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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 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.