -- so, don't think I find fault with that. But, again, you want more -- nothing is stopping you. Add skills, invest money in things that produce income, or whatever -- but certainly don't pretend like there is no way out of the hole.

If anything is "wrong" in this whole debacle it's the tolerance for people to listen to people complain about how crappy their situation is and not rebuke it correctly, aka, "You caused this, but the good news is you can undo it too." There is a culture of having a lack of personal responsibility, and I find that to be the biggest problem. Period.

I notice that a sense of personal responsibility correlates with success (strong
sense) and failure (weak sense). As I've said, nothing in life is guaranteed.
I'm reminded of a Louis Pasteur quote which goes something like....
"Chance favors the prepared mind."

Perhaps @ChristineM can quote it in its original Froggish, eh.

 

[Quintessence]

I knew you'd agree.
But I was pointing out that the Ameristanian
"myth" of succuss thru hard work is not a "lie".
It's just not guaranteed.

We're often taught that it is, though. That's part of the problem.

I have to have a conversation about this on a fairly regular basis with students. I get a lot of students interested in careers in human medicine. There are certain, specific benchmarks they have to pass to be considered for those sorts of programs - that bit requires dedication. Beyond that, there's a huge bottleneck between undergraduate and professional programs. There will be hundreds (sometimes thousands) of well-qualified applicants competing for those spots. Students who do everything right will be rejected.

It's especially hard for students coming from the lower socioeconomic tiers. Things that make an application stand out demand time - time these students don't have because they're too busy working one or two jobs to survive. There's ways to make it work, but it's considerably more difficult. I've had to watch many students just give up... not because they want to but because they've had to given the cards they were dealt.

Education bottlenecks are among the biggest contributers to what @Vouthon mentioned about limited social mobility these days. Kids who want to rise up through education face huge obstacles, not just during their programs, but after. What happens when these kids fail? The costs of "failure" (not their failure - this is a societal failure but students will take it personal anyway) are so much higher for them, because they've just saddled themselves with tens of thousands of dollars in loans. I meet with students looking for certainty that this cost will be worth it. I really wish I could give it to them. What I wish for more is that the state and federal government would properly fund public education like it is supposed to in the first place.

 

[Audie]

We're often taught that it is, though. That's part of the problem.

What a disaster for those who think
they are entitled to success!

Likewise for those tho are taught that
it is a myth, that the deck is stacked, and
it is someone else's fault when they flop.

 

[Revoltingest]

Anecdote time.....
I've had 2 commercial tenants who did furniture refinishing & repair.
Tenant #1 was a white guy who came from a comfortable background.
Not wealthy, but middle class Jewish business owners. As a tenant, he
couldn't pay his rent. He was barely scraping by. He pulled money from
his business to fuel a lifestyle he couldn't really afford. He seemed to be
coasting....not working long hours...not dedicated to meeting his obligations.

Tenant #2 was a black guy who grew up in more deprived circumstances.
He worked for #1 as an employee, & eventually bought the business from #1.
#2 moved his family into the business, with his wife working alongside him for
long hours. For the kids, this was their daycare. He even bought a cheap RV
trailer to spend the nite in so he could work longer hours. #2 now runs the
business far more successfully. There have been difficulties, but he is overcoming
them. He is living the dream which many would say is a lie.

I've since sold the building, but #1 doesn't maintain contact with me
(still owing back rent). #2 & I are friends who do business together.

 

[Nakosis]

Lenin: The State and Revolution

The State and Revolution

V. I. Lenin (1917)
​

In capitalist society, under the conditions most favorable to its development, we have more or less complete democracy in the democratic republic. But this democracy is always bound by the narrow framework of capitalist exploitation and consequently always remains, in reality, a democracy for the minority, only for the possessing classes, only for the rich.

Freedom in capitalist society always remains just about the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slave-owners. The modern wage slaves, owing to the conditions of capitalist exploitation, are so much crushed by want and poverty that "democracy is nothing to them," "politics is nothing to them"; that, in the ordinary peaceful course of events, the majority of the population is debarred from participating in social and political life...

Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich - that is the democracy of capitalist society. ​

Now, let me make something crystal clear. I regard Lenin as a demagogic rascal, motivated by a cult of materialist-teleological-utopian violence, who committed a slew of unforgivable atrocities against the very peasants he claimed to be fighting for against the Tsarist, and then liberal, Russian state. He was the midwife of totalitarian Stalinism and its mass murder of millions of defenceless people, not to mention its ethnocide and forced relocation of minority nationalities, as well as the gulag terror system that decimated so many lives from Lithuania to Kazakhstan. I'm also a Christian, so his savage persecution of the Orthodox Church and other religions in the Soviet Union earns my added scorn.

He thus rates very poorly in my categorisation of influential historical personages, given that his legacy has been almost entirely negative (in my estimation).

So, needless to say, I don't take what I'm about to say lightly or with the remotest hint of relish....but I think Lenin had a point. Due to his crimes, this is difficult to say. But I can't deny it. The man had a point. His solution was terrible but his analysis of the sickness wasn't very far off the mark and is now rather prescient, like that of his ideological forbear Karl Marx.

21st century democracy has increasingly proven inept at restraining corporate power and monopoly. Between 1980 and 2016, the top 1% acquired 28% of the aggregate increase in real incomes in Westernized democracies. The wage disparity between the average chief executive and and the average employee rose tenfold from 1970 to circa. 400. Multinational companies hoard wealth and influence governments around they world, harvesting personal data on private citizens and manipulating social media to further a corporatist agenda. They circumvent the legislation of national, elected legislatures by means of investor-state arbitration. They harm and degradation the environment. They evade tax.

In case someone says, "but wait, we've been here before - the gilded age in the 19th century! Laissez-faire Victorian Britain!", I would like to note that modern inequality is wedded to a shocking drop in social mobility not experienced even by in the 1800s, if measured by its sheer difference in scale. The U.S., which once boasted the most socially mobile lower middle class, is now the hardest Western society in which to climb the social ladder according to statistics. "If you want to be smart and highly energetic, the most important single step you could take is to choose the right parents," said Robert Frank. He's right, unfortunately.

If we don't do something major, I fear that we are on a downward trajectory brought about by ignorance of what it took to bring about the Western European "idea" in the first place, lack of feeling for society's losers and those left-behind by the rapacious onslaught of financial globalization (even though I support both it and free trade in principle), and crass complacency about our system's durability despite the solemn warning-shot of the 2009 banking crisis and the credit crunch.

The consequence of this generational - and I would add suicidal - misjudgement, is authoritarian populism and it's ever-rising appeal to young, socially dislocated men in particular. Jordan Peterson will be the first of many ideologues targeting impressionable young minds.

If we witness a whole generation of radicalised young men drawn to authoritarian nationalism (as we seem to be), their movement is our monster. Our system has created this distrust of "elites" (however nebulously defined). I would say that our liberal democratic system is as guilty as that of the aristocratic and mercantile one that preceded it, the policies of which - land enclosure and appropriation - fanned thievery and brigandage in sixteenth century England.

Are we really so far from the unequal, slave-holding, elitist democracy of classical Athens as we commonly assume? Lenin thought we weren't and with reluctance I'm starting to believe him. An extended franchise is not enough to provide real and effective equality.

Discuss.

It doesn't really matter that "the top 1% acquired 28% of the aggregate increase in real incomes in Westernized democracies". What happens to the wealthy doesn't affect me. My wealth, my earning power is on me. If I achieve a million dollar salary there's nothing stopping you from achieving the same.

However, people rise to the level of their competency. The issue IMO increasing the competency of people in general.

The best way I've seen of this is through some kind of mentoring program. As you quoted, ""If you want to be smart and highly energetic, the most important single step you could take is to choose the right parents," That's true, successful parents make great mentors.

Unfortunately not all parents are successful. Much better to be born to successful parents then unsuccessful one. This IMO is what limits ones upward mobility than anything else. Occasionally you get an individual who can break through this barrier and become successful themselves.

Others find a teacher, a friend, someone to teach them how to achieve success. People need to learn from the successful and rich. They did enough of the right things to become successful. We need to take the knowledge of success and find a way to transfer it to those less successful.

I see success transferred often but usually it is through family and friends. Folks have a vested interest in helping family and friends. Strangers, not so much.

I'm not sure how we could go about encouraging some type of mentoring program for the unsuccessful people of the world but that's what we need.

 

[Revoltingest]

We're often taught that it is, though. That's part of the problem.

I have to have a conversation about this on a fairly regular basis with students. I get a lot of students interested in careers in human medicine. There are certain, specific benchmarks they have to pass to be considered for those sorts of programs - that bit requires dedication. Beyond that, there's a huge bottleneck between undergraduate and professional programs. There will be hundreds (sometimes thousands) of well-qualified applicants competing for those spots. Students who do everything right will be rejected.

It's especially hard for students coming from the lower socioeconomic tiers. Things that make an application stand out demand time - time these students don't have because they're too busy working one or two jobs to survive. There's ways to make it work, but it's considerably more difficult. I've had to watch many students just give up... not because they want to but because they've had to given the cards they were dealt.

Education bottlenecks are among the biggest contributers to what @Vouthon mentioned about limited social mobility these days. Kids who want to rise up through education face huge obstacles, not just during their programs, but after. What happens when these kids fail? The costs of "failure" (not their failure - this is a societal failure but students will take it personal anyway) are so much higher for them, because they've just saddled themselves with tens of thousands of dollars in loans. I meet with students looking for certainty that this cost will be worth it. I really wish I could give it to them. What I wish for more is that the state and federal government would properly fund public education like it is supposed to in the first place.

When I coach people to realize their ambitions, I find it's important to have
realistic expectations. Working hard & smart doesn't guarantee one will
get what one has set one's sights upon. But it does give one the ability &
flexibility to exploit other opportunities. I've always found that qualified
people succeed, albeit seldom exactly how they planned.
I've been a total failure as some things.
It never stopped me.

 

[Orbit]

I'm pretty sure anyone can make it, but yeah, if you want to be the next Jeff Bezos that is like winning the lottery -- few people do that well, even IF they are doing well.

I guess the other argument I'd posit is, what is stopping you? School is basically "pay for it later", but even that isn't the only avenue -- you could start side businesses, or even just be really careful with saving money and investing. I did some calculations with saving when I was younger and it's basically impossible to not be a millionaire in this country -- all you have to do is save 20% of your pay. That's not even investing, just putting money aside. If you were making an average salary of 40-50k up until retirement socking away 10k/year into a managed IRA. Without the IRA, it'd still be 300,000 -- you'd certainly not be poor in retirement. Mind you, I'm talking a _really_ stable type of investment that gives you about 12-17% a year. How many jobs that you do when you go to college pay that much? Almost all of them. It's very attainable. If your salary goes up, you'd reach that even sooner. But, I'm assuming you work 30 years total for this conversation.

You have to accept that there is a class as a fundamental point of argument, but really there is only a division by "sense and laziness". If you're not saving 20% of your pay, you're not being sensible and that's why you're never going to be rich. It's nothing about opportunities being denied to you.

Many people simply cannot afford to save 20% of their pay; it's going to rent, food, health care/insurance; car repair/gas/insurance. Most Americans live paycheck to paycheck because wages have stagnated since the 1970s while the cost of living has risen.

 

[Audie]

When I coach people to realize their ambitions, I find it's important to have
realistic expectations. Working hard & smart doesn't guarantee one will
get what one has set one's sights upon. But it does give one the ability &
flexibility to exploit other opportunities. I've always found that qualified
people succeed, albeit seldom exactly how they planned.
I've been a total failure as some things.
It never stopped me.

Failing to work hard and smart does, though,
pretty much guarantee economic failure.

There just isnt anything that will help
fools. Observe what happens when people
win the lottery!

A recent example I heard, small one, was
winning about 80,000 dollars: for a paycheck-to-
paycheck guy, that is pretty good!

So what did he do? He put down payments on
TWO Meredes!!

Within the year, he lost them both, and
all t he rest of the money was gone.

 

[Orbit]

I was asking for an interpretation.

I do think those who are rightly or otherwise
concerned that there are "so many with so little"
should spend a bit of time in the third world,
for perspective.

I think there are few in the USA with "so little"
as to be kind of tragic are in that situaiton
for reasons other than that they did not,
or could not, try harder.

Do you want to tax the rich and rive to the poor
and call that a solution?

You can starve in the USA the same way you can in a 3rd world country. You can be homeless in the USA, millions are. Taxing the rich is a solution that has worked in the past, so why not?

 

[Orbit]

Failing to work hard and smart does, though,
pretty much guarantee economic failure.

There just isnt anything that will help
fools. Observe what happens when people
win the lottery!

A recent example I heard, small one, was
winning about 80,000 dollars: for a paycheck-to-
paycheck guy, that is pretty good!

So what did he do? He put down payments on
TWO Meredes!!

Within the year, he lost them both, and
all t he rest of the money was gone.

The Fallacy of Dramatic Instance: this does not mean all people are foolish.

 

[ChristineM]

Chance favors the prepared mind.

Perhaps @ChristineM can quote it in its original Froggish, eh.

Pasteurs quote was :- Le hasard ne favorise que les esprits préparés.

It translates as : - Chance only favours prepared minds

Close enough

 

[Nakosis]

I'm pretty sure anyone can make it, but yeah, if you want to be the next Jeff Bezos that is like winning the lottery -- few people do that well, even IF they are doing well.

I guess the other argument I'd posit is, what is stopping you? School is basically "pay for it later", but even that isn't the only avenue -- you could start side businesses, or even just be really careful with saving money and investing. I did some calculations with saving when I was younger and it's basically impossible to not be a millionaire in this country -- all you have to do is save 20% of your pay. That's not even investing, just putting money aside. If you were making an average salary of 40-50k up until retirement socking away 10k/year into a managed IRA. Without the IRA, it'd still be 300,000 -- you'd certainly not be poor in retirement. Mind you, I'm talking a _really_ stable type of investment that gives you about 12-17% a year. How many jobs that you do when you go to college pay that much? Almost all of them. It's very attainable. If your salary goes up, you'd reach that even sooner. But, I'm assuming you work 30 years total for this conversation.

You have to accept that there is a class as a fundamental point of argument, but really there is only a division by "sense and laziness". If you're not saving 20% of your pay, you're not being sensible and that's why you're never going to be rich. It's nothing about opportunities being denied to you.

This works good if you are on your own. You get a wife and kids it becomes a lot harder to put aside anything extra. So the other advice is to not get married and have kids. At least not until you have a good career going for you.

 

[Audie]

The Fallacy of Dramatic Instance: this does not mean all people are foolish.

Whatevs

 

[Revoltingest]

You can starve in the USA the same way you can in a 3rd world country. You can be homeless in the USA, millions are. Taxing the rich is a solution that has worked in the past, so why not?

They're already taxing the wealthy.
It's about how they spend the money that matters.
Voters (both Dem & Pub) would rather pour it into
foreign countries, either as bombs or cash.

 

[sun rise]

Students who do everything right will be rejected.

It's especially hard for students coming from the lower socioeconomic tiers. Things that make an application stand out demand time - time these students don't have because they're too busy working one or two jobs to survive. There's ways to make it work, but it's considerably more difficult. I've had to watch many students just give up... not because they want to but because they've had to given the cards they were dealt.

The Fallacy of Dramatic Instance: this does not mean all people are foolish.

There are multiple societal and personal assumptions here. One is that success and failure are totally the individuals and that who they were born to, the schools they attended and so forth don't count.

The other and one I subscribe to is that BOTH societal constraints and personal efforts are important.

And to be complete, the final is that society is all and individual effort does not count. But I did not notice this being asserted in this thread.

So from my perspective, using examples to prove a general rule is a logical fallacy. What I'm interested in is how to remove barriers hindering those who are born in dysfunctional families, raised in poverty, exposed to a society where being a successful criminal was "honored", sent to substandard schools and so forth.

To boil it down, I'm in favor of equal opportunity not mandated equal results. If people have equal opportunity, then the outcome is on the person to achieve or not.[

 

[Mindmaster]

This works good if you are on your own. You get a wife and kids it becomes a lot harder to put aside anything extra. So the other advice is to not get married and have kids. At least not until you have a good career going for you.

It's even easier with a wife, tbh, if she works as well. If both are pulling 40-50k you're getting there even faster, like half the time. Living beyond your means and not saving is not being sensible as well. That means, yeah, you buy a smaller house than you can afford on paper because they're going to sell you one that takes 40% of your income and that's too damn much.

Kids do add expenses, but it kind of goes in phases -- they're cheap when they're small, get a bit more costly in the teen years. After the teen years, it's not your damn problem, lol. The most expensive thing in child rearing is diapers and baby formula, seriously... Anything you can do in that regard saves a ton of cash.

Anyway, if you're thinking about the money only here you're missing out. Kids are great.

 

[sun rise]

They're already taxing the wealthy.
It's about how they spend the money that matters.
Voters (both Dem & Pub) would rather pour it into
foreign countries, either as bombs or cash.

To me, corporate welfare is a serious part of the problem as are tax loopholes allowing the wealthy to reduce their burden to almost zero in many cases.

 

[Revoltingest]

So from my perspective, using examples to prove a general rule is a logical fallacy.

And of course, using anecdotes is a most cromulent way to disprove a rule.
I know that you already know that, but it had to be said.