I can't speak for everyone, but I"m pretty sure most people do care about those with less than them.
Plenty of desperate people willing to do whatever jobs they can right now.
Not a lot of time to train for more lucrative work, let alone find it.
Yes, by definition. The question is, how much is too much money? And in what context?
Put another way, in a given economy, how much do the wages between the top and bottom earners need to differ in order for there to be not only a perceived inequity, but a genuine ethical imbalance?
Your stance is fine and logical, but most people don't feel the same. The difference between your wealth vs a poor African, vs your lack vs a rich American, is that you have the ability to collectivize and reach that rich American physically (not advocating violence, but pointing out that revolutions are violent).
I agree that Americans should also keep this in mind, when we as a country deal with the global poor. We're richer, but they have numbers. Not wise for us to fly too high above them, without using that wealth to benefit them too.
It is also worth noting that the results of those revolutions are often worse for both the rich and the poor. There's a long list of countries that have destroyed productive but unequal economies and replace them with those that are worse, and usually unequal but on a different axis.
People like to talk about the French Revolution with Eat the Rich slogans, and forget that it left everyone worse off, led to dictatorship, and eventually everyone coming back around to realizing the old system wasn't so bad.
This stats is relevant, if you vote based on data of how shared infrastructure is used.
Are health care CEOs unusually paid compared to CEOs? (They are not). As I said ultimately your selection in criteria is arbitrary.
The matter at hand here is some believe the income inequality is a problem. What ratio is acceptable to you?
And also one that confers some sense of fairness. Tell me how this is at all fair to workers?
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/08/07/for-most-...
Home ownership in the US is higher than in:
- New Zealand
- Sweden
- France
- Japan
- Austria
- Germany
- Switzerland
Home ownership in the US is lower than in:
- Kosovo
- Russia
- Norway
- Spain
- Italy
https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/home-ownership-rat...
My point is that home ownership isn't something that workers in even some of the most enlightened countries have. In contrast, there's incredibly high home ownership in some places that have dubious quality of life.
And so it begs the question why home ownership is voiced as such an important need of workers? I would argue that the incentive structures should be more aligned around good shelter.
Home ownership has been advertised and indoctrinated in the psyche as The American Dream, but I would question that dream...
I’m not even about to begin to touch the notion that home ownership, which has been a staple of human history since time immemorial, is not important. That strikes me as a comment waayyy to deep in the kool aid
There’s simply no problem with people having more money, and once people realize this we can move on.
Housing issues are supply issues exacerbated by zoning and local nimby governments. It can be resolved without income ceilings.
Health care issues can be solved with single payer healthcare or other schemes. Again no income neutering required.
And sure you can fund these things and more with taxes, but no taxation scheme will result in there not being extreme disparities.
Funny enough young Americans waste time complaining about rich people instead of just voting, which would solve most of their issues.
https://archive.nytimes.com/krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/1...
https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2019/
Even with more conservative approaches, wage growth of lower earners is far outpaced by top earners.
https://www.aei.org/articles/have-wages-stagnated-for-decade....
This is hopelessly naive. Whoever you vote for, your vote only matters one day a year. The other 364.25 days are for the lobbyists.
I was directly replying to this accusation that I'm to blame for idly standing by whilst nimbys oppress the developers. I respond that none of that lines up with my local situation, and yet your boogeyman of rent increase is ever-present.
> ... [complaining] instead of just voting, which would solve most of their issues.
You presented "just voting" as a panacaea. You've retreated to the "[single] very particular class of issue" while sounding very triumphant that I'm the fool. Classic motte&bailey.
I don't know about where you live, but I've never had more than one to three opportunities to "just vote" per year. I spend the rest of the time "complaining."
[1]: https://effectivegov.uchicago.edu/news/power-begets-corrupti... [2]: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadian-health-care-system... [3]: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/crea-housing-data-1.6843592
Here's a dirty secret in case you say all the billionaires will run away with their wealth. They aren't worth much.
Bezos isn't Amazon and if he was never born those people would work somewhere and the online store market would be divided somehow.
Billionaires harness labor and capture demand they create little of it then most of the benefits accrue to people who buy things not build things.
The version of it's a wonderful life starring Bezos has him stumbling around Bedford falls marveling that virtually nothing has changed and terminates with him begging Clarence to put him back because he misses his yacht.
There is online shopping other than Amazon.
It’s actually one person having more than literally a billion other people combined, and THATS a problem
Taxing the rich is less about the money, and more about the power it buys.
No, just like complaining abou theft doesn't betray the secret wish to be the thief, but for there to be no theft. Same for wages not matching productivity, not even inflation, while inequality keeps rising. If you can't understand that, that says solely something about you.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3....
This is a good point. America and Africa are the same because they’re both on earth. Few people have the good sense to dilute a point to absolutely meaningless terms, all of that muckety-muck about “relevance” and “the topic at hand” distracts from the truly important work: handwaving in such a way to shut down discussion at light speed
But let's follow the deflection. Instead of monetary disparity, lets look at energy waste disparity. It was recently shown that the top 10% wealthiest Americans contribute to 40% of the greenhouse gas emissions in the country. As you said, we are all on the same planet. just because they have managed to grab a bigger piece of the pie shouldn't mean that they get to pollute the planet more than anyone else. In both cases the mindset needs to change and those at the top maybe need to be a little less greedy overall.
source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/08/230817163849.h...
That's quite the arbitrary line to draw. Different roles have different labor markets. If you're a software engineer you are probably getting paid 10 times more than an EA.
> It was recently shown that the top 10% wealthiest Americans contribute to 40% of the greenhouse gas emissions in the country.
To be in the top 10% in America in terms of wealth, your net worth needs to be ~$850k. To be in the top 10% in America in terms of wages, your annual comp needs to be ~$175.
That means probably most senior software engineers are in that bracket - https://www.levels.fyi/
Rich people having almost all the money means in practice they have almost all the power and our society consistently acts in a fashion so as to serve the interests in virtually all matters right up until something is so important that it solely makes or breaks elections.
Billionaires don't just hoard all the toys they are outright poison for democracy.
If you aren't a temporarily embarrassed millionaire you are yourself benefiting from inequality and value your own interests over the rest of us.
It's ok if you think greed is good just admit it and don't pretend more ethical people are just jealous.
I have considered it, and it’s why I support ending all immigration (legal or otherwise), even enforcing reverse-migration if necessary.
Every person we bring here 10/20/30x’es their lifetime carbon output. Pro-immigration leftists are some of the biggest polluters on the planet for this reason.
You're mistaking region for (labor) market.
The market for different kinds of jobs is different. Otherwise everyone would be paid the same.
You can absolutely refer to the US economic market or African market and the participants there in. If not I would love a reference to explain otherwise.
Of course different kinds of labor receive varying compensation and these things depend on the level of skill and demand. This isn’t a question of whether everyone should be paid equally. It’s a question of how to resolve growing income disparities between top earners and low earners, specifically asymmetric income growth. Top earner income is rising at amazing rates while low earners are seeing meager increases. This has been ongoing for decades. There is an entire discussion on it here so I don’t think there needs to be any more elaboration.
You're recasting this as "they have too much money!!" But that's obviously not the problem and it's just bad faith to claim that it is.
If you want to get riled up, get riled up over the idea that maybe the same people responsible for poverty in the Global South are also responsible for inflation in the West.
Or you can try to deflect on any related issues in the hope that you never have to worry about it, your choice.
Edit: you added this and I found it particularly ridiculous.
> no problem making thousands more than the global poor and the global rich making more than me either. It is what it is.
Great, so let other people who care do their thing. Do you expect someone making $100k a year to give it all away to some random family with less money? That's an individual act of heroism, but it doesn't make a dent in the problem on a bigger scale.
Also let's be clear: I for one don't care that some people are rich, I care that some people are poor. If one person's richness is a cause for the other's poverty, then it's a problem.
> Not impose meaningless arbitrary income limits.
Who is?
You might not be aware, but a large number of people in the US and Canada are struggling financially right now due to inflation. So when someone else seems to be making increasing profits at the same time as they're raising those prices, you start to wonder about the causes.
This isn't some Harrison Bergeron situation, it's about actually trying to solve problems. If you are content with your life then stay out of the way of the people who want to make things better.
What is the connection and who are these people?
I’m not prepared to put a dollar amount on what anyone deserves to make, and neither are any of you.
The thing with capitalism is that there isn’t someone going around trying to set prices for things based off some moral philosophy. Prices and wages are based on what people are willing to pay.
With that aside, I suspect (and many other commenters here as well) that there’s price fixing involved in executive pay, creating an artificial floor that insulates from the effects of the labor market
Healthcare CEO pay is in-line with executive pay of similarly sized firms.
Simply put, senior management of large corporations is a skill few have, and even fewer are willing to take the responsibility and stress of.
So you're saying we don't need pharmaceutical companies on earth?
I used to believe this too. Sadly the statistics suggest this is no longer happening and millennials as a generation are the first to be worse off than their parents, with rising income inequality being a driving factor. Robert reichs class is available for free on YouTube, interesting stats to follow to help entertain other perspectives.
[1]https://www.brookings.edu/articles/new-insights-into-the-dis...
In figure 2.3, it shows that global inequality hasn't been lower since the 1870s, back when virtually all but the rich would be living in poverty by the standards of today.
> but the rich would be living in poverty by the standards of today
Such a comparison is completely useless. A person today in the US in poverty is better off than a caveman. What of it?
[1]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00144...
You could make an argument for 2019, but COVID-19 significantly increased global inequality; in wealth and health [1-3].
[1]: https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/01/1055681 [2]: https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2022/08/02/g... [3]: https://inequality.org/facts/global-inequality/
There are still countries getting worse though sadly
>There are still countries getting worse though sadly
Do you mean https://ourworldindata.org/?
It would be far more constructive to give an actual link to proof than some massive site.
No offense, but that's like me saying, "You want proof that climate change is real? Check the internet," that's not proof, just some nebulous hand-waving. No one would or should believe that.
Their source data for the slight decline [1] in global inequality (which is only hypothetical) is the Worldbank [2], a source that has been heavily criticized for data-rigging [3-5].
The Worldbank also tries to present itself as helping to reduce inequality [6], so they have a bias for showing results.
I am not saying you are wrong or right, but let us keep the conversation quality on this website strong.
[1]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-and-between-countr...
[2]: https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/9592514681766870...
[3]: https://www.reuters.com/business/world-bank-imf-face-long-te...
[4]: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-10-15/the-ge...
[5]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/09/20/theres-de...
[6]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/09/20/theres-de...
This was the article I was referring to:
https://ourworldindata.org/how-has-income-inequality-within-...
> Global inequality is actually decreasing (potentially at the expense of Americans).
The link you have [1] states that "While the steep rise of inequality in the United States is well-known, long-run data on the incomes of the richest shows countries have followed a variety of trajectories."
Also, "high and rising inequality is not an inevitability; it’s something that individual countries can influence".
This does not say anything about a global trend. This support nothing except that counties can influence inequality levels.
[1]: https://ourworldindata.org/how-has-income-inequality-within-...
Why? What are we doing differently now than we used to?
CEO pay has skyrocketed 1,460% since 1978
[0] http://web.archive.org/web/20220412104542/https://www.thegua...
It seems like the common thought is that goods and services that are the most valuable should have the least rewards and incentives for people to produce, when in fact we should incentivize them the most.
For the economically-minded folks out there, there's a difference between profit incentives and total cost. Ideally the economic system would be set up to drive cost of goods down in general.
I'm curious what barriers there are to prevent a company coming in offering insurance at 1% profit and undercutting the competition
What is more important than your life! Hey, you're bleeding out right now! Sign this contract where you pay me everything or we won't treat you.
Capitalism only works if you have the option of shopping around, if there is competition. If you're dying, then the first ambulance to reach you get to charge you whatever they like - and they do. And they can take you to an ER where doctors can charge whatever they like - and they do.
So, hey, let's introduce insurance! Now, the purchase decision is separated from the crisis.
Except the goal of the insurance CEO is to maximize profit. No different than any other business. And they do that by not paying for things. Denied. Denied. Denied. And if they can't deny, then they can insist on cost caps.
And of course, the ambulance and ER doctors don't like caps, and so they all leave the "network", and can charge you what they want. And they do!
And the insurance CEOs don't like that and so they say that if you use an out-of-network doctor then they don't cover you, or they cover you even less.
And they pay Trump and Republicans money to pass a law that says, actually they can sell you insurance that doesn't cover anything (if you read the fine print)!
So then maybe you decide that you need a single payer system like the UK, but then the rich people decide that they don't want to pay for the poor people, so they pay the government officials (or they are the government officials) to cut spending and cut spending and now no doctor wants to be a doctor and they can do quite well in a private system or leaving the country.
I think the fundamental problem with your statement is that there is no such thing as a "properly functioning economy". There is only human greed, tribalism and psychopathy.
Have a great weekend!
Now you have a system where it's basically impossible to start a new insurance company and compete. For the existing insurance companies, the best way to make more money is to pay more for treatments and raise premiums.
It is clearly a not a competitive market.
How?
> If you do, your profits are capped as a percentage by law.
Were they before 2014?
It's very different though, we're talking about either workers under the same company, or citizens within the same country.
Both of which have social contracts binding the people within those organizations.
If you're working for one of these companies, it's your potential comp going to that CEO. You've also contributed to that income with your work at the company. There's more entitlement and reason to feel like the CEO isn't pulling in the weight of it's comp. That you're not getting the same comp to value ratio. That you could do better or just as good a job as them, etc.
Similarly, as a citizen, you might feel they're not producing value to society proportional to their wealth. That they're not paying their fair share, etc.
If some poor person in Africa had also entered in a similar social contract, they'd have similar rights to complain about your big tech salary relative to theirs. And you might be more concerned about it as well, you might be asking for better social welfare or free healthcare for example, to help them out. Or discuss changes to tax brackets. Etc.
I mean not really if you’re a labor market participant. Maybe there’s an argument to be made if you’re talking about profit sharing.
Good for you. I believe that's a privilege one has to be able to throw hands and say "it really is what it is". That's totally alright if one is aware that it's a privilege. I assume no malice over your comment, but to even discourage discussion on wealth inequality is awful.
There are, however actual quality of life issues to be resolved and discussed. Trying to take things from people to make things right has never worked, ever. Including the infamous French Revolution.
Ok, what are we going to do about it? Of course, someone will respond moving the goal posts about how it’s different.
Turns out when you’re the one making too much money it doesn’t matter or count, which is, funny enough, the same thing these health care CEOs would say.