Inequality much worse than most think

[charliebrown]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

Add this too.

Lev, 19:9
⁹ “‘When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. ¹⁰ Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the Lord your God.

[jiimbergin]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

EJ and Charlie Brown well said, thank you both!

[newnewthing]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

Well, luck certainly has a lot to do with it. A close friend of ours had won the state lottery (low-mid 8 figures) when she was a student. She went on to finish college and taught public middle school for most of the last two decades and that's what we knew her from. She spent somewhat more than most teachers and we had assumed, wrongly, that she had money that came from a family trust fund or something. It didn't as we learned one day just hanging with her. She, OTOH, was astonished that we didn't already know about her big win having thought she had said something about it years earlier.

As for me, I'm a retired entrepreneur. Grew up without any inheritance but with lots of siblings and raised in "The Projects." Educated as an engineer with a BS on my own dime, after college I spent a few years learning more about my trade, which I dearly loved, then joined a new company that needed my skills in bit slice uPs. Some years after that I started a company with and at the urging of a technician who had only a GED but an uncanny sense of what the market we were in actually needed. This is often different from what customers say they need. It's hard to want something that doesn't exist. The startup went from a tiny portion of a garage to a fairly large tech manufacturing firm employing around 1,000. After building it for well over 20 years during which a lot of other people got (relatively) rich, I retired and cashed out my equity over many years. It netted for about the same amount as our friend, the lottery winner.

Sure there was some skill in what my partner and I did but there was also a lot of luck if not to the degree of our lottery winning friend.

And we stayed away from all government contracts as potentially lucrative as they might have been. When we were approached to do so it was clear early on that it was a rabbit hole we didn't want to go down.

Looking at the landscape today it is hard to imagine a time with more opportunity for people. What it is not is a time where "hard work" has much value. Effort != Value

[llanlad2]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

I question the antiquated framework of the social policy debate on economic equality, set as Labor vs Capital. It's a holdover from an era of slow technological innovation and highly limited social and economic mobility.

In Marx's time the chance of any young man or woman starting life as Labor and later in life becoming part of the Capitalist class, per the Marxian conceptions, was so remote as to be irrelevant from the perspective of his analysis of the political economy, yet such is common if not typical today, at least among certain cultural groups. In Marx's day if you were born to a family of laborers then a laborer you would be, too, and if you were born to wealth and privilege then you were forged from birth a Capitalist, so he can be forgiven for conceiving of the conflict between economic classes as between two immutable populations sets. As for the class aspiring to rise from one to the other Marx was contemptuous, referring to them as the Petite Bourgeoisie.

In the United States and a few other countries today social and economic mobility is largely a matter of family and culture, outside the control of the State.

Speaking for a moment from personal experience, I started my working life as a tech wiring and soldering circuit boards for a few dollars an hour and now spend a good amount of my time investing in and helping start-up companies. I had no inheritance to speak of when my parents passed away when I was in my 30s. What I did have was the luck of intelligence, health, education, and culture, some of which are hereditary advantages and others a factors of family and culture.

No matter what it does the State can never compensate for the poor distribution of these advantages among all citizens. It can endeavor to improve by law better equality of opportunity but anything the State tries to do to create equality of result inevitably backfires.

Among the critical factors for economic success culture and family are clearly now the most significant but still the least discussed, despite the clear evidence of this all around us.

A family from China moved in down the street from us during the housing downturn. Prices didn't go down much here but did somewhat and they timed their purchase to the downturn. The house is small, maybe 1500 square feet, with two bedrooms and one bathroom, swamp behind it and power lines beside it. I don't know exactly how many people live there but by rough count there are the mother and father, three kids, and at least one grand parent living in the home. They could have purchased a larger home on a larger and less modest lot in the neighboring town. But what the little house by the power line lacks for amenities it makes up for in one aspect of its location that was of primary importance to the family: proximity to one of the best elementary schools in the country. From there their children can attend to one of the best high schools, and after that be in a good position to get into MIT or Harvard. By moving into the cramped house they know that when their kids grow up they will be well educated, and speak without with an accent and vocabulary that instantly identifies them as part of the educated class. With that they have a ticket to a well paying profession or not, if they so choose.

The upper hand that they will have over the native-born kids the next town over, advantages that will serve them all of their lives, will be entirely due to decisions made by their parents, which decisions are a factor largely of culture. They will have nothing to do with the State.

When I speak with immigrants from Russia or India or China or virtually anywhere in the world they invariably express their confusion at hearing the complaints by native-born Americans about the unfairness of the American economy, as indicated by the fact that some are wealthy while others are poor.

A friend's Russian girlfriend put it to me this way -- paraphrasing. I asked her what she thought of economic inequality in America. Rolling her eyes, she said "All this whining and complaining. 'It's not fair that these guys have so little and these other guys have so much.' In my country as a woman I had no opportunities to advance myself. To even want to advance yourself was bad and unladylike. Your family history, race, religion, gender, accent... all of these narrow you down there. Here no one cares, or, well, not nearly so much. Here your boss cares what you can do for him. Promise results and deliver and it does not matter if you're a woman or African or what you are. If you fail you get to try again! Start over! And if you are broke you have welfare and food stamps, not to live like a king but you will not starve. America is the Socialist dream but better because you can opt-out. What more do people here want than this? I don't understand it."

The idea of everyone working harder to be ahead of everyone else is impossible. Likewise everyone can't be more frugal than everyone else.This logic leads to people working longer hours for less money. I am fortunate in that I became well-off through hard-work,lucky timing, not being very materialistic and having a wife who hates shopping! The window of opportunity for people (like myself) to gain freedom of choice to not work stupidly long-hours (to the detriment of family life) is closing quickly.

Personally I believe that what is written below is close to the reality we have reached today.

Improved Habits of Industry and ThriftThere is and always has been a widespread belief among the more comfortable classes that the poverty and suffering of the masses are due to their lack of industry, frugality and intelligence. This belief, which at once soothes the sense of nobility and flatters by its suggestion of superiority, is but natural for those who can trace their own better circumstances to the superior industry and frugality that gave them a start, and to the superior intelligence that enabled them to take advantage of every opportunity.
But whoever has grasped the laws of the distribution of wealth, as in previous chapters they have been traced out, will see the mistake in this notion. For as soon as land acquires a value, wages, as we have seen, do not depend upon the real earnings or product of labour, but upon what is left to labour after rent is taken out; and when land is all monopolized, rent must drive wages down to the point at which the poorest paid class will be just able to live. Thus wages are forced to a minimum fixed by what is called the standard of comfort - that is, the amount of necessaries and comforts which habit leads the working-classes to demand as the lowest that they will accept. This being the case, industry, skill, frugality and intelligence can only avail the individual in so far as they are superior to the general level - just as in a race, speed can only avail the runner in so far as it exceeds that of his competitors. If one man work harder, or with superior skill or intelligence than ordinary, he will get ahead; but if the average of industry, skill, or intelligence is brought up to the higher point, the increased intensity of application will secure but the old rate of wages, and he who would get ahead must work harder still.
One individual may save money from his wages, and many poor families might be made more comfortable by being taught to prepare cheap dishes. But if the working classes generally came to live in that way, wages would ultimately fall in proportion, and whoever wished to get ahead by the practice of economy, or to mitigate poverty by teaching it, would be compelled to devise some still cheaper mode of keeping soul and body together. If, under existing conditions, American mechanics would come down to the Chinese standard of living, they would ultimately have to come down to the Chinese standard of wages; or if English labourers would content themselves with the rice diet and scanty clothing of the Bengalee, labour would soon be as ill-paid in England as in Bengal. The introduction of the potato into Ireland was expected to improve the condition of the poorer classes, by increasing the difference between the wages they received and the cost of their living. The consequences that did ensue were a rise of rent and a lowering of wages and, with the potato blight, there followed the ravages of famine among a population that had already reduced its standard of comfort so low that the next Step was starvation.
And so if one individual work more hours than the average, he will increase his wages; but the wages of all cannot be increased in that way. In occupations where working hours are long, wages are not higher than where working hours are shorter; generally the reverse, for the longer the working day, the more helpless does the labourer become - the less time has he to look around him and develop other powers than those called forth by his work; the less becomes his ability to change his occupation or to take advantage of circumstances. And so the individual workman who gets his wife and children to assist him may thus increase his income; but in occupations where it has become habitual for the wife and children of the labourer to supplement his work, the wages earned by the whole family do not on the average exceed those of the head of the family in occupations where it is usual for him only to work.
Better EducationAs to the effects of education, it is evident that intelligence, which is or should be the aim of education, until it induces and enables the masses to discover and remove the cause of the unequal distribution of wealth, can only operate upon wages by increasing the effective power of labour. It has the same effect as increased skill or industry. And it can only raise the wages of the individual in so far as it renders him superior to others. When to read and write were rare accomplishments, a clerk commanded high respect and large wages, but now the ability to read and write has become so nearly universal as to give no advantage. The diffusion of intelligence, except as it may make men discontented with the state of things that condemns producers to a life of toil while non-producers loll in luxury, cannot tend to raise wages generally, or in any way improve the condition of the lowest class.
Greater industry and skill, greater prudence and a higher intelligence are, as a rule, found associated with a better material condition of the working-classes; but that this is effect, not cause, is shown by the relation of the facts. Wherever the material condition of the labouring classes has been improved, improvement in their personal qualities has followed, and wherever their material condition has been depressed, deterioration in these qualities has been the result.
The fact is that the qualities that raise man above the animal are superimposed on those he shares with the animal, and that it is only as he is relieved from the wants of his animal nature that his intellectual and moral nature can grow. Compel a man to drudgery for the necessities of animal existence, and he will lose the incentive to industry - the progenitor of skill - and will do only what he is forced to do. Make his condition such that it cannot be much worse, while there is little hope that anything he can do will make it much better, and he will cease to look beyond the day.
It is true that improvement in the material condition of a people or class may not show immediately in mental and moral improvement. Increased wages may at first be taken out in idleness and dissipation. But they will ultimately bring increased industry, skill, intelligence and thrift. Comparisons between different countries; between different classes in the same country; between the same people at different periods; and between the same people when their conditions are changed by emigration, show as an invariable result that the personal qualities of which we are speaking appear as material conditions are improved, and disappear as material conditions are depressed. To make people industrious, prudent, skilful, and intelligent, they must be relieved from want. If you would have the slave show the virtues of the freeman, you must first make him free.
Combinations of WorkmenTo raise wages in particular industries or occupations, which is all that any combination of workmen yet made has been equal to attempting, is manifestly a task the difficulty of which progressively increases. For the higher are wages of any particular kind raised above their normal level with other wages, the stronger are the tendencies to bring them back. All that trades unions can do in the way of raising wages, even when supporting each other, is comparatively little and that little moreover is confined to their own sphere. The only way wages could be raised to any extent by this method and with any permanence would be by a general combination which should include labourers of all kinds such as was aimed at by the Internationals. But this may be set down as practically impossible, for the difficulties of combination, great enough in the most highly paid and smallest trades, become greater and greater as we descend in the industrial scale.
In the struggle of endurance it must not be forgotten who the real parties are that are pitted against each other. It is not labour and capital. It is labourers on the one side and the owners of land on the other. If the contest were between labour and capital, it would be on much more equal terms. For the power of capital to stand out is only some little greater than that of labour. Capital not only ceases to earn anything when not used, but it goes to waste - for in nearly all its forms it can be maintained only by constant reproduction. But land will not starve like labourers or go to waste like capital - its owners can wait. They may be inconvenienced, it is true, but what is inconvenience to them is destruction to capital and starvation to labour.
Besides these practical difficulties in the plan of forcing by endurance an increase of wages, there are in such methods inherent disadvantages that working-men should not blink. A strike, which is the only recourse that a trade union has for enforcing its demands, is a destructive contest - just such a contest as that to which an eccentric, called "The Money King," once, in the early days of San Francisco, challenged a man who had taunted him with meanness, that they should go down to the wharf and alternately toss twenty-dollar pieces into the bay until one gave in. The struggle of endurance involved in a strike is really what it has often been compared with - a war; and, like all war, it lessens wealth. And the organization for it must, like the organization for war, be tyrannical. As even the man who would fight for freedom must, when he enters an army, give up his personal freedom and become a mere part in a great machine, so must it be with workmen who organize for a strike. These combinations are, therefore, necessarily destructive of the very things that workmen seek to gain through them - wealth and freedom.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

I know many Thais who spent 10 - 25 years in the states, but now live back in Thailand. They have kids who have graduated from US colleges. The picture they paint is not pretty. The kids who earned engineering degrees were snapped up, but almost all the others are working out of their fields in lower paying jobs. Many of the parents found it easy to find employment and save money in the US without going to college and are bewildered that a degree didn’t provide at least the same opportunity for their children. Whether it’s true or not, they perceive that their (aspiring graphic designer, architect, actuary) offspring would have a better go of it back in Asia.

[jiimbergin]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

I know many Thais who spent 10 - 25 years in the states, but now live back in Thailand. They have kids who have graduated from US colleges. The picture they paint is not pretty. The kids who earned engineering degrees were snapped up, but almost all the others are working out of their fields in lower paying jobs. Many of the parents found it easy to find employment and save money in the US without going to college and are bewildered that a degree didn’t provide at least the same opportunity for their children. Whether it’s true or not, they perceive that their (aspiring graphic designer, architect, actuary) offspring would have a better go of it back in Asia.

I am very surprised that you list actuary. Of course I do not know what level of achievement you are talking about. To become a "full fledged actuary" takes a long vigorous self study and exam sequence. You can get some of the exams at a college level, but most of the real work takes after college. If one can pass the initial exams then finding a job should not be a major problem. The exams are very rigorous and tough to pass. For example on the GRE math exam I did very very well, but on the first actuarial exam which at that time was very similar I only got a 6 out of 10. fortunately a 6 is passing. The passing rate on the exams rarely exceeds 30%.

[doom&gloom]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

I question the antiquated framework of the social policy debate on economic equality, set as Labor vs Capital. It's a holdover from an era of slow technological innovation and highly limited social and economic mobility.

In Marx's time the chance of any young man or woman starting life as Labor and later in life becoming part of the Capitalist class, per the Marxian conceptions, was so remote as to be irrelevant from the perspective of his analysis of the political economy, yet such is common if not typical today, at least among certain cultural groups. In Marx's day if you were born to a family of laborers then a laborer you would be, too, and if you were born to wealth and privilege then you were forged from birth a Capitalist, so he can be forgiven for conceiving of the conflict between economic classes as between two immutable populations sets. As for the class aspiring to rise from one to the other Marx was contemptuous, referring to them as the Petite Bourgeoisie.

In the United States and a few other countries today social and economic mobility is largely a matter of family and culture, outside the control of the State.

Speaking for a moment from personal experience, I started my working life as a tech wiring and soldering circuit boards for a few dollars an hour and now spend a good amount of my time investing in and helping start-up companies. I had no inheritance to speak of when my parents passed away when I was in my 30s. What I did have was the luck of intelligence, health, education, and culture, some of which are hereditary advantages and others a factors of family and culture.

No matter what it does the State can never compensate for the poor distribution of these advantages among all citizens. It can endeavor to improve by law better equality of opportunity but anything the State tries to do to create equality of result inevitably backfires.

Among the critical factors for economic success culture and family are clearly now the most significant but still the least discussed, despite the clear evidence of this all around us.

A family from China moved in down the street from us during the housing downturn. Prices didn't go down much here but did somewhat and they timed their purchase to the downturn. The house is small, maybe 1500 square feet, with two bedrooms and one bathroom, swamp behind it and power lines beside it. I don't know exactly how many people live there but by rough count there are the mother and father, three kids, and at least one grand parent living in the home. They could have purchased a larger home on a larger and less modest lot in the neighboring town. But what the little house by the power line lacks for amenities it makes up for in one aspect of its location that was of primary importance to the family: proximity to one of the best elementary schools in the country. From there their children can attend to one of the best high schools, and after that be in a good position to get into MIT or Harvard. By moving into the cramped house they know that when their kids grow up they will be well educated, and speak without with an accent and vocabulary that instantly identifies them as part of the educated class. With that they have a ticket to a well paying profession or not, if they so choose.

The upper hand that they will have over the native-born kids the next town over, advantages that will serve them all of their lives, will be entirely due to decisions made by their parents, which decisions are a factor largely of culture. They will have nothing to do with the State.

When I speak with immigrants from Russia or India or China or virtually anywhere in the world they invariably express their confusion at hearing the complaints by native-born Americans about the unfairness of the American economy, as indicated by the fact that some are wealthy while others are poor.

A friend's Russian girlfriend put it to me this way -- paraphrasing. I asked her what she thought of economic inequality in America. Rolling her eyes, she said "All this whining and complaining. 'It's not fair that these guys have so little and these other guys have so much.' In my country as a woman I had no opportunities to advance myself. To even want to advance yourself was bad and unladylike. Your family history, race, religion, gender, accent... all of these narrow you down there. Here no one cares, or, well, not nearly so much. Here your boss cares what you can do for him. Promise results and deliver and it does not matter if you're a woman or African or what you are. If you fail you get to try again! Start over! And if you are broke you have welfare and food stamps, not to live like a king but you will not starve. America is the Socialist dream but better because you can opt-out. What more do people here want than this? I don't understand it."

I relate.

Born to working class parents, a drafter and a factory worker, and not highly motivated, I should technically have gone nowhere. However, despite whatever other misfortunes I may have had in life, I was generally smart, went to generally good public schools, and graduated from a 'good university' as a lackluster student. Along the way I discovered sales and had both the fortune and misfortune to work for a narcissist for 7.5 years in my early career. What I learned along the way was how not to be like him, and how much I liked sales, success, and beating 'the other guy' when I was selling. I discovered how to compete in an arena I excelled at -- never allowing the answer 'no' to bother me. And it was never about the money, either.

While I have no way to measure this, I feel comfortable in saying I must be in the top 1-2% of my H.S. graduating class, many of which had daddies who helped set them up in businesses.

Along the road to success, I have been asked by people "how did you do that?" to which I can only reply I never gave up, and that they could do it too if they really wanted it bad enough.

[santafe2]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

I question the antiquated framework of the social policy debate on economic equality, set as Labor vs Capital. It's a holdover from an era of slow technological innovation and highly limited social and economic mobility.

I don’t agree that balancing the requirements of labor and capital inputs to an economic system is an ‘antiquated’ idea. Our economic system is more complex today but until labor is either non-human or through some magic of science or bad luck, a non-factor, there will always be a balancing act in the capital / labor dance. There are other inputs to our economic system, as there always have been, but these inputs do not negate or minimalize the fundamental requirements for labor within the US context. Neither do these other inputs secure a place for labor. In fact, it may be easier to argue that currently they act as agents to suppress the rights of those who offer their labor within our economic system. I would suggest that the evidence is overwhelming.

The core of your argument is that technological innovation and the possibility of social/economic mobility negate the requirement for us to support our social obligations to those people in our community who do not possess the ability or cultural context to use these vehicles to move upward and succeed. To that point, many anecdotal examples are offered.

Like you, I am an American success story. I started life with little other than an intact family with high expectations for me and worked my way up until I could start and build my own companies. For that, I am thankful. Like you, I have been rewarded. But as I look out on the landscape of my life, I see all of the extraordinary inputs from family, friends, teachers, associates and other acquaintances.

As you note, we live in a quickly developing world where technology offers the most capable humans the ability to succeed massively. It also offers the least of humanity the ability to fail massively in a place where the best people from China and Russia can succeed in a way they could never imagine at home.

But this is America. No matter the opportunity, we owe it to each other as Americans to offer a minimum opportunity to all other Americans. It is un-American to offer less and that requires the state to set minimal levels of living. Energy and technology inputs could care less if someone fails massively. I know some on this board don’t agree with this idea but I’ve read too many of your posts to think you don’t.

Technology is simply a capital input. What we do with it is up to us. We can choose equality or we can choose inequality. That was the question posed in the original post. I choose equality. I posit that labor is under attack and capital is winning massively. The best will thrive but most will just survive. That is not the America I signed up for. That is not an America I which I wish to live.

[Woodsman]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

I know better than to argue with a man in his own house, EJ. And as ever, I appreciate your candor.


I wish the reality of social mobility in America was as positive as you portray it, but the latest data is not as promising. I am always enthusiastic about questioning frameworks of debate and am curious as to what alternate framework you've developed. But I don't think anyone on the thread has questioned the efficacy of the free market or offered a defense of any Marxist dogma.


I agree that social and economic mobility is largely a matter of family and culture. Culture and family are the most significant critical factor for economic success, yes. But which culture and which families is something we need to define with clarity.

It seems rational to me that the progeny of Harvard faculty will see more benevolent outcomes from their efforts than the sons of bricklayers or automobile mechanics. I too find it challenging to understand how else the product of an entrepreneurial culture and intellectual family could fail to acquire an entrepreneurial and intellectual bent themselves. So yes, we are in perfect agreement here.


The anecdotes and personal stories you share are inspiring, yet would you agree that a qualitative difference exists between your neighbor choosing to live in a modest home near feeder schools to Harvard versus that of my friend's neighbor scrimping in Durham to get junior into NCCU. Yes, parents need to make good decisions for their kids. Kids need to make good decisions for themselves. Hard to disagree. Yet no one on the thread demanded that the state enforce equal outcomes, only that the good outcomes not be so colossally disparate and available to so few.


No one disputes that opportunities are available here for those with the ability to seize them. This is especially true in terms of the dynamism of our immigrants. Yet would it be fair to say that a man in your position would tend to share meaningful interactions with a more accomplished and seemingly more ambitious class of immigrant than one might meet in Durham?


I don't believe anyone here is demanding perfect fairness. I believe the general demand, if it could be called that, is that less special treatment and advantage be delivered to a class who by virtue of culture and family already possess the necessary qualities for economic success, not to mention the largest share (ever) of capital and political power.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

Well put, Woodsman.

I'd just add that Pew plays with the data a bit to paint a rosier picture than one might otherwise. "Family wealth" in that report includes home equity and is sampled as an average of years leading up to 2009. It's a pre-recession number essentially. "Family Income" in that report is adjusted by household size. Basically, Jack and Jill get the drop in average children from 2.3 to 1.8 per household as an inflator to their income. Basically, people are being thrifty and having fewer children. As they do so, the authors of that report are adding the savings from not having children to the number they calculate for income. There are reasons that one might be interested in such a number, but in the end it actually results in painting a much rosier picture about wages than would otherwise exist.

Just for fun. And another more complicated bipartisan (ra-roh) report from before the crash with a few interesting methodological quirks of its own.

[doom&gloom]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

I know many Thais who spent 10 - 25 years in the states, but now live back in Thailand. They have kids who have graduated from US colleges. The picture they paint is not pretty. The kids who earned engineering degrees were snapped up, but almost all the others are working out of their fields in lower paying jobs. Many of the parents found it easy to find employment and save money in the US without going to college and are bewildered that a degree didn’t provide at least the same opportunity for their children. Whether it’s true or not, they perceive that their (aspiring graphic designer, architect, actuary) offspring would have a better go of it back in Asia.

College is the new High School it seems for many degrees. And whereas back in the day any college degree seemed good enough to at least open some doors for you, today so many have degrees that it is almost generic in nature. We have friends putting their kid thru Alabama as an out of state student. First year all in, $40k+ and he is majoring in "partying" it seems. Mom, whi is well educated, seems to think this is fine. I have no idea what dad thinks. I do know it is draining the nest egg. This is NOT the only couple we know who have not embraced the idea that a college degree nowadays has to mean something.

OTOH, my own kids have heard since day one that I'll pay the full ride, but they have to get a degree in something that translates into a "real job". First one is a freshman in engineering in a Pac10 school. Second is 2.5 years away. I don't know what he'll be, but he won't waste his time with a degree in "cultural anthropology" or "women's studies" (other than for dates) unless he wants to pay for it. And my kids know I am serious too.

I can see where it would be hard to get a job as a graphic designer unless you are highly talented. And architects tend to starve even though they work their asses off in college. As Jim noted, if you pass almost ANY of the actuary tests someone should want to hire you. I had a college roommate who passed a few and has only been unemployed a few months in his life. He's always been paid well, too.


If anything has gone wrong in this country it was allowing the jobs base to be hollowed out in the manufacturing sector. That started in earnest in the 1980's, and Clinton nailed it but good with NAFTA. Ross Perot's "giant sucking sound" has been happening ever since. Throw in automation and a lot of opportunity has left for the lesser fiscally or mentally adept among us. If government truly cared about "the people" they would never have allowed the horse to leave the barn for China a long time ago. Unfortunately, government only cares about the next election cycle.

[llanlad2]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

I relate.

Born to working class parents, a drafter and a factory worker, and not highly motivated, I should technically have gone nowhere. However, despite whatever other misfortunes I may have had in life, I was generally smart, went to generally good public schools, and graduated from a 'good university' as a lackluster student. Along the way I discovered sales and had both the fortune and misfortune to work for a narcissist for 7.5 years in my early career. What I learned along the way was how not to be like him, and how much I liked sales, success, and beating 'the other guy' when I was selling. I discovered how to compete in an arena I excelled at -- never allowing the answer 'no' to bother me. And it was never about the money, either.

While I have no way to measure this, I feel comfortable in saying I must be in the top 1-2% of my H.S. graduating class, many of which had daddies who helped set them up in businesses.

Along the road to success, I have been asked by people "how did you do that?" to which I can only reply I never gave up, and that they could do it too if they really wanted it bad enough.

From the piece I posted above.

Better EducationAs to the effects of education, it is evident that intelligence, which is or should be the aim of education, until it induces and enables the masses to discover and remove the cause of the unequal distribution of wealth, can only operate upon wages by increasing the effective power of labour. It has the same effect as increased skill or industry. And it can only raise the wages of the individual in so far as it renders him superior to others. When to read and write were rare accomplishments, a clerk commanded high respect and large wages, but now the ability to read and write has become so nearly universal as to give no advantage. The diffusion of intelligence, except as it may make men discontented with the state of things that condemns producers to a life of toil while non-producers loll in luxury, cannot tend to raise wages generally, or in any way improve the condition of the lowest class.
Greater industry and skill, greater prudence and a higher intelligence are, as a rule, found associated with a better material condition of the working-classes; but that this is effect, not cause, is shown by the relation of the facts. Wherever the material condition of the labouring classes has been improved, improvement in their personal qualities has followed, and wherever their material condition has been depressed, deterioration in these qualities has been the result.

In South Korea they all "want it bad enough". So much so that the typical school child studies with tutors from 8am to 11pm at night. Do they all make it? Of course not. It would be the same number if they all studied 8am to 6pm. Who benefits from this?

When everyone works harder-rents go up and wages down.

Exhorting everyone to work and study harder to get on in life are nothing more than platitudes.

[RebbePete]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

The idea of everyone working harder to be ahead of everyone else is impossible. Likewise everyone can't be more frugal than everyone else.This logic leads to people working longer hours for less money. I am fortunate in that I became well-off through hard-work,lucky timing, not being very materialistic and having a wife who hates shopping! The window of opportunity for people (like myself) to gain freedom of choice to not work stupidly long-hours (to the detriment of family life) is closing quickly.

Personally I believe that what is written below is close to the reality we have reached today.

Improved Habits of Industry and ThriftThere is and always has been a widespread belief among the more comfortable classes that the poverty and suffering of the masses are due to their lack of industry, frugality and intelligence. This belief, which at once soothes the sense of nobility and flatters by its suggestion of superiority, is but natural for those who can trace their own better circumstances to the superior industry and frugality that gave them a start, and to the superior intelligence that enabled them to take advantage of every opportunity.
But whoever has grasped the laws of the distribution of wealth, as in previous chapters they have been traced out, will see the mistake in this notion. For as soon as land acquires a value, wages, as we have seen, do not depend upon the real earnings or product of labour, but upon what is left to labour after rent is taken out; and when land is all monopolized, rent must drive wages down to the point at which the poorest paid class will be just able to live. Thus wages are forced to a minimum fixed by what is called the standard of comfort - that is, the amount of necessaries and comforts which habit leads the working-classes to demand as the lowest that they will accept. This being the case, industry, skill, frugality and intelligence can only avail the individual in so far as they are superior to the general level - just as in a race, speed can only avail the runner in so far as it exceeds that of his competitors. If one man work harder, or with superior skill or intelligence than ordinary, he will get ahead; but if the average of industry, skill, or intelligence is brought up to the higher point, the increased intensity of application will secure but the old rate of wages, and he who would get ahead must work harder still.
One individual may save money from his wages, and many poor families might be made more comfortable by being taught to prepare cheap dishes. But if the working classes generally came to live in that way, wages would ultimately fall in proportion, and whoever wished to get ahead by the practice of economy, or to mitigate poverty by teaching it, would be compelled to devise some still cheaper mode of keeping soul and body together. If, under existing conditions, American mechanics would come down to the Chinese standard of living, they would ultimately have to come down to the Chinese standard of wages; or if English labourers would content themselves with the rice diet and scanty clothing of the Bengalee, labour would soon be as ill-paid in England as in Bengal. The introduction of the potato into Ireland was expected to improve the condition of the poorer classes, by increasing the difference between the wages they received and the cost of their living. The consequences that did ensue were a rise of rent and a lowering of wages and, with the potato blight, there followed the ravages of famine among a population that had already reduced its standard of comfort so low that the next Step was starvation.
And so if one individual work more hours than the average, he will increase his wages; but the wages of all cannot be increased in that way. In occupations where working hours are long, wages are not higher than where working hours are shorter; generally the reverse, for the longer the working day, the more helpless does the labourer become - the less time has he to look around him and develop other powers than those called forth by his work; the less becomes his ability to change his occupation or to take advantage of circumstances. And so the individual workman who gets his wife and children to assist him may thus increase his income; but in occupations where it has become habitual for the wife and children of the labourer to supplement his work, the wages earned by the whole family do not on the average exceed those of the head of the family in occupations where it is usual for him only to work.
Better Education

Interesting slant, and it does ring true. However, the piece that is quoted (BTW, from Henry George, Progress and Poverty), is from the era before fiat currency. It seems to me that tangible assets like land are no longer so important when "money" can be created at whim and given to whomever the powers that be deem desirable, and instead of "rents" we have "seigniorage."

That last paragraph quoted above is particularly chilling, seeing how many households now have two wage earners just to keep afloat.

[EJ]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

I don’t agree that balancing the requirements of labor and capital inputs to an economic system is an ‘antiquated’ idea. Our economic system is more complex today but until labor is either non-human or through some magic of science or bad luck, a non-factor, there will always be a balancing act in the capital / labor dance. There are other inputs to our economic system, as there always have been, but these inputs do not negate or minimalize the fundamental requirements for labor within the US context. Neither do these other inputs secure a place for labor. In fact, it may be easier to argue that currently they act as agents to suppress the rights of those who offer their labor within our economic system. I would suggest that the evidence is overwhelming.

The core of your argument is that technological innovation and the possibility of social/economic mobility negate the requirement for us to support our social obligations to those people in our community who do not possess the ability or cultural context to use these vehicles to move upward and succeed. To that point, many anecdotal examples are offered.

Like you, I am an American success story. I started life with little other than an intact family with high expectations for me and worked my way up until I could start and build my own companies. For that, I am thankful. Like you, I have been rewarded. But as I look out on the landscape of my life, I see all of the extraordinary inputs from family, friends, teachers, associates and other acquaintances.

As you note, we live in a quickly developing world where technology offers the most capable humans the ability to succeed massively. It also offers the least of humanity the ability to fail massively in a place where the best people from China and Russia can succeed in a way they could never imagine at home.

But this is America. No matter the opportunity, we owe it to each other as Americans to offer a minimum opportunity to all other Americans. It is un-American to offer less and that requires the state to set minimal levels of living. Energy and technology inputs could care less if someone fails massively. I know some on this board don’t agree with this idea but I’ve read too many of your posts to think you don’t.

Technology is simply a capital input. What we do with it is up to us. We can choose equality or we can choose inequality. That was the question posed in the original post. I choose equality. I posit that labor is under attack and capital is winning massively. The best will thrive but most will just survive. That is not the America I signed up for. That is not an America I which I wish to live.

There is nothing more difficult than to think outside one's personal experience. I present mine as much as a bias as an example.

It's a complex topic without simple solutions. I don't think thee is anyone among this group that will argue that there should not be a living standards floor, perhaps a higher one that exists today, below which no American citizen is permitted by his fellow citizens to fall. My theory of a solution of our health care crisis reflects this. I think it should be modeled and based philosophically on the same philosophy that led to public education policies, to provide a minimum level of education for every citizen. A healthy population is as much a public good as is a educated population. But aside from the madness of the American health care system, the economy works fairly well with room for improvement, of course.

I'll conclude my remarks on the topic with the words of the late Sam Kinison: " If you can't make it here, where exactly do you plan to make it?"

[gugion]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

There is nothing more difficult than to think outside one's personal experience. I present mine as much as a bias as an example.

It's a complex topic without simple solutions. I don't think thee is anyone among this group that will argue that there should not be a living standards floor, perhaps a higher one that exists today, below which no American citizen is permitted by his fellow citizens to fall. My theory of a solution of our health care crisis reflects this. I think it should be modeled and based philosophically on the same philosophy that led to public education policies, to provide a minimum level of education for every citizen. A healthy population is as much a public good as is a educated population. But aside from the madness of the American health care system, the economy works fairly well with room for improvement, of course.

I'll conclude my remarks on the topic with the words of the late Sam Kinison: " If you can't make it here, where exactly do you plan to make it?"

But most people think the public education system in the US has failed. Personally, and from some discussion with friends who work in public schools, it seems like the basic educational needs to provide success to children are there (ie the foundation and framework is provided), but a lot of kids simply don't want to learn or take advantage. I imagine this is mostly due to poor parenting and/or a culture/community that doesn't emphasize education. It's like a smartphone. A smartphone could provide amazing educational potential for America's youth, but most are used to play video games, text, watch movies, and social media.