It’s Time to Hold American Elites Accountable for Their Abuses | Hacker News Reader

It’s Time to Hold American Elites Accountable for Their Abuses

theatlantic.com

52 pointsRickJWagner36 comments

For a guy that did little to make Chicago a better place during his 2 terms as mayor, he may want to spend more time on self-reflection rather than pointing his finger at others.

https://theintercept.com/2019/05/20/chicago-mayor-rahm-emanu...

Eh, given the absolute shitshow he was handed, he didn't do an awful job. No mayor could fix all of Chicago's long-term structural problems in two terms.

As European, which only discovered aboug legacy preferences [0] recently, I am still not sure how to reconcile it with my belief that meritocracy was a cornerstone American value, and how this case is fundamentally different.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences

Meritocracy is a spoken value, but it's never been a reality. I'm sure that's true in every country.

In fact, upward mobility is much better in places like France and the UK[1].

Most people like me, who pay attention to history and current social issues, see the American dream and the myth of meritocracy as a way to keep the poor from seeing that the system is rigged against them and becoming restless.

1. https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/02/14/american...

Sorry, but I have a bone to pick with social mobility as measured in the cited articles.

Why do they only limit social mobility in terms of going from the bottom to the top quintile? That seems like one very limited measure.

Also, how does social mobility measure when you look at absolute gains? If America's top quintile is much higher than Europe's (which it is), you could have someone go from $20K to $200K per year in the US (bottom to 4th quintile) and that would be viewed as worse than someone going from $20K to $150K in Europe (bottom to top quintile).

Plus, you can't cherry pick social mobility papers, because they actually go both ways (US low or US high). It all depends on how you measure it.

Despite the citation, I remain skeptical. How is it possible that countries with such high tax rates would have that level of upward mobility? Just when you're getting going, the rug is getting pulled out from under you. Not that it isn't the case in the states, too, mind you. Just to a slightly lesser degree.

Meritocracy? GTFO! Companies do nothing but virtue signal these days.

> How is it possible that countries with such high tax rates would have that level of upward mobility?

They have such high upward mobility because of high tax rates since high tax rates allow funding more public institutions (health care, education, housing, child care) that make upward mobility possible. By the time you're wealthy enough to "have the rug pulled our from under you" you're already in the top 10% - top 1%. Getting the rug pulled at that point just means you make a little less money.

>Getting the rug pulled at that point just means you make a little less money.

It also means you have a much harder time saving for a house, funding a company etc. The top 10% are also the most important part of a society from an economic perspective.

So basically its easier to get into the top 10% in Europe while its easier to get into the very top in America.

The are much more selfmade Billionaires in America , i suspect its the same for Millionaires

https://www.citylab.com/life/2016/05/world-billionaire-wealt...

There are many more people who would like to enter the 'Tonnaires' than there are who consider Millionaire or Billionaire status a worthwhile goal. And as far as I can tell anything beyond a few ton doesn't significantly increase happiness.

From my perspective there's no reason to value the ability to become a 'self-made' billionaire if it leaves more of the 'precariat', and I prefer a society that reduces the number of people that are part of it.

I agree with you that this would be a more pleasant society for the majority, which would be a good thing.

Unfortunately i think that the more "unfair" society would be more dominant and will outcompete it over time, thereby making it worse.

So i think in the end some unfairness will isnecessary, but maybe less then we have today

Tax rates are progressive, meaning that those with lower income pay significantly less than those with high earnings.

Taxes are used to finance and subsidize common services such as heathcare, public transport and education, which people with a disadvantaged background otherwise could not afford.

Thus, it is more likely that those which were born in a low income family (and are willing to improve their situation) can move upwards, since they don't have to worry so much about basic needs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/02/14/american...

I understand that you once we consider US health insurance payments by employers and employees to be a tax (in many EU states, it is explicitly a tax), the US does actually have a comparably high tax rate to many EU countries with that significantly higher mobility.

Which might suggest that the high tax rate isn't inherently linked to upward mobility, or at least that it's much more complicated; that taxing high-earners isn't inherently anti-mobility.

Americans don't consider a large, essential expenditure to he a tax because it's not. Food and rent are not taxes either.

Upward mobility there is defined as movement between different income quintiles. Higher taxes affect everyone so would merely adjust the boundaries of those quintiles.

“Just when you're getting going, the rug is getting pulled out from under you.”

What do you mean with that?

He means you can't turn into a billionaire without paying into society so obviously no meritocracy. /s

I don't actually want to put words into the other posters mouth. There is, however, a sizeable number of people in America who act like the only the that matters is the rules around getting rich and that having social services that allow anyone to take a gamble on entrepreneurship don't count as helping a meritocracy get in place

Rahm Emanuel oversaw with Obama the largest upward transfer of wealth in human history. And now he's chiding elites.

I’d love some more detail on your statement, but either way I don’t think we should attack the messenger here. The message in OP is solid in my view, and the fact that it’s coming from an “establishment” Democrat is refreshing.

If by upward transfer, you mean elites gained the larger percentage, then also include that immediately previous to Obama the same elites saw the largest percentage losses under the Bush financial collapse. The gains as the economy improved restored some of those losses.

Also under Obama the middle class gained significant wealth, through reduction in unemployment, restoring of stock values (i.e., pensions and 401ks), and wage increases (the largest year over year median wage increase on record was under the Obama admin).

>under Obama the middle class gained significant wealth

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/middle-class-charts_n_6507506

Check out these charts and tell me you're not full of shit.

Edit: it took me 30 seconds of googling to find this, next time research your position before you make a fool of yourself.

Your article is dated 2015. You're ignoring a decent amount of historical growth. Here's a pretty decent chart to let you know how good your news sources are

https://www.adfontesmedia.com/the-chart-version-3-0-what-exa...

Here's historical wage growth reports from BLS. https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/earnings-and-wages.htm

Here's 75 consecutive months of growth under Obama, a record: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/01/decembe...

Here's wage growth charts https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wage-growth

Here's median householdincome from FRED https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N

Here's income data from Census, which you can download in Excel and analyze yourself. Again same conclusions. https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-p...

As you can see, all of these paint a much rosier picture than HuffPo. And places like BLS and FRED and Census are vastly more trustworthy for data, since you remove opinion piece writers trying to get eyeballs.

>Edit: it took me 30 seconds of googling to find this, next time research your position before you make a fool of yourself.

Indeed.

You just sprayed links all over, expecting me to fish through that data? From what I can tell, your data shows mediocre growth that has barely kept pace with inflation. Half the links you show are for "median" values, which will always increase in an economy that is growing (as it did under the Obama years). It's fact that the middle class as stagnated as the ultra-wealth have gained immensely over the past decades, no amount of FUD will make your argument factual. I'm not arguing any further with someone who argues in bad faith.

>Half the links you show are for "median" values, which will always increase in an economy that is growing (as it did under the Obama years). It's fact that the middle class as stagnated as the ultra-wealth have gained immensely over the past decades,

You're confusing median with mean. Median is the middlemost income, which represents the middle class well. Mean is the average including tops and bottoms.

>I'm not arguing any further with someone who argues in bad faith.

You presented worse sourced, out of date data, misuse or don't understand basic terms, and don't look at evidence from well respected sources when presented. How am I the one not arguing in good faith?

>But $1 trillion and 5,000 lives and 16 years later, the public had been told that those WMDs had not existed after all.

5,000? More like 500,000...

America has an unbalanced system which rewards a small group exponentially (regardless of what that is), this is a feature built into the core of the system and the american psyche. Changing this requires a fundamental revolution to the system. Most of american life follows the Pareto principle on crack. E.g small number of people capture absurd amounts of value generated, small number of colleges create most of the elites... presidents, businessmen, scientists etc...

>a bailout of bankers issuing entirely toxic debt, and a massive public effort to prop up auto executives who were building cars that weren’t selling.

The bailouts were loans to banks, with stable banks forced to take them to avoid signalling, and the loans were paid off with interest to the benefit of the taxpayer. The toxic debt was debt the middle class treating their houses like casinos, taking on debt, then defaulting. If we hold the elites accountable, do we also hold those lying on loan forms (mostly middle class) accountable?

The auto bailouts were designed to save middle class jobs, and these were a financial loss to taxpayers when these were defaulted. So here taxpayers did pay to keep middle class jobs.

Note that taxpayers did not pay for either bailout, but the did pay or benefit on the gains or losses. The money was from the Fed, with the taxpayer on the hook for the deltas, not the initial amount.

Actual accounting on the bailouts [1]

Maybe the middle class should hold themselves accountable.

[1] https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/

Taxpayers still pay for fed expenditures, albeit indirectly. Expansionary fiscal policy -> inflation, and inflation is probably the biggest single tax on any one.

We've had very low inflation for some time.

Deflationary spirals have caused more damage than low inflation by far historically. There's ample evidence central banking has reduced volatility across hundreds of countries, which is why every single country on earth has adopted it.

Inflation also benefits borrowers, which is the middle class. It makes house payments relatively lower over time, for example, while wages tend to track inflation on the whole.

Inflation is a macro benefit to taxpayers.

Not necessarily. That has been the traditional economic opinion, but it has been challaneged as of late. Employers don't always raise wages, harder to save for retirement (unless you want to take higher risk in the stock market, your money shrinks in real value).

You don't need much risk in the stock market. Index funds have outpaced inflation since forever.

It's easier to save for retirement since most people spend a lot of their life with fixed payment debt (mortgage, car, school, etc), and all of these become cheaper to service due to inflation.

Thus the majority of the middle class has access to and uses debt, and has access to assets that outplace inflation.

The counter to inflation is deflation, which has, due to deflationary spirals, been devastating to economies. There is not an inflationary spiral. This is why all central banks target small inflation.

>Taxpayers still pay for fed expenditures

And they benefit from Fed gains, which are passed Treasury by law, and which happened in this case, of over $100 billion.

That is why I linked the data. Feel free to link other data if you think it's relevant.

Ignoring his terrible record and taking his argument at face value, I think he's right on some counts, but misses three important points:

* "The Elite" includes not just bankers and B-list actresses. It also includes most of Hollywood and many athletes, many media pundits, the Clintons, himself, and other politicians who make millions in "speaking engagements", book deals, etc., get cush healthcare and retirement, advocate and legislate wasteful policy, then lecture us on how evil we are for wanting to keep our hard-earned money to invest, share and spend as we see fit.

* Disagreeing with someone is not automatically racist or sexist. Sure, those evils exist today and should be confronted, but having nuanced, principled opposition to "Elite" talking points should not get you banned from social media or doxed. We throw around ___ist words and hyperbole way too much in an effort to bypass rational debate.

* A person having money or status is not a problem in itself. When those people start looking down their noses at me (a middle class libertarian), insinuating I am ___ist because I don't like a healthcare program they made, and creating a culture where people are maligned for their beliefs, it does begin to raise concerns.

I think much of the nationalism we see is a reaction to those points. He's correct in the broader problem, but shortsighted in his application.

American Elites should be held accountable?

Oh yes, you got that right. But I'd like to change it around a bit.

ALL elites in the world are responsible for the shit happening right now. And yes, WE WILL hold each and every one of you accountable for the futures you are currently destroying.

No matter what your political beliefs are, or how "good" you pretend to be. All of you.

Like winter, justice will be coming. I don't know when and I don't know how -- but it will be coming. COUNT ON IT.

Kind of surprising, an attack on Hollywood from The Atlantic. (They tend to be sympathetic to left-side politics.)

I guess it's mostly just the picture that depicts Hollywood. The text is as expected.

This is an article by a Democrat, in a left leaning publication, about things Democrats have got wrong politically recently and what they need to do to correct on to the right track. Seen that way, Illustrating it with a fallen Hollywood icon seems particularly thematically appropriate.

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