Inequality much worse than most think

[ProdigyofZen]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

POZ,

I have read your posts here for years and generally find your thoughts to be logical and valuable. However, I find myself quite confused by your sentiments on this subject.

Correct me if I'm wrong but you find yourself in the following situation:

You're young (around 30?), healthy, intelligent, well educated, in one of the richest countries in the world, in one of the most opportunity filled countries in the world, employed with an good salary and have stated that you're content with a modest lifestyle of a small room sleeping on a mat.

Yet, you're upset because you don't have enough opportunity based on the fact that you don't already have "many hundreds of thousands of dollars" in order to start the particular business that you feel satisfies your particular requirements for career fulfillment.

Does that really seem reasonable?

Yes, because my salary is modest and not enough to provide a better standard of living for my medically and mentally ill mother.

Many people are in that situation and various others, I am not trying to be a woe is me person. It is just the reality of the situation.

Sure I require a modest lifestyle and care not for most expensive things but my family is lower middle class to poor trapped in a pit of despair with no hope of ever attaining anything (except for more debt and suffering). On my fathers side it is just him, his wife and grandparents. They live comfortably.

The doctor has already told me that my mother will pass of a youngish age due to her lungs. I need to get into a position fairly soon that pays a much much higher salary to provide a comfortable living for her before she passes.

[LazyBoy]

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.

[Polish_Silver]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

. Hedges is a self-identified socialist. Maddow, Olbermann, et all are the controlled opposition and offer no fundamental critique of the system as does Hedges. They are centrist reformists. Hedges is the "right shade" and the rest are careerists.

.

I'm very impressed by hedges depth of thought, but I don't agree with him on many things, and his understanding of some economic realities is poor. For example, he criticizes corporations for "shedding jobs". Well, it is a companies job to make the most product using the least costly resources. Shedding jobs is part of that. If they did not "shed" they would lose competitiveness. The problem now is that there is more shedding than their are new possibilities, at least for those in the middle and low-middle part of the spectrum. This is a public policy issue, not a corporations fault.

[Woodsman]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

...When you confuse people with property, you confuse freedom with slavery by necessity. Maybe it's all just a question of whether we will have another abolition movement.

Apropos to your point on confusing people and property...

When reality overthrows imagination
http://www.24hgold.com/english/news-...nas+Price&mk=1

by Hugo Salinas Price - Plata.com.mx

Imagination is an exclusively human faculty. Only humans can imagine.
I have on another occasion mentioned Arthur Koestler’s remarkable book, “The Sleepwalkers”. As a child of his time, Koestler accepted the theory of Evolution, but he did have a question (which he did not answer) regarding this theory.
I am not quoting Koestler’s very words, but this is their substance: “If we are evolved creatures, and our bodily constitution reflects the challenges of survival and our ability to evolve to meet those challenges, then – how is it that we are endowed with brains of a capacity for thinking vastly greater than necessary for our survival? All other living creatures have brains only just sufficient for their survival. But we humans have brains whose abilities far exceed the requirements of survival. This is a puzzle.”
At no time in history, surely, has humanity lived in this real, physically tangible world with so enormous a reliance on the human brain’s capacity for imagination.
We humans are living a great part of our lives in an imaginary world; I believe the great problem of our time is that this imaginary world has gradually evolved to a condition where what we imagine is rapidly losing connection with the real physical world in which we live.
Without a doubt, the faculty of imagination is essential to human survival, for all purposive behavior implies a capacity to imagine something not present or even existing as a final cause of human action. If we are going out for dinner, we imagine what we would like to eat before deciding where to dine. However, this faculty, like Reason itself, has its proper limits. Past those limits we enter a dream-land, where imagination can ignore, for a time, the realities within which we live.
Consider the Corporation. Corporations do not exist anywhere outside of our imaginations. Tell an employee that the corporation he works for, or tell an investor in that same corporation that the corporation does not exist and you will at least get a blank look. Neither the employee nor the investor, nor the vast majority of mankind, cares to distinguish between what is imaginary and what is real.
“Walmart” does not exist. There are tens of thousands of buildings which bear a sign that says, “Walmart”. But Walmart is not the buildings. There are over one million employees of Walmart, but – where is Walmart? There are executive offices of Walmart, thousands of executives and a Governing Body of Walmart – but they are not Walmart. What part of Walmart does the investor own? No part that can be identified. We can find close-by, a building that bears a sign “Walmart”. But we can never find Walmart itself anywhere, because it exists only as an idea in our imagination.
There are probably millions of corporations in the world, and such is the enormous power of imagination, that people mistakenly believe in the existence of those corporations when they are only imaginary constructs.
The Supreme Court of the US has declared that “corporations are persons.” It stands to reason that the Supreme Court of the US would state such a thing, since the Supreme Court itself is an imaginary construct: a group of men and women who have been declared to be The Supreme Court, which is only an idea, not a reality, by some other men and women who imagine themselves vested with authority to name people to the imaginary Supreme Court.
One of the great problems with corporations is that, as “imaginary persons” they can do very big bad things; but corporations cannot go to jail, they can only be fined and bankrupted as punishment; and since their executives are not the corporations themselves, executives of corporations form only a very tiny percentage of people in jails, in spite of the fact that they are the real culprits, guilty of all felonies which may be committed by the imaginary corporations under their command.
The whole structure of Government has ever been, since governments were invented in this world, a work of the imagination, in ancient days supported by pagan religion, impressive ceremonies celebrated by priesthoods who overawed the people, and the pomp and circumstance of the Royal Court.
Government power today comes not from the gods but from votes, which in “advanced” countries involves getting people to push voting buttons in private booths. The result of the voting is relatively meaningless; what counts is that the voters are satisfied that their will has been manifested and will be taken into account, and they can thus comfortably forget about politics and continue to pursue their usual amusements.
The imaginary governments of the world, peopled by flesh and blood individuals who collectively style themselves “the government”, are supported in their selected comfortable lifestyles by the imaginary institution of a Central Bank. In Washington, D.C. you may be shown the impressive Eccles building, where dwells the imaginary Federal Reserve. Benjamin Shalom Bernanke, who thinks of himself as chief of that imaginary institution, and his colleagues enter that building and do the jobs they are supposed to do as constituting the imaginary Federal Reserve – which can nowhere be seen, since it exists only in the imagination as an idea.
You can have the same experience in any capital of the world, for there are imaginary Central Banks in every capital city of the world.
Now to get to the heart of perhaps the most important imaginary construct in which we live: money. Today, the world uses as money something totally imaginary: fiat paper money exists in printed form and can be folded, but its value is quite imaginary; the numbers on this paper money, which give it value in proportion to their magnitude, bear no relation at all to anything tangible. On the other hand and to a much greater extent we have fiat digital money; this form of money is absolutely imaginary, and is produced by the imaginary banking systems of the world.
All imaginary digital money is imagined to exist exclusively in imaginary banks, where it is registered as supposedly the property of corporations and other imaginary institutions of all sorts, and also, as the property of flesh and blood humans. An awkward fundamental question is “How can something imaginary constitute property?”
Such is the mighty hold of imagination upon humans that even the ridiculous imaginary Bitcoin has gained the attention of some otherwise prudent humans. Governments have objected to the use of the Bitcoin because the Bitcoin, as imaginary money, invades the imaginary turf of bankers and governments and these people don’t like that. Curiously, on the Internet we can see pictures of pretty shiny Bitcoins, though none have been minted. A picture is helpful to the promotion of an imaginary coin.
On the part of some normally sound critics of fiat money the main doubts regarding the Bitcoin refer to its security and safety from falsification. Nobody is concerned that the Bitcoins are totally imaginary. Humanity appears to be quite happy in the imaginary world in which it lives.
Today, imaginary governments rule by means of distribution of imaginary money provided by imaginary banking systems controlled by imaginary central banks.
To give the creation of imaginary money a semblance of authenticity, we are told that money is created when a debt is created. The fact is that digital imaginary money, which is most of the money used in the world, appears in the realm of quantity as pure number – not a part of the material world – the effect of key-strokes on computers by individuals authorized to carry out such key-strokes by the managers of imaginary banks. But to preserve the illusion of authenticity of the imaginary money, its creation (though the world “creation” is not logically applicable to the invention of a number which represents nothing physical at all) is tied to the creation of debt. So we are told that all money originates in the need for credit, and the banks, responding to the need for credit, grant loans in imaginary digital money.
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.
The bucket of water thrown upon the Wicked Witch of the West by Dorothy, in “The Wizard of Oz”, symbolizes the release from an imaginary threat which has become oppressive. Instead of a bucket of water, we might consider a bagful of $1 Trillion dollar platinum coins, issued by the imaginary Treasury and paid to the imaginary Federal Reserve to extinguish the imaginary threat of imaginary money owed. Why not? We are taught in kindergarten to be creative in the use of the imagination.
What lies ahead?
Humanity has abused the faculty of imagination. We live in a dream-land which has drifted away from any attachment to the reality of the physical world.
A relatively small group of men behind the facade of established imaginary governments of the world long ago decided that the only way to obtain and retain “that perfect bliss and sole felicity, the sweet fruition of an earthly crown” was to resort to imaginary money and distribute it liberally to the ever-hungry masses, drugging them into holding their peace.
What lies ahead is a series of financial disasters in various parts of the world - at first these will be isolated events - which will increase in frequency until finally the whole world is caught up in a financial storm. The cause of the storm will be the failure of the real economic world to satisfy the expectations of the public.
The storm will force the men and women of the world, who have lived so unquestioningly in their highly imaginary world, to wake up and find, to their astonishment dismay and anger, that they have lost their jobs, that they have no savings and that their pension funds are gone or have been confiscated. Their indignation will be forgotten as sheer terror sets in. The Department of Homeland Security has been given a supply of more than one billion hollow-point bullets for good reason.
George Orwell, in his book “1984” painted a pessimistic picture of the future for humanity: “A boot crushing a human face into the mud, forever.” I prefer to be hopeful. Evil is not self-sustaining. We are living in a transitory period of history, always in flux. This world of dreams of ours will give place, but for a time only, to a more reality-based world. For mankind are dreamers of dreams, for better or for worse.

[DSpencer]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

I work in investment management. The business I want to start costs many hundreds of thousands or more to start not 15k.

Sure I would love to start a manufacturing business actually producing goods in the real economy but the capital outlay for that is in the millions.

Sure I could possibly go start a fast casual restaurant but perhaps thats not my passion nor what I want to do?

POZ,

I have read your posts here for years and generally find your thoughts to be logical and valuable. However, I find myself quite confused by your sentiments on this subject.

Correct me if I'm wrong but you find yourself in the following situation:

You're young (around 30?), healthy, intelligent, well educated, in one of the richest countries in the world, in one of the most opportunity filled countries in the world, employed with an good salary and have stated that you're content with a modest lifestyle of a small room sleeping on a mat.

Yet, you're upset because you don't have enough opportunity based on the fact that you don't already have "many hundreds of thousands of dollars" in order to start the particular business that you feel satisfies your particular requirements for career fulfillment.

Does that really seem reasonable?

[littleshark]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

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.

A friend of mine's girlfriend works at a public school in Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn, a pretty tough area. She teaches 7th graders, 12yr olds. Two boys got into a fight the other day, she tried to break it up, one of the kids slammed her against the wall and punched her. She is now in trouble with the school for not following protocol, she was supposed to let the kids fight, and call security to come break it up. To make matters worse, in defending herself, she grabbed the kid around the neck, and he has now filed a complaint with the BOE for her putting her hands on him. Not to mention, this 12 yr old already has a probation officer that he has to meet with, so has been a consistent troublemaker.

Watch this clip of Obama talking to the graduating class of Moorehouse University. Start watching at around 17 min, you don't need to hear the whole thing. The talk that Obama gives to the black men at this prestigious university is the speech he should also be giving to the parents in poor areas around the country but never will. About responsibility, hard work, competition....Instead, he talks to the inner city folks about the 99% vs 1% and creates more animosity. What a waste of a platform that this man has had as the first black president of the US.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e50Tt9qJRQk

[santafe2]

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?"

Thanks for your response EJ. As much as I’ve appreciated your expertise and insights over the last few years, I appreciate your honesty, your sense of decency and humanity more.

I agree with you…if not here, where? And I love this country like I love my kids. I won’t accept anything less than the best we can be and I’m so frustrated with the direction we’re moving. We owe each other more than this. If it doesn’t start with us, who does it start with?

I have really enjoyed hearing everyone who posted on this thread and understanding that when we stick to the central idea and try to leave our politics aside, we can generally agree on the problem. Like any other family or cultural group, we have to start there before we can begin to work through a solution. To paraphrase the late Mr. Kinison, if not on iTulip…where?

[RebbePete]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

A good article on the economy, as only Fred Reed could write it.

[TBBNF]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

Fascinating thread when looked at from the perspective of how hard it is to have a constructive discussion when powerful, hard felt emotions underlay the facts from each individuals' viewpoints.

It speaks volumes to me in terms of how far the pendulum needs to be pushed to right the wrongs of the FIRE economy, and how effectively left and right have been split.

+1

[gwynedd1]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

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.

I would not so quickly cast aside land. Banks rely on securitization from assets, and real estate is still the clear undisputed asset of choice. Money is not created at a whim until that is we get to the whimsical assets we find in real estate. Now if bank accounting rules were relaxed, then that link would be more tenuous.

[gwynedd1]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

The US is a fine place for climate control and gluttony; piles of meat and potatoes on banquet tables, and titillating entertainment. Unfortunately this machine turns out simpletons and dolts by the gross . However for me, 2008 is was an abomination proving that the frontier carved out by our virtues fails to go beyond the brain stem. What makes it even worse is my ambivalence to it. On the one hand it is a righteous judgment. Yet the destroying angels are not of some alien strain. They are the the most rapacious and venal of the bunch who cannot even suffer the repudiation communicated by the loss of a single penny.

This culture I was born in, I must make the admission that I tend to despise it. I am fine certainly, but it is painful to observe. I cannot distinguish this eulogy of a great empire from my own:



Character of the Roman nobles, by Ammianus Marcellinus

The greatness of Rome (such is the language of the historian) was founded on the rare and almost incredible alliance of virtue and of fortune. The long period of her infancy was employed in a laborious struggle against the tribes of Italy, the neighbours and enemies of the rising city. In the strength and ardour of youth she sustained the storms of war, carried her victorious arms beyond the seas and the mountains, and brought home triumphal laurels from every country of the globe. At length, verging towards old age, and sometimes conquering by the terror only of her name, she sought the blessings of ease and tranquillity.

The VENERABLE CITY, which had trampled on the necks of the fiercest nations, and established a system of laws, the perpetual guardians of justice and freedom, was content, like a wise and wealthy parent, to devolve on the Caesars, her favourite sons, the care of governing her ample patrimony. (35) A secure and profound peace, such as had been once enjoyed in the reign of Numa, succeeded to the tumults of a republic; while Rome was still adored as the queen of the earth, and the subject nations still reverenced the name of the people and the majesty of the senate. But this native splendour (continues Ammianus) is degraded and sullied by the conduct of some nobles, who, unmindful of their own dignity and of that of their country, assume an unbounded licence of vice and folly.

They contend with each other in the empty vanity of titles and surnames, and curiously select or invent the most lofty and sonorous appellations — Reburrus or Fabunius, Pagonius or Tarrasius (36) which may impress the ears of the vulgar with astonishment and respect. From a vain ambition of perpetuating their memory, they affect to multiply their likeness in statues of bronze and marble; nor are they satisfied unless those statues are covered with plates of gold; an honourable distinction, first granted to Acilius the consul, after he had subdued by his arms and counsels the power of king Antiochus.

The ostentation of displaying, of magnifying perhaps, the rent roll of the estates which they possess in all the provinces, from the rising to the setting sun, provokes the just resentment of every man who recollects that their poor and invincible ancestors were not distinguished from the meanest of the soldiers by the delicacy of their food or the splendour of their apparel. But the modern nobles measure their rank and consequence according to the loftiness of their chariots,(37) and the weighty magnificence of their dress. Their long robes of silk and purple float in the wind; and as they are agitated, by art or accident, they occasionally discover the under garments, the rich tunics, embroidered with the figures of various animals. (38) Followed by a train of fifty servants, and tearing up the pavement, they move along the streets with the same impetuous speed as if they travelled with post-horses and the example of the senators is boldly imitated by the matrons and ladies, whose covered carriages are continually driving round the immense space of the city and suburbs. Whenever these persons of high distinction condescend to visit the public baths, they assume, on their entrance, a tone of loud and insolent command, and appropriate to their own use the conveniences which were designed for the Roman people.

If, in these places of mixed and general resort, they meet any of the infamous ministers of their pleasures, they express their affection by a tender embrace, while they proudly decline the salutations of their fellow-citizens, who are not permitted to aspire above the honour of kissing their hands or their knees. As soon as they have indulged themselves in the refreshment of the bath, they resume their rings and the other ensigns of their dignity, select from their private wardrobe of the finest linen, such as might suffice for a dozen persons, the garments the most agreeable to their fancy, and maintain till their departure the same haughty demeanour, which perhaps might have been excused in the great Marcellus after the conquest of Syracuse. Sometimes indeed these heroes undertake more arduous achievements: they visit their estates in Italy, and procure themselves, by the toil of servile hands, the amusements of the chase. (39)

If at any time, but more especially on a hot day, they have courage to sail in their painted galleys from the Lucrine lake (40) to their elegant villas on the seacoast of Puteoli and Caieta, (41) they compare their own expeditions to the marches of Caesar and Alexander. Yet should a fly presume to settle on the silken folds of their gilded umbrellas, should a sunbeam penetrate through some unguarded and imperceptible chink, they deplore their intolerable hardships, and lament in affected language that they were not born in the land of the Cimmerians, (42) the regions of eternal darkness.

[vinoveri]

Re: Inequality much worse than most think

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.

Bingo. Asset inflation via "crony seignorage", meaning who gets the fiat money first to bid up assets such as land (which results in food and shelter getting more expensive for the average family for instance), and those costs are borrowed from the wages of the laborers who pay the inflated values over their lifetimes.

Dont' get me wrong, nothing wrong with fiat "capital" per se, if it is equitably distributed to be used for INVESTMENT not consumption, and one of the means of equity would be to recycle some of the earnings generated from fiat capital based investment into the social infrastructure/safety net.

It's gotten to the point of bad faith amongst the ruling classes - this ain't rocket science after all - and this is the BS regarding the free market - it ain't a free market when only a few privileged few have access to the monopoly money.

[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.

[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?"

[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.