Real vs Income Inequality...

[Hugh Conway]

freedom begets inequality. deal with it.

 

lack of freedom also begets inequality.

 

deal with it?

[dmuja]

Isn't that exactly what Jay's post was about? Yep.

 

Now go lick sack.

 

 

No, Jays post is an elitest argument that is designed to distract from the real issues. If you don't think there is a real, actually true underclass (hidden) in our society then you need to get on your tivo and check out the New Orleans Hurricane aftermath. As hard as it may be for your little brain to figure out, things "arn't all better" soly because of rich guys, working folks built the middle class and that constant is under great threat from the freemarket neofacist mentality that seems to be on the rise these days.

 

Kiss me first sweety, I might even give you a drink if youre thirsty.

[sexual_chocolate]

there wouldn't even be a middle-class without the rich, morons.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

there wouldn't even be a middle-class without the rich, morons.

 

you crack me up

[JayB]

Isn't that exactly what Jay's post was about? Yep.

 

Now go lick sack.

 

 

No, Jays post is an elitest argument that is designed to distract from the real issues. If you don't think there is a real, actually true underclass (hidden) in our society then you need to get on your tivo and check out the New Orleans Hurricane aftermath. As hard as it may be for your little brain to figure out, things "arn't all better" soly because of rich guys, working folks built the middle class and that constant is under great threat from the freemarket neofacist mentality that seems to be on the rise these days.

 

Kiss me first sweety, I might even give you a drink if youre thirsty.

 

Was the article arguing that the underclass doesn't exist?

 

The gist of the article seemed to be that

 

- income inequality and material inequality aren't quite the same.

- When it comes to material deprivation, in comparison to the wealthiest people in society, the poorest people in today's society are immeasurably better off than the poorest of 20, 40, 80, and 120 years ago.

 

You can thank inventors and entrepreneurs for substantial part of that improvement.

[tvashtarkatena]

If I am indeed a king, then my kingdom's really, really small.

 

I do feel rich, but that's an attitude thing. Still, there are those who don't appreciate their own lives enough to keep them from envying others. Ah well, that's an attitude thing, too.

Edited January 4, 2008 by tvashtarkatena

[dmuja]

The gist of the article seemed to be that

 

- income inequality and material inequality aren't quite the same.

- When it comes to material deprivation, in comparison to the wealthiest people in society, the poorest people in today's society are immeasurably better off than the poorest of 20, 40, 80, and 120 years ago.

 

You can thank inventors and entrepreneurs for substantial part of that improvement.

 

There are parts of this country that are not obvious unless you go there, where extreme inequities and serious poverty still exists, Katrina showed some of that. I travelled through No/So Carolina in the 80's and there were still black indentured sevents living in slave camps - I kid you not. You can say "this generation is better of than previous" etc, but that doesn't stop violent revolutions from occurring when vast inequities exist. Income is one of the ways we measure those inequities and it is an important way to mearsure that IMO. It is the inequities that are often the sparks of change - good and or bad.

 

Yes I have better "cleaner" food than my Dad did, but I also can't buy my way out of a criminal conviction, or buy my way to the best health care available the way many wealthy folks can. Too much inequity is bad for our society, period.

[JayB]

Given that the poorest class of people in the US probably have material wealth (car, food, roof over head, indoor plumbing, electricity, freezer, over, clean drinking water, etc) that far exceeds that of at least 3/4ths of the world's population - it's worth asking whether or not it makes sense to focus on absolute vs relative standards of living when drawing conclusions about what their material conditions say about the state of our society.

 

 

[ashw_justin]

How much income would I need today to be able to compete with corporate political contributions? Methinks more than I would have needed yesterday. Ah well, political representation is not that important tho as long as I can has cheeseburger.

[billcoe]

My mother was born and raised on a farm near the Black Canyon of the Gunisson (outside of Hotchkiss, Colo).

 

As a teenager their farm was the first in the valley to get electricity. A single bulb in their living room.

 

They generally lived better than city folks at the time however, as they had plentiful food. Over 2/3 of the US population lived on such farms, no running water, no electricity, no cars (OK, grandpa finally did get one).

 

I think anyone who glorifies that time (and it was worse than that as you go even back further in time) needs to only reject indoor plumbing, pump their own water, fire up a coal or wood stove daily, and use an outhouse for a week in the winter in sub-freezing temperatures to come to an obvious and timely reassessment.

 

I'm not discussing the obvious wealth inequities which the current administrations tax policies are excaberating.

 

I'm just sayin'....life is pretty damn sweet.

[whirlwind]

only difernce being in order for people of lower imcome brackets to have the so called equaility they must go into more debt, and more than likly work till they die, rather than retire at a decent age. it is much easier to get lines of credit now days and people get stuck paying off one credit card with another, as well as paying 3-4-or god knows how much more for the same products purchaced under credit rather than paid for in cash. the " old" days people usally didn't have the option to put themselfs into mass debt to buy a refrigerator or other modern convences, becuse it simply wasn't posible to get a loan unless you put up some sort of collateral.

[PLC]

Fifteen years ago, I was a dirt poor grad student. Now I'm filthy rich. The article is correct in that my life isn't significantly better today - everything I own is more expensive, but it doesn't necessarily work any better.

 

My house is bigger, but its not like I was homeless before. My car is a lot nicer, but I had a car back then, too. I have a subzero and it cools food pretty much exactly the same as the free brown fridge I found on the side of the road.

 

The one real benefit to being rich is the freedom from worry. If my car broke down when I was poor, I was fucked until I could figure out a way to fix it. Now, if my car breaks down, I just buy a new one.

[JayB]

"I'll take 'Words that will never be uttered by a PhD candidate studying The Role of Latent Gender Signifiers in Late Victorian Poetry' for $1000, Alex."

[JosephH]

No, we weren't poor by any means at all - my Dad started out in bi-planes and retired a 747 Captain for United. But, immediately after Vietnam I discovered climbing which basically did in college. Following that it was ditch digger, roofer, tree crews, and carpentry mixed with photography and animation, neither of which I could much tolerate after Vietnam. Went from those to horticulture and only later, due to having been wanting to automate animation stands and greenhouses, did I end up starting comp sci fairly late in my early thirties in Chicago. Four years with DEC and being independent since '87 pretty well rounds out the story. I'm doomed unless I figure out some clever code you can't live without - but then that would require I quit climbing and so far I'm not ready to do that.

[JayB]

I'm just curious as to what qualities, values, or circumstances you think enabled you to go from ditch-digger to your present station. Do you think that your trajectory constitutes an exception to the rules in a way that renders it meaningless for anyone else to base any broad conclusions on, or that others might be capable of doing something similar?

[olyclimber]

anything is possible if you know how to dream

[sexual_chocolate]

I'm just curious as to what qualities, values, or circumstances you think enabled you to go from ditch-digger to your present station. Do you think that your trajectory constitutes an exception to the rules in a way that renders it meaningless for anyone else to base any broad conclusions on, or that others might be capable of doing something similar?

 

exception to what rules?

 

it seems quite obvious that his exposure early on to a "successful" environment would help give him both the freedom to follow his dreams and the abilities to pursue his professional career later in life.

 

definite advantages over someone growing up being taught that life sucks, everyone is against you, no use trying etc etc negative crap.

 

i think everyone has the same potentials; i also think that realizing those potentials is more of a challenge for some.

 

i think you'd agree with the above, but i can't say i understand your anger towards those who aren't "succeeding" in this life game. i'd guess it has something to do with an overbearing father? mother? being picked on early in life? some latent self-hatred issues? (interesting possibility, since you blame others (projection?) for having this issue)....

 

 

[JosephH]

Pretty odd developmental circumstances in my case, so I'd say you can only extrapolate so far from me. Basically I owe it all to being a white man, a 5" gunmount, 25 hits of acid, and climbing in more or less that order despite the fact the 'man' part - physically, emotionally, and socially - really didn't kick in until quite late in the game.

 

Before that I was basically functioning as a large 10 year old. So, if you think I'm bad now, you should have seen me early on. Digging and roofing were probably good for me, as was sweeping and mopping all of which I pretty much loved. As I said, it's all a bit strange - sort of like a long, slow-motion version of coming out of a coma to a slight autism . Happy to be here now and my wife, along with being a babe, is a saint for helping me get to where I am today - however flawed that remains.

 

Skip a single step - white, gunmount, acid, or climbing and I'd basically still be quietly mopping floors somewhere in a haze, living alone in a basement, reading comics, and staring at a dozen aquariums for a life. Tolerable, but glad a vast amount of randomness interceded and tumbled me down a different chute. Would love to take far more credit for it all, but let's not get carried away just yet...

[Fairweather]

If I am indeed a king, then my kingdom's really, really small.

 

I do feel rich, but that's an attitude thing. Still, there are those who don't appreciate their own lives enough to keep them from envying others. Ah well, that's an attitude thing, too.

 

Look at Tvashy...actin' all humble n'shit. About a complete fantasy, no less. What a dick.

[Hugh Conway]

I'm just curious as to what qualities, values, or circumstances you think enabled you to go from ditch-digger to your present station. Do you think that your trajectory constitutes an exception to the rules in a way that renders it meaningless for anyone else to base any broad conclusions on, or that others might be capable of doing something similar?

 

Please explain the role of random chance in wealth generation. Many wealthy, including Bill Gates, acknowledge it's role in their wealth. Nobody is saying Bill G was lazy.... just that Bill G didn't necessarily work 40,000 times harder than the millionaire. Or for that matter 40,000 time smarter than the millionaire.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

the " old" days people usally didn't have the option to put themselfs into mass debt to buy a refrigerator or other modern convences, becuse it simply wasn't posible to get a loan unless you put up some sort of collateral.

 

Dude, WTF are you talking about? You ever heard of banks foreclosing? How about the "company store". Debt existed in the "old days", with dire consequences.

 

[prole]

From the Economist.

 

"IN 1904 Willie Vanderbilt hit a thrilling 92.3 mph (147.7 kph) in his new German motorcar, smashing the land-speed record. His older brother's sprawling North Carolina manse, Biltmore, could accommodate up to 500 pounds of meat in its electrical refrigerators. In miserable contrast, the below-average Gilded Age American had to make do with a pair of shoes and a melting block of ice. If he could somehow save enough for an icebox, a day's wage would not have bought a pound of meat to put in it. Paul Krugman, of Princeton University, has recently argued* that contemporary America's widening income gap is ushering in a new age of invidious inequalities. But a peek at the numbers behind the numbers suggests that Mr Krugman has been misled: far from a new Gilded Age, America is experiencing a period of unprecedented material equality.

 

This is not to deny that income inequality is rising: it is. But measures of income inequality are misleading because an individual's income is, at best, a rough proxy for his or her real economic wellbeing. Because we can save, draw down savings, or run up debt, our income may tell us little about how we're faring. Consumption surveys, which track what people actually spend, sketch a more lifelike portrait of the material quality of life. According to one 2006 study**, by Dirk Krueger of the University of Pennsylvania and Fabrizio Perri of New York University, consumption inequality has barely budged for several decades, despite a sharp upswing in income inequality.

 

But consumption numbers, too, conceal as much as they illuminate. They can record only that we have spent, but not the value—the pleasure or health—gained in the spending. A stable trend in nominal consumption inequality can mask a narrowing of real or “utility-adjusted” consumption inequality. Indeed, according to happiness researchers, inequality in self-reported “life satisfaction” has been shrinking in wealthy market democracies, America included, suggesting that the quality of lives across the income scale are becoming more similar, not less.

 

You can see this levelling at work in markets for transport and appliances. You no longer need be a Vanderbilt to own a refrigerator or a car. Refrigerators are now all but universal in America, even though refrigerator inequality continues to grow. The Sub-Zero PRO 48, which the manufacturer calls “a monument to food preservation”, costs about $11,000, compared with a paltry $350 for the IKEA Energisk B18 W. The lived difference, however, is rather smaller than that between having fresh meat and milk and having none. Similarly, more than 70% of Americans under the official poverty line own at least one car. And the distance between driving a used Hyundai Elantra and a new Jaguar XJ is well nigh undetectable compared with the difference between motoring and hiking through the muck. The vast spread of prices often distracts from a narrowing range of experience.

Save money. Live better

 

This compression is not a thing of the past. To take one recent example, Jerry Hausman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Ephraim Leibtag of the United States Department of Agriculture, show† that Wal-Mart's move into the grocery business has lowered food prices. Because the poorest spend the largest part of their budget on food, lower prices have benefited them most. The official statistics do not capture these gains.

 

As a rule, when the prices of food, clothing and basic modern conveniences drop relative to the price of luxury goods, real consumption inequality drops. But the point is not that in America the relatively poor suffer no painful indignities, which would be absurd. It is that, over time, the everyday experience of consumption among the less fortunate has become in many ways more similar to that of their wealthier compatriots. A widescreen plasma television is lovely, but you do not need one to laugh at “Shrek”.

 

This compression is the predictable consequence of innovations in production and distribution that have improved the quality of goods at the lower range of prices faster than at the top. New technologies and knock-off fashions now spread down the price scale too fast to distinguish the rich from the aspiring for long.

 

This increasing equality in real consumption mirrors a dramatic narrowing of other inequalities between rich and poor, such as the inequalities in height, life expectancy and leisure. William Robert Fogel, a Nobel prize-winning economic historian, argues†† that nominal measures of economic well-being often miss such huge changes in the conditions of life. “In every measure that we have bearing on the standard of living...the gains of the lower classes have been far greater than those experienced by the population as a whole,” Mr Fogel observes.

 

Some worrying inequalities, such as the access to a good education, may indeed be widening, arresting economic mobility for the least fortunate and exacerbating income-inequality trends. Yet even if you care about those aspects of income inequality, the idea can send misleading signals about the underlying trends in real consumption and the real quality of life. Contrary to Mr Krugman's implications, today's Gilded Age income gaps do not imply Gilded Age lifestyle gaps. On the contrary, those intrepid souls who make vast fortunes turning out ever higher-quality goods at ever lower prices widen the income gap while reducing the differences that matter most."

 

Simply fascinating that the pages of the Economist need to rely on the crude, outdated economic theory of utilitarianism to justify what is evident to all as gross economic and political inequalities leading to profoundly undemocratic social outcomes. This is some college intern's 21st Century equivalent of "let them eat cake". Resident utopian and CC.com's version of Dr. Pangloss again trying to dazzle us with the miracle of meat refrigeration while the powdered wigs are laughing their asses all the way to the bank.

[tvashtarkatena]

Denali.

[Ron Mexico]

That article made hella sense. Clearly the citizens of czarist Russia or post WWI Germany should have been more content with their lot, I mean after all they had way more stuff then your average cave man.

[archenemy]

Fifteen years ago, I was a dirt poor grad student. Now I'm filthy rich. The article is correct in that my life isn't significantly better today - everything I own is more expensive, but it doesn't necessarily work any better.

 

My house is bigger, but its not like I was homeless before. My car is a lot nicer, but I had a car back then, too. I have a subzero and it cools food pretty much exactly the same as the free brown fridge I found on the side of the road.

 

The one real benefit to being rich is the freedom from worry. If my car broke down when I was poor, I was fucked until I could figure out a way to fix it. Now, if my car breaks down, I just buy a new one.

Dead straight!