Wealth distribution in the US

[Admiral Yi]

You did say that, but you failed to see that as a consequence of anarchy, and I didn't.  Any country without rule of law is for all intents and purposes an anarchy.  Unless you're the dominant warlord/oligarch/mafia don, your fortunes depends a lot on the good graces of your protection, in whatever form it comes.

To a certain extent.  However in a mafia state you don't have to worry as much about fighting to protect your food, your shelter, or your fuckable women.

[OttoVonBismarck]

There is no reason not to take money from the wealthy to make sure people receive some base level of support. But there is nothing wrong with inequality, and it's inherently just, not unjust. Inequality isn't incompatible with an appropriate amount of social services.

[alfred russel]

Bill Gates would do much, much better in Somalia than you or I would.

Bill Gates would be ruined if the world ended up like Somalia. Companies like Microsoft can't function in anarchy. The value of his stock would go to zero. The value of the money he held would also vanish, as would the value of debt holdings.

Maybe Bill Gates could convert some of his wealth into a durable form (such as small arms and ammunition) before the transformation was complete. Maybe he could then capitalize on that wealth to be a powerful warlord. My guess is that Somali warlords have standards of living well below our own, and probably short life expectancies (I wouldn't be surprised if it is even shorter than average Somalis).

[Ideologue]

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?

Of course it is.  Don't be one of those people who says because poors can afford a microwave or have access to refrigeration, things are better than they ever were.

So when my great-great-grandfather got off the boat from Scotland he had been trained as a school teacher but the only work he could find on these shores was cleaning out the inside of industrial machinery in a 19th century factory. I'll compare his life story to the story of a guy I grew up. My friend James' father worked in the coal industry, in the late-70s he was killed on the job due almost entirely to the negligence of his employer. In the settlement large trusts were set up for James, his mother, and both sisters. Enough that after all three children had graduated college (fully paid for from the trust) they each individually had in excess of $1m in assets, their mother had a similar amount and held no employment from the time her first husband died until the present. My great-great-grandfather was killed at a facility owned by Bethlehem Steel in the 19th century, he was cleaning equipment and it was started while he was essentially inside of it and he was crushed to death. His family received no compensation, and in fact did not even receive his full paycheck for that week (only the hours he had worked prior to the accident.) There was no governmental support offered and minimal community support. My great-grandfather (who I actually knew as a child), then went to work at the age of 14 in a factory (dropping out of school) to support his 5 siblings and mother.

The poor are vastly better off than they are today. Evidence this by the fact here you are, whining on the internet instead of working 7 days a week 12 hours a day and 8 on Sunday.

Actually, I wasn't comparing it to the 19th century, but Neolithic times.  That's when we had it made.  Obviously.

[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?

Of course it is.  Don't be one of those people who says because poors can afford a microwave or have access to refrigeration, things are better than they ever were.

So when my great-great-grandfather got off the boat from Scotland he had been trained as a school teacher but the only work he could find on these shores was cleaning out the inside of industrial machinery in a 19th century factory. I'll compare his life story to the story of a guy I grew up. My friend James' father worked in the coal industry, in the late-70s he was killed on the job due almost entirely to the negligence of his employer. In the settlement large trusts were set up for James, his mother, and both sisters. Enough that after all three children had graduated college (fully paid for from the trust) they each individually had in excess of $1m in assets, their mother had a similar amount and held no employment from the time her first husband died until the present. My great-great-grandfather was killed at a facility owned by Bethlehem Steel in the 19th century, he was cleaning equipment and it was started while he was essentially inside of it and he was crushed to death. His family received no compensation, and in fact did not even receive his full paycheck for that week (only the hours he had worked prior to the accident.) There was no governmental support offered and minimal community support. My great-grandfather (who I actually knew as a child), then went to work at the age of 14 in a factory (dropping out of school) to support his 5 siblings and mother.

The poor are vastly better off than they are today. Evidence this by the fact here you are, whining on the internet instead of working 7 days a week 12 hours a day and 8 on Sunday.

Actually, I wasn't comparing it to the 19th century, but Neolithic times.  That's when we had it made.  Obviously.

You know when was a great time? The 50s. People hadn't gotten all uppity yet.

[Ideologue]

Are you suggesting that a necessary condition for a middle-class society is racial and gender segregation?  No wonder you voted for Romney.

[garbon]

There seems a lot of wistfulness for better conditions in the past and I wonder when exactly those supposedly existed.

[Razgovory]

There is no reason not to take money from the wealthy to make sure people receive some base level of support. But there is nothing wrong with inequality, and it's inherently just, not unjust. Inequality isn't incompatible with an appropriate amount of social services.

Yes, it does seem that inequality is the fundamental idea of conservatism.

[OttoVonBismarck]

There is no reason not to take money from the wealthy to make sure people receive some base level of support. But there is nothing wrong with inequality, and it's inherently just, not unjust. Inequality isn't incompatible with an appropriate amount of social services.

Yes, it does seem that inequality is the fundamental idea of conservatism.

It's not, actually--traditional conservatism is more process than results oriented. But I'm not interested in debating the meanings behind a broad term like "conservatism." What we've seen historically is true equality of all is both impossible, and actually in States that have ostensibly tried for it you just have a large number of poor people ruled by a civil servant/political class that find lots of ways to reap unequal benefits. Inequality is fundamentally part of a free society, the only way to get rid of it is to remove significant freedoms.

The idea that in Sweden in the 1970s you might have to pay over 100% in income taxes is ridiculous. Why shouldn't people who found great companies like Ikea or write terrible books like Pippi Lockstocking be able to reap disproportionate rewards from their efforts? When you take away that ability you create a broken and unworkable society. Even the Swedes recognized that and they weren't even that far down the rabbit hole (as compared to countries like the USSR at the time.)

[Razgovory]

Yes, we do sacrifice fundamental freedoms for the sake of equality.  For instance we curtail property rights so that people won't be enslaved.  If we remove the freedom to be a slave why shouldn't we remove the freedom to starve?

[Barrister]

Yes, we do sacrifice fundamental freedoms for the sake of equality.  For instance we curtail property rights so that people won't be enslaved.  If we remove the freedom to be a slave why shouldn't we remove the freedom to starve?

[Zanza]

But I am not sure what sounds like a nightmare about a perfect meritocratic society. Everybody making their own destiny based on their ability sounds like a good thing to me.

If I had children, I wouldn't want to have to watch them fail.

Well, all parents want their children to succeed, but obviously the concept of social mobility necessitates that at least some do relatively, not necessarily absolutely worse than their parents.

Aka a society that'll never happen (/sounds like a nightmare) as people higher up the ladder aren't going to want such instability for their children.

It will obviously never happen as it is impossible to achieve same starting chance in life.

But I am not sure what sounds like a nightmare about a perfect meritocratic society. Everybody making their own destiny based on their ability sounds like a good thing to me.

It implies that family and parents have by some mechanism been made unable to contribute to the success of their children. It gets down to an almost philosophical question: what is "ability"?

If it is genetics, then perhaps there will be perfect social mobility in our future gattica world, though I am unsure that whatever genes contribute to "ability" are evenly distributed across income groupings.

If it is knowledge, work ethic, social skills, etc, as determined at some future point in life, then it almost certainly won't be perfect social mobility. Parental impact is going to have a major role. Parents who earn higher incomes should be (on average) better teachers of skills that result in higher incomes, and also have the resources to have others help where they can not.

Yes, as I said it is impossible to have the same starting chance in life for everybody as social context and genetics obviously matter. I guess societies can accept that to a certain degree and I don't want to argue that 20% is the rate that Valmy asked for. I merely pointed it out for reference.

But I am not sure what sounds like a nightmare about a perfect meritocratic society. Everybody making their own destiny based on their ability sounds like a good thing to me.

The irony is 'meritocracy' was coined by a British writer in a satirical dystopian essay. It was a pejorative phrase that's now something we openly aspire towards.

The problem with meritocracy is that if success = ability + effort then there's very little reason helping people who don't have the ability or the effort, or don't put it in. That is, as in the dystopia, just 'sentimental egalitarianism'. A perfect meritocracy is justly unequal, anything like a welfare state is an act of gratuitous charity from the justly successful, to the justly unsuccessful.

Yes, you're right. I guess that would in fact be a nightmare, but not the one that Garbon had in mind.

[garbon]

But I am not sure what sounds like a nightmare about a perfect meritocratic society. Everybody making their own destiny based on their ability sounds like a good thing to me.

If I had children, I wouldn't want to have to watch them fail.

Well, all parents want their children to succeed, but obviously the concept of social mobility necessitates that at least some do relatively, not necessarily absolutely worse than their parents.

Sure but in your "perfect" scenario, parents would be completely helpless. /it really seems like it'd make more sense to have some sort of Plato's Republic like arrangement of family.

[Malthus]

You will never get a society in which success = ability + effort. There will always be other factors involved, such as upbringing, luck, and environmental factors beyond one's reasonable control. 

[Zanza]

I think the value of 20% is only interesting as a point of reference. From the looks of the map, there are quite a few areas where the lower quintile shows much more upward social mobility than what you would expect in even a perfect meritocratic society. That's a quite interesting effect. Probably just as interest as the very bad value for Atalanta et al.