A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality

I will never understand how adults can believe that things like economics, journalism, central banking, and (especially) the US constitution can be non-political.

It's not 'poor people' vs. 'rich people' but the majority vs. a minority.

>>"Economics, as the expression of human beings exchanging with each other, accepts neither."

Economics? what do you mean? There are theories that, in a less simplistic way, come to propose one and the other.

Incorrect. It has been well-documented that when people have more disposable income, their spending increases. This increase in economic activity grows the economy.

The only axis of discrimination between politicians would be charisma - which is no predictor at all of what someone will actually do.

EDIT It might be even easier for handlers to corrupt the system, because they could make it known that if a bill gets through, they'll be generous with their largess to everyone - and there will be know way to verify which politicians are the ones who are being bought off.

And in general, I don't like attributing these things to a single cause of "corruption". It's too neat, too easy.

As for why things took a right-wing turn in the mid-70s, I prefer this thesis:

Lobbying America: The Politics of Business from Nixon to NAFTA

https://www.amazon.com/Lobbying-America-Politics-Business-So...

TL;DR: Titans of industry felt persecuted, rolled back The New Deal.

"Lobbying America tells the story of the political mobilization of American business in the 1970s and 1980s. Benjamin Waterhouse traces the rise and ultimate fragmentation of a broad-based effort to unify the business community and promote a fiscally conservative, antiregulatory, and market-oriented policy agenda to Congress and the country at large. Arguing that business's political involvement was historically distinctive during this period, Waterhouse illustrates the changing power and goals of America's top corporate leaders.

Examining the rise of the Business Roundtable and the revitalization of older business associations such as the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Waterhouse takes readers inside the mind-set of the powerful CEOs who responded to the crises of inflation, recession, and declining industrial productivity by organizing an effective and disciplined lobbying force. By the mid-1970s, that coalition transformed the economic power of the capitalist class into a broad-reaching political movement with real policy consequences. Ironically, the cohesion that characterized organized business failed to survive the ascent of conservative politics during the 1980s, and many of the coalition's top goals on regulatory and fiscal policies remained unfulfilled. The industrial CEOs who fancied themselves the "voice of business" found themselves one voice among many vying for influence in an increasingly turbulent and unsettled economic landscape.

Complicating assumptions that wealthy business leaders naturally get their way in Washington, Lobbying America shows how economic and political powers interact in the American democratic system."

It is absolutely legitimate to characterize the president denigrating government as self-deprecating, splitting hairs about this is silly.

> Second, he is not at all unique in that. Bush (43 more than 41) and Trump have done much the same, and even Clinton did it off and on.

Reagan was more unique in his ability to actually do it, though. The others had much less impact.

He has some magnificent quotes: contrary to the president "with the best words" he was actually a great public orator.

http://www.ontheissues.org/Celeb/Ronald_Reagan_Government_Re...

They don't care about deficits, they care about spending priorities. Deficits is just the argument they turn to when they don't have an argument against particular spending priorities.

If you want to dig in to the gory details of reaganomics, economists have researched and debated about its effects for decades. There are many economists who make cases both for and against it having appreciably affected income inequality in various ways.

In other words, with just the evidence provided, you can’t safely say much of anything beyond “it started getting worse in the 80’s”

The 'fix' could well be rich people being worse off, not poor or middle income people being better off. Not much of a solution, that.

A fun thought experiment, there are some good answers to this: at the end of the day, a different policy would be redistributing something real away from the rich. That wouldn't be food (rich people eat as much as everyone else), so what would it be? That is to day, what exactly are the rich securing that is unfair? (money isn't a valid answer, the answer is what the money is then used to buy)

Mark Zuckerburg has very little of what I'd call "capital" that actually produces stuff, yet he makes tons of money.

People down vote, but where am I wrong? The West's biggest problem right now is having TOO MUCH FOOD! Think about that. We are so fat that we're dying. Not starving. FAT!

But is it also working as advertised ?

e: Oh shit I just realized who I'm replying to. Serious answer time. Socialism will be a disruptive new paradigm for start-ups and other businesses where (following the idea of a meritocracy) workers, and not stuffy old capitalists, each own an equal number of shares at their place of work. And even more innovative in structure than Zappos and Valve, it allows for capital investment decisions to be voted on by individual contributors, throwing away traditional management structures you see at crufty old firms. Pretty cool stuff! According to some dusty old theories it's the "Exit Strategy" for our largest firms.

And let's not even talk about whatever rebranding of Marx is used as a strawman these days, like this "cultural marxism" dog whistle I hear 10 times a day and I can't be bothered to figure out what that's even supposed to mean anymore. Actually I just tried to search the term and the first result was an entry on "urban dictionary" which goes like:

>An umbrella term for identity politics, affirmative action, feminism, radical LGBT activism, Islam apologetics, white privilege, political correctness... Basically the SJW ideology.

I think I missed that part in Das Kapital...

Implementations of Leninism did, sure, but (deliberate mislabeling aside), I'm not sure what that has to do with Marc, since Leninism rejected the preconditions Marx laid out and altered the approach to address the changed preconditions.

Leninism is farther from Marxism than the near-universal abandonment of the system Marx named “capitalism” for modern mixed economies (which, to be sure, is still pretty far from Marxism), so if you are going to blame Marx at all for the failure of the former, you have to credit him at least as much for the success of the latter.

The question of Marx's meaning and intentions, what does or does not flow from his critique, the idea of revolution, the issue of Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin and Mao are all very much actively discussed today. At the same time, there is a distinct, perhaps irreconcilable, difference of opinion between the liberals who treat property as part of an individual, or an extension of him, and the tradition since Marx which does not take this for granted at all.

As for the two attempts to implement Marxism (assuming you're speaking of Russia and China here)... in Russia, you can't separate it from Leninism and Stalinism. Is Marxism the problem, or the authoritarian government?

China is more interesting. China is still ostensibly a Marxist nation, right? Per World Bank data I just looked up, China's per capita GDP (in constant US dollars) was lowest in 1962, at $71.91. That's per year. In 2017, it's $8826.99. Constant dollars, mind you. That's 123 times more.

I have a hard time calling that a failure of any sort.

There hasn't been large-scale political violence in China since the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. That ten-year period killed 5-10 million on the high end. Which is, of course, quite bad, but in comparison to the 50-80M that died in ostensibly capitalist Europe during WWII, it doesn't seem that outsized.

So for burden of proof, I think you need to argue that an alternative model would have resulted in less political violence and more economic prosperity than that for China. Good luck.

For example, Bertrand Russell only 3 years after the revolution (thus 1920):

In a capitalist state, the Government and the capitalists on the whole hang together, and form one class; in Soviet Russia, the Government has absorbed the capitalist mentality together with the governmental, and the fusion has given increased strength to the upper class. But I see no reason whatever to expect equality or freedom to result from such a system, except reasons derived from a false psychology and a mistaken analysis of the sources of political power.

I am compelled to reject Bolshevism for two reasons: First, because the price mankind must pay to achieve Communism by Bolshevik methods is too terrible; and secondly because, even after paying the price, I do not believe the result would be what the Bolsheviks profess to desire.

So you're taxing the act of becoming richer, rather than just owning stuff. I suppose you could still have a wealth tax, if you set the threshold high enough that it only affects the top 10%.

I also think this example may be valid for some discussions but in the modern world where the acquisition of wealth is denied from a large portion of the population this example fails to provide value.

1. We are social creatures, not homines oeconomici whose utility function only includes our own consumption. (In fact, I feel that the argument you (and others) make comes from this mistaken Econ 101 idea that the simplifying economics assumption of a utility function only including own consumption is has normative character (ie we should only look at that). But it has neither positive (descriptive) nor normative character for actual humans.)

2. Extreme inequality jeopardises the democratic project, and corrodes the political process.

3. In the real world, higher inequality is linked to more crime. (Too lazy to find the reference now, but there's a recent book out on it.)

4. The jostling for status arguably leads to enormously wasteful spending (ie conspicuous consumption, ostentatious waste, etc.)

5. Life expectancy, health, happiness seem higher in more equal societies.

You can't just dismiss these facts (some empirical, some philosophical) by "why should you care about what someone else has?".

(Note: none of the above objections are dependent on a false "zero-sum" or "fixed-pie" argument.)

In addition to Nozick, I recommend reading Rawls (or even better, somebody writing about Rawls - his "Theory of Justice" is very heavy reading, taking way too long to get to the points).

I feel like your initial question is just coming from a very disingenuous place, the discussion of the relative economic efficiency of unequal vs. perfectly equally distributed wealth is a bit aside from the question of how extreme wealth inequality is. So I suppose, I agree that wealth inequality does provide value, but it does so in very small doses which we have greatly exceeded at this point.

Would Einstein have stilled discovered relativity regardless if he had been paid large amounts of monney for doing research or not?

Sure, there are examples like Ford - where without profit motive, they would not have gotten the advances that happened. But those examples tend to have less impact than the non-profit driven motives.