Wealth distribution in the US

[Razgovory]

Slavery was and is abhorrent because it's people doing bad things to other people.  We generally agree that people shouldn't do bad things to other people.  What we don't generally agree on is that people are obligated to do good things for other people.

My previous post was written in a state of intoxication and should be disregarded.

The Slave owners didn't recognize it as doing bad things to other people.  So we hit an impasse with your "generally agree that people shouldn't do bad things to other people", since the slave owner clearly were not agreeing that they were doing bad thing to other people.  We have similar problems with property rights today for instance environmental pollution.  A factory may reduce the quality of life (and the life spans!) of people living around it but they hardly will agree that they are doing bad things to people.  Anyway that is a bit off topic.

Slavery is form of inequality and we all agree it's bad, (at least I think it's bad), and we rectified it by removing certain "fundamental freedoms".  So clearly inequality is a bad thing, and removing some freedoms to destroy it is a good thing.

[Admiral Yi]

The slave owners may or may not have thought they were doing bad things to their slaves, but we did fight a war over the issue, and now it is generally agreed that people shouldn't do bad things to other people.

We believe in the principle of equal rights and equal protections under the law.  It does no follow from that belief that we must believe in the equal distribution of income and wealth, and generally we don't.

[Razgovory]

Does that mean we are going to have to fight a war again?

[Admiral Yi]

Does that mean we are going to have to fight a war again?

Depends what you mean by "we" and "have to."

[crazy canuck]

now it is generally agreed that people shouldn't do bad things to other people.

It is?

If so, I wonder why we have no laws to enforce such moral conduct.  You yourself readily defend the right of employers to dismiss their employees at will.  Indeed you have often argued that doing this particular bad thing to other people is on the whole positive for society.

[Syt]

Slavery was and is abhorrent because it's people doing bad things to other people.  We generally agree that people shouldn't do bad things to other people.  What we don't generally agree on is that people are obligated to do good things for other people.

My previous post was written in a state of intoxication and should be disregarded.

No, slavery is abhorrent because people should not be property no matter how well their "master" might treat them.  Under your definition slavery would be fine so long as all master's were kind.

Why do you hate BDSM? 

[garbon]

Slavery was and is abhorrent because it's people doing bad things to other people.  We generally agree that people shouldn't do bad things to other people.  What we don't generally agree on is that people are obligated to do good things for other people.

My previous post was written in a state of intoxication and should be disregarded.

No, slavery is abhorrent because people should not be property no matter how well their "master" might treat them.  Under your definition slavery would be fine so long as all master's were kind.

Why do you hate BDSM? 

Fake slavery.

[crazy canuck]

Why do you hate BDSM? 

[grumbler]

If so, I wonder why we have no laws to enforce such moral conduct.  You yourself readily defend the right of employers to dismiss their employees at will.  Indeed you have often argued that doing this particular bad thing to other people is on the whole positive for society.

A general agreement that people shouldn't do bad things to other people does not mean a general agreement that employers should not be able to dismiss employees (which is a "bad thing" for the employee and whether it is "at will" or not is immaterial).  That's the difference between a "general agreement" and an "absolute agreement:" a general agreement has exceptions.

[CountDeMoney]

If so, I wonder why we have no laws to enforce such moral conduct.  You yourself readily defend the right of employers to dismiss their employees at will.  Indeed you have often argued that doing this particular bad thing to other people is on the whole positive for society.

No, they do it to increase the shareholder value and profit for the corporation, which Yi places a premium on above anything positive for society. 

[Admiral Yi]

Firing someone is "a bad thing" in the same way that quitting a job, not buying any more from the same retailer, or getting a divorce are bad things: they make people unhappy.  But the discontinuation of a mutually beneficial relationship is not the same thing as murder, or robbery, or assault, because a murderer, robber, or assaulter is taking away something that didn't belong to them, whereas the first group is merely exercising their free will as to who they will associate with. 

[OttoVonBismarck]

@ Berkut - I think the answer lies in the taxation system.  Not just in the rate of taxation but the system itself.  Wealth can be accumulated at a much greater rate by the 1% than by the middle class because the tax system is skewed heavily in their favour.  Taxation on employment income is the highest - so most people who are able take their income in other forms - dividends, shares, income trusts, etc etc etc etc....  The list is only limited by the imagination of one's accountants and tax lawyers.


Which is another way of saying that tax reform is a big issue on both our countries.

Another issue, perhaps the main issue, is how to tax estates.  One simple way to ensure that everyone is rewarded according to their ability and hard work is to limit the ability of wealth to be transmitted through the generations.

Well, primogeniture and inheritance in general is how the nobility stayed so powerful for so long in the UK. It seems fairly obvious reigning in vast estates is the way to go to deal with the problem  of a developing "entrenched upper class." It doesn't do much about current income inequality of persons who start from a roughly equal point and end up with widely disparate results, but I think we should look seriously at how we handle estates.

I lean somewhere towards Carnegie on the matter. He wrote that he basically thought rich people should both keep their money while they're alive, and give it all away. His reasoning was that by becoming rich they demonstrated some aptitude with money, and that they would be good shepherds in the efforts to get rid of their money. His opinion was that aside from "reasonable" support of dependents wealth should be almost entirely given away during the wealthy person's life. He found in his own life that actually wasn't as easy as just waving a wand (especially at his level of wealth, as he had ongoing complex business arrangements and etc)--so his ultimate solution of endowing several foundations was a good one.

I'm comfortable with a wealthy guy leaving his heirs enough that they basically "never have to work." That's fine, that number is somewhere in the $4-15m range. I'll even be generous and just say, no estate taxes on estates up to $25m. I'm much less comfortable with a wealthy guy leaving his heirs enough that they are on the Forbes 500, or so much that not only do they never have to work they can buy a new plane every year. So I'd say any assets in an estate over $25m should be taxed at a 100% rate. [Let's not get concerned about tax dodges, let's assume we'd write the statute so that you can't easily dodge the tax through strange trusts or sheltering.]

What I'd basically want is a wealthy guy left with two options: giving away all his money (down to $25m) before he dies, or he has the option to endow an independently run charitable foundation in his will--but said foundation must not provide any pecuniary benefit to any of his descendants or legal heirs.

What about companies like Mars or Tyson Foods or Wal-Mart that are either privately owned by a family (Mars) or controlled by a majority voting-power family (Tyson, Wal-Mart?) I'd basically say this is the end of people who just happen to be the grandkids of a corporate founder who get billions of dollars in shares of the company. And the founding family loses control. I'd basically give the founder the option to convert his company into an "employee owned business" (like Publix, for example), or he could give his stake in the company to a charitable foundation (who would use income derived from it for charitable purposes, but this foundation must not provide any pecuniary benefit to any of the guy's heirs), or the government just takes it out of his estate and runs an IPO and keeps the proceeds, force-converting it into a regular publicly traded company.

The only scheme where I'd be okay with the owner passing on the company would be some sort of system where you would be allowed to transfer say, 5% of your holdings in an enterprise to an heir for every year they are involved in the day-to-day management of the company whose shares you are gifting them. So I guess that means one of the Walton sons could have received at least a portion of Sam's shares, but he'd have to work for it. Same for the Mars kids.

[MadImmortalMan]

Yeah Carnegie's money more or less got our medical system rolling down the wrong hill, so I'm not sure we wouldn't be better off if he had just kept it and gave it to his heirs.

[Razgovory]

Firing someone is "a bad thing" in the same way that quitting a job, not buying any more from the same retailer, or getting a divorce are bad things: they make people unhappy.  But the discontinuation of a mutually beneficial relationship is not the same thing as murder, or robbery, or assault, because a murderer, robber, or assaulter is taking away something that didn't belong to them, whereas the first group is merely exercising their free will as to who they will associate with.

What about something like air pollution lowering the quality of life and real estate value of people in the area?

[MadImmortalMan]

My employer has converted the thing into an employee owned business. I currently own 9.049 shares and they're worth about forty bucks. 

Yay.