Wealth distribution in the US

[Tamas]

I do have a quibble unfortunately. The presentation was talking about wealth, I would much rather it talked about income.

I have a good example in my family. Both of my grandfathers worked in the coal industry and for the latter 20 years of their working lives it was a nationalised industry with fixed payrates. But, one family had no wealth whatsoever, every payday they would go wild and blow it in the next 4 days. The other had modest but by no means irrelevant wealth, including a paid for house and savings.

Anecdote over. The point being that making wealth more equal requires far more intrusive action by the state than action which makes wages more equal.

I was thinking the same thing.

As much as the present situation is ugly, I cannot see how you can have a healthy economy without also being able to create similarly shocking graphs on wealth. Compare the wealth of a factory owner and his workers and OMG TEH DISPARITY!!!

Also, how much of that excess wealth is in stocks and stuff? How much of it would be simply melt away together with the stock market? How much disparity is there in terms of REAL stuff? Like properties and stuff?

[Zanza]

I think we've had this exact same conversation before, but generally suffice to say people are better off (across all economic bands) today than they were in 1980 or 1990. They'll probably be better off in 2020 than they were in 2000.

Is that so? You often read how real incomes have stagnated or declined etc.

[jimmy olsen]

I do have a quibble unfortunately. The presentation was talking about wealth, I would much rather it talked about income.

I have a good example in my family. Both of my grandfathers worked in the coal industry and for the latter 20 years of their working lives it was a nationalised industry with fixed payrates. But, one family had no wealth whatsoever, every payday they would go wild and blow it in the next 4 days. The other had modest but by no means irrelevant wealth, including a paid for house and savings.

Anecdote over. The point being that making wealth more equal requires far more intrusive action by the state than action which makes wages more equal.

I was thinking the same thing.

As much as the present situation is ugly, I cannot see how you can have a healthy economy without also being able to create similarly shocking graphs on wealth. Compare the wealth of a factory owner and his workers and OMG TEH DISPARITY!!!

The US has had a healthy economy in the past without similar disparity. There are countries with healthy economies right now that don't have disparities like that right now.

[Razgovory]

I think we've had this exact same conversation before, but generally suffice to say people are better off (across all economic bands) today than they were in 1980 or 1990. They'll probably be better off in 2020 than they were in 2000.

Is that so? You often read how real incomes have stagnated or declined etc.

Otto is wrong of course.  The wider the gap in wealth and income the harder it is to jump that gap which means a more stratified society and less entrepreneurial activity.  The result is stagnation.

I know Berkut is ignoring me, but I'm uncertain the origin of his horror at the idea of taxation.  Someone should ask him.

[CountDeMoney]

I know Berkut is ignoring me, but I'm uncertain the origin of his horror at the idea of taxation.  Someone should ask him.

There.  Now he'll see it.

[Ed Anger]

[Berkut]

I don't have any problem with taxation of course.

I jsut don't think it is the solution to the problem that the US has experienced in the last 30 years or so.

It isn't the source of the problem, and it isn't the right way to solve it either.

Taxation, simply put, has nothing to do with the problem. Trying to solve it by applying a tool that is not related to the issue is simply not going to work.

It is interesting that both the nutbar elements hold it up as the only possible way of even thinking about the issue though. The nutbar right holds it up as this fake solution so they can dismiss it, and the nutbar left thinks it is the only thing that matters.

We have radically increased income disparity in the US over the last few decades. That didn't happen because of reduced taxes on the wealthy made them incredibly wealthy. That cannot possibly explain an order of magnitude increase in total share of the wealth. There is a systemioc problem with the way we allocate resources outside the tax system.

It is interesting that both the nutbar sides willfully ignore what I post in favor of just trying to score political points. Raise taxes on the wealthy? Go right ahead, I am all for it. But do so because we need more revenue, and the welathy are best able to afford it without harming growth overall. *That* is the purpose of taxes.

Dealing with the fact that there is a recent and completely new thing happening in the US economy where we've gotten ourselves into this robber baron like situation where the super rich are taking more and more and more of the overall slice of the nations wealth while everyone else stagnates needs to be addressed by addressing whatever systemic problem has created that situation.

Whether the super rich pay 28% or 34% is not relevant to why they went from having 8% of the nations wealth to 40% of it.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

iiirc, didn't (or do) the countries in South America (and probably most of Africa) have similar graphs of wealth-distribution? And for most of their existence (or at least previous 100 years).
A situation that everyone could see was/is unhealthy and unstable.

while income disparity needs to exist and while there will always be people who are rich or poor it seems to me that -as a society- you'd like to avoid a situation as presented in the OP.

[Berkut]

I do have a quibble unfortunately. The presentation was talking about wealth, I would much rather it talked about income.

I have a good example in my family. Both of my grandfathers worked in the coal industry and for the latter 20 years of their working lives it was a nationalised industry with fixed payrates. But, one family had no wealth whatsoever, every payday they would go wild and blow it in the next 4 days. The other had modest but by no means irrelevant wealth, including a paid for house and savings.

Anecdote over. The point being that making wealth more equal requires far more intrusive action by the state than action which makes wages more equal.

I was thinking the same thing.

As much as the present situation is ugly, I cannot see how you can have a healthy economy without also being able to create similarly shocking graphs on wealth. Compare the wealth of a factory owner and his workers and OMG TEH DISPARITY!!!

That is stunningly stupid Tamas.

The issue is not "OMG TEH DISPARITY" the issue is "Holy shit, the disparity has grown radically in the very recent past, and is now grossly, obscenely greater than it has been at any point ever, is getting worse, and pretty much everyone agrees that it is far out whack with what is healthy for a society, and further, most people know that it is out of whack, think it is a problem, and yet don't even realize that it is actually vastly MORE out of whack than even they think".

Acting like this is just the standard grumbling that the not rich don't have as much as the rich is almost willfully ignorant. I am all for a "OMG TEH DISPARITY" in income/wealth distribution.

[Berkut]

while income disparity needs to exist and while there will always be people who are rich or poor it seems to me that -as a society- you'd like to avoid a situation as presented in the OP.

I am simply stunned that people are actually arguing that the situation is fine.

I am perfectly ok with income disparity. I am ok with even more than what the article laid out as what most people (including Republicans) think is "ideal".

I am kind of amazed that the argument being put forth is not just that this is ok, but that by extension *any* wealth disparity is ok. Because if an amount of disparity that is literally 100 times more than it was, and 100 times more than what 9/10 people consider is ideal is a-ok, then clearly there is no amount of disparity that is unacceptable.

[DGuller]

Let's go back a couple of steps.  Share of wealth graph can be misleading.  We need to look at the growth rates of wealth of each quintile over many years, including years before the obvious shift started.  On which end do you actually have a shift?  Is it the reach accumulating the wealth at ever-increasing rates, the poor accumulating the wealth at decreasing rates (or even negative rates), or a combination of both?

[garbon]

Is the position being put forth that because of the disparity those of us without such wealth are being forced to live in much worse conditions than we were previously accustomed?

[garbon]

I think we've had this exact same conversation before, but generally suffice to say people are better off (across all economic bands) today than they were in 1980 or 1990. They'll probably be better off in 2020 than they were in 2000.

Is that so? You often read how real incomes have stagnated or declined etc.

Otto is wrong of course.  The wider the gap in wealth and income the harder it is to jump that gap which means a more stratified society and less entrepreneurial activity.  The result is stagnation.

Aren't there a hell of a lot of small businesses? Is the idea then that they are all going under?

[Berkut]

Let's go back a couple of steps.  Share of wealth graph can be misleading.  We need to look at the growth rates of wealth of each quintile over many years, including years before the obvious shift started.  On which end do you actually have a shift?  Is it the reach accumulating the wealth at ever-increasing rates, the poor accumulating the wealth at decreasing rates (or even negative rates), or a combination of both?

Those are all very good questions.

But they are questions that go to addressing what is happening and why.

What I find amazing is that apparently there are people who look at the outcome and say "Yeah, that is cool."

I don't even think the people who are that 1% look at this result and think "Yep, that is how it should be..."

[DGuller]

Aren't there a hell of a lot of small businesses? Is the idea then that they are all going under?

Small businesses are not exactly a highway to riches.  Most of the time it's a life of subsistence.