Income inequality in America has been growing rapidly, and is expected to increase [PDF]. While the widening wealth gap is a hot topic in the media and on the campaign trail, there's quite a disconnect between the perceptions of economists and those of the general public.
For instance, surveys show people tend to underestimate the income disparity between the top and bottom 20% of Americans, and overestimate the opportunity for poor individuals to climb the social ladder. Additionally, a majority of adults believe that corporations conduct business fairly despite evidence to the contrary and that the government should not act to reduce income inequality.
Even though inequality is increasing, Americans seem to believe that our social and economic systems work exactly as they should. This perspective has intrigued social scientists for decades. My colleague Andrei Cimpian and I have demonstrated in our recent research that these beliefs that our society is fair and just may take root in the first years of life, stemming from our fundamental desire to explain the world around us.
http://theconversation.com/lifes-not-fair-so-why-do-we-assume-it-is-45981
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @05:58PM
And, if you've reached your 26 birthday and you eat three meals a day, it's time to grow up.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by SubiculumHammer on Thursday September 10 2015, @06:07PM
Wrong. Economic inequality quickly equates to political inequality. Political inequality leads to more economic inequality.
Which leads to pitchforks.
Let them eat cake you say.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @06:37PM
That's the least of it.
There are many things and opportunities that middle class people take for granted. Most of us had opportunities that we are not even aware of.
And those opportunities are decling because of globalization, automation, and corporate America making people work more hours instead of hiring more people. The average work week is now over 50 hours and in tech, 60 hour workweeks are the norm.
But corporate profits have been the highest ever - and so has CEO pay, hedge fund manager's compensation and the others at the very top of the economic food chain.
My standard of living has been cut in half since '00. STEM shortage my hairy ass!
My jobs were off-shored and on my last job, I trained a H1-b and had to teach him what a pointer was. But if I were any good, I wouldn't have been unemployed - what I was told. And that H1-b was hired because he was more qualified than an American - that had to be taught basic C programming.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by CRCulver on Thursday September 10 2015, @07:50PM
On the other hand, globalization allows Westerners to move to other places where they can provide in-demand skills while enjoying a very low cost of living. I ended up in northwest Romania rather by accident (liked it as a tourist in the early millennium, decided to stay), but I was pleased to discover that there is still heavy demand for native English speakers in various freelancing fields carried out remotely, so I could work two or three lazy days a week, make quite close to a Western salary, and live in a nice flat and eat well while still saving up a lot of money for interesting travels or tech items. As the years have gone by, I have witnessed the arrival of numerous North Americans or Western Europeans who came here (or the beaches of the world) expressly to work remotely for Western firms while enjoying the good life.
Yes, globalization can seem unfair for those who live in the US or somewhere similarly expensive and want to stay there, because they have some close attachment to their hometown or family. But for those who enjoy mobility and seeing the world, they can reap benefits from our connected era just as much as a poor Asian country that gets an offshored call centre or factory. (And with their head start in affluence, such Westerners are in a better position than people in developing countries to, say, invest in real estate in order to weather any dry periods in freelance and contracting work.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2015, @02:03PM
Good luck having the same civil rights in a foreign country.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by edIII on Thursday September 10 2015, @11:36PM
We hear of this a lot, but I don't think to many that it is real. Last month I offered a homeless man a meal that was begging for help in the entrance to a shopping mall. He was very appreciative and said that he had just ate from some kind people a little bit before. I ended up spending about an hour talking to him.
I found out that he had lost his job a few years back, a hard job just to pay the bills, not live. Just survive. Unemployment ran out at about the same time they were evicted from their home (had a wife). Turned out to be a fairly intelligent man, but now in his 60s. Work was very difficult to find, and he informed me that he just got a full time job finally after 10 months on the street. Starting in about week, but just needed to survive until then, and then maybe things would be better.
This man made over $100k a year with Hewlett-Packard before *he* trained his H1-b replacement and then was let go after a few decades with Hewlett-Packard. Told me how old man Packard was actually very nice when he met him. This man was upbeat and sticking to his faith that everything will be ok. Now homeless people can talk up a storm to be sure, but I sincerely doubt he could have bullshitted his way through the story for 15 minutes with as many technical details we spoke about.
Yeah, this shit is real. There is an executive sitting someplace a little bit richer while this man is desperately trying to survive in an economy like ours past retirement age. Life may not be fair, but it's our fucking fault that these executives still remain breathing, and allowed to continually abuse us . We enable these executives to continue making the decisions that destroy our way of life, and all of that political inequality you speak of, is merely evidence that these executives receive unequal representation with the politicians that should have been trying to save this homeless man's livelihood, not increasing the wealth of a *very* *very* few.
Fair? The Justice Department just announced in the most retarded press conference of all time that they were finally going to perform the basic tenets of their fucking jobs for once. They announced this information as if it was a huge scientific break thru in understanding how executives needed to face punishment directly, and that they had been really just enabling the behavior the whole time. Seriously. Reading that offensive bullshit caused me to face palm hard enough to jump start a Big Bang.
Americans are desperately trying to deceive themselves that our country is fair, but we know better. Of course life is not fair! It can't be with Ivy League schools pumping out MBAs, and Presidential campaigns being effectively bought and sold with toxic pieces of shit like Adelson having every Republican in office attempting to blow him in person. Just because he has ~$26 billion.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 11 2015, @02:36AM
This man made over $100k a year with Hewlett-Packard before *he* trained his H1-b replacement
He has no excuse to be homeless then. He should have over a million saved away, even after his ex-wife took her cut. I think we have better things to do than punish some executive of HP for this person's decades of poor life choices.
Fair? The Justice Department just announced in the most retarded press conference of all time that they were finally going to perform the basic tenets of their fucking jobs for once.
I'll believe it when I see it. Still making the announcement (to punish actual people for actual crimes committed) is a small step in a good direction.
Americans are desperately trying to deceive themselves that our country is fair, but we know better. Of course life is not fair! It can't be with Ivy League schools pumping out MBAs, and Presidential campaigns being effectively bought and sold with toxic pieces of shit like Adelson having every Republican in office attempting to blow him in person. Just because he has ~$26 billion.
So what? I see this as Adelson squandering his wealth on some very expensive blow jobs. Political spending is notoriously ineffective. I notice that the Wikipedia article on him states that he has started over 50 businesses. That's probably a vast number of people helped by this toxic piece of shit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2015, @02:59PM
I hope you lose your job to an out-sourcing shit-mill in India or China. I really, really do.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 11 2015, @03:14PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2015, @04:13AM
I found out that he had lost his job a few years back, a hard job just to pay the bills, not live. Just survive. Unemployment ran out at about the same time they were evicted from their home (had a wife). Turned out to be a fairly intelligent man, but now in his 60s.
60-what? He should be collecting Social Security now or soon. That's the original government program to force irresponsible people to save for retirement, and it works pretty well in that.
I'm not doubting your story in particular, but I have a hard time believing the narrative these stories purport to tell because it just doesn't mesh with my experience at all, or with statistics. I teach at a college, and every single one of our students has gotten a job basically straight out of college. We track them, and every single one of our graduates gets a job within 6 months or something.
"Age discrimination" is what you'll say, I know. I'm sure there's some of that, but, well, some of my co-workers from my time in industry still have jobs, and they are probably getting close-ish to retirement these days. More importantly, 100% employment of new college graduates is not just notable, it's economically unhealthy, even. There should be SOMEONE who can't find a job in 6 months, just by bad luck. So the STEM shortage seems real to me.
In any event, no one's guaranteed a job. Layoffs are part of the way workers are made to go where they can do the most good. Protectionism may have allowed that man to keep his job, but it would have done that by causing stagnation in the labor market. You should always have savings, because you always might lose your job. If you make $10K a year, then, sure, I don't blame you for not having savings when you get bad luck. If you make $100K, then you were irresponsible in the extreme. What, did HP not offer him a 401K? I'm sure they did. Did he not enroll in it? Probably not, based on his situation. Someone making 100K a year for 20 years who has no savings and ends up homeless when laid off must have made some pretty bad life decisions. Perhaps those life decisions also affected his work. Perhaps these anonymous stories of age discrimination are also cases of personality/other personal problems making someone unemployable, and the individual blames "the system" instead of looking in a mirror.
Now, all that said, we shouldn't have homeless people in the US. From this perspective, I don't really care about his irresponsibility; most homeless people have mental health issues of some sort and poor impulse control leading to poor financial management is a mental health issue. We should have government-run shelters for people who lack the capacity -- for whatever reason -- to support themselves. There's no excuse for us, as a society, not taking care of the destitute. It's just that forcing companies to employ people they don't want would be neither an effective nor an efficient way of doing that.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Friday September 11 2015, @09:29AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2, Insightful) by termigator on Friday September 11 2015, @02:20PM
Many people are lousy managing their money. Combine that with humans being social animals, with most concerned about their social status, many will live beyond their means to gain social status.
I find it amusing that those lower on the ladder are expected to be more disciplined and responsible than those higher up. It easy for higher-ups to tout financial discipline when they do not have the same financial and social pressures as those on the lower end of the income ladder.
As for savings, the system is rigged that basic savings actually loses value over time. Therefore, folks have to put money in investment products, like 401k and IRAs, which allows the wealthy to get their cut of folks money via fees and transaction costs.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Thursday September 10 2015, @07:04PM
Western civilizations have economic inequality since their very inception, and more or less political inequality (depending on the times) for just as long.
When was the last time we saw pitchforks?
You are far more likely to see pitchforks (or Kalashnikovs) where there is not even a pretense of a possibility for change, such as kingdoms or dictatorships.
TFS suggests inequality is increasing. But since we have had this situation for something approaching 400 years, it would seem that maximum inequality would have already been reached a long time ago.
Inequality, as perceived by the cited SJW website, seems to boil down to the size of a bank account or the pay check. Sometimes CEO earnings (in cash) are over 400:1 of the median wage [payscale.com] in the same company. The actual US average is probably closer to 20:1 for fortune 10000 companies and probably a national average of 10:1 when you crank in small business.
To postulate that this will continuously get more lopsided until pitchforks come out, suggests you believe that people will work for almost free, and the only ones making any money will be the CEOs. This of course is nonsense.
In short, we don't use either pitchforks or Kalashnikovs much any more. We use ballot boxes and government actions, and strikes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/06/business/dealbook/sec-approves-rule-on-ceo-pay-ratio.html [nytimes.com]
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/24/nyregion/push-to-lift-hourly-pay-is-now-serious-business.html [nytimes.com]
http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2015/0415/Fast-food-workers-Why-more-strikes-over-15-minimum-wage-video [csmonitor.com]
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @08:19PM
Western civilizations have economic inequality since their very [inceptions]
The Shakers (starting before the American Revolution), The Paris Commune of 1871, Barcelona in 1936 - 1937, Mondragon since 1956, the village of Marinaleda in Spain, and thousands of worker cooperatives across northern Italy all say that you are painfully ignorant in assuming that gross economic inequality is a natural and necessary state of affairs.
400 years
You have forgotten centuries of Feudalism and the slave economies which preceded that.
400:1
You left out Larry Ellison, with whom it was 5000:1.
sec-approves-rule-on-ceo-pay-ratio
Window dressing. Nothing fundamentally changed.
The corps simply have to add that line to their reports.
...and the ruling should have included compensation for members of the boards of directors as well.
In Switzerland, OTOH, they had a referendum that would have capped the ration at 12:1.
A well-played propaganda campaign by the elites convinced Swiss workers to vote against themselves.
The line about USAians seeing themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires (often attributed to John Steinbeck) seems to apply to the Swiss as well.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday September 10 2015, @08:27PM
That you can reel off a list of vanishingly small localized exceptions means nothing.
None of those tiny minority groups count as a civilization. They are merely aberrations in time.
Could it be, that a CEO that earns more than 12:1 really doesn't hurt the average worker at all?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @08:38PM
> Could it be, that a CEO that earns more than 12:1 really doesn't hurt the average worker at all?
Could it be, that chickens really fly out of my butt?
Absolutely. Nothing is impossible because quantum uncertainty.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @09:43PM
vanishingly small
In 2006, Mondragon enterprises employed 16% of total employment in Gipuzkoa and a [3.8]% of the whole Basque Country [wedreambusiness.org]
8100 worker cooperatives across Emilia-Romagna is 30 percent of that region's economy.
Your definition of "small" is different than mine.
...or would a 30 percent pay cut be just fine with you?
localized exceptions
When it comes these days, change is a bottom-up phenomena.
(We've already tried top-down; that is showing itself to be a bigger failure with each passing day.)
None of those tiny minority groups count as a civilization
If you walked into one of those places and spouted off with that, I'm betting you would come out with a fat lip.
doesn't hurt
Since they went to the trouble of getting a referendum on the ballot, clearly, a significant number of folks think it does.
-- gewg_
(Score: 4, Informative) by sjames on Thursday September 10 2015, @09:20PM
You must have slept through the guilded age through WWII in U.S. history. Some of the union action turned quite violent (and used guns, not pitchforks) in those times and as a result, we got 8 hour days, weekends off, workplace safety, and the social safety net. In the '60s they tried non-violence (mostly) and we got greater racial equality and concessions on minimum wage.
Since the bubble popped in 2007, we have seen repeated incidents in spite of police using chemical warfare and military hardware.
Where have you been hiding?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by digitalaudiorock on Thursday September 10 2015, @07:58PM
...which leads to more and more political messages convincing everyone that it's all somehow a good thing.
Never mind that history proves time and time again that our best economies are during times of lower inequality. The tiny percent that reaps windfalls from globalization etc have done a great job of drowning all that out with revisionist BS.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @06:11PM
Maybe if we built moving sidewalks in the city, maybe more people will get to see what the inside of a slum looks like.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday September 10 2015, @06:18PM
Maybe if we built moving sidewalks in the city, maybe more people will get to see what the inside of a slum looks like.
... or obesity would increase since you get even less exercise.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Thursday September 10 2015, @07:02PM
Now you're thinking! If you're not a starving child in Africa, you need to check your privilege! Ignore all the problems the world faces, because your situation could be worse. And as we all know, if X is worse than Y, Y isn't bad at all, simply because there exists something worse.
(Score: 2) by zugedneb on Thursday September 10 2015, @06:17PM
We have these nice features called knowing and understanding, and, as time goes, they do not make life *fun*...
I guess, given evolution, the one who is burdened by understanding and knowing does not put itself in a position to make children. Or, given history, to make *more* children than those who have already died...
Eventually, when evolution patches idiocy, it becomes belief...
old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
(Score: 5, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Thursday September 10 2015, @06:25PM
We all want to think people treat each other decently and look out for the disadvantaged and society as a whole functions. There's a meaning to life, and if you live a good one you get rewarded afterwards, etc., etc.
Either that, or you admit that capitalism is all just everyone racing to fuck each other over before they get fucked over first, and rich people are callous bastards, and politicians don't even believe in the system, and if you try hard from nothing you probably won't make it unless you fight dirty. Then you live a mediocre life, you have some kids, which you really don't have all that much control over how they turn out, and then you die and it's all over and the world doesn't care that you even existed.
"Fair" is one of those painfully idealistic words.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bob_super on Thursday September 10 2015, @06:47PM
Without the illusion of fairness, the whole social contract is in danger:
The poor don't have to behave, they'll never get anywhere
The middle can scrape a living, but should cheat at all times to enjoy whatever they can put their paws on, until they get caught by an arbitrary rule and fall. Behaving well does not allow them to escape the arbitrary rules or the poor, and is therefore a liability.
The rich hide in their castles and keep on grabbing everything their power allows them to, as long as they can keep enough guards.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jdavidb on Thursday September 10 2015, @07:27PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Thursday September 10 2015, @07:48PM
The problem is with the pyramid structure of society. Whenever you have a small peak controlling the large base you are in danger of abuse, which is inevitable over time. We will always have some amount of power focused on individuals / small groups, but it should be as distributed as possible. Also, full transparency for anything that runs on public funding. Obviously there will be a few exceptions, but overall the shell games of spying and arms races are stupid, wasteful, dangerous, and lead to more national insecurity.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Friday September 11 2015, @05:13AM
The problem is with the pyramid structure of society. Whenever you have a small peak controlling the large base you are in danger of abuse, which is inevitable over time. We will always have some amount of power focused on individuals / small groups, but it should be as distributed as possible.
I agree with you and my solution is that power should only exist when voluntarily granted and it ought to be revocable.
And for me a popularity contest doesn't voluntarily grant power over the losers of the contest.
Respecting all of this would disperse and distribute an enormous amount of power and would be devastating for the pyramid/hierarchy you mentioned.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Friday September 11 2015, @05:16AM
Also, full transparency for anything that runs on public funding.
Just imagine if every individual could say "No, I don't want my money going to that," and revoke the power to have their money taken for it? If you wanted people to fund something you'd have to actually persuade them to believe in it enough to support it.
Of course to do that we'd each have to individually give up the dream of having the power to make people do what we believe they should do.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday September 10 2015, @06:29PM
Let's be real clear here, equality of opportunity is fair; equality of outcome is the most unfair thing ever devised. As long as nobody is acting to specifically hinder you from getting ahead, you are getting all the fairness you can ever expect or ask for out of life.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Tork on Thursday September 10 2015, @06:36PM
Let's be real clear here, equality of opportunity is fair... As long as nobody is acting to specifically hinder you from getting ahead.
In other words: It isn't.
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 2, Disagree) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday September 10 2015, @07:12PM
Nice zinger while managing to also be full of shit. The vast majority of people will never encounter someone wanting to hold them back because of their skin color/gender because the majority genuinely do not give a fuck about those anymore. Those that do can easily work around it in nearly every case.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Tork on Thursday September 10 2015, @07:43PM
Those that do can easily work around it in nearly every case.
This is not true. That's why we've been in conflict for the last several decades. There are several groups of people, today I'm talking about, that have to work extra hard just to be equal. There are people declaring it to be over, after-all we did finally elect a black President, but they are delusional. What I was referring to was income inequality. As workers we're expected to bleed for our employers. (I've actually had a boss tell me that.) We're almost at a point now where house purchases require two-income families. That's only going to get worse. Never mind how the trends are going with our life expectancies going up. But, hey, it's our own fault for not saddling ourselves with ridiculous student debt.
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 1, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday September 10 2015, @10:02PM
Income inequality can suck a dick. There's nothing fair about income equality. Some people's time is simply worth more than others because they know better how to use it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday September 10 2015, @10:11PM
Some people's time is simply worth more than others because they know better how to use it.
Heh. That's not what income inequality is.
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday September 10 2015, @10:35PM
Tell that to the small business owners you want to tax the utter fuck out of.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday September 10 2015, @10:49PM
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Thursday September 10 2015, @07:43PM
So far, every single non-white person and woman I know well has told me at least one story of somebody who held them back because they were non-white or female (or both).
Some examples, and bear in mind that this is all fairly recent:
- One of my closest female friends gave up a budding interest in theater because the director she was working with attempted to molest her (she was 16 at the time), and when she reported it to the theater organization their response was to call her a crazy drama queen and kick her out. She might have been a good actress, instead she was a mediocre pencil pusher at an insurance company. The director in question is on trial for making and distributing pornography with underage teenage girls he met working in the theater program, but that doesn't help with my friends' non-career.
- The women in my computer science class who I got to know told me regularly about being sexually harassed in the CS lab. Almost all of them transferred over to being math majors in large part to avoid the treatment they were getting.
- One of the smarter engineers I know, who is black, was repeatedly denied promotion despite having all the necessary credentials, seniority, and sterling performance reviews. Less qualified white employees kept getting promoted in front of him.
- One day the company I was working for was interviewing for a new programmer. My colleagues did the technical evaluations, and decided that he was more-or-less OK for a junior level programmer. They then invited the co-owner in charge of technology to meet with this prospective employee. Within 10 minutes, the co-owner was back saying to the entire office that he'd never hire him because he was Indian. This same co-owner had also pushed out the one black guy in the company by repeatedly denying him raises and promotions while demanding more and more work from him.
- A white friend of mine who works in HR talked about one time they were considering a candidate for an office assistant. The candidate did well on all the skills tests and all the personality questions, but when it came time to discuss things and my friend said "So this seems like a hire", the rest of the room looked at her like she was crazy. Why? Because the candidate was black.
- A black male work buddy was dancing with somebody he'd just met in a nightclub. A white woman came up to him and attacked him with a knife for "harassing her girlfriend". The cops arrested *him*, despite his bleeding hand and numerous witness statements making it very clear that he was the victim rather than the aggressor. Then they denied him medical treatment and left him in jail for the weekend before a judge could dismiss the case.
If you don't think that being not-white or not-male makes a huge difference, then you aren't paying attention.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday September 10 2015, @07:58PM
Sorry to hear about all these stories. That sucks.
But you're offering anecdata. He said "vast majority" and now we're just talking about how prevalent it is. He never said discrimination doesn't exist.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday September 10 2015, @08:37PM
My point with the "anecdata" is that the anecdotes match up perfectly with a very well-documented difference in outcomes for black, Hispanic, and female people, and a historical pattern of discrimination against black, Hispanic, and female people.
It's basically intended to counteract the notion that the social scientists are making the whole thing up, which I have heard more than a few conspiracy theorists do.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday September 10 2015, @10:07PM
Allow me to refute then. I'm Indian (feather not dot) and it has never been a hindrance to me. Not once. I'd be willing to bet a hell of a lot of the people who told you they were held back because of their race were held back for lack of value to an employer rather than anything sordid, but they're told day in and day out that they're oppressed by race baiters who make their money off generating strife where there was none to begin with.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 10 2015, @11:13PM
I just posted regarding my own boss, and hiring brown men.
I had an Indian helper. Obviously non-white, he looked very Native American. Rudy worked for me for a little over two years, and like the average laborer, he was screwed over repeatedly. No raises, for starters. He caught all the shit jobs that no white man wanted to do. Medical benefits delayed because he didn't dot all his i's and cross all his t's. Generally used and abused, as much as possible within a corporate environment.
We buried the man a couple years ago. It started out with a rather minor injury. Took the man to the ER, and the doctor treated the injury, then he wanted to admit the patient for observation. Rudy's blood pressure was out of this world! Without insurance, and a meager excuse for a wage, Rudy fought being admitted. So, Rudy is back at work the next day, and I start digging to find out about insurance for him. Well - long story short, he got his insurance, he got a doctor's appointment, he got a prescription for blood pressure medicine, but delayed picking up the script because he didn't have the co-pay to pay for the medicine. Just a few bucks, but he didn't have it. Hell, I'd have lent him twenty bucks, but he didn't ask me . . .
That weekend, Rudy had a little family gathering, had a great day, he's laughing and bullshitting with an adult son, sits down in an easy chair - and dropped dead of an aneurysm. Just that quick and simple - lights out.
One less hard working Choctaw in this world, and none of my bosses or co-workers can imagine that the man died because of actions and inactions on the company's part. Rudy SHOULD HAVE had his insurance in order an entire year prior to his death, and he shouldn't have been scrabbling for the couple dollars necessary to pick up his prescription.
High blood pressure. Life sucks.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @11:51PM
So you are saying he didn't have all this because he was not white? And you are still working for this racist company? Maybe you are the problem?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday September 11 2015, @11:34AM
You obviously didn't read all of my post, like the part where I wrote about a boss that told the entire staff of his company flat-out that he would only hire white people.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @08:10PM
Buzz talking about sociology is like a programmer who doesn't understand indirection.
If its not blatantly rubbed in someone's face it doesn't exist.
And when it is blatant, its just a one-off, not the tip of an iceberg.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday September 10 2015, @10:09PM
And what exactly qualifies your happy ass to speak on it, slappy?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @11:19PM
I see you locked Slappy in a car, ran up on your porch, and then pointed and laughed at him! Wow! What was that twinkling star that just flew into your bare snap...? Wait... what was that sinister voice that just said "Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit's suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuupper tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime..."? It came from within your raw bayer aspirin hole...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2015, @03:16AM
> And what exactly qualifies your happy ass to speak on it, slappy?
BSc in sociology.
You?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 10 2015, @10:52PM
Funny thing is, I've seen HR actually support these policies. I once pointed out that my immediate boss only hires white males for tech positions, and uses only brown males for support, or help. "Human relations" supported my boss by claiming that she had personally interviewed all of these brown males, and found that they were "unqualified".
Basically, the crotch biting SOB that I work for can write a job requirement for a position that excludes anyone he wants to exclude.
We have a black man in production right now, who wants to transfer to maintenance. His experience is better than my own. His education is about equal to my own. His specific experience isn't a perfect match for the work we do, but hey, unless we raid other companies in the same industry, we simply will not find perfect matches. I really, really, really want this big black guy to work with me. My boss? He finds all manner of stupid bullshit reasons why the man wouldn't work out.
Bottom line, he ain't hiring any non-white to fill a tech position. End of story. It's alright to have a black or brown man mop the floor, but no way is he fit to work on machinery.
Fucking IGNORANT!
And, the bitch in HR tacitly supports this attitude.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2015, @05:55AM
>>Fucking IGNORANT!
>>And, the bitch in HR tacitly supports this attitude.
Why can't they be tolerant, classy individuals like yourself?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 10 2015, @08:33PM
I wish you were right, but you're not. It is true that fewer people care about that now than they used to a generation ago, but all you have to do is read Drudge or RedState or FreeRepublic and you'll quickly see that there are a great many white people who still do care about race. That is also true for non-white people--very conscious of race. It is lamentable and there are layers and degrees of injustice and tragedy in it for everyone, but it remains a fact that if you are a non-white person in a white-dominated society you have a significantly higher chance to be shot dead by cops or passed over for promotions.
White people who say they're not being given any special favors perceive that the system is screwing them over, too, which it is. They conflate that reality with proof there is no racism, but there is.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday September 10 2015, @10:13PM
Oh the system screws white people over because of their race as well. Look at any company that approaches the same racial diversity as society and you'll find it chock full of racism. Ask anyone in HR what the main stumbling block to having a diverse workforce is and they'll tell you Lack Of Qualified Applicants. So if they're approaching society's diversity that means they've been hiring less qualified candidates because of their skin color.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 11 2015, @01:40AM
Yes that is true and that is what I was alluding to when I said that there are many layers of injustice and suffering for all involved. But that is an entirely different thing than saying that racism doesn't exist anymore. It certainly does. And the consequences for non-white people in a white-dominant society like, say, America, are much more severe than they are for white people. As a white guy I never fear I'm going to be summarily executed by cops for the crime of walking out my front door. That is not the case for non-white people in the US.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2015, @03:52PM
Never fear? Certainly your chances are lower, but the cops have randomly executed white guys before too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @11:06PM
If White people are so bad and racist as you say. Then why is it that white people were the first and only race to eliminate slavery across the entire planet. Why is it that every race on the planet need to move into white countries. Is it so that they can get a real good close look at all that racism or because whites are more fair than their own race.. Get over your self and look up the statistics. For example black people in the usa are targeted more fro speeding,this is true.Why? because they on average speed twice as much as whites (http://www.city-journal.org/html/12_2_the_racial_profiling.html)
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Friday September 11 2015, @05:07AM
I just went through the comments on all the threads here. It amazes me how many people here on Soylent News don't see what you and I thought was obvious. This thread that The Mighty Buzzard started was very eye opening to me. I am amazed how wide the split is between opinions. I'm just speechless.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by urza9814 on Thursday September 10 2015, @06:51PM
Maybe if that 'opportunity' is who your parents are and that 'outcome' is the entirety of your life...
Otherwise you're merely demonstrating the exact delusion explained in the article.
...which is something people do *constantly*. Racism, sexism, all those other -isms...everyone's got their biases. Which largely come from the thousands of years of accumulated history that nobody living today had any influence on. It's a game that's been played for thousands of turns, and you get dropped into a random player's seat, you get ten turns to do the best you can with what you happened to be given, and then you're booted out again.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Francis on Thursday September 10 2015, @06:56PM
I don't think that anybody would argue that we have equality of opportunity that isn't trying to rationalize why they have so much more than they deserve.
I believe the point the GP is making is that efforts to provide equality need to focus on giving people equal standing from which to compete, not ensuring that everybody gets the same result.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday September 10 2015, @07:08PM
They may or may not have more than they deserve, that depends entirely on whether they actually cheated anybody or whether it's simply envy driven whining. And I'd argue we have close enough to equal opportunity that a couple extra hours effort a day can negate any deliberate disadvantage entirely. Not luck of the draw disadvantages like being born to rich parents, that's just fate; it's utterly fair because it's entirely random.
Second sentence you got exactly right though, Parent. I'm 100% against -ism discrimination except when you're comparing physical capability of men vs women, which is quite often irrelevant today. As long as you have the opportunity to do the work and take the risks to get ahead, you're getting a fair shake. That is what we should be striving for but most progressives do not want that, they want equality of outcome.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @07:31PM
Not luck of the draw disadvantages like being born to rich parents, that's just fate; it's utterly fair because it's entirely random.
As a white kid you have just as much chance of being born into a black family as you do of being born into a white family.
It's totally random that average black household wealth is just 6% of white household wealth. [forbes.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday September 10 2015, @07:37PM
No, there are plenty of reasons for that and most of them have nothing to do with race but everything to do with culture and parenting. And, yes, random is fair. Always.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @07:43PM
No, there are plenty of reasons for that and most of them have nothing to do with race but everything to do with culture and parenting.
Yeah, like the culture of red-lining and the parents who taught their children that things like red-lining were proper.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday September 10 2015, @10:17PM
More like the culture of ~80% out of wedlock births in the black community. Being raised in a one parent home is a hell of a lot bigger hindrance than your skin color will ever be. Mad props for the ladies (and yes, it's almost always the ladies) stuck with this chore but it doesn't change the fact that there's only one income to the home to help the child get started in life.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Friday September 11 2015, @12:51AM
More like the culture of ~80% out of wedlock births in the black community.
Wow, that's just terrible. As we all know, marriage magically fixes problems.
Being raised in a one parent home is a hell of a lot bigger hindrance than your skin color will ever be.
That's quite a different problem than people merely having children out of wedlock.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by prospectacle on Friday September 11 2015, @02:39AM
It looks like you're describing exactly the kind of unequal opportunities that can occur during the most formative and influential period of someone's life, namely their first five years.
The guidance, education, nutrition, safety, and health in this time have a massively disproportionate influence on the rest of a person's life (on average).
I would say a person's opportunities are (again, on average) more than 50% defined by their starting conditions. So the level of equality of opportunity for one generation, depends a great deal on the equality of wealth/health/education/etc of the previous generation.
So you can't have one without the other.
If a plan isn't flexible it isn't realistic
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday September 11 2015, @03:09AM
Agreed here. I have respect for these women on the basis of my education as an Amazon, although I cannot help on that basis to wonder why they had the children in the first place. Do they not have access to contraception? Becoming pregnant is a deliberate act in the Amazon world.
Raising a child needs two parents. The Amazon model is weird in that regard. Male children are given back to the father, with knowledge that machismo will cause him to be the sole provider. Meanwhile, female children have the benefit of a village to raise them.
I have great respect for my tribe back in Qinghai, but there were questionable things that made me ultimately leave them.
(Score: 1) by OwMyBrain on Friday September 11 2015, @02:59PM
More like the culture of ~80% out of wedlock births in the black community.
Didn't you claim earlier in this thread that racism wasn't an issue any more?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Friday September 11 2015, @02:09AM
So racial and gender discrimination is cool with you? It's all random, that black woman could have been born a white man so it's all fair, am I right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @07:39PM
If it can be strongly correlated to other factors, like average education level, or IQ it would certainly not be random. Then you would have to ask yourself what exactly do you want to fix.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @07:45PM
> If it can be strongly correlated to other factors, like average education level, or IQ it would certainly not be random.
Yes, absolutely. All those factors are the result of having far less opportunity.
> Then you would have to ask yourself what exactly do you want to fix.
Make sure they have equal opportunity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2015, @12:00AM
So u want them to have equal opportunity with no regard to their IQ or educations? So basically you want to hire people too fuckin dumb for the job. Yeah that will fix EVERYTHING, especially when they are fired 3 months later because they are utterly useless. Also giving people more money than they can make in their market place normally will not result in them misusing the funds or being taken for a ride with any number of scams because they are too dumb to hold on to the wealth. You will fix NOTHING, and just make a mess. I'm smart enough to figure out that if now dumbass brown people are being hired for my job "just because", that I can turn into a scam artist that takes them for a ride and separates them from their new-found money. I rather have an honest job, but if everything is fucked why not?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 10 2015, @08:50PM
I'm sorry, but that's not what happens. Working harder gets you ahead? Do you not pay attention to who gets ahead in the places where you work (or have you not worked in many places yet?)? It's not the hard workers or skilled people who know how to do stuff that get ahead. Or, perhaps more accurately, the people who get ahead do not get ahead because of their hard work or the things they can do and have done. They get ahead because they play politics or because they know somebody. It's sickening. It's the opposite of the meritocracy that the Powers-that-Be try so hard to convince all of us we live in, so that we'll blame ourselves for not working hard enough instead of blaming them, and then proceed to work even harder hoping for the pat on the head from the wise- and powerful leader.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday September 10 2015, @10:26PM
I've worked, as a minority, in bullshit minimum wage jobs, the military, several trades, and eventually moved on to the tech industry in general. My race has not once hindered me and my finances are my own problem not anyone else's. I recently shut down my own business to move to TN with a friend. So, yes, you can with hard work and, let me stress this as highly important, brains get ahead in life.
Hard work or brains alone won't get you shit except frustration though and nobody ever said they would who knew their ass from a hole in the ground.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 11 2015, @01:53AM
Then good for you, but you're damn lucky. Or perhaps you're too young to have experienced that luck not holding out. Many smart, hard-working young people who've been fortunate enough to skate through those shoals think they're bulletproof. Then they hit a rock.
I hope you don't, ever. I hope you do sail on and make the world a little bit better. But even if you do, it doesn't prove that race doesn't matter or that the system isn't rigged. The hard stats show it is: decade-on-decade decline in real wages in the face of skyrocketing productivity, greater and greater concentration of wealth in fewer hands, middle-class households struggling to make ends meet despite dual incomes, etc. If you don't fit that, then you're what they call an outlier. Not because you're smarter or harder working than the others, but through pure stochastic noise.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Francis on Thursday September 10 2015, @06:52PM
Precisely. The closest thing we've ever managed to equality of outcome was the USSR. And it was a significant part of why the empire wound up crumbling. There was very little incentive to do more than the bare minimum. If you achieved something massive, you might get a nice apartment and that's about it.
But other than that, some people don't want to be rich or would be happier with a "lesser" outcome. Trying to ensure equal outcomes requires forcing some people to take things they don't want just to ensure equity. E.g. forcing women into STEM jobs that they don't want to have just so that people can say that there's no gender gap.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @10:36PM
The closest thing [...] to equality of outcome was the USSR
Swallowed a bunch of Cold War bullshit, did you?
Clearly, you didn't notice what happened immediately after the USSR collapsed.
The same bunch of dudes who had been in charge (the buddies of the dictator) scooped up the means of production when that was privatized.
The system was still rigged against the workers (whether that system is State Capitalism or overt profit-driven privatized Capitalist Oligarchy aka Fascism).
.
A list of some the best examples of egalitarianism is contained in my post up the thread.
The Iroquois in North America is an example that predated the ones involving folks of European ancestry.
A recent example (dating from the late 1970s) is Marinaleda, [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [jacobinmag.com] a Socialist society so successful that they abolished their police force.
-- gewg_
(Score: 1) by Murdoc on Friday September 11 2015, @07:59PM
I'm sorry, but that's a widely circulated myth about the USSR. Their relatively small income diversity had nothing to do with either incentive to work or their collapse. The first is because there are reasons to work other than money. Some are internal, such as altruism, sense of duty, belief in a cause (in this case Communism), or even just love of what you're doing. External ones include fame and respect from peers. One only needs to look at the worlds of volunteers and free software to see a lot of examples of people working despite not getting paid for it (indeed they are even 'punished' for it since they could be spending that time and effort to make more money). Most often people will seek to excel if they are given adequate opportunity to work in a field they love. In fact, usually money can work as a disincentive in cases like this.
As for the collapse, that happened because of two reasons: 1) the USSR was a dictatorship, which caused harsh conditions for many and thus social friction. People often blame socialism or communism (which they never actually practiced, it was their goal not their economic model) for these conditions, but it was the socialism that made life better there, and the dictatorship that made it harsh. They are two different things but of course the capitalists of the west want you to believe that it was the other way around. Which brings me to 2) the west did everything in their power to bring the USSR down, because if they succeeded, then people would start to question whether capitalism was really better or not, and our leaders couldn't have that, or else they wouldn't have been able to keep widening the income divide like they have been since. The fact that the USSR was a dictatorship played into their hands, making it easy to confuse people into conflating their politics with their economics. So socialism in the USSR didn't fail, it was defeated.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @07:10PM
Let's be real clear here, equality of opportunity is fair
We don't even have equality of opportunity. Unless you define "opportunity" to include anything from a 0.0000000000000000000001% chance of succeeding to a 99% chance of succeeding. In which case, you are just foolish. The rich make themselves richer and are far more likely to succeed in what they do because of their wealth, which they always have to fall back on. Poor people are far less likely to succeed, and have far fewer realistic opportunities.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday September 10 2015, @07:17PM
You don't get to shit on the rich for being born rich, that's blind luck and thus fair. You don't get to shit on the ones who've earned it either because they've earned it. Who's left to blame? Your own ass and nobody else.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @08:10PM
that's blind luck and thus fair.
That doesn't follow. Even if it is blind luck, they are still in a position where they have immense privilege and far more opportunities than anyone else, just because they happened to be born into a certain family.. That is not fair in any reasonable sense of the word, regardless of how much blind luck was involved. I noticed you did not respond to my point about there not truly being equality of opportunity.
You don't get to shit on the ones who've earned it either because they've earned it.
When did the discussion become about the mythical people who earned their positions in society? It didn't.
Who's left to blame? Your own ass and nobody else.
So being born rich is fair because it's blind luck, but not being born rich is an individual's fault? Interesting.
I wonder how many of these blind luck rich people could succeed if they were born into an extremely poor family. Not very many, I would imagine. It is blind luck, after all.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by kurenai.tsubasa on Thursday September 10 2015, @08:51PM
You have to understand where The Mighty Buzzard is coming from. This isn't even the just world theory. This is the just world axiom.
According to the just world axiom, it's absolutely fair that some people are born to immense privilege or win the capitalism lottery and can sit around or party in Ibiza while making more money off interest than most of us will see in a decade! Anything else would be trying to equalize outcomes! Didn't you know that how hard you work can be measured by your net worth?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 10 2015, @09:03PM
Don't forget your self-worth, too. And your social value.
By that standard JP Morgan is the greatest human who ever lived, and Mother Theresa was a worthless hippie and drain on society.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday September 10 2015, @10:30PM
You say it sarcastically but I'll say in all frankness that not your net worth but your increase of net worth can very much be used to gauge your value to society. A man who employs a hundred people is worth a thousand times what any one of his employees is to society because he's created a means for those hundred people and their families to not starve.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 10 2015, @11:25PM
That depends. What is the quality of life for those hundred employees? Is the boss just exploiting those employees, or does he treat them like friends? Does he give the smallest damn about their problems in life? Might he get involved if one of them has a medical problem?
I've witnessed employers going the extra mile, and helping good employees. I've also witnessed the corporate attitude - use the employees up, then throw them away.
Being an employer isn't an accurate measure of your value to society. Some employers aren't worth the powder it would take to blow their brains out. Other employers should be nominated for sainthood. And, more often than not, the real SOB's are more successful than the best employers.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday September 11 2015, @12:20AM
Runaway points out one complication of this idea.
The other is the reason why those hundred people have decided to become employees. Is it because the job-creator has a true vision and working for him is a great deal? I see that when considering Elon Musk.
The question at hand isn't one of individual merit, however. We are talking about record corporate profits. We are talking about wage stagnation. We are talking about tech employees being asked to train their own H1B replacements.
Here are some preliminary results from trials of a basic income scheme [wikipedia.org]. In my mind these results highlight the basic problem we face in a society with growing income inequality. Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he'll eat right up until somebody with vastly more resources confines his fishing territory to some pond that doesn't have any fish, and then he'll have no choice but to sign up as a hand on Ritchie Rich's big fishing boat for half a fish a day (not the head if he's lucky). Give a man a fish a day instead of the alternative of wage-slaving to Ritchie Rich, and he'll invent a better fishing net and perhaps better husbandry methods to increase the amount of fish available to be caught. (Is there such a thing as fish husbandry? There is now!)
I'm not saying the USA or especially humanity as a whole is ready for a basic income. Maybe in 50 years. I haven't run the math. As it stands, however, soaring corporate profits and stagnant wages represent a “something's not right here” situation. If the job-creators are so benevolent, then surely they'd like to see the lives of those hundred people and their families improve as well, or at least say the best and brightest 10 that enable the boss man to be worth the thousand times they are.
Now, that's not to say that there's a whole lot wrong with the notion that a fool and his money are soon parted. In this case, the fools are any worker who would work Ritchie Rich's fishing boat for half a fish a day. Instead, they should be picketing. Ritchie Rich catches a thousand fish per day with his operation, but the workers only get a half a fish? The guy who gets three quarters of a fish to invent the fish net that improves the operational capacity of the fishing boat and gets a whole fish instead of ¾ as a bonus one day is a fool for thinking he's better than the line workers getting half a fish. Thanks to the unintended consequences of 2nd wave feminism, both husbands and wives need to work on board the SS Ritchie Rich now from can see to can't see and have to split a whole fish between themselves and their child? Now here comes Obamacare, and they're forced to split the fish four ways now so the insurance industrial complex gets its cut too all while screaming “religious objection!?”
Something has gone massively awry here, but the people are complacent. It's just odd. A fool and his money are soon parted. The fool is every 99.9%er in man's world. Perhaps even every 1% ≥ $income_percentile > 0.1%er who believes themselves a temporarily embarrassed billionaire providing jobs for temporarily embarrassed millionaires. The economy is not a fixed quantity. It's growing. It's being automated. Workers are more productive than ever. We're building Burger-G, almost literally, but the proceeds don't seem to be trickling down.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday September 15 2015, @02:49AM
(Re-evaluating previous comments. For the reader of archived threads: there is such a thing as fish husbandry also called fish management [bridgwater.ac.uk]. This is an important technique for the fish-based economy in my expansion of the given-a-man-a-fish analogy. See also Fisheries management [wikipedia.org], which is based in fisheries science. Science!)
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2015, @03:21AM
> You say it sarcastically but I'll say in all frankness that not your net worth but your increase of net worth can very much be used to gauge your value to society.
You are only as good as your metrics.
That your metric of value is limited to dollars really shows how under qualified you are to decide the value of a person.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @09:32PM
> I noticed you did not respond to my point about there not truly being equality of opportunity.
Equality of opportunity is only about equality pre-conception. Anything after conception is equality of outcomes. Being born is an outcome, so being born into a rich family is something a child earns by hard work.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kurenai.tsubasa on Thursday September 10 2015, @10:58PM
Ah, here's somebody who understands the just world axiom, and the supporting theory of karma and reincarnation! Read all about it in Matheson's What Dreams May Come (don't be confused by the movie of the same name and watch that instead, not that it's a bad movie).
Basic synopsis: souls reborn in 3rd world hell-holes had it coming to them. They were probably lazy or violent in a past life. They're probably murderers or traitors like that (trigger warning!) Chelsea Manning. Don't do the crime if you can't do the time!
So, after several lives of hard work, eventually a position will open up in the 0.1%. You get something of a choice most of the time. Do you want to be somebody like Brianna Wu and use your hard-earned karma to work to expose the evils of all assigned males except herself? Do you want to be somebody like Notch, strike it rich by selling a game that people like for the wrong reasons, and experience the anguish of a $70 million dollar mansion with silence in the halls? There are more conventional routes that might involve actually being good at something. Take the Trump for instance or Bill Gates. Want to be a part of the new aristocracy with your hard-earned karma? Look no further than Chelsea Clinton, surely a modern day princess merely awaiting her coronation after her mother's reign, or Paris Hilton, the more vapid kind of aristocrat.
So, citizen, keep your nose to the grindstone. Work harder, save up that karma, and just choose better parents next time!
(Score: 1) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday September 11 2015, @03:50AM
Is this what you believe, or is it a sarcasm bomb? Not being snarky here, genuinely wondering.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday September 11 2015, @10:53PM
Thanks for asking. I do have a vague belief in reincarnation and enlightenment (not going to pretend I have a shred of evidence), but the rest of the post is pure snark and a misrepresentation of what Matheson postulates in What Dreams May Come about the nature of death, existence after death, and reincarnation. If anything, I'd wouldn't be surprised if most of the people I named are in for a rude spiritual wake-up call in a 3rd world hellhole next life. Even if that's the case and one would extrapolate that and conclude (using the just world axiom again) that people born in 3rd world hellholes deserve what they get for being greedy assholes in their previous life, we would still fail for being equally lacking in the compassion department compared to the greedy assholes and and we would completely miss the point of the cycle of death and rebirth (if there is a point).
That's also assuming individuality is preserved on the journey to the other side during death. The alternative is seeing death as being dumped back into some life stream after the container (the living body) is no longer able to function as a container and birth is the process of dipping a freshly made container into the stream of life. Maybe who one has a lot of the same life-stuff as somebody who had just died, say, minutes before one was born (who knows if that means conceived or delivered), or maybe one has the mixed and matched life-stuff from hundreds of others, like something out of Dark City [imdb.com]. (See also the representation in The Matrix of the power plant, especially when they beat us over the head with the metaphor in Revolutions—love it or hate it—when we learn the manager of the powerplant is a program called Rama-Kandra who's married to an “interactive software” programmer program called Kamala!)
I've haven't made a formal study of Buddhism, but if I understand the legend, Prince Siddhartha achieved enlightenment despite being born vastly privileged (and it may be possible that enlightenment may only be found when tempted at that level to be attached to the material world), not because of it.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday September 11 2015, @11:03PM
Please forgive the typos! Should have used the preview button!
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 10 2015, @08:59PM
That's crazy. Is it fair for Chelsea to get a fat salary as a "special correspondent" at NBC because she's Bill Clinton's daughter? Is it fair for Mark Rockefeller to have millions at his disposal when the guy's dumb as a post? Where's the meritocracy there? Where's the equality of opportunity there? Do you not know how incredibly much the rich cheat the rest of us? Man, you should spend a couple decades in NYC or DC rubbing elbows with those people and your eyes will be opened.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday September 10 2015, @10:31PM
Fair? Yes. A brilliant decision? No.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday September 11 2015, @12:48PM
OK, I'm not entirely sure I agree that "random is fair" but it's at least understandable...
However, what you seem to then be arguing is that BIRTH is fair, but the LIFE that comes after it is not.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday September 10 2015, @10:11PM
You don't get to shit on the rich for being born rich, that's blind luck and thus fair.
Mighty Buzzard, once again your lack of education, and American antagonism to all things leftish, have betrayed you! It is not "shit on the rich", it is "shit the rich", because it will finally come to the point where the poor have nothing to eat but the rich. The Slogan is "Eat the Rich!" I guess you could add, "Don't hate us because we are delicious." Oh, and Soylent Green is people, delicious juicy fat rich people.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by sjames on Thursday September 10 2015, @10:07PM
There's more to it than that. Some people get an excellent education where they end up with no debt and no work to distract them from their studies. They have an angel investor lined up from birth that will, due to family imperative fund them well through multiple failures until they make it. Their name alone will attract outside investment even after a couple failures. If they decide to work for someone else first, they go to the front of the line based on dad patting someone on the back at the club. If they break the law, they'll get a slap on the wrist ( see 'affluenza'). If, in spite of that, they still manage to fail, they can still count on being a media darling, people falling over themselves to give them free stuff, and having enough money that they can give their children far more opportunity than anyone in the middle class will ever know. That's a hell of an opportunity that most simply do not have.
The above ends up on a sliding scale on down to having to quit high school to bring in extra money for the family.
Luck plays a much larger role than the rich and shameless like to admit, but equally, the more times you can afford to play and lose, the more likely you are to find that lucky break. Some can't even afford to play once.
Given that, if you think we have anything approaching equality of opportunity in our society, you are delusional.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2015, @01:58PM
This is a double dichotomy. You can compromise perfect equality of opportunity (think the quintessential Rand fanboy's wet dream) and not end up with with communism. Just because something is beneficial doesn't mean that going to the extremes with it is even better. You can suffer a fatal intoxication from too much water [wikipedia.org].
As long as nobody is acting to specifically hinder you from getting ahead, you are getting all the fairness you can ever expect or ask for out of life.
Income inequality does hinder people of poor upbringing by virtue of guaranteeing premium access to opportunities to those who are much wealthier. In order for a poor person to achieve more than a filthy rich person, he must either be incredibly lucky and stumble into a golden goose (ie Bill Gates), or be creme-de-la-creme of humanity (Stephen Hawking). However, if the talent disparity heavily disfavors the wealthy person, he will still be much more likely to have much more influence on society, despite the fact that the poor person might have benefited society much more in the same position.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 12 2015, @09:02PM
Gates never was a poor kid. The man went to private school [notablebiographies.com]. There, he "began studying computers in the seventh grade". This must have been in 1966, a time when most people hadn't even seen a computer from up close. Talk of opportunities not available to the majority of the population.
Hawkings' parents went to Oxford university [wikipedia.org]. That's not to dismiss the possibility that he would have gotten roughly where he is now otherwise, just that it is not a valid example.
Which leaves us with no examples, really. Disappointing, isn't it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2015, @04:02PM
Equality of opportunity is a fallacy.
You give a fish to a poor man and you feed him for a day, you teach him how to fish and he can feed himself for many days, now if you gave the same fish to a rich man he'd sell it today, leverage the money to speculate on fish futures and then use the proceeds to hire a bunch of fishermen to feed him while he sunbathes by the sea.
The opportunity is there for everyone but only people who were lucky to have money in the first place got to learn how to use it with a safety net.
If the rich man loses the fish it's only a fish.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday September 10 2015, @06:36PM
Actually, our predisposition to see society as basically fair might have biological origins.
Pretty much all the higher primates seem to have an inbuilt sense of fairness, refusing to engage in activities which will disproportionately benefit another, even i it would still benefit them. Especially if it is the other that chooses the benefit split (example: monkey A splits a banana, monkey B decides if both or neither of them gets to have their pieces. B will consistently refuse the deal if A claims more than about 2/3-3/4 of the banana)
In the wild, where individuals can't do much to leverage past gains into future advantages, this will maintain a certain level of "fairness" in the society, an important feature in a species for whom cooperation is one of their major evolutionary advantages. I would propose an evolutionary closed loop: instinctual belief that society is roughly fair -> reflexive refusal of grossly unfair proposals -> disadvantages those who behave very unfairly -> society as a whole remains moderately fair -> reinforces belief that society is fair.
As I see it, without a belief that life is/should be basically fair people would have much more incentive to accept bad deals so long as they come out at least a little ahead themselves. That encourages exploitation/freeloading, and makes cooperation a much less effective evolutionary strategy. And since all this was shaped long before we developed sophisticated symbolic reasoning, the fact that we're a cooperative species is in a sense built upon the instinctual understanding that fairness is a guiding principle in society.
And that of course leaves us predisposed to exploitation by a system that hides the unfairness of social interactions under systemic imbalances that aren't obvious within the context of individual decisions. Or under a system that allows the long-term accumulation of wealth such that a long history of only "acceptable" levels of exploitation can result in a grossly disproportionate accumulation of wealth. And of course our modern society facilitates both.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday September 10 2015, @06:42PM
It's the "just-world fallacy" in action. People take a lot of SAN damage if they don't believe patently false things like "everything happens for a good reason" and "in the end it all works out." Also, a lot of people have a religious need to believe that this is the best of all possible worlds, contra all the evidence, possibly for fear that their just and loving and mind-reading God will torture them in the flames of Hell for all eternity if they so much as think he fucked up...
THAT, of course, leads into about eleventy-seven hojillion different flavors of victim blaming, especially for anyone not male and reasonably wealthy.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Zinho on Thursday September 10 2015, @07:33PM
Also, a lot of people have a religious need to believe that this is the best of all possible worlds. . .
Which religions teach that? I thought the "best of all possible worlds" thing was a conceit of philosophers Leibniz, specifically) [wikipedia.org] and was thoroughly discredited by Voltaire when he published Candide. [wikipedia.org] TL;DR version of Candide: if this is the best of all possible worlds, I'd hate to see the other ones; this one has some serious problems.
I'm going to throw my hat in the ring and agree that any religious person who thinks they'll be punished for thinking this world isn't perfect needs a better doctrine. People make mistakes all the time, and those mistakes have consequences; in short, this world isn't perfect because we aren't either. Believing that the world can't be better is the same as saying we (as both a species and as individuals) can't make better choices; this is objectively wrong, and fatalistic. I fall firmly in the "free will" camp, and I think that blaming God for our mistakes is many kinds of messed up. It implies that He is choosing poorly for us, forcing us into bad situations and imposing negative consequences on us for the decisions He imposed on us. Anyone who simultaneously believes that is really happening and also believes that God is benevolent and loving has some serious double-think going on.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Archon V2.0 on Thursday September 10 2015, @08:15PM
> Which religions teach that?
Having a religious need for something isn't the same as making it an explicit part of doctrine.
That said, it occasionally crops up in less sophisticated apologetics when the problem of evil is approached (though not half as much as "Satan did it"). The number of people who can't elaborate on their faith any deeper than concepts like panglossian theodicy or Pascal's Wager are sadly common.
(Score: 2) by Zinho on Thursday September 10 2015, @08:51PM
Good point. We desperately need a "sad but true" mod option. I'll settle for "insightful" on this one.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @08:44PM
this is objectively wrong, and fatalistic.
I believe we probably can make "better" ("better" is subjective) choices, depending on what you mean by "better". But you have not shown that this line of thinking is objectively wrong. If our genetics make us far more likely to make certain choices as a species than other, 'better' choices, then this line of thinking might not be objectively wrong after all.
I fall firmly in the "free will" camp
Free will doesn't exist, at least not in the sense that many believe. I admit, there are different definitions of "free will" which are technically compatible with a scientific worldview, but I was not referring to those. We are all subject to the laws of physics. It's a nice illusion, though.
and I think that blaming God for our mistakes is many kinds of messed up.
You're right. Why blame beings that are extremely likely to be imaginary for our failings? That is indeed silly.
(Score: 2) by Zinho on Thursday September 10 2015, @10:15PM
this is objectively wrong, and fatalistic.
I believe we probably can make "better" ("better" is subjective) choices, depending on what you mean by "better". But you have not shown that this line of thinking is objectively wrong. If our genetics make us far more likely to make certain choices as a species than other, 'better' choices, then this line of thinking might not be objectively wrong after all.
OK, let's get specific, then. Spousal/child abuse is a poor choice on the part of the abuser, and has negative impacts on the abuser, the abuse victims, and society in general (abused children tend to be antisocial). The abuse is cyclical, with victims often becoming abusers in turn. It's fair to assert that our genetics make people in these circumstances more likely to make certain choices than other choices. As a society we're moving toward a position of recognizing the harm abuse causes, and providing care and treatment to both the victims and the abusers. On an individual level, abusers can seek help to find other solutions to their problems and repair the harms they've caused. Victims likewise can learn to avoid future abuse and make better choices than the ones they've seen modeled by their abusers. The result can be happier, better-adjusted individuals, families, and societies. I hope we can agree, without devolving into an ivory-tower discussion on the merits of hedonics, that having fewer battered spouses and children in our society is a net win for everyone, and therefore "better". Lots of people are in situations that are objectively bad, and for those who want to make their situation less bad (i.e. "better") help is available and change is possible. Saying that individuals cannot change bad behaviors is objectively wrong: even one counterexample is enough for that, and there are many more than one example of successful intervention and treatment for abuse, addiction, etc.
As far as free will not existing, I'm not concerned much by the neurology research about human cognition. In the absence of coercion and/or brainwashing, people end up choosing the things that they want to do. Eventually we'll have a really good understanding of the physics behind decision making, and perhaps even conscious and unconscious thought. With or without that knowledge, people will continue to choose to rise above their genetics, environment, and upbringing. Whether you want to call that free will or not is unimportant.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @11:00PM
Lots of people are in situations that are objectively bad
You lost me. There is no "objectively bad". A grand majority of people can find X bad, but you can't conclude from that that X is objectively bad.
Saying that individuals cannot change bad behaviors is objectively wrong
It's not about whether individuals can change behaviors; it's about whether enough individuals can change their behaviors and affect society to such a degree that we can prevent the so-called atrocities that humans have caused time and time again throughout history. So far, it doesn't seem probable, so you're on the losing side when you say it's "objectively wrong", unless you're responding to someone who claims it's absolutely impossible rather than just improbable. I maintain that it's merely improbable, and there is an overwhelming amount of historical evidence that demonstrates that.
So I was thinking about large-scale effects.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @11:53PM
Just one thing to point out about spousal abuse, as someone who grew up in a family with an abusive parent:
Abuse is often the response of the individual to having been abused as a child, although not always.
In my family, my mother was the abuser. She abused and assaulted my father until he left, then had him charged with assaulting her after she punched herself until she was covered in bruises.
She physically assaulted me as a toddler, the damage she caused is lifelong and no amount of therapy can repair it. (It's physical, neurological, in nature.) My father left, and we didn't get to see him for five years because she convinced the court he was a danger to her and us as children.
Meanwhile, as a child, I was beaten with electrical cables and vacuum cleaner attachments. I was shoved into walls, verbally abused, and of course, psychologically abused.
My father, as a child, lived through some very weird abuse, things like not being allowed to wear trousers until he was 13, and stuff he won't even talk about. He had brothers who were paranoid schizophrenic, and he ended up in a number of foster homes. My mother, on the other hand, had a fairy tale upbringing yet she has some serious psychological (presumably organic or structural) issues.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2015, @01:19AM
You think male victims aren't blamed. When did people stop laughing at prison rape jokes? When did people stop using the phrase "man up" whenever anyone wants to shame a male into doing something?
(Score: 1) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday September 11 2015, @03:56AM
When the hell did I say that?! If men took a good long look at the way what is called "the patriarchy" works, they'd realize the ones hurting them are OTHER MEN a huge majority of the time!
I'm active, low-level, against human trafficking and prostitution. A surprising number of the victims are males. And there is almost nothing out there for them. I, a lesbian and a feminist, have been told "you're the first one to listen to me and take me seriously about this." What does that say?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @06:42PM
In other words, the 1% have successfully conditioned most of us to not realize just how fucked up everything is.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Zinho on Thursday September 10 2015, @06:56PM
From TFA:
We look to simple descriptions of the objects in question – orange juice has vitamin C – without considering external information about the history of these objects or their surroundings.
What this means is the bulk of our explanations rely on the features of the things we’re trying to explain – there must be something about orange juice itself, like vitamin C, that explains why we have it for breakfast.
I always thought that the reason Americans associate orange juice with breakfast is that it was frequently shown on cereal commercials. I fairly quickly realized that "part of this complete breakfast" meant "you need this much extra nutrition to make up for the cereal's deficits". [tvtropes.org] (Warning, TV Tropes link!) The orange juice was always there because cereals only give you grains as far as food groups go. If I'm right that this is the origin of America's OJ+Breakfast connection, then we are one good ad campaign and celebrity endorsement from thinking of orange juice as a lunch and dinner sort of drink, or perhaps as a sports drink.
Many of these rationalizations we're making for the way things are in our environment aren't spontaneous, they are trained and targeted. "America is the land of opportunity" and "any child could grow up to be president" are ideas so common in the U.S. that I'd wager they're memes in the head of everyone old enough to read.
We teach kids these things for a reason. We want them to take responsibility for their successes and failures, working hard to succeed. A narrative focused on "historical and contextual factors" for lack of success acts as a demotivator, it's an excuse to blame lack of success on things out of the child's control. Sure, acknowledge the inherent unfairness of not being born rich, or white, or in whatever other advantaged class the child doesn't belong to. I'd hope that we can still instill hope and confidence in the next generation so they strive to succeed in spite of their disadvantages.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @07:41PM
Ever wonder why breakfast cereal is so big in the US (not not so much in other countries)?
Blame religious marketing - seventh day adventists to be specific. Kellogg was an adventist and thought the blandness of breakfast cereal would help keep horny teens from jerkin the gherkin. [mentalfloss.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @07:50PM
> Sure, acknowledge the inherent unfairness of not being born rich, or white, or in whatever other advantaged class the child doesn't belong to.
You have that backwards. We need tons more education of children to inform them of the all advantages they accrue due to the advantaged class they do belong to.
There are far too many people who "are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple."
(Score: 2) by Zinho on Thursday September 10 2015, @08:40PM
We need tons more education of children to inform them of the all advantages they accrue due to the advantaged class they do belong to.
To what end? So that they appreciate what they have, work hard to not squander it, and show compassion for those less fortunate? Or to train them to "check their privilege" and live in constant guilt for not being born poor? One of these is healthy, the other rather less so.
For what it's worth, I support the idea of encouraging kids of all classes to volunteer at soup kitchens/homeless shelters/etc. Reaching out to help those in need is a good habit no matter your background. The fact that it helps give suburban white kids a dose of reality and some perspective on their own #firstworldproblems is a bonus.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2015, @12:05AM
I think his point was more that, if you're born rich stop thinking you've worked hard to get where you are. Realise that hard work doesn't always mean wealth, and rid yourself of that sense of entitlement: "I'm well paid because I worked hard: I deserve this money. If you're not well paid, you didn't work hard enough even if you worked harder than me, which you clearly didn't because I'm well paid for my hard work."
Ask anybody with a disability who has the same achievements as you, even though they're at a severe disadvantage and so had to work much harder, but is paid much less than you are if they're lucky enough to find a job at all. You'd be surprised at how often you hear something that translates to "Oh, you have a disability? Well, fuck off retard, I've got normal people who aren't stupid and lazy."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2015, @03:31AM
To what end? So that they appreciate what they have, work hard to not squander it, and show compassion for those less fortunate? Or to train them to "check their privilege" and live in constant guilt for not being born poor? One of these is healthy, the other rather less so.
(a) That's a false dichotomy. And (b) "check their privilege" is literally the same thing as showing compassion for those less fortunate. The only people who think it is other than that are those lacking in that compassion and angry about being criticized for that failure of personality.
(Score: 2) by Zinho on Saturday September 12 2015, @02:25AM
Thanks for that explanation, because before now I had very little comprehension of what the phrase "check your privilege" meant. In context, it seems to mean "shut up and go away, you just lost this discussion because I'm offended." Until now I'd never even seen an attempt at defining it. The people using that phrase habitually need a better outreach program for those who sympathize with their cause but have no idea what they mean when they talk.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @07:16PM
The world is totally 100% without a fault FAIR... on AVERAGE.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2015, @08:57AM
¿ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_fair [wikipedia.org] ?
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday September 10 2015, @08:02PM
Life's not fair! So why do we assume it is a little bit fairer than it actually is?
FTFY. Though it's not as snappy.
And the answer is, of course, that we don't have enough information, or the inclination to go and get it for ourselves. Ain't nobody (apart from the economists) got time for that.
there's quite a disconnect between the perceptions of economists and those of the general public.
Yes. That's why they are economists and we're not. They study the economy. "We" don't.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 3, Interesting) by srobert on Thursday September 10 2015, @08:04PM
The unfairness isn't so much about one person having more than another. That's to be expected. When it becomes unfair is when one person has much more and another doesn't even have the means to survive. So my question is:
Would you rather live (1) in a world where wealth is distributed as it is here and you are a billionaire, or (2) a world where, although there was some inequality, even the poorest had all of their needs met, and you were merely average?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 10 2015, @09:14PM
I personally am perfectly comfortable with somebody who gets rich because they worked really hard or had a good idea. I'm even fine with people who don't fit that description but happened to be in the right place at the right time--good for them.
I do have a problem with the wealthy, who have no material reason to steal (they're starving, they have a sick child, etc) but steal anyway. I have a problem with the wealthy who destroy the lives of millions for a sum of money, just because "they can." I really have a problem with wealthy in finance, because they produce nothing of value but destroy nearly everything they touch.
Those are the wealthy we're talking about in this day and age, not some mythical super-race of super-entrepreneurs or "job creators." They have shattered the social contract because they're greedy, stupid sociopaths.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday September 10 2015, @10:56PM
I do have a problem with the wealthy, who have no material reason to steal (they're starving, they have a sick child, etc) but steal anyway.
Wanting more bling is just as material a reason as wanting more food.
I have a problem with the wealthy who destroy the lives of millions for a sum of money, just because "they can."
Who's doing that on that scale? I find it's more the politicians who do that.
Those are the wealthy we're talking about in this day and age, not some mythical super-race of super-entrepreneurs or "job creators." They have shattered the social contract because they're greedy, stupid sociopaths.
This pop psychology gets in the way of reasoning on the subject. This is normal human behavior. Sure, it's comforting to buy into the belief system that the wealthy who lie and steal are somehow different from the rest of humanity(other than that they have more money), but it's irrational to do so. There's plenty of evidence that lying and stealing is just as common to all of us as our sense of fairness. The latter probably came about as a result of the former.
And where's this social contract written down? Maybe you should have gotten someone to sign it.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 11 2015, @01:35AM
Maybe you take it as pop psychology, but I mean it in the sense of Jean-Jacque Rousseau's Social Contract [wikipedia.org], specifically "When the government exceeds the boundaries set in place by the people, it is the mission of the people to abolish such government, and begin anew." It's solidly embedded in the Western Tradition and was a core Enlightenment ideal that influenced the American Revolution, among other drives toward democracy.
The Declaration of Independence, the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, documents like that. Also, a very long reading list from Bentham through Durkheim to Weber and others. The short version is that governments derive their power from the consent of the governed, and a government that severs that bond loses its mandate.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 11 2015, @02:15AM
As to the term, "social contract" that has been used to excuse all sorts of abuse. For example, here's your comment on finance:
I really have a problem with wealthy in finance, because they produce nothing of value but destroy nearly everything they touch.
The Declaration of Independence, the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, documents like that.
Note that you don't mention a relevant document like a constitution. The documents you mention are fundamentally propaganda with no legally binding aspect. And the UN Declaration has a bunch of stuff that should be stripped out - to actually mandate it in whole (rather than merely bluster about it in a feelgood way) would be disastrous for the society.
A more relevant observation with respect to the subject at hand is the fair, impartial application of the rule of law. My view is that any system of law that is biased against the wealthy will end up even more biased against the poor, just because the wealthy can buy better protection from the law. So at some point, you will need to protect the interests of the wealth in order to protect the interests of all members of society.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 11 2015, @02:43PM
Of course the Constitution of the United States is among them. It's a terribly long list, the Western Canon. Are you one of those who jumps up every time a complete and exhaustive list for something is not spelled out for you? The Google machine produced this introductory syllabus [studymore.org.uk]. Add it to your weekend reading list and discover that "social contract" is not a loosy-goosy concept but one that's deeply set in the foundation of Western Thought. If you live in a Western society, the concept of social contract is literally interwoven with every legal, political, and social structure that forms your daily life. It's so ubiquitous it's invisible to most.
As to "legally binding," I don't know what you would call documents that duly elected and appointed representatives sign. Because that's who the signers of the Declaration were--duly elected and appointed representatives of the American colonies. The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights was signed by representatives of member nations. They are different kinds of documents than constitutions, but that's because they're called "declarations" and not "constitutions." But that doesn't make them not legally binding. And I cited the declarations because it's much easier to pick up on the concept of "social contract" in their language than it is to read between the lines of constitutions.
Your rhetoric needs work, or at least more editing. You contradicted yourself no fewer than four times in those two sentences. "a system of law that is biased against the wealthy" is by definition not a system of law that is biased against the poor. And if the wealthy can buy better protection from the law, then again that is not a system that is biased against the wealthy. So having a system that protects the interests of wealth is not one that protects all members of society.
Maybe you meant something else, but it didn't come through.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 11 2015, @03:09PM
Of course the Constitution of the United States is among them. It's a terribly long list, the Western Canon. Are you one of those who jumps up every time a complete and exhaustive list for something is not spelled out for you?
Well, I guess it's fixed now. I made the obvious point that if you're going to talk about social contracts, then it would be a good idea to use actual social contracts as examples.
As to "legally binding," I don't know what you would call documents that duly elected and appointed representatives sign.
Here, "documents that duly elected and appointed representatives sign" seems viable, if a bit clunky. It's worth noting that isn't "legally binding". Legally binding means there are actual negative consequences, enforced by the legal system, for not following the contract in question.
"a system of law that is biased against the wealthy" is by definition not a system of law that is biased against the poor.
Nonsense. Think about it. It is quite possible to be biased about both a thing A and everything that is not thing A. A classic example is to assume that A is bad and everything that is not A is thereby good. Congrats, you have just biased both A and not A. My take is that this sort of dual biasing is actually a common way human bias manifests.
And if the wealthy can buy better protection from the law, then again that is not a system that is biased against the wealthy.
Unless the system forces them to buy that protection, which is the usual state of developed world societies.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2015, @10:00AM
I have a problem with the wealthy who destroy the lives of millions for a sum of money, just because "they can."
Who's doing that on that scale? I find it's more the politicians who do that.
And here you demonstrate that you have swallowed their propaganda that they are separate classes.
There are only two main classes. The "Rulers*" and the "Ruled".
The "Ruled" is then broken up into sub-classes which are manipulated into fighting each other, so that they do not threaten the "Rulers".
* The "Rulers" are also known as the 1%, although theses days it is closer to the 0.1%.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 11 2015, @12:59PM
And here you demonstrate that you have swallowed their propaganda that they are separate classes.
And you've swallowed the propaganda that they aren't. The wealthier are more useful to the political class than you are so they get more privileges.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2015, @01:14AM
See, that works on the assumption that they were in a position to take advantage of either their hard work or their good idea. There was a story I read the other day that explained that entrepreneurs are more likely to come from backgrounds with plenty of money, while those without are much less likely (and presumably less able) to make money.
You certainly don't make money working for the wealthy. They take it from you.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by srobert on Friday September 11 2015, @12:00AM
I should've gotten the ball rolling by answering my own poll. My answer is (2).
I'd rather live in a world where I had only average wealth, but poverty did not exist, than be a billionaire in our own world.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2015, @12:13AM
Wouldn't in your world everyone be poor?
(Score: 2) by srobert on Friday September 11 2015, @12:29AM
No. There would still be wealthy people, perhaps even some with billions. And there would be (relatively) poor people. Most people would be in between. But the poor would not be living in the deplorable conditions that we see in this world. Everyone would have homes (whether owned or rented), access to health care, food, sanitary living conditions, safe reasonable working conditions, and education. What we think of as poverty in this world simply wouldn't exist. So, do you want to be average in that world, or a billionaire in this one?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2015, @09:16AM
I believe the reason the sociopaths choose option (1) is because for them the suffering of others is a perfectly fine way of enhancing their own well being. There comes a moment when you're so wealthy that adding any amount of wealth to your current reserves will be practically invisible. (Call it diminishing marginal utility if you will.) The only way is to see your brother suffer, preferably constantly and in most horrible way possible.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 11 2015, @01:37AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @08:20PM
Two reasons:
Humans are innately hopeful about the future [brainpickings.org] - so the under-privileged are naturally inclined to hope they can improve their lot in life.
And on the flip-side people hate to feel guilty. So the over-privileged have lots of incentive to discount their unearned good fortune - just recently there was a poster here going on about how all it takes to be successful is to "think like a winner" completely ignoring the fact that it is so much easier to think like a winner if you've already won.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by isostatic on Thursday September 10 2015, @08:25PM
The American Dream, work hard and you will be rewarded, is a con. What you get is nothing to do with how hard you work. Compare Paris Hilton vs your typical Farmer. Jan Koum worked no harder than anyone else at yahoo, but he took a gamble and it paid off.
Capitalism rewards luck, and rewards capital. It doesn't reward hard work. The rich get richer, the very few get lucky, and the rest get poorer.
Eventually it will implode. It always does.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @10:03PM
I don't agree. I learned a trade without going to college, worked hard, bought a house that I paid off in 12 years, and retired at age 55 with over $1.5M in my retirement fund. There's three types of class... Those that work hard and play (spend all their money) hard, those that work hard and save, and trolls. If you have the ambition to work hard you will succeed, but then there are welfare trolls that don't want to work because of the freebies they can get.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2015, @12:07AM
That is fairly accurate, thou my economic theory explains it a bit better: 1) People should never have more money than brains. 2) People will never have less money than greed. The ones that "save" tend to have more greed, thus they hold on to their money.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2015, @01:34AM
You're one of the lucky, who imagine that you're entitled to what you've got because you worked hard.
Let's look at what you've said. First, I'm going to discount your case, because of the above statement. I don't give a fuck about your trade, I've never met a tradesman who didn't rip people off. (A friend of mine gutted and rebuilt his house. The tradesmen charged him full price and only took an extra 18 months to complete the job. Instead of moving back in August six years ago, he moved in December five years ago, while the tradesmen fucked off and did other jobs instead of working where they were paid to be.)
This is complete bullshit. Let's start at the end: welfare trolls.
I work for a multimillionaire. That bastard gets $80k/year in government funding just to run his business. He doesn't need it, doesn't work hard for it. He even regularly commits fraud by accidentally redirecting my wages to general business costs every few weeks. He doesn't keep accurate timesheets and has us working all sorts of extra hours without pay. We absorb his losses so he doesn't need to. He's definitely a welfare troll, by abusing his position as an employer.
Welfare trolls come in all forms, rich and poor. Don't discredit the poor as welfare trolls simply because they can't get ahead; that would be an extremely foolish thing to do.
Working my way backwards through your list, I now come to those who work hard and save. This is me.
My last two jobs had me working a minimum of 10 hour days each day without breaks, and weekends where the welfare troll owners could get it. I saved everything I could. In 18 months, I managed to save $16k, that's all I could get. Meanwhile, the business I worked for pocketed $10 million and paid out nothing to the staff. We all worked for free
After a while, the CEO felt I was a threat to his position with the hours I was working and so framed me for his mistakes, and fired me. The owner won't even look at me now, because I damaged his business (but only in his mind, he made another $10 million a year later) and I can't even get a job that pays the same as welfare. That's what I got for working hard.
Now we're back at your first group: those who work and spend. I know a couple who are on $110k/year and can barely make ends meet because they spend up. That's their problem, if I was on their wages I'd have half my mortgage gone in two years.
It seems that your classification system is based entirely on the just world fallacy, where those who work and save deserve, those who don't have nothing. Right now, I am proof that this is a load of crap and you're simply espousing a system of entitlement: you have money because you worked hard, and we can tell that you worked hard because you have money. You can't just assume that people with money earned it, you need to consider where it came from.
Right now, several members of my government just gave themselves very cheap loans that nobody else can get so they could buy government assets. That doesn't sound like hard work, that sounds like corruption, but your argument is that they'll be able to retire early because they worked hard.
Don't be a fool all your life, because you haven't got that much remaining.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2015, @03:27AM
> What you get is nothing to do with how hard you work. Compare Paris Hilton vs your typical Farmer.
No, hard work is always necessary. Its just that some people get a lot more return on their hard work than others.
Paris Hilton works her ass off. She's not working a white-collar job in some office somewhere, but guaranteed she puts in more than 40 hours a week constantly managing her brand. Same thing with the kardashians. You might not think their work contributes to society, but that's irrelevant because its still a lot of time and effort spent working the system.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @08:56PM
I see all of this as a game of Monopoly. You know: buying, selling etc.
When does the game finish? When one person has all the money.
What's next? Money gets divided and a new game starts.
Coincidence? I think not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @11:27PM
"The game of life" is closer to reality than Monopoly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_of_Life [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by Pav on Friday September 11 2015, @01:48AM
You should check out the history [wikipedia.org] of Monopoly. Turns out it was originally designed as a political commentary with two sets of rules. The one which we know (ie. everybody except one player becomes bankrupted over time), and another set of rules which allow for some to succeed more than others but generally noone becomes completely impoverished.
(Score: 2) by Non Sequor on Thursday September 10 2015, @11:35PM
I decided to dick around running some linear regressions on country data looking at the relationship between an income Gini index and various other variables.
The regressions between the Gini index and economic variables give too poor of a fit to draw any conclusion.
The regressions between the Gini index and demographic variables were vastly stronger.
Countries with lower income inequality (as measured by Gini index) have less population growth and have an older population.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2015, @12:09AM
Would u say that the wealth is redistributed over time if there is slow growth? Which would be in line with economic principles of capitalism. If the population doesn't grow you can't throw money into investments and expect a return, so you have to spend the principle of your wealth as opposed to the interest.
(Score: 2) by Non Sequor on Friday September 11 2015, @12:57AM
I think there's merit to the idea that if certain families have sufficient wealth to live off of interest indefinitely, if they don't spend down that principle eventually, they may very well end up sitting on claims to resources that could be put to more productive use elsewhere. I find myself wondering if taboos on lending at fixed interest in various religious traditions may have some legitimate grounding. Maybe also, low interest rates like we have now are a product of too many individuals and institutions living off of interest rates to be sustainable.
As far as r vs g thing goes, I'm not sure. We don't really understand interest rates or economic growth or how they relate to each other. At the very least, r and g have different denominators. g is growth of the total economy, r is return on the investable portion of the economy. These things are like pieces in a time-dependent jig-saw puzzle.
Another way of talking about economic growth is saying that the growth of the economy is the growth in the population combined with the growth in labor productivity. Increased renewable power generation and improvements in efficiency can create prospects for economic growth even under a declining population. Keep in mind that the current trend is to make more of the economy open to public investment (although some fronts of that trend are kind of retarded so I can't say that I have a lot of faith in it).
You don't need a steadily growing population for our economic system to work, you need a relatively stable joint distribution of age and income. Young people are basically useless but they eventually grow up into productive people who then age into people who are useful for the sake of retaining institutional knowledge and guidance but less useful when you have a ton of them. You have to derive resources from this cycle and use them in a way that sustains the cycle.
I think there should be a stable flow for a level population. Actually declining the population may be difficult because if it happens quickly, it creates a generation that's much smaller than the older generations and you can reach a point where that's a really big freaking deal and you have relatively little you can do about it (having a ton of babies doesn't fix it).
However, net migration patterns will probably mean that we will never actually directly see stability. Every thing is always going to be flowing someplace else even if the aggregate flows are in some band around an equilibrium.
Short answer: economics can be interesting but really it's mostly useless.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 1) by pgc on Friday September 11 2015, @12:17AM
Why do we assume it should be?
And what is 'fair' anyway?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2015, @01:27AM
Yes that is what we are discussing. Do you have something to say about it?
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday September 11 2015, @02:49AM
David Bowie, in the movie "Labyrinth", playing the Goblin King, Jareth (not to be confused with "Jared" the subway kiddie porn guy), said, in response to Our Heroine (Jennifer Connelly)'s complaint that "it's not fair", "You say that so often, I wonder what your basis for comparison is?"
(Score: 2, Interesting) by purpleland on Friday September 11 2015, @01:34AM
Inequality for All [imdb.com] is an excellent primer explaining the gap.
It is mind boggling that the top 400 rich people in America has as much wealth as half the country (2013), and the sort of problems it entails. Gist of it is simple: the extremely rich spends/invests *considerably* less in proportion to their wealth compared to the middle class, and that expenditure is important to the health of the economy.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday September 11 2015, @10:23AM
I like the idea of a 1% tax per year, with a $10 million threshold. If you have less than ten million you can ignore it. If you have more you can pay it out of interest/investment earnings.
The catch is, it is 1% of total assets, not 1% of income.
Given that a one-time wealth tax of 14% would suposedly pay off the US national debt*, it would at least let you balance your budget and pay down some of the debt.
*well, according to Trump http://edition.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/11/09/trump.rich/index.html?_s=PM:ALLPOLITICS [cnn.com]
(ps. as an aside, this sort of thing is why I would not be at all surprised to find he is the next Prez)
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday September 11 2015, @10:26AM
Whoah !! Just noticed the date on that. I still like the idea, but by now the figures are probably massively wrong.
Does anybody know if Trump still supports that idea?
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.