The Wrong Inequality
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
The world cannot function solely on the fruits of debates and negotiations between middlemen. Ditch diggers have to exist. What we have to determine is if we will continually have the debate between whether they will be guaranteed to be paid enough to live, or whether the market determines that we should reduce their living conditions and liberties in order to bring their cost to a rate that keeps certain products and businesses viable.
I would also argue that we need measures of human progress other than productivity per person. For one example, with each generation pay ditch diggers more to do less work, and by that standard we are woefully regressing.
Someone posted this the other day, which I'd never read before but I thought was quite an eloquent argument for the same. Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness: http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html
You're implying that we're becoming less productive, that's totally untrue. The same argument has been made about the motor vehicle, cotton gin, etc.
Of course, that time is not here today, or terribly soon.
I'm not certain this is really true. Certainly the number of people required to dig a ditch has plummeted over the last 200 years. A few skiploader drivers can do the work of thousands. As robots get cheaper and more capable, it's not too hard to imagine a future where humans stop doing purely physical jobs entirely.
I also think the thesis of "everyone should be respected" is inconsistent with the thesis of "education is good". If knowledge and education is good, then lack thereof is inherently not-good. This doesn't mean you should spit on the binman, but it does mean you will probably steer your kids away from that career path.
Also, knowledge is good, education is only good to the extent that it brings you knowledge, and neither mean that you don't drive a garbage truck.
If it helps, replace ditch-diggers with skiploader drivers. Replace assembly line workers with robot repairmen. The point is that somebody will have to be doing something, rather than just directing and allocating people who are doing something.
In my experience, the folks who don't respect ditch diggers are not the so-called 1% (either finance or MDs) but the so-called "New Class", as discussed in http://volokh.com/2011/10/31/the-fragmenting-of-the-new-clas... .
If you have a society of winners where winners take all, what happens to the losers? What do the hundred million or so people who aren't rockstars of their domain do?
My initial reaction to the article was dismissive, but the more I think about it, the bigger the problem seems like it will be by the time it is brought into the public eye. Is a 'bottom 50%er' version of Occupy WallStreet something we could end up seeing within our lifetimes?
We aren't there yet, however. We are also not at the point where most people's work is devoid of merit. We are merely at the point where many people lost their old jobs and are unwilling to take new jobs in other sectors.
For example, consider an unemployed construction worker. There is plenty of work waiting for him - cleaning houses, picking strawberries, etc. But he remains unemployed because he is unwilling to take other work.
There's a mountain of difference between, say, a doctor earning $400,000 and a trader earning north of $10 million. The outsized gains in the past 30 years have been made by the folks in the latter category. Your typical doctor or lawyer has always done well for himself; this is no great surprise. But he's never been yachts-and-mansions wealthy, and he's no closer to that mark today than he was decades ago. Rockstar doctors and lawyers, occasionally. But doctors and lawyers on average, no.
The real focus should be on the financial sector, where one needn't be a rockstar to earn more in a single year than most white collar professionals earn in ten. The finance industry has expanded rapidly in recent decades, occupying a larger and larger slice of the US economy, and baking more and more volatility into the pie. That many of its players are mega-rich is merely a symptom. The real issue is that finance is so powerful and so omnipresent.
There is a place for a healthy financial sector in a modern economy. But an economy can't thrive on "services" alone -- a fact the US is learning the hard way, after decades of being told the contrary by banks and consultancies.
Network and Other Communications Equipment Internet Services and Retailing Pharmaceuticals Medical Products and Equipment Railroads Financial Data Services Mining, Crude-Oil production Securities Oil and Gas Equipment, Services Scientific, Photographic, and Control Equipment Household and Personal Products Utilities: Gas and Electric Aerospace and Defense Food Services Industrial Machinery Food Consumer Products Electronics, Electrical Equipment Commercial Banks Telecommunications Chemicals Construction and Farm Machinery Insurance: Life, Health (stock) Information Technology Services Computers, Office Equipment Metals
hmm..What if I want to reduce inequality && expand opportunity? What if you can't fix red without tackling blue and vice versa? Should this combined perspective be called purple inequality?
No he didn't. He said that the gap between those with and without a university degree is rising. It's not the same thing.
It is almost certainly wrong to claim that the non-college educate are worse off ("dramatically" or not) than some historical period.
That’s because the liberal arts majors like to express their disdain for the shallow business and finance majors who make all the money.
Nonsense. The 1% aren't there because they are exceptionally savvy and went to business school, they're mostly there because they were born into wealthy social networks. The implication of the article is that the other 99% chose their lot, and that if only we all went to college and studied a lucrative craft, we'd all be wealthy. All the while he lauds college grads and their wealthier lifestyle, Brooks incredibly ignores the possibility that maybe wealthy people are more likely to go to college in the first place. Maybe his 'Red Inequality' is just more 'Blue Inequality' after all.
'Red Inequality?' More like red herring.
Hindsight being 20/20 and all
It's like we re-discover the conflict between the "small" bourgeoisie and the proletariat every 15-20 years since the July Revolution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_Revolution) .
It is easy to put blame purely at The Banker Bonus. Fixing education and providing equal opportunity plus social mobility is a continous struggle. A lot of complex open issues.