-
- Elizabeth Barrette (
ysabetwordsmith) wrote,
Elizabeth Barrette
ysabetwordsmith
- Mood:
busy
Behind the Wall Street Protest
-
A Little Slice of Terramagne: YardMap
Sadly the main program is dormant, but the YardMap concept is awesome, and many of its informative articles remain. YardMap was a citizen science…
-
Goldenrod Gall Contents
Apparently all kinds of things go on inside goldenrod galls, beyond the caterpillars who make them. Fascinating. I've seen the galls but haven't…
-
Science and Spirituality
Here's an article about science and spirituality, sort of. It doesn't have a very wide view of either. Can you be scientific and spiritual? This…
-
A Little Slice of Terramagne: YardMap
Sadly the main program is dormant, but the YardMap concept is awesome, and many of its informative articles remain. YardMap was a citizen science…
-
Goldenrod Gall Contents
Apparently all kinds of things go on inside goldenrod galls, beyond the caterpillars who make them. Fascinating. I've seen the galls but haven't…
-
Science and Spirituality
Here's an article about science and spirituality, sort of. It doesn't have a very wide view of either. Can you be scientific and spiritual? This…
What would be a good solution to uneven distribution of wealth?
October 12 2011, 21:38:29 UTC 9 years ago
If we provide a basic subsistence level income for 80% of the population and 20% still have jobs then we continue to have unacceptable levels of wealth distribution.
Wealth is the accumulation of income over time: someone who makes very little and can save very little will save it in a low-income-producing vehicle like a savings account or maybe their house. Someone with more income will save in those places PLUS a pension plan. Someone with even MORE income will save in both those places PLUS some riskier stocks.
Over time, the rich get richer just by mathematical progression: if you all start out with the same $4,000 to invest and one invests it at 5% and the other invests it at 10% this will happen.
Same story with someone who makes $20K/year and another person makes $120K/year. The rich will get richer every time, even if they spend every dime they have, because inevitably some of their spending will be on tangibles that they will continue to have.
I don't think anyone is REALLY all that upset about the amount of money one person can acquire in their lifetimes, though: I think they're mostly upset about dynastic wealth. (I could be wrong.)
I feel quite gloom and doomy about people wanting to solve wealth disparity. It isn't a problem that can STAY solved. The highly skilled or higher risk-taking will get richer again by next week.
But I like that you are okay with waiting for the creative destruction to work its way through. I like that idea. We really do need to have some new energy solutions and perhaps that bubble of spending will inflate our middle class again. That would be nice.
I think we've been sick so long now that we've forgotten that we can ever be well again.
October 12 2011, 23:04:04 UTC 9 years ago
And one generation of dynastic wealth doesn't bother me at all, since everyone wants to care for their kids. OTOH taxing inheritance wouldn't stop one generation of dynastic wealth because people can care for their kids by actually caring for them while they're alive.
Plus the person who 'deserves' the money is dead at that point and doesn't care who gets it.
OTOOH trying to limit people to what they deserve probably isn't going to lead to a world that you want to live in. Especially if who deserves what is determined by a political process. I can't see that working any better than the chaos of the market.
So, really, I'd want a solution based on practicality and not morality. v.v
Well...
October 12 2011, 23:13:31 UTC 9 years ago
Money is rarely going to spread exactly evenly, and that's okay. Making it perfectly even is a pain in the ass that appeals only to a few people. Most folks like the idea of having some range. The problem occurs when the range gets so wide that some people don't have enough to meet basic needs while others have more than they could possibly use for personal needs.
The idea is to spread the available money around enough that people can meet their needs and, with a little care, some of their wants. People who want to work harder should be rewarded for that. I don't think people should be rewarded beyond reason, though. One job might be 10 times harder than another job. Nobody's job is 350 times harder than anything.
Re: Well...
October 13 2011, 02:11:41 UTC 9 years ago
A career with enough star power to get 350x the base salary is a career that doesn't have a lot of earning years in it. You spend your twenties in graduate school. You spend your thirties working your way up. You get a good salary in your forties and hit the big time in your fifties and really only make that for three or four years of the Big Time contract. Only a handful of people are stars like that.
Sort of like basketball players.
The reason they get that sort of money is because of a bidding war: one person is in great demand and their unique (or nearly unique) skillset and rolodex is what is being requested. No other substitute will do, because no one else has spent the past thirty years grooming for this one job.
You know who determines whether a CEO is worth that money? The board of directors, who represent the owners. If the OWNERS of the company paying the salary are okay with it, why would you object?
This is a bit of a trope. There are only 500 Fortune 500 companies. Most CEOs are not stars. They make a couple hundred thousand, yes, but they were in graduate school about the same length of time as doctors. They are responsible for hundreds or perhaps thousands of people's jobs. Yes, their job is 350 times harder that a machine operators, where the machine operator shows up and presses a button and concern and responsibility never wrinkle their brow, whereas the CEO has responsibility 350 days in the year.
What makes someone's labor valuable is an interesting question. In the most fundamental element it has to do with a person's ability to transform energy into something someone else wants to buy. A knowledge worker consumed a lot of energy to get their brain trained: years of growing and eating and being heated and cooled waiting until the Problem they were Trained To Solve comes along. Another person might have less of a time/energy/life investment in their labor and generally be replaceable by anyone who ate breakfast this morning.
We've been changing how we transform energy quite a lot in the past two centuries. Harnessing extracted hydrocarbons allowed us to transform a LOT of energy. A lot a lot. Our society grew rich burning coal then oil then gas. We also extracted quite a lot of other stored up wealth: depletable resources like metals and renewable resources like timber and fish that weren't stewarded well.
Now we're growing rich with our brains. Well, some of us. And it's not leaving a lot of choices for those who don't work like that.
But, yeah, I can see how someone's brain could be worth 350x more than someone's brute labor.
October 13 2011, 01:53:39 UTC 9 years ago
That's where I stand, too, which is easy because I find so often that other people's morality is pretty shocking.
All this talk about "redistributing wealth" sort of sends shivers up my spine. Our we really giving up the concept of Rule of law now? Private property? To help the ECONOMY?!??
I have been listening very closely to a lot of far left people talk about Occupy Wall Street and I've been trying to hear what specific things are being requested. So much of the laundry list is just children flailing in the dark without a clue about what they're talking about. I'm sympathetic, these issues are HARD.
But you know what happens next after you forgive student loan debt? No one ever gets a student loan again. When they say "ban the corporations" and "give us good jobs" it just makes me want to bang my head against the desk. I have to wonder how many of them are using their Bank of America debit cards while they protest against banks being too powerful. It is easy to mock. Really really easy to mock.
But at the core of it, even if people don't seem to be able to articulate what changes they'd like that could result in beneficial outcomes, they are right that things are broken. Really really broken.
We're past peak oil. Our fiat currency is in its frail old age. Our democratic republic was replaced by an empire. (I wonder how many of those protesters voted in the primary elections? That is the only remaining place where democracy has any power. Turnout was 10% in my precinct, where we immediately voted to return the inept or corrupt - can't tell which - octogenarian to office.)
Yes, there is income inequality, but that's partly because the fiat currency killed savings and apparently also killed capitalism. All that's left is gambling in commodities and bubbles to try to stay ahead of inflation.
There are no political solutions to these problems. We're past the point of no return. We lost our country. Rioting makes sense.
But empires don't have to be that bad. A regime falls somewhere on the planet pretty much once a month. Currencies fail and new ones are created. It's going to be okay-ish. Not great, but okay.
Rioting won't help, though. That was the thing I was happiest about when Obama was elected: I thought perhaps the sheep would stay complacent a bit longer because of the Hope & Change Yes We Can thing. It was all nonsense, but I had *hoped* it would forestall riots.
Poor Obama. He never knew what he was getting into.