Inequality much worse than most think

[lektrode]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

I’m really amazed by the blindness of the 1%, to have this power and let things head to where they are going. No amount of police, gated walls around their homes/communities, body guards or security systems will help once we pass the tipping point of ubiquitous poverty leading to ubiquitous crime......

+1

and IF it happens - one wont want to be anywhere near a bluestate urban area, thats for DAMN sure.

[wayiwalk]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

I’m really amazed by the blindness of the 1%, to have this power and let things head to where they are going. No amount of police, gated walls around their homes/communities, body guards or security systems will help once we pass the tipping point of ubiquitous poverty leading to ubiquitous crime. Unfortunately, I expect that last week’s shooting/murder during a car-jacking at an upscale mall in New Jersey to become more common.

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2013/12/dustin_friedland_funeral.html

NOTE - I’m not suggesting anything specific related to this particular person in this story being 1% er or anything like that. When things go bad, I’m sure the middle class will suffer as much if not more than the most wealthy….but in general, everything will get crummier for everyone.

[jr429]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

I don't think it is all that different from history. There hasn't been any degradation in morals.

I was reading up on the purchase of the Seal Beach Naval Airstation a few weeks ago - a huge plot of land in southern california. The federal government offered the owner (some lady I don't remember who) a certain amount for the land and she came back with a LOWER counter-offer citing patriotism. I think it's very rare today that a land owner will not try to ream the federal government for every penny and more. I believe "morality" is just a word used to characterize a state of mind. While human nature has always been able to be at its very best and very worse I believe culturally our morality has degraded over the years. In this particular case I suppose greed versus generosity.

[jiimbergin]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

In many ways living in the United States has become a blood sport. You must win or lose. Nothing in between is acceptable or understood. You are exceptional or you are fodder. Muddling through is not acceptable. We are opposed to each other for almost any reason and looking for an internal fight.

In no particular order: It is a result of required integration of races and forced acceptance of non traditional lifestyles. It is due to the rise of fundamental religious beliefs. It's due to the belief in white America that life should be easy and incrementally upward moving. It is due to the indoctrination of Fox and MSNBC. It is due to our general disrespect of honest, every day work. It is due to us valuing education, health care and housing as profit centers. It is due to us taking on debt to pretend we're not working class or maybe worse, (see disrespect of honest work). It is due to technology that allows us to withdraw from community. It is due to a tax system that favors success and failure and punishes everything in between.

This is just my off-the-cuff list, feel free to add to it. What it is not driving this is crooked politicians or greedy bankers. They have been around since well before The US was formed and will be around after we fade. Americans are willfully failing each other. We by-and-large don't care about each other. We need to see others fail to feel successful. I see no other explanation.

I guess I just live and associate with folks where I do not see the pessimism that you seem to. I agree that most of the things you mention are causing difficulties, but I really don't see it as a blood sport where you must win or lose. Most of the people I know are reasonably happy with their life, and I am talking about many economic levels.

[vinoveri]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

LazyBoy, I was going to post something along these lines.

The change has been enormous and I don’t think there has been a book that nails it.

In the 70's a professor at a small college could buy a nice house, send his three kids to college while his spouse stayed home. An airline baggage handler could pay off his car and rent a nice apartment. Hardworking college kids could earn much of their tuition and living expenses during the summer.

Poof! In one generation...Gone!

Chesterton in fact nailed it 100+ yrs ago in "What's wrong with the World" - a great first book to read if you haven't had the pleasure of reading GKC. The story of Hudge (plutocrat), Gudge (Marxist) and Jones (common man). http://gkcdaily.blogspot.com/2013/01...and-gudge.html
full book here: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1717/1717-h/1717-h.htm

[BadJuju]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

There you go. Morality has degraded into a culture of greed and the increasing inequality of wealth coupled with the reduction of quality of life for the majority of americans has led to a me or him mentality. Pretty sad.

I don't think it is all that different from history. There hasn't been any degradation in morals.

[jr429]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

. We by-and-large don't care about each other.

There you go. Morality has degraded into a culture of greed and the increasing inequality of wealth coupled with the reduction of quality of life for the majority of americans has led to a me or him mentality. Pretty sad.

[jr429]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

EXACTLY! This is really the important subject. All this discussion about how 'easy' it is for a motivated person to rise from the 20th percentile to 80th or 90th or whatever is mostly irrelevant IMO. (BTW I agree with what people have said on the subject - there is still plenty of opportunity for the exceptional.) The sour grapes over how difficult (impossible?) it is to rise to the 99th are even more irrelevant.

The issue is the quality of life and work for the 50th percentile. And I don't mean in terms of the quality of their car, but in terms of security, or at least anti-fragility, among other factors.

I agree with your comments here. It's still possible for the highly motivated to succeed - but our current political and economic policies have made the majority of americans less wealthy, less successful and less secure. Of course the original thread title is a little misleading.

[santafe2]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

Great thread! But a lot of the focus has been on how far up the economic ladder the exceptional (those who are also hardworking, aggressive and lucky) can climb. Why not? We're all exceptional here, right?

IMO, this is ignoring the larger part of the wealth inequality issue. What about the less exceptional? Should the merely hardworking be able to make a living? Raise a family? Be middle class? Lower middle? There was a time when a factory/construction/janitorial/retail worker (not boss/business owner/entrepreneur) could support a family and have hope that the next generation might move up the ladder. You needed train-ability, a work ethic and a saver's mentality.

Now two of those jobs are often insufficient and usually can't be found anyway. And everyone has been conditioned to live in debt. This part of the wealth inequality issue is more disturbing than the fact that I only went up a few rungs and didn't get stinkin' rich.

How many millions are unemployed, under-employed, or the working poor? The solution can't be "be exceptional and entrepreneurial".

Go back to the first post and see how bad the tail of the curve is.

In many ways living in the United States has become a blood sport. You must win or lose. Nothing in between is acceptable or understood. You are exceptional or you are fodder. Muddling through is not acceptable. We are opposed to each other for almost any reason and looking for an internal fight.

In no particular order: It is a result of required integration of races and forced acceptance of non traditional lifestyles. It is due to the rise of fundamental religious beliefs. It's due to the belief in white America that life should be easy and incrementally upward moving. It is due to the indoctrination of Fox and MSNBC. It is due to our general disrespect of honest, every day work. It is due to us valuing education, health care and housing as profit centers. It is due to us taking on debt to pretend we're not working class or maybe worse, (see disrespect of honest work). It is due to technology that allows us to withdraw from community. It is due to a tax system that favors success and failure and punishes everything in between.

This is just my off-the-cuff list, feel free to add to it. What it is not driving this is crooked politicians or greedy bankers. They have been around since well before The US was formed and will be around after we fade. Americans are willfully failing each other. We by-and-large don't care about each other. We need to see others fail to feel successful. I see no other explanation.

[llanlad2]

Re: Where to make it

The other possibly good places to live, Denmark, Sweden, Holland, Taiwan, Singapore, Finland, New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, are still trapped in their inherited biases...a tendency towards feudalism.

I prefer the idea of a Republic, and a lot of old fashioned Constitutionality (prior to 1913). If we can but dump the fantasy players on the rest of the world, and avoid it here in America, I believe we can survive well enough.

America is not the only good place to live...but it is still the best.

It is the best for some. The size of the "some" is getting less and less all the time. As a wealthy country "survival" is a very unambitious goal. Conditioning and propaganda are trying to convince people it is. It isn't. Give me Scandinavian feudalism every time. Longer life-expectancy, national health coverage, lower working hours, higher levels of employment. And have you seen the women?

As for debt being imaginary, well that may be true, but when imagination is backed by force, then it becomes all too real.

[leegs]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

Great thread! But a lot of the focus has been on how far up the economic ladder the exceptional (those who are also hardworking, aggressive and lucky) can climb. Why not? We're all exceptional here, right?

IMO, this is ignoring the larger part of the wealth inequality issue. What about the less exceptional? Should the merely hardworking be able to make a living? Raise a family? Be middle class? Lower middle? There was a time when a factory/construction/janitorial/retail worker (not boss/business owner/entrepreneur) could support a family and have hope that the next generation might move up the ladder. You needed train-ability, a work ethic and a saver's mentality.

Now two of those jobs are often insufficient and usually can't be found anyway. And everyone has been conditioned to live in debt. This part of the wealth inequality issue is more disturbing than the fact that I only went up a few rungs and didn't get stinkin' rich.

How many millions are unemployed, under-employed, or the working poor? The solution can't be "be exceptional and entrepreneurial".

Go back to the first post and see how bad the tail of the curve is.

EXACTLY! This is really the important subject. All this discussion about how 'easy' it is for a motivated person to rise from the 20th percentile to 80th or 90th or whatever is mostly irrelevant IMO. (BTW I agree with what people have said on the subject - there is still plenty of opportunity for the exceptional.) The sour grapes over how difficult (impossible?) it is to rise to the 99th are even more irrelevant.

The issue is the quality of life and work for the 50th percentile. And I don't mean in terms of the quality of their car, but in terms of security, or at least anti-fragility, among other factors.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

What about the less exceptional? Should the merely hardworking be able to make a living? Raise a family? Be middle class? Lower middle? There was a time when a factory/construction/janitorial/retail worker (not boss/business owner/entrepreneur) could support a family and have hope that the next generation might move up the ladder. You needed train-ability, a work ethic and a saver's mentality.

Now two of those jobs are often insufficient and usually can't be found anyway. And everyone has been conditioned to live in debt. This part of the wealth inequality issue is more disturbing than the fact that I only went up a few rungs and didn't get stinkin' rich.

How many millions are unemployed, under-employed, or the working poor? The solution can't be "be exceptional and entrepreneurial".

Go back to the first post and see how bad the tail of the curve is.

LazyBoy, I was going to post something along these lines.

The change has been enormous and I don’t think there has been a book that nails it.

In the 70's a professor at a small college could buy a nice house, send his three kids to college while his spouse stayed home. An airline baggage handler could pay off his car and rent a nice apartment. Hardworking college kids could earn much of their tuition and living expenses during the summer.

Poof! In one generation...Gone!

[Forrest]

Re: Where to make it

"Here we meet another figment of the human intellect: debt. All debt is imaginary. It is imaginary because it is a promise, and promises have no material existence. One measure of the quality of a human being is revealed by his feeling that his honor is involved in fulfilling a pledge. But what if the credit money received is something imaginary? And what if the debtor is a Corporation? As imaginary constructs, corporations have no sense of honor, a human quality. And the officers of a corporation are not held personally responsible for the debts of the corporation.
What can we say of the so-called “interest rate” determined by the Federal Reserve? It is an entirely arbitrary number determined by the imaginations of the functionaries at the imaginary Federal Reserve, and has no relation whatsoever, to any reality of the market-place.
When Mr. Cheney was imaginary vice-president of the imaginary US government, he is reported to have said: “Deficits do not matter”. He was correct, for the National Debt of the US is entirely imaginary. It cannot and will not ever be repaid, and will grow numerically up to the point at which reality finally dissolves the bewitched imagination which holds the population in thrall."

Most people with modest resources like to rent their money out, and get a return appropriate for allowing someone else to use their money to build something of value that will help them, the borrower, to improve their life, and perhaps the rights of others. That has been going on since the beginning of time, right up there with prostitution. Both are immensely practical usages of letting someone use an excess of value for a fee.

Our difficulty is not in renting out or lending what we have for a fee, but lending what is a fantasy...one that was once a game called Monopoly, and is now advanced into the creation of debt for the fun of playing the new and improved game of Super-Monopoly.

The world must eventually face the distinction between reality, and lending what is real, and fantasy...printing debt obligations in order to make leveraged gains at no cost.

When we do face that reality, and the fantasy crashes, I still would rather be in America, which for all her faults, still has some great ideas about individuality and personal sovereignty. It may only be a hangover from the past, but people are still coming here because, for all our faults, the ideas of America are better than everything else out there.

We do have to kill off the propaganda of the Fantasy players, and their ability to tie up the country with wars and debts we don't need to have and face the reality in its entirety, but we have done that before. There is still at least fifty percent of the population that has the old American 'can do' mindset, and we are very good at making do with reality, and then coming up with news ways to enjoy it.

The other possibly good places to live, Denmark, Sweden, Holland, Taiwan, Singapore, Finland, New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, are still trapped in their inherited biases...a tendency towards feudalism.

I prefer the idea of a Republic, and a lot of old fashioned Constitutionality (prior to 1913). If we can but dump the fantasy players on the rest of the world, and avoid it here in America, I believe we can survive well enough.

America is not the only good place to live...but it is still the best.

[Polish_Silver]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

agree with that. But retail was never all that great. Too many qualified people, hard to unionize for the most part (though many grocery stores were unionized in the old days).

[Polish_Silver]

Where to make it

. . .

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?"

I can think of quite a few places: Denmark, Sweden, Holland, Taiwan, Singapore, Finland, New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong. Of course most of them are quite difficult to sneak into.

Health care and over all governance in these places is on a par with the US, possibly better.

None of these countries has an obsession with military and wars.

All have much lower incarceration rates.

Most have much better public schools. (yes, even better than Mass. by most metrics)

All have much more cost effective health care.

America is exceptional in it's persistent belief that it is the only good place to live, despite of abundant metrics showing otherwise.