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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, @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.