Income Inequality.

[Audie]

"I know you are but what am I?" Is that the best you can do?

I didn't q what I am. Or say what you are.
Perhaps you'd do well to question yourself
a bit. Esp your notions about economics.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

I'm not anything. Just a realist. The current capitalist system is doing well by you, so naturally you just want to "tweek" it a little to make it a bit less greedy and ruthless. But that strategy has been failing for a very long time. We need a sea change, and we need it soon, because where this is all going is not going to be good for anyone. Not even the well off.

So you're not advocating for revolution?

 

[EconGuy]

How does private prisons make people poor?

Really? By paying corrupt officials to incarcerate them when the court might have otherwise chosen another alternatives. Or hand out longer sentences.

We can agree that being in jail has an economic impact?

So your argument is when crooks rip people off, the poor are mostly effected?

Where did I say that? Strictly speaking, most of the examples of how income inequity affect the poor aren't illegal.

I gave you examples, as you asked, of where the poor are disproportionally affected by the actions of those seeking huge profit without any thought of how it affects people.

That may be true, but that’s not the result of income inequality

Strictly speaking, no, I would agree, it's the result of a growing class of people who have so much money the result is parasitic. When profit is quite literally a fiduciary duty, something bound by law AND individuals and companies have absurd amount of wealth, it will absolutely result in disproportional effects on the poor because the poor have very little political or economic power and the result is an effect on the poor. We can look at other nations where disparity is lower, like the Nordic nations and we see less of this affect which in turn results in higher levels of happiness, lower levels of drug use, less incarceration, lower levels of recidivism, less crime, less teen pregnancy ect, ect.

As of Q4 2021, the top 30,000 people in the US controlled 32.3% of the country's wealth. This means that the top 0.1% of the population controls more wealth than the bottom 90% combined. And I've given you many examples of how they use their income and it affects the poor.

There are political PAC’s for the poor as well; PAC’s exist regardless of income inequality

Sure, there can be PACs that represents animals, but there being PACs that represent the interest of the poor does not mean that the number or political influence of those PACs are even close to parity (and hint: there not). If they were it wouldn't have been so easy to rail off a dozen examples of how the poor are effected by greed.

The examples of crooked business dealings have nothing to do with income inequality because if the gap between the rich and poor were less, these shady deals would still go on.

Again, demonstrably false. These sorts of crimes occur less in places where the income disparity is less.

This has nothing to do with what I was talking about, my point was; just because a worker gets a raise, doesn't mean the rich lose money.

Fair enough, but let's ponder that claim for just a second, and here I'm just asking, you might be right, maybe you've thought of something I haven't. All other things being equal (AOTBE), If a company makes a profit and pays the bottom 20% of its workers (from an income perspective) 10% of the profits as wages, then can you explain to me how paying them, let's say 15% more doesn't result in less profit for investors?

You could argue that a business might raise prices to offset the cost, but businesses don't exist in a vacuum. Companies generally exist in a competitive environment and raising prices, again all other things being equal, will result in shoppers going somewhere else if they can find a lower price. So for example, many towns have a Lowes and Home Depot. If Lowes increases there wages they can either decrease profit or increase prices, which will result in more people going to Home Depot.


All that said, I provided examples of what you ask, how income disparity affects the poor.

You responded by telling me that there will always be people that will try to rip other off (which I hope we can agree, AOTBE, having more money relative to others increases the capacity to affect those of lesser means (think back to the example with the Hedge funds buying up and evicting people in trailer parks so they can legally take their property and sell it to others in the form of rent. This simply wouldn't be possible on the same scale if so much money wasn't in so few hands.

Respectfully,

EG

 

[Kfox]

No. Wealth is 99% of the power. All those other things are just noise. They can affect policy only if they get the backing of the wealthy or do not affect their interests. Issues like gender controversy, abortion etc do not affect the wealthy, so they do not care.

No amount of outrage or academic writing made it so that the bankers were held criminally accountable for the 2008 crash did it?

Tyrannical Political power is the other form of power, and it may come from the millitary (dictatorship), populism or ideology (theocracy, communism) . But they are also tied with wealth. All the dictators may have used brute force initially, but they use wealth to keep themselves in power.

So how do you explain the power of Black Lives Matter?

 

[Stevicus]

You see no extremism in saying capitalism
is all about greed, and that communism is the
answer.

Nobody is saying that "communism is the answer." You're just assuming that. There are many who may be of a more democratic socialist bent. My only approach has been historical, as we've all seen the historical consequences of what happens when capitalism is combined with nationalism.

 

[Audie]

That's not what I said; I said that most of the arguments I've seen in this thread don't seem to me indicative of extremism and that criticizing income inequality, when it results from unfair factors, is perfectly fine.

Many people support capitalism but still denounce the status quo of the US, since the US goes well beyond most other developed countries in terms of corporate exploitation and lobbying, among other issues.

Same question again.
Such as I identified is present here in abundance.

 

[Debater Slayer]

Same question again.
Such as I identified is present here in abundance.

I'm not sure what you mean or what question you're referring to.

 

[Audie]

Nobody is saying that "communism is the answer." You're just assuming that. There are many who may be of a more democratic socialist bent. My only approach has been historical, as we've all seen the historical consequences of what happens when capitalism is combined with nationalism.

All of communism but the word itself
is being promoted.

Other than NK I think every country has some
degree of socialist / socialist system.

I had not noted nationalism as a main topic
from you. But sure, nationalism in combo with
any other - ism can be bad news

 

[Audie]

So you're not advocating for revolution?

Sure reads like it.

 

[Kfox]

Do you even realize how stupid your indoctrination has made you? (I think that it is the indoctrination but maybe you are really as stupid as you show yourself to be.) You have a psychological, dogmatic block that makes you not understand any anti-capitalistic concept by totally erasing you thinking, or in this case, reading skills.

Why do you have to be insulting this way? If you can’t give me the same respect I give you, I will no longer talk to you. I will let this one go, but please; from now on be respectable in your responses.

I laid out what would happen to Tesla in the first sentence.

Okay so you said the Government takes the stock and acts like any other shareholder. But as people die, the Government will eventually take controlling interest in every company and nobody will want to invest in the stock market because their vote won’t count. Where is the incentive to start a company if you know in a few years the Government will eventually take it over once enough shareholders die leaving their stock to the Government?

You have repeated that several times but you haven't shown how inequality causes economic growth and not that economic growth causes inequality.

I never said inequality causes economic growth, I pointed out how economic growth causes inequality.

 

[Kfox]

Do you think that wealth may play a teensy weensy part in all of those things?

Yes wealth can equal power depending on how it is used, but there are plenty of non-rich people who have far more power than plenty of rich people.

 

[Kfox]

Ok. But inequality doesn't have to be great to have economic growth.

I agree; I never said that it did.

They did lose money. You are not taking into consideration they would have, at least in principle, gained even more money if they didn't have to raise the wages.

I don't think it is possible to prove workers getting a raise effects share price of a stock.

 

[Stevicus]

I didn't q what I am. Or say what you are.
Perhaps you'd do well to question yourself
a bit. Esp your notions about economics.

My notions about economics? Have you ever heard of John Kenneth Galbraith? My notions are somewhat similar to his.

But this isn't really about economics anyway. This about politics. The extreme socialism and communism you fear is not really due to any abstract systemic issue. It's just a historical consequence of what had existed before and the attitudes of those involved. It's mainly based on an observed historical consequence of an entrenched ruling class which lets things fester and rot to the point where there's chaos and revolution - along with the consequential extremism and atrocities. At least that's what happened in Russia. I know that China also went through multiple uprisings and revolutions in the period leading up to Mao's takeover. It was different for the U.S. and various European countries which embraced liberal democracy early on, so our course took a different path.

The question now is not really about "income inequality," since that's just one of many economic indicators one can look at. The real income inequality is not really between the rich and poor within the United States, but more on a global scale, which is even more pronounced. And all those people from all over the world are lined up and waiting to enter. Then it becomes a political issue, as more than a few people in the U.S. want to shut that down and build a wall along the border. But that situation would not exist in the first place if not for the global income inequality which does exist.

My notions about economics relate to my overall notions about the human condition as a whole from many different facets, and I see how actions and decisions by national governments lead to consequences - sometimes good, sometimes bad.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

Yes wealth can equal power depending on how it is used, but there are plenty of non-rich people who have far more power than plenty of rich people.

Can you give me some examples?

Do you think that wealthy people are, perhaps, disproportionately represented within the social elites of America?

 

[Kfox]

The pie chart shows distribution at any given point in time, thus is 100% valid if done correctly. Thus, I never stated nor implied that any given pie chart would be fixed for all years.

True! The pie chart shows percentages; but it does not show if those percentages are a good thing or a bad thing which is what we are trying to figure out

So, to repeat, in any given year, if the pie chart shows distribution at any given point that is heavily slanted towards the wealthy, less of the "pie" is available for the rest of us peons.

No; ya see this is where it gives a false impression. The pie chart only shows a smaller percentage for the rest of us, not less pie.

 

[Kfox]

This is simply not true. If what you're saying had any merit to it, then countries like Mexico and Namibia would be world powers today, since they have wealthy people and wealth inequality existing in those countries.

I said in the United States, and in today's economy.

The poor are not better off in those countries. As I noted earlier, the income inequality in the U.S. was lowest at the time of LBJ's Great Society, which was the last era when the living standards of the poor and working classes in the U.S. were significantly raised. Since then, it's been mostly stagnation and malaise.

You can't compare today's economy with what was going on in the 50's because during that time shortly after WW-2 the USA was the only productive country on Earth open for business; pretty much all of Europe and Asia was destroyed. Today's economy includes lots of competetition from Euroope and Asia; something that was not a factor during LBJ and his administration

 

[Kfox]

I agree on the tax thing.

I'm a firm proponent of taxing in %
Everyone should pay, for example, 25% income tax.
If you earn 1000, you pay 250.
If you earn 1.000.000, you pay 250.000
If you earn 1.000.000.000, you pay 250.000.000

Fair, clear and easy.

That looks like a flat tax. Flat taxes are labeled as taxing the poor, because they raise the taxes on the poor and cut the taxes of the rich

 

[Audie]

My notions about economics? Have you ever heard of John Kenneth Galbraith? My notions are somewhat similar to his.

But this isn't really about economics anyway. This about politics. The extreme socialism and communism you fear is not really due to any abstract systemic issue. It's just a historical consequence of what had existed before and the attitudes of those involved. It's mainly based on an observed historical consequence of an entrenched ruling class which lets things fester and rot to the point where there's chaos and revolution - along with the consequential extremism and atrocities. At least that's what happened in Russia. I know that China also went through multiple uprisings and revolutions in the period leading up to Mao's takeover. It was different for the U.S. and various European countries which embraced liberal democracy early on, so our course took a different path.

The question now is not really about "income inequality," since that's just one of many economic indicators one can look at. The real income inequality is not really between the rich and poor within the United States, but more on a global scale, which is even more pronounced. And all those people from all over the world are lined up and waiting to enter. Then it becomes a political issue, as more than a few people in the U.S. want to shut that down and build a wall along the border. But that situation would not exist in the first place if not for the global income inequality which does exist.

My notions about economics relate to my overall notions about the human condition as a whole from many different facets, and I see how actions and decisions by national governments lead to consequences - sometimes good, sometimes bad.

Hmpf

Gimme something to argue with

 

[EconGuy]

So how do you explain the power of Black Lives Matter?

The power of social movements, right or wrong are much different than political or economic and political power. There will always be a few at the heart of these moments that engage for selfish reasons and a few might become quite wealthy, but tell me, did BLM, the Civil rights movement, Pro choice (or pro life) movements, Greenpeace etc directly make any billionaires?

Respectfully,

EG

 

[EconGuy]

Hmpf

Gimme something to argue with

I'll bite, though I tend not to "identify" with established schools of thought as that tends to bias my interlocutor. That said, EconGuy loves to discuss (or debate, whatever) econ, here or in another thread!

Respectfully.

EG