Conservative Dopers convince me with your best-case plans

Great Debates
21

I don’t have a problem with income inequality, but I think it is a BIG problem that for the middle class, income growth has been pretty stagnant for the past several decades, while the wealthiest have seen their incomes grow significantly (illustrated by this link).

For the first half or so of the last 100 years, middle class and wealthy incomes increased at close to the same rate. But for the last 50 years, middle class income has not increased much, while wealthy incomes have increased by more than they did previously.

For conservatives-

a) is this a problem?

b) if so, how would you fix it?

22

I think the income inequality issue isn’t really the core of the problem, not precisely, and will be a hard sell to conservatives.

How about this, as a replacement question :

Entrepreneurs and economists usually agree that a robust middle class is greatly beneficial (and some would argue, essential) for a healthy economy. This is because the middle class is the most reliable driver of demand.

The middle class in America is shrinking. Home ownership is becoming less common. Many middle class persons are ‘downwardly mobile’ as their jobs are outsourced, as companies slash payroll, et cetera.

What is the Republican solution to the vanishing middle class?

23

This is precisely the issue. Efforts to distract from the question by claiming jealousy, or by suggesting that the concern is why it is unfair for Shodan to earn less than his neighbor are either intentional dodges, or are born of ignorance.

I would also add that America is not only geography. It is not just a set of laws. It is a set of aspirations and values. Historically, the American Dream has represented something universal.

The New York Times recently ran a figure that depicted changes in income and wealth disparities, along with changes in productivity. These were set against changes in two-earner households and household debt. See http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/09/04/opinion/04reich-graphic.html?ref=Sunday.

I agree that there is no evidence for causality in that figure. However, for me the connection is evident. When I was a kid, people talked about, and worried about, latchkey kids. Do you remember the term “latchkey kids”? It used to be unusual for children to return to empty households at the end of the school day. Now it is normative.

Paul Krugman makes a compelling argument in “The Conscience of a Liberal” that the dramatic changes in income disparity since the 50’s have had a significant influence on the quality of life, economic stability, and political power of the American middle class.

Ironically, it is conservatives who express the greatest concern about the family values of the American middle class. Yet, they appear at ease with economic conditions that require moms and dads to work, to have latchkey kids, to be insecure in terms of employment and unstable economically, and to stagnate in terms of mobility and power. I wonder what it is that conservatives do want to maintain about American family values?

For me, I do think that fundamentally, these changes, if they are to persist, will mean that America is no longer America.

24

You know business don’t usually just fire people on a whim, and even if they did I’m not sure how that would result in increased share prices or bonuses. If you need to replace those employees at some point, it’s going to cost you a bundle in rehiring, retraining, loss of experience, loss of team cohesion, etc. If Google announced tomorrow they were firing half their workforce to cut labor costs, and they were going to take that money and distribute it in bonuses to the senior management, what do you think would happen to their share price?

If, on the other hand, you don’t need to rehire them then maybe firing them was the right thing to do. I find the concept that I am obligated to hire or retain employees to the detriment of my business a baffling one. Are my employees obligated to work for me if they don’t like their jobs or a better paying one comes along? The idea that firing 20 people is okay but firing 2000 isn’t is also doesn’t make much sense to me, but that’s enough questions for one post I guess.

25

See post #9.

26

I did. I disagree. I believe this difference is semantic in nature. Regardless, I believe that income and wealth disparities negatively affect the bulk of American families, and their ability to achieve the aspirational goals I associate with the American dream.

27

Is there a term for something for an action that, on an invididual basis, is reasonable, rational and benefits any individual performing this action, but is detrimental to society as a whole if all individuals perform this action? Maybe something akin to the ‘tragedy of the commons’?

28

Actually, it seems to have trended upwardsfor the most part. And the idea that the middle class is shrinking depends in large part on how you define middle class.

And part of the reason the middle class is shrinking is people moving up into the upper classes.

Regards,
Shodan

29

Is it possible we could get back on topic a bit, we can do the income inequality debate all day, I’m looking for what conservatives would like to see happen.

30

My apologies, Acid Lamp. I will reply to Shodan in the thread on income disparities that Dr. Butts has opened.

31

I’m not seeing it. Why is it ethical to lay off one person for economic gain but not 100? Shouldn’t it be unethical in both cases, but just worse in the latter case?

n.b.: I don’t think it’s unethical in either case. I just don’t understand how you can construct an objective argument that, below some number of people affected it’s ethical.

32

They pollute, and in their attempts to slash costs they “underpay/offshore jobs/etc”.
I would argue, as an admitted liberal, that pollution is a de facto evil, and that in our consumer-driven economy, the “underpaying” of the middle and lower classes is not sustainable. An unremitting focus on nothing but the immediate bottom line is frequently unwise in the long term (we could ask Enron about that, if they were still here…)
Sorry if this is a sidetracking of the OP.

33

nm, missed the call to get back on target.

34

I am in general painfully moderate on most stances. I have some left views, I have some right views. But, based on talking with my arch-conservative in-laws, and my own knowledge, I will see how right I can get.

Some environmental laws are good, as we have learned from just how bad things got back in first half of the last century. However, restrictions that stifle business, or are feel-good measures with no actual benefit, such as to address the so called “global warming” myth are not needed. (note: I’m not saying that’s my viewpoint. Just the mainstream republican view on the issue)

While the subject has been requested to be debated elsewhere, I will address the substance of it by replying thusly: if you don’t like how much you are making, pull yourself up by your own bootstraps and make more. Don’t want crippling college debt? Go to trade school, or work 2 jobs, don’t take as much in student loans. Whining that there are no jobs is whining, there are plenty of jobs, you just don’t want to graduate college and then go work for minimum wage. Well, maybe you should. Join a company, and work your way up. Hard work will fix anything.

Abolish or highly restrict the teachers unions, so that our schools can go back to teaching and stop being PC Cuddle Factories. The working world won’t care about your fragile ego, so neither should school. Also, revamp trade schools. We need more men working with their hands to keep this country great.

The market will fix this. Businesses that cannot cover their employee’s needs will fail and be replaced by businesses that can. Also, pushing freeloaders off of the welfare system will assist in this endeavor.
IF I am wrong on any off these points, I assume that I will be “corrected” by my more conservative boardmates.

35

With respect to the first question, here is an answer from someone who considers himself a libertarian:

I would prefer to see air and water pollution handled on the basis of litigation rather than on the basis of legislation and regulation. The litigation could be handled similarly to a class action lawsuit, on this basis: the air belongs to everyone (or no-one), and therefore no-one has a right to pollute it. You, company X, are demonstrably polluting the air. You owe us damages, compensatory and punitive.

That is, the government wants to tell you that you have to put air scrubbers on your smokestack that meet certain standards; businesses claim this is an onerous cost, and environmentalists complain that the standards are not strict enough. A rich company can afford the fines, or maybe they’re allowed to do something like trade carbon credits. But in all this, there is no thought to the actual immediate victims of pollution. Government concern seems to be limited to whether regulations were followed, and whether the regulations should be changed, which is always a big political football.

Litigation would focus on where the actual damage is. If I, as a defendant, can prove that my 1 part per trillion of arsenic released into the air could never harm anyone, then I should be immune from litigation on that point. If I, as a litigant, can make a reasonable case that your pollution caused my son’s cancer, then I should get large damages from you, as well as the continued threat of additional damages if you continue. If all I can prove is that your pollution is contributing to a decreased quality of life, but in some less dramatic way, the damages should still be forthcoming but on a smaller scale.

Note how different the history of American industry would have been if this had been the norm; we would already be green, because that’s where the dollars would be (in inventing non-polluting solutions, and in avoiding big damages).

I admit I don’t have a good idea to get from where we actually are, to where the litigation approach is the main one. I suspect there are currently many bars to such litigation, so we could start by reducing those bars.
Roddy

36

It is child-like how you’re unable to conceive of any situation that requires nuance.

No one is proposing that every single person who out-earns anyone else has acted unjustly. Do you really feel that this is a response to anything anyone in this thread thinks? You exclude the possibility that one person can out-earn others by unethical means, but then throw out the assumption that the other side thinks every person who does so must be out-earning others by unethical means.

And you are apparently seriously asking if it’s unjust for someone to earn more because they’re a doctor. I mean, seriously, who are you addressing here? Do you think these socialist communist libruls on the SDMB seriously think that everyone from homeless bum to janitor to doctor should make the exact same pay? Because that seems to be what you’re responding to.

Because it’s obviously easier to respond to these childish and ludicrous simple straw men than to tackle the real nuanced issue - that despite massive gains in productivity, the actual level of income earned by everyone other than those at the top has remained flat, and that this may be due to a systemic bias, and that this may be detrimental to the long term health of the economy and the net wealth of the United States.

But why address this issue when you can say “REALLY? YOU THINK DOCTORS SHOULDN’T MAKE MORE THAN JANITORS?!??”

37

On the subject of education, this is hugely a matter of definition. How do you define quality and depth of education?

I think our current system is a mess. There is little or no meaningful competition in education below the level of college, and so you get few incentives to produce good education (however you define that).

If you want to go so far as to mandate education through tax funding (not a libertarian approach, but I could live with it) then do away with public schools as such, and dole out the money as vouchers, equally to every child, which can only be spent on education. I suppose there would have to be standards and some kind of oversight, because the vultures for free money would be out for whatever they could get (I’m talking fake schools, which do a minimum of education and give a kickback to the parents, or something like that). But there could at least be some competition among different methods and theories of education, and gradually the best ones would become more popular and more profitable. Yes, rich people will be able to supplement the vouchers to get their kids into more expensive or more exclusive schools; they can already do that. Poor people should be able to at least have a shot at a decent education, which a lot of them now don’t.

As for colleges and universities, I really don’t understand why these expenses are rising so much more rapidly than the overall cost of living. This may not be strictly an economic policy issue. In any case, I think we need to re-examine our notion that the only people who don’t get a college degree are blue-collar mechanics and factory workers. There are lots of very good jobs where one can learn the necessary from what amounts to a trade school, even a white collar trade school. And people could teach themselves a lot of what is taught in liberal arts courses, if they had a mind to do so, without sitting in a $20K/year classroom. Maybe if there was less insistence on everyone going to college, colleges would have to compete more and offer better value for their services.

Again, this is not really a policy solution. And I recognize that many people regard college as the only opportunity in a person’s life to learn those things (like literature or basic science) that make them well-rounded but that don’t contribute directly to their career or income. That may be another assumption that we need to challenge as a culture. There’s no real reason why people couldn’t do those things instead of watching TV or playing video games.
Roddy

38

Injustice? That was Mitt Romney’s business plan!

39

Personal digs like this don’t belong in Great Debates.

40

Social dilemma. The Tragedy of the commons is one form, and the one you are describing.