Wealth Inequality in America

[sd'sker]

there was a time when all economists, from smith to marx, believed that the point of an economy was to expand liberty and provide livelihoods for workers. now it is to make shareholders rich and everyone else is disposable. frankly, the view of the working class (or 'peasants' as someone, surely affectionately, referred to them) in this thread is disgusting. but if you want to live in a feudal system, just wait. we are closer than you realize.

[Creighton Duke]

So you'd prefer the present model of making college more and more accessible by creating instituions that are of lower quality, more poorly administered, and teach little to no critical thinking? The same institutions that charge exorbitant tuition with little guarantee of a job afterwards? Yeah, let's just keep feeding into the college debt crisis (the next bubble).

where did i say any of that? i think paper-mills are criminal. but i do not think that someone qualified to go to a state school should be burdened with debt for the next 50 years, nor do i think that the first course of action for state gov't in slumping economies should be to raise tuition.

 

"Qualified" is a very relative term. Also, there is more than enough financial aid out there for "qualified" kids to tap into. Why doesn't the kid have a job in HS and in college to help with expenses? Why did the parents never save a dime for college? Why do the kids major in "art appreciation" or "comparative literature" and complain when they can't find a job? Kids that are too stupid to realize that they GREATLY contributed to their own plight aren't "qualified" IMHO

is that how you view the average college student? and why do you assume all these families just have spare cash they are wasting instead of saving?

 

does this seem reasonable to you?:

 

http://online.wsj.co...1182640920.html

 

More than half of states have some form of merit aid (on top of traditional aid) now available to students. "Qualified" kids should easily be able to tap into this aid. Staying home and going to CC for the first 2 years makes things even cheaper. "Qualified" kids have enough avenues available to them where they aren't feeling the brunt of the rising costs. It's the unqualified kids who either a. don't have grades to garner merit aid b. jack around and lose their aid c. don't bother to go through the financial aid process d. have parents loaded enough to pick up the tab who are experiencing the rising costs the most.

 

http://money.cnn.com/2010/06/30/news/economy/personal_savings_decline.fortune/index.htm

 

We are wasting more and more money i.e. not saving.

[BigRedBuster]

I'm assuming this board is going to be pretty quiet on Friday while everyone pays their respects to Chavez. He's a HERO.....Long live income control and wealth redistribution.

[sd'sker]

not sure what chavez has to do with this conversation. and i really do not know much about chavez other than that he controlled oil and we should hate him for that.

 

 

but just for fun, who said it? palin or chavez:

And [edit]—we’re set up, unlike other [edit], where it’s collectively [edit] own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs. … It’s to maximize benefits for [edit], not an individual company, not some multinational somewhere, but for [edit].

 

palin

 

[Junior]

So you'd prefer the present model of making college more and more accessible by creating instituions that are of lower quality, more poorly administered, and teach little to no critical thinking? The same institutions that charge exorbitant tuition with little guarantee of a job afterwards? Yeah, let's just keep feeding into the college debt crisis (the next bubble).

where did i say any of that? i think paper-mills are criminal. but i do not think that someone qualified to go to a state school should be burdened with debt for the next 50 years, nor do i think that the first course of action for state gov't in slumping economies should be to raise tuition.

 

"Qualified" is a very relative term. Also, there is more than enough financial aid out there for "qualified" kids to tap into. Why doesn't the kid have a job in HS and in college to help with expenses? Why did the parents never save a dime for college? Why do the kids major in "art appreciation" or "comparative literature" and complain when they can't find a job? Kids that are too stupid to realize that they GREATLY contributed to their own plight aren't "qualified" IMHO

is that how you view the average college student? and why do you assume all these families just have spare cash they are wasting instead of saving?

 

does this seem reasonable to you?:

 

http://online.wsj.co...1182640920.html

 

More than half of states have some form of merit aid (on top of traditional aid) now available to students. "Qualified" kids should easily be able to tap into this aid. Staying home and going to CC for the first 2 years makes things even cheaper. "Qualified" kids have enough avenues available to them where they aren't feeling the brunt of the rising costs. It's the unqualified kids who either a. don't have grades to garner merit aid b. jack around and lose their aid c. don't bother to go through the financial aid process d. have parents loaded enough to pick up the tab who are experiencing the rising costs the most.

 

http://money.cnn.com/2010/06/30/news/economy/personal_savings_decline.fortune/index.htm

 

We are wasting more and more money i.e. not saving.

 

The aid that I qualified for were federal student LOANS and a handful of minor scholarships that accounted for maybe $1000 over 4 years. Which is why I graduated with a pile of debt to repay.

[Creighton Duke]

Did you live at home and go to community college for the first couple of years?

[Junior]

Did you live at home and go to community college for the first couple of years?

 

I couldn't live at home. Not everyone lives in Omaha or Lincoln. I took a few CC classes... talk about a waste of time.

[carlfense]

not sure what chavez has to do with this conversation. and i really do not know much about chavez other than that he controlled oil and we should hate him for that.

 

 

but just for fun, who said it? palin or chavez:

And [edit]—we’re set up, unlike other [edit], where it’s collectively [edit] own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs. … It’s to maximize benefits for [edit], not an individual company, not some multinational somewhere, but for [edit].

 

palin

 

Gotta be Chavez. Palin loves freedom.

[Creighton Duke]

Did you live at home and go to community college for the first couple of years?

 

I couldn't live at home. Not everyone lives in Omaha or Lincoln. I took a few CC classes... talk about a waste of time.

So the only colleges on the planet are in Omaha and Lincoln?

[Junior]

Did you live at home and go to community college for the first couple of years?

 

I couldn't live at home. Not everyone lives in Omaha or Lincoln. I took a few CC classes... talk about a waste of time.

So the only colleges on the planet are in Omaha and Lincoln?

 

Sure, Wayne State College was an hour's drive from my home, not exactly what I would consider a reasonable daily commute. Even so, they don't exactly offer courses in the field I studied. And, simply put, BS from UNL > BS from Wayne State. Not all colleges and universities are the same.

[krill]

I quit watching in the first few seconds

 

Beggining your statement by proudly annoucing that you did not read, watch, or even consider the point of the discussion makes for a very compelling argument.

[Conga3]

Let's say you work 8-hours a day, 5 days a week and spend 100% of your income on living expenses. At the end of each month your bank account is $0.

 

If you increase your productivity - and that can mean many things - or increase your efficiency - which can also mean many things - you will have a surplus at the end of the month.

 

This surplus is wealth.

 

And yes, 'money' is created out of thin air when an economy is more productive/efficient. Money is not matter.

 

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this is an unsatisfactory answer and i am not sure what it explains. that money comes from somewhere. it comes from the business that pays the worker. this is a good example of microeconomics, but it hardly explains wealth distributions and american macroeconomics. you are explaining how someone can increase their spending power, but not how money is created. money is a zero sum game. the only aberration is the amount of debt a person is able to take on, then money seems to come from thin and vanishes just as quickly.

 

Unfortunate, but I'm not your economics teacher. If you had one that told you 'money' (wealth is not money) is a zero sum game... in that someone else having wealth means someone else must have less... then you should ask for a refund for your tuition.

 

Listen, we're debating a core tenant of socialism here...something you obviously subscribe to intellectually and emotionally. I'm not going to change you mind here. I would just suggest you question your firm belief in this concept. It's a bit complicated, but there are explanations how "wealth" is generated in an an economy through productivity/efficiency - aka specialization, etc.

 

My core argument is that the growing wealth distribution disparity in our economy is due to competitiveness and should be addressed through making the one with less...more competitive - which will grow the wealth of everyone.

 

 

 

Economic concepts are sometimes difficult to wrap your head around.

 

For example, if you go to Walmart and grab a cart out of the parking lot instead of the cart rack at the front of the store, you are reducing the prices of the goods you are about to buy in the store. The amount maybe negligible, but the economic concept is nonetheless true.

 

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what does this have to do with anything and do you have any empirical evidence that this or true or normative reports of how this effects the economy?

 

This is simply an example of an unintuitive economic principle about productivity/efficiency that everyone experiences. For some (it appears like yourself included) this example is hard to comprehend. It's an oversimplification of a very complex thing (Walmart prices), but it's meant to illustrate how it's all connected.

 

 

The word 'productivity' is used throughout economic discussions but its meaning varies greatly.

 

Like the point made earlier that "productivity" gains have outpaced "wages" since the 70's...

 

These words/concepts are incredibly deceiving when discussing them at the level of the US Economy.

 

The MSNBC article and EPI report tried to correlate wages and productivity, but kinda sorta forgot to mention the biggest thing to happen in the last 30 years to effect productivity. Also, 'wages' is not compensation.

with computers, would productivity not be increased? according to you that equals more wealth. but there have been technological advancements throughout time, usually it means greater wealth for all. how, exactly, has computers effected wealth distribution?

----

The articles were comparing a growth in productivity with wage growth, and how they didn't keep pace.

 

I thought mentioning computers would be obvious, but...

 

If ACME Accounting Co. was using marbles arranged in piles to do taxes, and had 10 employees at 100,000/yr arranging marbles to compute tax returns for 1000 clients....

 

The computer is invented!

ACME buys two computers and hires 2 new computer trained employees and fires 10 marble employees. They still process 1000 clients, but for much less.

 

So the marble tax accountants made 10,000/yr and the new computer trained employees make 20,000/yr.

 

10 10,000/y jobs are replaced by 2 20,000/jobs.

 

 

 

--

All things being equal, the productivity of the labor force is increased 5x, while the wages increase 2x.

 

The article and the graph is wanting to say wages aren't keeping up with productivity.

 

Of course. You don't have to pay 2 computer employees 50K each because you were paying 10 employees 10K each to accomplish the same amount of work....but that is what you would have to do to make wages keep up with productivity.

 

The argument is they are trying to make is flawed. Wages not keeping up with productivity is not a "bad" thing.

 

 

and to those who say that 'wealth is earned, not distributed', do you really believe the the top 1% really work that much harder than everyone else? do you really believe the rest of the nation are just that much lazier than 30 years ago? do you really think it is just that simple? that changes in tax code, wages stagnating, increased debt at younger ages and everything else has no effect?

 

The Top 1% are letting their accumulated wealth "work" for them, by investing in others. They are the "investors" class and it sounds like you are trying to compare their "work" to someone working for wages....which is a false comparison.

 

Does someone with $10M "work" harder than someone with $100K. In terms of "economic work", yes - absolutely.

 

It's rather silly to not assume the wealthy "work" harder...but you have to be able to understand there is your own labor, and then there is investing in the labor of others - which is also "work", but while there are only so many hours in the day one can perform labor, the amount you can invest in others is limitless.

 

 

 

 

[BigRedBuster]

not sure what chavez has to do with this conversation. and i really do not know much about chavez other than that he controlled oil and we should hate him for that.

 

Just google Hugo Chavez and Redistribution of Wealth.

[sd'sker]

Listen, we're debating a core tenant of socialism here...something you obviously subscribe to intellectually and emotionally. I'm not going to change you mind here. I would just suggest you question your firm belief in this concept. It's a bit complicated, but there are explanations how "wealth" is generated in an an economy through productivity/efficiency - aka specialization, etc.

you project way too much on me and do nothing to support your points other than bring up odd analogies that have nothing to do with what we are talking about.

 

what exactly is the 'core tenant of socialism'? and why are you always mentioning how arguments have an emotional component? what the hell are you talking about?

 

what i am talking about is tax reform and the unprecedented redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the richest.

 

This is simply an example of an unintuitive economic principle about productivity/efficiency that everyone experiences. For some (it appears like yourself included) this example is hard to comprehend. It's an oversimplification of a very complex thing (Walmart prices), but it's meant to illustrate how it's all connected.

do not insult my intellect. and i understand what you are saying, what i do not understand is your point. your example is so negligible, if at all existent, i would love to see some empirical evidence of this effect.

 

yes, efficiency saves money, but it does not create money. so what is your gd point?

[carlfense]

what i am talking about is tax reform and the unprecedented redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the richest.

Hey . . . check it out . . . quantifiable class warfare.

 

"There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning." -Warren Buffet

 

 

 

But then again, Buffet is just a socialist commie . . . so we should disregard everything that he says.