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Wealth inequality stands at its highest since the turn of the 20th century - the so-called 'Gilded Age' - as the proportion of capital held by the world's 1,542 dollar billionaires swells yet higher. The report, undertaken by Swiss banking giant UBS and UK accounting company PwC, discusses the roles technology and globalization play in the status quo, and appears two weeks after the IMF recommended that the rich should pay more tax to address the enormous disparity.
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A Smith & Wesson beats four aces.
(Score: 2, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday October 29 2017, @04:32PM (36 children)
No, there is nothing civilized about taking what one person has earned and giving it to someone undeserving. Having money is not a vice and being poor is not a virtue. Our economy is in need of some fixing but saying "here, have some of his money" doesn't fix anything; it just buys you votes. What would actually put our economy in a position where everyone could pay their share is a damned long conversation though and I don't feel like giving a detailed economics lecture on a sunday afternoon.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Informative) by turgid on Sunday October 29 2017, @04:51PM (28 children)
The problem with that line of reasoning is that "earning" is merely being given crumbs from the table of the rich man, the bear minimum he can part with in order to get some value out of you.
The problem for a lot of people is that they can be of no value to the rich man because they are young, old, sick, disabled, or being replaced by machinery.
Agreed. Who has money has no bearing on any moral values. Mostly it's accidental. Trump is rich because he was born into a rich family, for example.
It fixes the acute problems of poor people starving to death, dying of exposure sleeping rough, and dying on the streets in agony due to unaffordable medical care. In the longer term, it can be used to invest in everyone's future via things like education.
Why should everyone "pay?"
And as I explained, you'd be starting from a false premise anyway (that everyone has a non-zero "fair" share to pay).
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Sunday October 29 2017, @05:13PM (8 children)
So what? You weren't doing anything more useful to yourself, or you would be doing it.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Sunday October 29 2017, @05:15PM (7 children)
Ah, the gadfly of Soylent News comes to challenge our simplistic beliefs!
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 29 2017, @05:22PM (6 children)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Sunday October 29 2017, @11:44PM (5 children)
I just love how not agreeing with khallow is equivalent to "resisting learning". And he wonders why no one takes him seriously. Other than his rather warped view of economic reality.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 30 2017, @01:09AM (4 children)
But should you ever have anything interesting or relevant to say, please contribute.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Monday October 30 2017, @02:11AM (3 children)
Yeah, as some AC or the other remarked, the preponderance of TMB posts suggested it was a thread to be skipped. And your contributions have been, well, typical of you I suppose. So no point in contributing, since there will be nothing but resistance to learning.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 30 2017, @02:24AM (2 children)
Well, should you ever become sufficiently open to reason, we might be able to work on that.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Monday October 30 2017, @03:19AM (1 child)
Oh, my dear and fluffy khallow!
We have been around long enough to not have to trade such platitudinous insults! And you are well aware that our disagreements, as well as those you are having with your present interlocutors, has nothing to do with reasoning, it has to do with the basic assumptions you are making, which seem to us to be wildly implausible. As with data processing, garbage in, garbage out. Wealth inequality is not bad because of the jealously of the lower classes, that is your assumption. And capitalism is not some sort of Spencerian process of natural selection, so the poors are not poor because they are stupid, drunk, and Irish, all though all this may be true. And the richies are not rich due to self-discipline, frugality, hard work and keeping it in their pants. Obviously.
You should think about why you believe such things, khallow. Do you have any actual grounds for such a 19th century approach to wealth inequality? Inquiring minds, once again, want to know.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 30 2017, @04:02AM
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday October 29 2017, @05:25PM (18 children)
This was not a problem while we had a middle class. You could create your own business and be the rich man if you had the attributes necessary to succeed.
Because not paying for something is what we like to call either theft or charity, depending on whether it was voluntarily given or not. Neither means you deserve what you get.
No, it does not. I thought we covered that in the "give a man a fish" story a couple thousand years ago. I don't expect a socialist utopian to understand reality though, so I'll stop here and go have a nap instead of wasting my words.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Touché) by turgid on Sunday October 29 2017, @08:19PM (3 children)
What we have here is a failure to communicate.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday October 30 2017, @04:17AM (2 children)
No, what we have here is a willful refusal to communicate. His entire worldview on this question is predicated on certain fixed ideas he has about the definitions of words like "earn," "value," "wealth," and so forth. He's sunk too much into his present definitions to change, mostly because doing so would require a massive re-working of almost his entire personality, such as it is.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @03:38PM (1 child)
TIL: poop as personality. I would never have seriously thought about the comparison, but now that I do I think that yes, I have taken shits that smell better than the garbage TMB likes to push out here.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday October 30 2017, @07:58PM
Carnivores have stinky shit, scavengers doubly so :) Maybe he should be a little more selective with what he gulps down and regurgitates.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Pav on Monday October 30 2017, @12:26AM (13 children)
I'd like to see how your ideas work from a programmers perspective. First I'll state what I understand (which seems to clash with your understanding). There's a whole branch of game theory devoted to negotiation between economic entities of unequal power - basically economic power allows a renegotiation of ever more favourable terms when economically cooperating. Simply stated, without regulation capitalism is unstable, and inevitably leads to extreme inequality (before it stops working altogether). After the last guilded age this became the understanding, hence high taxes, regulation, and Keynesianism after the last guilded age (which resulted in "Happy Days" America). Its funny how the game of Monopoly (from this time period) was originally a "pre game theory" way to show that capitalism needed to be regulated. Low taxes and low regulations push all but one player into bankrupcy, with the last being the slowest to realise the economy has stopped working. (BTW, there was another set of rules with higher taxes and regulations which was boring because, although players could become comparitively wealthy the economy remained stable - thus a set of rules that didn't make a "fun" game, hence they got lost to history).
How can you see your ideas working that could be implemented in a game, or in a computer?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 30 2017, @01:24AM (12 children)
The thing is inequality declined. The reason is that demand for labor increased. That in turn increased the pricing power of labor relative to employers.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Monday October 30 2017, @02:40AM (11 children)
Yes... due to high taxation and redistribution the majority of the economy was re-empowered (building infrastructure in FDRs new deal). The very few ultra-wealthy had poor incentive to invest once they'd already captured most of the wealth, but once they were taxed highly and the money was again out there to be won...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 30 2017, @03:00AM (10 children)
That's a cool story, bro, but... US did quite well before the mid 1930s when taxation was made a bit higher (after tax loopholes) than present. The increase in labor power predates FDR by decades. And FDR's policies didn't lead to improvement in the economy until the worst of them were reversed during the Second World War. We had already such things as rising wages, decline of the 19th century monopolies, and growing global trade. By the time of the First World War, the US had a number of world-class universities and medical centers. The Gilded Age was for the US a transition from former colony with primitive infrastructure to nascent superpower.
The US never had that level of concentration of wealth. And the rich had massive investment opportunities around 1900, such as new transportation modes (cars and airplanes), electrification, early computers (analogue), and beginning growth of the suburbs.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Monday October 30 2017, @09:33AM (8 children)
You do realise that the 1800's had seen many technological developments resulting in increasing inequality, and of course with less money in the larger economy this resulted in a labour OVERsupply (the opposite of what you stated) - the resulting poverty and poor working conditions triggered the labour movement. 1910's was rescued by war industries, but unfortunately weath concentration increased yet further. As for the 1920's it would have become a recession or depression except for a bubble built on household borrowing. Yes, the roaring 20's was built on household debt. Why? Because inequality starved the real economy of cash - look it up! The reason for the later tight banking regulation which neoliberals decry is so this couldn't happen again - I wonder why it happened again? The US is back in the same position ie. wealth concentration, with the rest of the economy stagnant - money poor and trying to maintain education, health and standard of living through borrowing.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 30 2017, @12:35PM (4 children)
Let's discuss those. The most famous example was the cotton gin which greatly reduced downstream labor costs of picking cotton by automating the process of picking out the seeds from the cotton. But it still required picking by hand. That made slavery on cotton plantations extremely profitable, increasing inequality. But in the long run, slavery couldn't compete with the freer states of the North which had higher populations and stronger economies. And eventually slavery did end, reducing inequality a bit.
What does "less money" mean here? Less inflation? There is a slight negative correlation between inflation and unemployment, but the US was inflating its money supply enough that this wouldn't have been a factor. Otherwise, supply of money has no relevance to labor supply. Money is needed for a more efficient economy, but once you have it, it's just not that important to have more. I have noticed similar sentiments on occasion over the past few years, but I haven't figured out where these ideas are coming from.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Tuesday October 31 2017, @01:02AM (3 children)
{Let's discuss those. The most famous example was the cotton gin which greatly reduced downstream labor costs of picking cotton by automating the process of picking out the seeds from the cotton. But it still required picking by hand. That made slavery on cotton plantations extremely profitable, increasing inequality. But in the long run, slavery couldn't compete with the freer states of the North which had higher populations and stronger economies. And eventually slavery did end, reducing inequality a bit.}
The reason the plantation economy collapsed was because of the civil war, blockades in conjunction with an export-reliant economy, banning of slavery, the mass distruction of capital involved in losing the war, and the economic colinisation by the north because of the destruction of capital in the south - some call the south Americas first colony. It's like certain third world countries today - if the ruling class stays wealthy and there are wealthy areas to export to, then the living conditions for the bulk of society matters little (provided they are disenfranchised).
{What does "less money" mean here? Less inflation? There is a slight negative correlation between inflation and unemployment, but the US was inflating its money supply enough that this wouldn't have been a factor. Otherwise, supply of money has no relevance to labor supply. Money is needed for a more efficient economy, but once you have it, it's just not that important to have more. I have noticed similar sentiments on occasion over the past few years, but I haven't figured out where these ideas are coming from.}
What does "less money" mean? As wealth inequality grows, the elites have more power to negotiate an increasingly large share of the proceeds, which depresses wages emptying the real economy of cash. People either become impoverished, or borrow in the hope that economic conditions will improve - this borrowing can keep things going for a while eg. roaring 20's. Unfortunately this borrowing brings on the end, because it accellerates inequality - financiers get rich while people in the real economy lose even more spending power.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 31 2017, @04:46AM (2 children)
It's interesting to actually look at history here. As time went on, the masters of the South grew increasingly desperate, among other things sparking guerilla wars in Missouri and Kansas (obtaining a voting majority in these states was necessary in order for them to become slave-holding states - it quickly devolved to the point where people were fighting each other in order to drive out voters of the other side) with their machinations. Their nominal opponents of the day, the Whig party in turn fell apart and was replaced by the Republicans due to their corrupt and incompetent attempts to placate the Southern states.
By 1861, the Southern position was untenable both politically and economically. That's why they succeeded from the US and formed the Confederacy. And then the subsequent attacks on US military positions, starting with the siege of Fort Sumter drew them into a conflict that they were poorly equipped for (particularly with no European allies to assist them, which would have been key to any eventual victory over the US).
The destruction you mention was just the end game of a long conflict which slave-holding states had been losing for a while.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Tuesday October 31 2017, @01:05PM (1 child)
I always read that the confederacy was certainly not disadvantaged economically, even though they lagged in manufacturing output.
Double checked... and this seems to be the case (at least according to a page from the national park service web site):
"The Southern lag in industrial development did not result from any inherent economic disadvantages. There was great wealth in the South, but it was primarily tied up in the slave economy. In 1860, the economic value of slaves in the United States exceeded the invested value of all of the nation's railroads, factories, and banks combined. On the eve of the Civil War, cotton prices were at an all-time high. The Confederate leaders were confident that the importance of cotton on the world market, particularly in England and France, would provide the South with the diplomatic and military assistance they needed for victory."
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 31 2017, @01:41PM
And yet the economic value of slavery was zero by the end of 1865. Thus, I wager their economic position was not as strong as claimed in that blurb. This also goes back to my question, how rich are the rich? [soylentnews.org]. There apparently was a nice valuation of slavery in 1861, but that valuation had vanished by 1865.
Let us keep in mind that by 1860, slavery had globally already become a rare thing with abolition having already occurred throughout most of Europe and South America (Brazil being the last holdout to fully end slavery in 1888) by this time. So the greatest economic value of the elite in the Confederacy was based on an institution that they were worried might be ended any year by the US government. In addition, population and economic growth was far greater in the North than South. The writing was on the wall. If the South did nothing, eventually the institution of slavery would be ended and all that economic value would no longer be theirs to own.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 30 2017, @12:49PM (2 children)
Once again, we have this assertion without evidence of "wealth concentration increasing". My take is that the stock market crash of 1929 indicates that a huge portion of this wealth concentration was purely imaginary.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Tuesday October 31 2017, @12:32AM (1 child)
Do a search for "america 1870's wealth concentration".
There has been much research into this, initially finding that industrialisation caused wealth concentration, with subsequent research backing this up. From a later paper :
"By using the much larger sample available in the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) we are able to disaggregate the data much more finely than has previously been possible allowing us to explore differences in inequality across space and between different population groups. The data provide strong support for the hypothesis that American industrialization during the nineteenth century resulted in increasing inequality in the distribution of wealth."
(Score: 2) by Pav on Tuesday October 31 2017, @12:39AM
The reason I started in the 1870's was because that's when America started industrialising. Europe had already industrialised, inequality had grown, and the "economic renegotiation" had already happened driving vast quantities of people into crushing poverty (and famine in Ireland - even during the so-called "potato famine" Ireland produced an agricultural surplus... it was just that wealth inequality had developed so far that Irish peasant lives were expendable). Americas industrialisation happened later (starting in the 1870's, and continued til the great depression).
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday October 30 2017, @10:11PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fyngyrz on Sunday October 29 2017, @04:52PM (6 children)
To that, I would simply say that your idea of "undeserving" and the comparable conception of others of the term – including mine – has some rather significant differences.
For starters, I think everyone deserves to not freeze, starve, die of something preventable, or live in pain.
From there, I'm willing to discuss what might or might not be "deserved."
The fact is, though, that in order to prevent people from falling through those levels of suffering, money is required.
Prophylactically speaking: The fact also remains that charity has not even remotely stepped up to cover those things, so any suggestions about how charity "ought" to be the recourse for such folk is ludicrous. You know, if anyone was thinking of dipping into that well. :)
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday October 29 2017, @05:29PM (5 children)
Why? What have they done to be deserving? I can see taking pity on them and helping regardless but no, they do not "deserve" anything simply for existing.
As for charity, you must live in a major city. Out in the sticks us sister-fuckers take care of each other, though it's often not in an organized fashion.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Touché) by fyngyrz on Sunday October 29 2017, @08:05PM (1 child)
Not seeing why they have to do anything to be deserving of such basic levels of survival. Society can afford to keep them at some level of not-bottom, and IMHO, it should do so. If it doesn't, it ends up creating extremely desperate people, and that's just stupid, not to mention counter-productive, inconvenient, and cruel.
The fact that some (not many, really, but some) people don't want to do anything particularly useful doesn't bother me a bit. There are always outliers; complaining about relative productivity means you ought to be complaining about yourself, as there are far more productive types out there than you and I (and I'm pretty darned productive, as you may well be too.) Furthermore, highly-productive types aren't always in receipt of proportional recompense for their efforts. Society is being perfectly reasonable when it smooths out the ends of the curves – both ends. IMHO.
I live in rural Montana. 300 miles from the nearest thing one might, if one were feeling generous, call a "city" ("shithole" is a lot closer to the mark.) I've been here for almost thirty years, ever since I managed to get out from under other people's corporate hammer. The attraction was, and remains, cost of living. It certainly isn't a surfeit of kind souls nearby.
Your sticks are not my sticks, clearly. The residents here are perfectly happy to let other people freeze, starve, and die of whatever. Including other residents. The local cops, when they find people walking in town who are not actual residents, kindly pick them up and deposit them on the highway outside of town with a firm admonition to "keep going." There's no shelter for people – transients, etc.; there's no humane society or equivalent; animals are mostly for shooting and/or butchering and selling the resulting fragments thereof. And riding. Until they're old. Then they tend to get shot anyway. Entertainment here is largely comprised of sinking a hook in a fish's face or a bullet in a four-leggers heart or head, as a prelude to hanging its head on the wall. Or just dragging them behind a pickup until they die horribly, though I do give the local cops credit for stopping that shit when they catch anyone at it. Which is all too regularly.
In my experience, rural people tend to be insular, selfish, vicious gossips, and generally small minded and poorly informed. Other than that, they're absolutely lovely. :/
I still don't think any of them need to suffer in a country as productive and rich as ours is.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday October 30 2017, @10:18PM
You: I live in rural Montana. 300 miles from the nearest thing one might, if one were feeling generous, call a "city"
Possibly the most deserving "touche" mod recipient I've seen in a long time!
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @12:46AM (2 children)
Let me turn that back on you. What has the typical wealthy billionaire done to be so deserving? What have they done that makes them more deserving of that wealth than the hundreds of thousands of people that could be kept sheltered and fed given the same wealth? I can tell you what: NOT. A. GOD. DAMNED. THING.
No, taxes on the wealthy aren't "taking what one person has earned and giving it to someone undeserving." It's quite the opposite. It's taking from those who haven't earned it, don't deserve it, and, most importantly, don't need it and can't even possibly spend it all, and giving to those who do need it. Taxes on the wealthy is a way to take back at least some of what they've stolen from society and return it to their victims. There's not a single multi-billionaire that got where they are without either inheriting it (read: DOING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING AT ALL TO DESERVE OR EARN IT!), or cheating, stealing, and otherwise stepping on those who have less in order to "get theirs." Not. A. Single. One. You can find dirt on ALL of them if you choose to dig deep enough. There's enough on some of them right at the surface to get them locked up for life without parole, if only the same laws applied to them that apply to the rest of us. Google "billionaire pedophile" if you want to see the reason I absolutely despise the super-wealthy. They can, have, and do continue to get away with murder and things considered WORSE than murder, all for the simple fact that they have enough wealth to buy their way out without making a meaningful impact on their wealth.
"I got mine. Screw you." -- Official motto of the top .001% and their gaggle of moronic followers usually referred to as "The Republican Party."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @09:29AM
Hadn't produced hundreds of thousands hungry offspring without means of support, for one.
ANY amount of wealth you throw to your "kept" people, you end up with NO wealth and MORE such people to "keep". You cannot win. You cannot get even. The only sane strategy is not to play. :(
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 30 2017, @04:04PM
Directly employ tens of thousands to millions of people. Hundreds of thousands of the poor aren't doing that either.