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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: 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?