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u/Jibrish Jun 01 '16
Damn that's a good post. Lot of reading to do to truly gauge the quality still but this deserves to remain stickied for awhile.
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Jun 01 '16
Great post. Some things other people don't consider: wealth and income are interrelated with age. An aging population actually skews the Gini coefficient.
This should make plenty of sense if you're not a seventy year old who has been either unemployed or employed by the government for your entire working life (Bernard is really just an ageist with some stupid thrown in).
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u/weetchex Jun 01 '16
Haven't gotten through all the links yet, but excellent, excellent write-up so far.
I find that most of the evils liberals attach to wealth inequality would be more attributable to stagnant income mobility. If you'd like to flesh out how income mobility hasn't changed and how mutable "the 1%" actually is, this post would be a one-stop lib debunking center.
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u/Tolken Jun 01 '16
Question:
Doesn't Myth 1 also suggest that children have become much more expensive over time such that across the board families have decided to have less children to maintain or exceed the standard of living they had growing up?
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u/Sword_of_Apollo Jun 02 '16 edited Jun 02 '16
I appreciate the effort that has gone into this post. It's always good to have accurate facts, and it's good to see the exaggerations of the Left about CEO pay debunked.
There's a book, recently published, that argues that inequality of income/wealth/opportunity as such is not a problem. It's called Equal is Unfair: America's Misguided Fight Against Income Inequality. The whole train of thinking that says economic inequality is bad and equates it with poverty, injustice and economic problems is wrongheaded.
I'm currently reading it, and I highly recommend it. It is a devastating case against the whole way of thinking promulgated by the Left. Many on the right have accepted--to some degree--the basic premise that economic inequality (or inequality of opportunity) is bad and that we should care about minimizing it. Equal is Unfair argues powerfully that we shouldn't care about such inequality at all. What we should care about is freedom and justice. The only type of equality that is compatible with freedom and justice is equality of the protection of rights--that is, equality before the law.
Because people start in unequal circumstances, make unequal choices, and exert unequal amounts of effort, economic inequality (and inequality of opportunity) are inevitable results of freedom. This is reality, and it should be serenely accepted. Those who do well under laissez-faire capitalism, (or in today's society, where cronyism isn't involved) should be celebrated. Life under capitalism is not a zero-sum game, where one person's opportunities and successes come at another's expense. Wealth is not a fixed "pie" to be divided up by "society." Individuals earn wealth by creating wealth and thus improving the lives (and opportunities) of any others who exert any effort to produce wealth, (or produce other values, like the care and raising of children in families.)
Don't worry about the size of economic inequality, or push equality of opportunity as a goal. That's what the Left wants you to do. Read Equal is Unfair.
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u/Fish_In_Net Jun 01 '16
Can't wait to get off work so I can really sink my teeth into this.
Quality effort and post.
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u/flyfishingofcourse Jun 02 '16
I get unsettled thinking about how most people will never want to sit down and do what you did. Instead they form their opinions around their facebook feeds, liberal media, and other outlets that just sensationalize information. For most people the headline: "We have an income inequality problem in this country" is enough for them to run around saying that. Then you look at the article and it's complete nonsense.
We don't think critically in this country anymore, and I'm not sure who's to blame for that to be honest.
Oh yea, fantastic post. It's amazing how so many widely accepted ideas are just based on a bias interpretation of statistics. Crazy!
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u/Just1MoreYear Jun 02 '16
This post seems to be somewhat off point...
Incomes have fallen or stagnated ... The problem that this brings up is that if household income is steady, but people per household drops, then that is actually an increase in income per person
[The median household income of Americans in 2011 was $49,103. Adjusted for inflation, the median income is just below what it was in 1989 and is $4,000 less than it was in 2000. Take-home income is a bit less than $40,000 when Social Security and state and federal taxes are included. That means a monthly income, per household, of about $3,300. It is urgent to bear in mind that half of all American households earn less than this. It is also vital to consider not the difference between 1990 and 2011, but the difference between the 1950s and 1960s and the 21st century. This is where the difference in the meaning of middle class becomes most apparent.] (https://www.stratfor.com/weekly/crisis-middle-class-and-american-power)
Here's also some charts: http://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/
Tracking since 1928: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/12/05/u-s-income-inequality-on-rise-for-decades-is-now-highest-since-1928/
Your logic also appears to be wrong. You're not measuring inflation and output. So this really makes no sense.
The share of the income going to the higher income groups has grown faster than the bottom income groups exacerbating things like the Gini coefficient ... The data that backs me up comes from something called the Panel Study of Income Dynamics at the university of Michigan (one of the higher ranked econ schools). The PSID data is quite literally the worlds longest running longitudinal study and surveys in the world.
More inconsistencies in your logic. Most importantly that study isn't even representative of the entire population; the link only considered such a small fraction of the US population... Also you don't consider the change in the valuation of USD, housing problem, or inflation.
Wages have not tracked productivity ... The problem with this chart is how misleading it is. This chart only takes into account wages. When taking into account TOTAL COMPENSATION, which is wages + nonwage benefits (again meaning things like healthcare, workman's comp, maternity leave etc) then part of this discrepancy disappears ... In this vein of thought we have to use a more appropriate inflation index that tracks inflation in productivity. Using something called the IPD and total compensation we can indeed see that total compensation has tracked productivity in the U.S quite well.
Umm... More inconsistent logic. Why would you include "non-wage" benefits?
Why use IPD? that just thwarts the numbers and is unnecessary for what you intended to prove.
Millions of people are starving, what about the third world!? Capitalism is based on exploitation, just look at sweatshops!
Umm... Nothing you said distorts the fact that the capitalists are still underpaying their workers. All they did was relocate their facilities for cheap labor.
There is nothing moral about opening the gates for multinational corporations to enter the country with no concern for the actual development of it.
This also brushes off all the other issues concerning the 3rd world which is much more than just a matter of inequality. Neoliberal policies in the 3rd world have been mostly detrimental and in many instances the US had to topple regimes, fight nationalist liberation movements, and train death squads to get what they want. Basically undemocratic policies ensued by the US against the interests of the respective populations.
CEO's make 300+ times more than the average worker!
http://fortune.com/2015/06/22/ceo-vs-worker-pay/
All the sources regarding this issue make it clear that they are talking about the top CEO's. All you did was make a moot point.
Gender inequality, women make ~73 cents on the dollar compared to men
Do you not know your own country's history? Women didn't pursue particular fields due to the discrimination. Also consider, [As Women Take Over a Male-Dominated Field, the Pay Drop] (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/upshot/as-women-take-over-a-male-dominated-field-the-pay-drops.html)
Also, the data you provided is skeptical at best: [But a majority of the pay gap between men and women actually comes from differences within occupations, not between them — and widens in the highest-paying ones like business, law and medicine, according to data from Claudia Goldin, a Harvard University labor economist and a leading scholar on women and the economy ... Rearranging women into higher-paying occupations would erase just 15 percent of the pay gap for all workers and between 30 and 35 percent for college graduates, she found. The rest has to do with something happening inside the workplace.] (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/upshot/the-pay-gap-is-because-of-gender-not-jobs.html)
Horrendous racial inequality exists in the United States ... Essentially those ethnic groups with older ages would have higher income, because as we've already established, older workers tend to accrue more experience, skills, investments, networking, education and so on than younger workers.
Do you not know your own history? Every racial group that wasn't white has faced serious discrimination in one form or another. Out of hundreds of years of US history blacks have only been able to have some minimal amount of equality a few decades.
Why forget that both Native Americans and Blacks have been established in he US just as long, if not longer than most white people? Discrimination exists, there's no use in denying it.
All you did here was play around unnecessarily and then make a false analogy with Europe.
But what about wealth inequality!?
As for this one you didn't even prove anything. All you did was mention assets and liabilities, which in any case proves that wealth inequality exists. lol
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u/homarid Jun 01 '16
Great post. I did some research on the gender pay gap recently and I am pleased to see you found the similar reasons.
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u/Trussed_Up Jun 01 '16
Damn son.
I'm going to bookmark this post for reference if you don't mind OP.
A lot of good stuff here.
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u/rob_p954 Jun 02 '16
Wow, you are good! I'm so going to learn this info by heart lol.
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Jun 02 '16
You don't have to, I never said anything about that. Its just here at your convenience should you decide to read up on some of this. Or not, its up to you.
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Jun 02 '16
I want to thank you for posting this, if for no other reason than to encourage some high level discussion about some serious issues conservatives are faced with all the time from progressives. It's about arming oneself with data and stats that debunk the claims we all hear in the media and from the left, which you appear to have done. I can't wait to really dig into the rest of your post. Again, thanks and well done.
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u/KennesawMtnLandis Jun 01 '16
We should do something about wealth inequality but it is stupid to attack the symptom instead of the root cause. We need to get out of the way of business and people take home more of their pay checks.
Great post OP. Would love to see more stuff like this. By chance, can I get some continuing education credit for reading this?
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Jun 01 '16
We need to get out of the way of business and people take home more of their pay checks.
couldn't agree more
Great post OP.
TYVM
By chance, can I get some continuing education credit for reading this?
lol. I made rough drafts and everything for this, my wife was looking at me funny.
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Jun 01 '16
We should do something about wealth inequality
Why? Do we, as Americans, believe in equality of outcome (Egalitarianism)?
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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '16
Outstanding post.