People Want Fairness, Not Economic Equality
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Not everyone takes those chances, but we want to make sure those who do have the shots to gamble the take, so that there is a churn that allows the cream to rise to the top.
That, to me, is the meaning of the message of equality, and I suspect it's what people like Sanders are talking about.
The difficulty with doing that is that real estate values, and thus taxes, is a very local thing, it's quite hard to set them universally.
Honestly, from my time in the trenches of listening to trite, small, yet passionate people discussing some of the harder parts of educating children (i.e. hard to educate when they're coming to school having eaten 3000+ calories from horribly un-nutritious sources), I've learned that there's no easy solution.
You can't bus those kids out of the low-tax neighborhoods into good schools if they're still going home to a shit environment. The best you can do is stand up and try to mentor one or two kids in your neighborhood in small ways, and encourage others to do the same. Distributed cultural-standard building. That's the best I've got.
At this point it's just a name. It's a phrase a lot of people recognize and has become a rallying cry liberals. You can't change it anymore.
TL;DR Because marketing.
"There is something profoundly wrong when one family owns more wealth than the bottom 130 million Americans." - Bernie Sanders
(Also a really misleading stat. If you have a $1 net worth, you have more wealth than the bottom 25% of Americans combined.)
This is where we disagree.
Yes, they have every right to be rich because of their business success.
But their unequal wealth is a result of a broken system that allows for "income inequality".
Some would go as far as saying their business success is a direct result of their ability to exploit "income inequality".
As long as you strive for merit, and the more you strive. The more inequality this leads to.
Define the principles of the society you wish to build. If you wish to trade merit for equality, then you should also live by its consequences. Which is people going else where their hard work is better recognized.
Free market economy is a direct result of learning to live by the consequences of your actions.
What's broken with the system, in their case?
Whether zeroed-out grantor-retained annuity trusts should be a valid tax avoidance scheme is a valid question, if that's your point.
Second, no, that is not what he's talking about.
He's pointing out a symptom of "income inequality"
The solution is not "wealth redistribution", the solution is to be fair.
Pay a fair wage, provide universal healthcare, reduce the cost of tuition, close tax loopholes, end corporate lobbying, etc...
Every single one of the policies you describe are exactly wealth redistribution (except for corporate lobbying -- that's restriction on speech). You just perceive them as examples of good policies. You think they are particularly fair ways to redistribute wealth.
Unless you think that when tuition is free, the cost isn't passed to anyone? Or if the minimum wage is raised, no one has to pay?
The features which provide access to economic opportunities are, themselves, economic goods, and wealth is largely (though not entirely) fungible, so the two things are not entirely separable. You can't provide an equality of access that meets some common standards of fairness without finding some way to reduce the degree and circumstances in which the current system produces inequality in things.
The point seems to be that this is not the case, thus provisions are required as a means of correction.
There's no stable equilibrium that is fair, achieving fairness, to the degree that is possible, requires constant monitoring and active balancing.
This is specifically not what Sanders is talking about. He's saying that the basic fact that the rich have become richer than they used to be, relative to everyone else, is wrong and must change.
How do you read this differently?: https://berniesanders.com/issues/income-and-wealth-inequalit...
The rich being richer and the poor being poorer is an indication of the disparity of opportunity. This disparity is being used to illustrate the difference -- it is the cough caused by the cold; the cough is not the root cause, but a signal. Income inequality growth is not the root cause, it is the outcome of policies that affect access to opportunities and why all of the points that he proposes are goals to alleviate that access imbalance.
If opportunity were perfectly equal (your ideal state), what would you imagine income distribution to look like? Would that be acceptable then?
In other words, at what distribution would you not argue that the distribution itself is evidence of unfairness?
You'd prefer incomes to be more equal
Establishign a more progressive tax rate, ending on the cap of social security payments (which is the literal definition of a regressive tax), a livable minimum wage, equal access to education (education being generally a flat cost, and so affects the poor a lot harder than the wealthy), a singlepayer healthcare system which will put a much larger portion of income for the poor (than the rich) back in to their pockets ($300/mo for insurance is a lot more to someone who earns $1k a month than to someone earning $10k a month).
These happen to be points 1, 8, 2, 7, and 9 on the page you linked.
See? You can make income (and thus opportunity) more fair without redistributing.
In my opinion, it's just word-trickery to call it anything else:
Take money from A, and give to B. As opposed to: Take money from A, pay C to provide service to B, so that B doesn't have to pay.
Moral discussion about "taking" vs "voluntarily giving" aside, of course. That never ends productively.
You think it means that the government has a role in making sure the poor and the rich have the same outcomes available to them. In that sense, the rich being able to afford fancier educations, better housing, better healthcare, etc. is something that needs to be fixed.
I think it means that the law is blind as to your station in life -- that you are free to do with your life as you please, as your abilities and good fortune allow. That you do not get special treatment from your government if you happen to be rich or connected -- but definitely not that you can be assured that life will be fair, and that the hand you're dealt will be worth the same as your neighbor's.
That you do not get special treatment from your government
if you happen to be rich or connected
You also have access to better lawyers to protect you from crimes you commit, which means you'll serve a lighter sentencing (on average).
Being rich has very clear advantages beyond simply having more money, and to deny that is to be willfully obtuse.
Except social security cap -- social security was supposed to be a benefit, not a tax. You don't get paid more after that cap is reached.
And capital gains tax is a stupid example outside of the very narrow debate of carry-interest income.
There is a social security benefit cap, but its on final benefits based on lifetime social security qualified earnings adjusted to account for wage inflation from the year earned. Capping annual social security qualified wages and tax liability isn't actually essential to maintain the integrity of that scheme (and it arguably is unfair treatment to income earners based on degree of annual income volatility.)
Further, the benefit formula already has bend points where aggregate qualified wages past a certain point contribute less in benefits per dollar of wages than below that point, so there's no reason that couldn't be extended and the benefit cap removed, possibly with another bend point.
> And capital gains tax is a stupid example
Asserting that is not an argument. Capital gains are income, and it doesn't make a lot of sense to treat them more favorably than other income in taxation, except that you want to favor capital holders over those deriving income from other sources. (It may make sense to excluded them from the kind of SS/Medicare taxes and qualification calculations, though arguably this is unfair to minor capitalists who must actively manage their own capital to derive income from it, and face similar issues to actual workers when it comes to loss of their own ability to do so; it would makes ense to include individually-received capital gains in both the tax and benefit calculations for SS & Medicare).
Favorable treatment of long-term capital gains is sometimes justified, in a progressive tax system, by the fact that not giving some favorable consideration overtaxes the capital gains as they are not earned over a single year, but progressive tax is based on the presumption that the income received in that year is earned in that year. But when you have enough capital that you can structure it such that you are consistently rotating holdings so that you are regularly realizing "long term" gains, that's less sensible. A more sensible approach to addressing this problem -- which also addresses labor income that has volatility, where the peaks are enabled by the choice to work in a domain where the troughs are also an occurrence, is to simply set up a system for all income where income can be recognized for tax purposes in advance of being realized (and thus, taxed) without limit, and also, with some limits on time and amounts, deferred after realization for tax purposes, giving tax payers with irregular income from whatever source the ability to smooth those irregularities within the structure of a progressive income tax system, without structurally favoring those with large, consistent, capital income streams.
Frighteningly fallacious logic. I want a house with a pool. But I don't want one a 2-hour commute from work even if it has a pool. Does that mean I don't value the pool?
Stuck through it for shits and giggles, but the article doesn't really get better from there.
I think that's why the logic is fallacious - it only works for a specific question phrased in a specific way.
Suppose instead of just saying that you're choosing between a house with no pool but a short commute over a house with a pool and a long commute you try to rank your priorities:
1. Pool
2. Commute < 1.5 h (choosing an arbitrary cutoff to turn this constraint into a binary one)
Now if the pool is really the most important thing to you, then you will have to forfeit the < 1.5 h commute no matter how long it is. If you decided to forgo the pool for a shorter commute, then that is sort of exposing a hidden priority, it would look something more like
1. Commute < 2 h
2. Pool
3. Commute < 1.5 h
The point being that if we haven't fulfilled a certain priority, then it cannot be the most important priority. At least in this binary priority model, there are of course other ways you could lay this out. I just don't think it's fair to call the logic "frighteningly fallacious"
Similarly, if you live in a rich society, you might prefer a more equal society to one that's somewhat more wealthy on average. But if you live in a poor society, you might prefer one that's wealthier even if it has more inequality. For example, the U.S. has 25-35% higher PPP GDP per capita than Germany and France. However, the ratio between the income of the top 10% and the bottom 10% is twice as wide in the U.S. as in those countries. I imagine a lot of Germans and French are okay with that state of affairs.
Edit: no one would ever talk about the distribution of "ability at basketball" for example.
Distribution is just a mathematical concept - it doesn't care what type of variable you are looking at.
"Wealth distribution" is a descriptive, not a prescriptive concept, just like "height distribution." Here is a system applied to some population; let's measure how some quantity ends up distributed among that population based on the behavior of the system.
> So, do you believe wealth is earned by hard work and diligence or that it is distributed by some kind of greater power?
I don't believe either thing absolutely. I believe wealth can be earned by hard work and diligence, but that those things are neither necessary nor sufficient. I believe wealth is often distributed by a greater power in effect if not in literal practice through things like regressive taxation and systematic difference in access quality education that have a disparate (and in my opinion, inequitable) impact on those of lesser means.
There's a myth of the hustle that gets perpetrated whenever a feel-good story about a hard working, intelligent person's success gets bandied about.
The reality is that I'm where I am at least as much because of who I was born to as to how much hard work and diligence I've put into my professional career.
And studies bear this out. One of the greatest predictors of a person's wealth is whether his or her parents are wealthy. And this, even when corrected for such factors as environment and behaviour.
And, of course, this entire thing is a symptom of fixed-pie mentality. When inequality exists - when some people have bigger slices of pie than others - people seem to be reliably made happier by throwing chunks of the pie on the floor as long as they're someone else's chunks of pie. They're happier about throwing away chunks of pie than they are about getting an entire new pie to split up. It really bugs me when I see "fairness" valued over actual goodness.
Also, the pie is fixed.
I didn't claim that it was. Maybe you should ask saulrh that.
> Also, the pie is fixed.
Economic growth has exceeded population growth rather reliably for the last two hundred years or so. The pie is definitely not fixed.
This puts a hard cap on how much "stuff" can exist. Therefore, the pie is fixed.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banach%E2%80%93Tarski_paradox
Even using your definition, though, the pie is not fixed. We can't mine the moon today. Perhaps someday we can. If so, the amount of matter available to us is not fixed. Or perhaps we can mine the earth's core. More mundanely, there's fracking. That's dramatically added to the amount of matter (of a particular useful form) that is available to the human race.
So am I. What is "the economy"? I submit that it is the tracking of material in space.
There is a fixed amount of space on the planet as well. At some point, there will be no more space or material to place another Hearst Castle.
I guess someone should provide an example of an "entire new pie". (Interestingly, this is what I demanded in my first post.)
My theory even explains your observation that 'People will complain about who got "more than their fair share" of the new pie'. The reason they complain is because the pie is fixed and the new pie is a lie.
If we could just create "entire new pies", then there would be no reason to complain about the newest pie, because we can just create yet another entire new pie.
There are (probably) fundamental limits to the economy. That's a different topic than the one the rest of us are talking about, though.
You keep using the same words ("pie", "economy") to talk about something different, and then you argue that we're wrong. It's tiresome, and also not useful for actual communication.
They have only said that my idea of "entire new pie" is incorrect (while couching that it is actually probably correct). How can I know the difference between my meaning and yours if you are unable to produce an instance of what you are talking about?
>There are (probably) fundamental limits to the economy. That's a different topic than the one the rest of us are talking about, though.
The topic you are all talking about is subsumed by the more fundamental limits (saulrh even explicitly referred to this in their OP). If there are limits, then there is a notion of fairness. The original premise of saulrh's argument was that "fairness" wasn't useful because the pie is not fixed (even though it is incorrectly [according to saulrh's OP] perceived to be).
I also think that there may not only be universal (or inter-universal [or other])) limits, but there may be local limits as well. For instance, once I create an entire new pie, where does it go? It would need to displace some thing, even if it's just atmospheric molecules.
Take the US economy of 1900 as "the pie". The US economy as of 2015 is more than double that, even after accounting for inflation and population growth. That is what the rest of us are talking about when we say "an entire new pie".
As for the rest, you seem to be deliberately (and needlessly) nitpicky and argumentative, and I'm done with this conversation.
>Take the US economy of 1900 as "the pie". The US economy as of 2015 is more than double that, even after accounting for inflation and population growth.
See, you are talking about two different things. There are very few people alive today who were alive in 1900. So, an "entire new pie" takes 115 years to make?
Now I will be you:
`But, jsprogrammer, didn't saulrh claim, "They're happier about throwing away chunks of pie than they are about getting an entire new pie to split up.", in their OP?`
Edit: My only real point here is that "entire new pie" is a bankrupt concept. It has no real substance. There is "stuff we can do to improve things", but those have costs (and I'm not talking about monetary).
If you define "pie" as real wealth, then it becomes effectively unbounded; see fractional-reserve banking for a real-world example.
If you define "pie" as value of your personal rational utility function, you get a much nicer - which is to say, much less bounded - result. I don't exactly think that Banach-Tarski Banach-Tarski is directly possible, but it's almost certain that our minds are in a region of the state space of all possible minds that is also mapped to by simulated brains with vastly greater measure than all brains existing in universes ex nihilo (for more exploration on this topic please consult Permutation City by Greg Egan and then chapters 2+ of The Finale of the Ultimate Meta Mega Crossover by Eliezer Yudkowsky). Which extends to Tegmark's Mathematical Universe hypothesis, which defines (and I do mean defines, in a constructive sense) uncountably infinite universes implying uncountably infinite versions of indistinguishable-from-me (as far as I know, see previous) that are simulated in universes which have unbounded quantities of utilitronium.
Multiple universes may just be an artifact of our math. For instance, Inter-universal Teichmuller Theory may provide or point to a resolution.
Ultimately, the economy is measured in "units moved", which is ultimately tied to the amount of "units" available in the entire system.
That's not even close to being what that math is about.
That is, a refutable, physical theory that is not based at all on integers?
* We take a set of axioms, just like any other mathematics. Say ZFC.
* We construct an isomorphism - a bijective mapping - between states of universes and the reals. This step is honestly pretty trivial. Our laws of physics, as far as we can tell, are just big continuous-ish differential equations, so it's just going to be a serialization.
* We construct the reals from our axioms.
* By the isomorphism from before, we have constructed all possible universes which run under our laws of physics.
* We have constructed our universe.
Epistemologically speaking, mathematics doesn't work like anything else. Just about everything else you ever do is fundamentally bayesian in nature - we form hypotheses and attempt to disprove them by comparing them to our observations, and all we can do is disprove hypotheses, and even then not particularly strongly. Consult Karl Popper's works on empirical falsification for deeper discussion. Mathematics, in contrast, is inductive. We can prove that a statement is True by combining other True statements, and once we've done this it's done and cannot be "disproven" by the addition of more information. Well, unless you count Godel's result, but that's a bit of a special case and we usually ignore it because it's annoying.
However, mathematical induction is different from "inductive reasoing" (as opposed to deductive, or "the deductive theory of testing", as Popper's translators call it). In fact, I don't believe it is a contrast to Popper's work; mathematical induction is actually a form of deductive reasoning (of course, this makes it rather confusing to talk about). Popper's method requires first formulating a system (axioms) in pure mathematics (logic). Then deriving the logical conclusions from the system and determining tests that could be performed that could contradict those conclusions. Popper also provides a schema for comparing systems, deriving contradictory conclusions, and designing experiments to distinguish between the various theories under consideration.
>The way this works is:
I don't mean to be obtuse, but it's not immediately clear to me at the moment what "this" refers to (although, from the context of the prior post, I would assume it refers to Inter-universal Teichmuller Theory). Is there another way you could clarify what we are talking about?
Edit: Ok, I read my last post again and I think maybe you are giving a physical theory that is not based on integers or number theory? My concern with that interpretation is that I'm not sure how meaningful of a distinction can be made between Integers, ZFC, or Logic within the context of physical theories. Doesn't Shannon's work allow us to collapse all writable (a necessary precondition to execute Popper's method) theories to integers?
Ok...now define real wealth.
Your statement is correct, but your assumed cause is not. It's 60-80% genes: https://jaymans.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/iq-heritability-...
It is present, but relatively weakly compared to genetics: http://literacy.rice.edu/thirty-million-word-gap
There is fixed and diminishing amount of arable land to grow the wheat and apples. You can make only so many pies.
That's a really bold statement to make. Where is your proof? Are you just making it up based on your own biases?
If we're just going by anecdotes, then I can honestly say, I have never met anyone who wants to destroy other people's piece of the pie.
If anything, I've met more people adamant about defending other people's pie pieces. Like you, for example.
When given the choice between fair-pie-on-the-floor and unfair-everybody-gets-more-pie, humans reliably choose fair-pie-on-the-floor.
Destroying parts of the pie clearly isn't Pareto optimal, either.
Even if we attempted equality, time would introduce inequality due to the risks people take. One invests wisely, the other gambles away. Do we compensate the gambler to reestablish equilibrium?
Should a soon to be retiree have the same wealth or earning power as a new graduate of X degree, or even a dropout?
Maybe we should compensate workers based on responsibilities (ie dependents, that, in some ways would be fairer, the woman with three dependent children gets paid more than the man with one, but the man with two where one requires extra care gets paid more than either, to compensate for added medical expenses)
Hint think how single people will see this.
I was following you up until this notion. Compensation has nothing to do with a worker's responsibilities. Compensation is based on how much the job is worth to the person or company paying. That's why a brain-surgeon with no dependents is paid more than a ditch-digger with a house full of kids.
You just assumed the gambler ended up worse off. What if he won? Do we compensate the investor for his sub-risky-gambling return?
People would rather see those less fortunate have to beg and suffer than to give up what they 'worked' for.
Never mind the fact that we all derive benefit from systems that we inherited, and did not work for...
Having a family full of conservatives (mind you I can't speak for all), I can tell you that for them, it comes down to how big the system is and what benefits should be provided by the government or not. The difference in where the line is drawn and why it's drawn is the difference between conservatives and democrats.
They think that outcomes would be better with a smaller federal government, that it is not the responsibility of the government to take care of everybody, and that everyone would be better off for it. They think that the federal government should deal with defense, foreign diplomatic policy, and inter-state issues, not insert itself into every aspect of policy making nationwide. They think that governments closer to the people can respond better to the needs of the people.
So yes, that does mean that it shouldn't redistribute wealth, at least on the federal level. But it's not that they want to see people suffer, it's that they think it's not the responsibility of the federal government to ameliorate it. That's not the same thing.
Note: I don't agree with them on a lot of things. I just don't like seeing these things misrepresented.
While that's certainly not a bad thought, we have all benefited from larger government. History shows out that the more government spending and distribution of goods and services there is, the better the economic outlook. Even amongst most developed countries today, the government accounts for around half of GDP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending#As_a_perce....
'Small government' is nice as a political philosophy, however it hasn't been shown historically to be a great economic policy.
Not to mention, while right-wing politicians and economists argue for private enterprise, lower taxes, smaller government, less spending, etc..., they simultaneously use state institutions to their advantage. In most economies governments fund research, education, they are responsible for building most infrastructure, funding transit, etc... These things benefit us as a society, yet the same people who reap these benefits every single day argue against paying for them (ie. paying taxes).
The problem with left-wing economics is that they aren't intuitive. Right-wing economics is - it's simple, and reminds people of budgeting at home. The only problem is that when you study macroeconomics, you realize that it's more about behaviour than about finance. Government spending increases GDP, in most cases by more than the dollar amount spent. Social nets increase entrepreneurial behaviour, and reducing poverty always yields social benefits.
> So yes, that does mean that it shouldn't redistribute wealth, at least on the federal level.
No one would argue that the government should only build roads in rich cities. Or only build hospitals in rich cities. Yet creating infrastructure is a redistribution of wealth. When the US government creates a new military base, they're redistributing wealth. When they give money to schools, they're distributing wealth.
Yet for some reason we have it in our heads that 'taking' taxes and then giving 'cash' to others is wrong, but it's OK when the government uses other means to redistribute wealth.
Anyhow, the point is, we see it as 'fair' that we work hard and get paid. That we 'deserve' what we make. That we did it 'alone'. The fact is, wealth cannot be created in a vacuum. Whatever we do, we do because others helped us. We're more than happy to use the institutions created for us, but don't want to share the rewards. We see 'fairness' as more important than prosperity.
Counter-thoughts from reality: China's doing great, and the US has a higher percentage of its own population incarcerated than any other state in human history.
https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2014/jun/22/inside-chin...
For that matter, the US has it as well (albeit to a 'cleaner' extent):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_Stat...
One thing most miss out on is they want fairness but don't want to give up their stuff or such because it is so much tied to who has how much stuff, money, and more. Far too many will state unequivocally that those richer than them don't pay their "fair" share when those same people contribute a higher percentage and far more wealth into the system.
This is primarily driven by politicians who profit by dividing people. That is what most people miss. They hear about all the disagreement in government as if that is a problem. In the US the government wasn't designed to be fully cooperative, it was designed to make governing difficult so as the federal government would not overrun the states. Where events were not to be treated with such division there are statements to that fact.
Yet politicians spend more time pitting people against each other to preserve their own status and this is why people don't understand what fairness let alone equality is.
On the one hand there's the internal division of equality of outcomes vs. equality of opportunities. (See this [in my opinion somewhat confused] article by Dylan Matthews[0]). On the other hand "it's not fair" usually seems to mean "I have been slighted".
As someone who has worked in Game Theory, I've seen a variety of notions of what constitutes fairness (in the form of social welfare). There isn't one obvious-even-if-technically-infeasible choice. There's a variety of plausible, mediocre alternatives.
I think that what this actually demonstrates is that most people have muddled thinking on most topics.
</curmudgeon>
[0]: https://www.vox.com/2015/9/21/9334215/equality-of-opportunit...
There's another term I'm seeing misinterpreted earlier in the thread too that is relevant. We use mathematical distribution of income growth over the population as the metric and people misinterpret it to mean distribution of wealth in the Marxist sense. It's just a measurement of who has what, but it implies a solution (to some) that has a lot of political baggage.
He's right in that Capitalism is not about marking up a product to generate a profit by taking the cost of the goods and the labor to produce it but rather by paying labor less than what their labor is worth. And this is what bothers people. It isn't fair. And they are helpless to change it.
And it is what is happening more and more. And the eventuality of it is Capitalism will eat itself as those without will be large enough in numbers where they assume power. Those which did the exploiting will either have their heads rolled or at the very least made impotent and marginalized. This is revolution and leads to Socialism and eventually Communism.
The second part Marx argues is that only the State can sort out the best way to distribute means and goods - that the free market is too chaotic. This I disagree with and I think time has shown this to be false. The state will eventually be corrupt if it isn't already. And whose to say what is best for one person is also the best for the other?
So, the free market exists where people can pick and choose. They have freedom. This allows some to have more than others and I think people are in fact OK with that. In fact I think people want that because we believe in getting what you're worth. Its just they don't want their own labor to be discounted to the point of being exploited - which is happening more and more with through wage suppression via policy or globalism which has displaced a lot of people very quickly, even if it might eventually benefit everyone as a whole.
This has been clearly demonstrated to be incorrect many times.[1]
I believe we will eventually progress to the mean here but until then there are people feeling cheated. The trade agreements and bank bailouts did not consider the displacement in the near term and thus has created a growing group that is angry due to feeling that the system is not fair.
>"policy unilaterally advantage the capitalist at the expense of the local worker"
This is obviously untrue, and can simply be demonstrated by looking at how many of the supposedly disadvantaged workers strike out on their own, and form new businesses; if it were so easy and so sure, everyone would be doing it. Most employees with enough money to form a business in their field do not, because they do not think it is worth it.
>"people feel they are being treated unfairly"
People can feel they are being treated unfairly for a number of reasons, but we should make it clear that there are a few kinds of fairness that people care about, and they are not always mutually compatible. Fairness of treatment refers to procedural guarantees, and fairness of outcome refers to how equitable people feel the result of the process was. Conservatives tend to value the former, and liberals tend to value the latter.
>"I believe we will eventually progress to the mean here but until then there are people feeling cheated. The trade agreements and bank bailouts did not consider the displacement in the near term and thus has created a growing group that is angry due to feeling that the system is not fair."
You should be careful about making sweeping predictions based on simple theories, as they have the unfortunate tendency to be wrong. Tetlock's book is a good read on the subject of predictions and judgement if you are interested.[1]
Given your other statements, this is not a sensible position. A widget is priced according to the value it delivers a buyer -- if there are 100 brands of widgets on the market and they are easy to make, it's priced low; if I am the only widget maker, the only limit on the price is what I can convince people to pay.
And what I pay my factory workers is subject to the same competitive forces -- labor's value is limited by my ability to replace it. That's your free market in effect, labor is only extracting value for itself until it exceeds the cost of the alternative, be that a robot or another worker.
So if you are a believer that free markets deliver the best pairing of choice and freedom, how do you not look at a person working in a factory, being paid a low wage, enjoying no participation in profit, and think if they had more value to offer, they would negotiate a better deal.
I'm not here preaching socialism. I'm just saying a near term effect of rampant globalization is people are going to be displaced and feel they are being exploited. I think this is where unrest comes from.
Don't mean to be sarcastic here, but isn't that the whole point of government right now? Foodstamps, welfare payments, child-assistance money, social security, free medical care, etc.
At what point can we stop using this supposed "power-differential" between employer and employee as some sort of silent force in the labour market?
And while you're not wrong that a lot of that safety net stuff is the point of government, you'd have a pretty hard time claiming that they were doing it well, or helping everyone who needed it, especially with a lot of states slashing aid from their budgets in order to give tax cuts.
Investing your capital into business/machinery yields higher profits. Those get taxed at corporate tax rate, which is 35%. This rate is only matched with the highest income-tax rate bracket.
It may not "look" fair on the surface, but to compare capital gains tax with income tax is an oversimplification. For one, invested capital is unpredictable.
Too many people still associate him and his theory of communism with failed communist states like the soviet union, North Korea or pre-capitalistic China. While the association may or may not be real, his observation about capitalism is unequivocal.
But out sourcing has worked fabulously for many other industries. And although I agree globalization has many benefits the side effect is many displaced people today seething with anger as the capitalist class gets wealthier. That anger will turn to pitch forks when there's enough of them.
to compete with people around the world means to be exploited here and policy doesn't help it so people feel they are not allowed to participate in society fairly. Capitalists (including me) need to behave otherwise revolution will come and our bourgeois heads will roll.
Governmental policy devolves into this to the detriment of everyone involved.
Entire political campaigns are centered around not making things "fair" but "equal". Watch and see who communities vote for and why they vote for them; it is closely related to the child who prefers to have one and everyone else zero as opposed to everyone getting two.
It is imperative that those who might claim to be against the idea of "equality" for some abstract philosophical reason to separately ask themselves why they can't also be AGAINST egregious and institutionalized inequality.
Being against both universal equality and egregious inequality is an entirely consistent position. Setting up the utopia of universal equality as a straw man in order to avoid addressing the latter question is dishonest and immoral.
So how does one formulate an equal distribution, and who gets to choose those rules?
there are many unfair side effects of current economics
look at taxes..
recently i read a major corporate entity paid 4k pounds in taxes in 2014(o). The top comment says:
TIL our small UK startup pays 10-20x more corp tax
.. Doing things honestly and by the book
is expensive in both money terms and time terms
(paying accountants)
Big corps .. make me feel like a fool.
or look at fines..
if i get a parking ticket(i) for 100$, i may be unable to pay it right away with my zero savings and my 12k/yr income, someone making 80k+ a year will just pay the 100$ grievance and be done with it
i will have to start budgeting myself to make enough to pay the 100$ fine, but it will take time with bimonthly paychecks and in that time i will be punished with late fees only increasing the financial burden and time needed to accrue the funds
even if trying to do the right thing people punished further simply for economic circumstance
so though the two violators are seen as equal, the expectations and avenues of how to rectify the violations seems unfairly balanced
people making less end up paying more for the same violation due to the bureaucracy maintaining the violations
or i could use a payday loan(ii), another damning option
these are only two examples of areas where a conversation about fairness stead equality alters the direction of the conversation
(o) https://www.reddit.com/comments/3ofo13/ (i) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UjpmT5noto (ii) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDylgzybWAw
Not trying to be callous, but it's going to come out that way -- maybe the answer is to try to make some more of it.
Because trying to redesign society to eliminate this basic fact of the world has so far led to disastrous results. Like, hundreds of millions dead kind of results. With nothing to show for it, because there were still haves and have nots.
"But I'm not advocating Stalinism!" you'd say. But remember, Lenin and Trotsky and Stalin came from good intentions, too. So did Mao and Pol Pot and Ho and Kim. Everyone wanted to solve the problem you're describing.
but i'd wonder, how does one 'make some more of it'?
stalinism? you're arguing with someone else
my complaints are against the bureaucracy of the problem
there is more to this conversation than a binary of stalinism and some undefined other
what do you mean by 'easier'? seems to the suffer the same ills as using vague language such as 'fair'
and i'd caution against utilising the concept of 'fact' when discussing subsets
what of a generation born into wealth that fails to make any more if it but their life remains, or even becomes moreso, by your own definitions, 'easier'?
If we aren't rich, fairness is the next best thing.
Too many people like to think about themselves as robotic savants desiring only to be logical and more intelligent. This is a fantasy story that is somewhat true but side steps the issue of what we really want. If you were truly intelligent you would know that biologically speaking what we want is sex, money and status.
In front of you have two doors. You go through door A you can have knowledge of the true nature of the universe and the promise that you have to live like a hobo for the rest of your life. In the other door (door B) you have billions of dollars, the adoration of the most beautiful women in the world, the respect of everyone and the promise that you will die without ever knowing the true nature of the universe.
Which door do you choose? Let's be real. (Door B)
Money is a social construct that is tied to status. We want money because we want status.
You claim not to seek power. But if it was in front of you would you take it? Which door? Be honest.
"The secret to success is being smart enough to play the game well, but not so smart you figure the game out. Then you realize how stupid it is and you don't want to play anymore."
Someone like... say... Donald Trump strikes me as just the right amount of smart.