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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: 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.