# IS Wall Street the main cause of U.S. income/wealth inequality? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 12, 2016, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wall-street-the-main-cause-of-u-s-income-wealth-inequality/745926 "2016-02-12T13:45:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wall-street-the-main-cause-of-u-s-income-wealth-inequality/745926/101 "2016-02-16T21:48:15Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > For example, as we move more of our lives and activities into the digital realm, the differences between income levels begin to shrink. Elon Musk and Bill Gates interact with the digital world essentially the same way you and I do. There are no special billionaire computers that give them a radically different online experience. The internet and digital technologies are great equalizers. On the internet, the poorest person can have a conversation with a billionaire. Ivy League graduates share the same debate forums as people with high school diplomas from small towns. Excluding those people who have to go to a library to get on-line, the WalMart worker and the billionaire can equally look at web pages advertising expensive European river cruises. Only one of those people can afford to book one. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wall-street-the-main-cause-of-u-s-income-wealth-inequality/745926/102 "2016-02-16T22:10:17Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Since one of the supposed solutions to wealth inequality is government transfers, you need to include them when looking at the statistics. So add in the EITC, food stamps, tax changes to the middle class, and other programs. CBO ([PDF](https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/112th-congress-2011-2012/reports/10-25-HouseholdIncome_0.pdf)) already added most of it up: Real median after-tax household income increased by 35% 1979-2007. That conclusion should be immediately obvious to anyone who steps back and spends five minutes scrutinizing the claim that the middle class has stagnated. The report does also show the rich getting richer. Everyone is getting richer, even the bottom quintile. But it’s faster for the rich. And that brings us back to the OP: IS Wall Street the main cause? ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2016, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wall-street-the-main-cause-of-u-s-income-wealth-inequality/745926/103 "2016-02-17T05:06:11Z")
Just an observation: The SDMB tends to lean left on social issues, but economic discussions resemble comment threads from The Blaze or Breitbart. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2016, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wall-street-the-main-cause-of-u-s-income-wealth-inequality/745926/104 "2016-02-17T06:01:21Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Excluding those people who have to go to a library to get on-line, the WalMart worker and the billionaire can equally look at web pages advertising expensive European river cruises. Only one of those people can afford to book one. Hey, whatever floats your boat. On the other hand, they might also be busy getting an online education, enjoying looking through museums online, participating in public debates, and in general living the kind of public life that the poor were completely closed off from not that long ago. This should at least be acknowledged. What should also be acknowledged is that a lot of the economic growth in the past several decades has been in technologies and economic policies that have benefited the poor greatly. Wal-Mart revolutionized distribution of public goods, which allowed poor people to buy those goods at a lower price, improving their standard of living. It’s globalization that allows a poor person to own a smartphone or a middle class person to have an iPhone and an iPad. Federal Express enabled small businesses to be competitive and opened up whole new markets to small entrepreneurs. Etcy and other internet marketplaces are doing the same. The Waltons and Fred Smith did not become billionaires on the backs of the poor. They became billionaires because they figured out how to bring little extra bits of value to vast numbers of people. Steve Jobs became a billionaire not because he was an exploiter, but because he affected billions of people’s lives in very positive ways. Those people voluntarily gave him every nickel that he earned, and he gave them back extra value in return. His workers were better off working for him, or they wouldn’t have been there. His contractors in China had to build so much capacity to meet the demand of his products that they lifted the entire standard of living of the area significantly. It was pressure from the Korean automakers that forced other car companies to step up their game in quality and features at the low end of the auto price spectrum. The reason there are so many billionaires now is because innovative ideas and great products can reach huge numbers of people in a globalized world. Actors make much more because a movie can make a billion dollars globally instead of just 100 million domestically. iPhones sell in a global market, not just an American market. Companies from around the world compete to subcontract with others, driving down profit margins and forcing innovative responses. Extremists on the right and left talk of globalization as a destructive thing, but it’s really just the next stage in the evolution of the global economy. It’s a great thing for the poor, and an even greater thing for the rich. Maybe that’s just the way a free society evolves optimally - if we’ll let it. On the other hand, let’s look at the areas where the middle class is really getting hammered: The cost and quality of education, the cost of health care, the cost of housing. What do these all have in common? They are the areas where the government exerts the most operational control. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2016, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wall-street-the-main-cause-of-u-s-income-wealth-inequality/745926/105 "2016-02-17T06:15:10Z")
You also need to look at income mobility. If your 80/20 income spread is because your society is composed of the Morlocks and the Eloi, that’s one thing. But if that number has more to do with wealth increasing with age, and therefore you have poor youth and wealthy old people, or it’s largely the effect of choices people make freely, then not so much. A society where young people and old had the same amount of wealth would be very strange, and probably very authoritarian. I would add that if the wealth was generated through free market transactions then you would expect there to be large differences in wealth because humans have large differences in capability and productivity. The 80/20 rule is surprisingly robust: 80% of program bugs are caused by 20% of the programmers. 80% of the value in a corporation is generated by 20% of the people. And about 80% of the wealth is controlled by about 20% of the people. That may just be an emergent property of a well functioning market system. And so long as that system is the most efficient one we have at generating economic growth for everyone, we might want to take just a little bit of care before taking the screwdrivers to it. Because you know, world history is full of cautionary tales in the form of economies that were wrecked because the experts turned the wrong screws. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2016, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wall-street-the-main-cause-of-u-s-income-wealth-inequality/745926/106 "2016-02-17T13:39:19Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Average wages used to increase proportionally with increases in productivity. They no longer do. Now the vast majority of the wealth created by increases in productivity are handed to the providers of capital and very little of it goes to the providers of labor. Increases in productivity in the recent past are not due to improving workers; they are largely due to expert systems, computers, high-tech manufacturing, and so on - not anything that would create higher demand for unskilled workers. Highly skilled employees have experienced wage growth. But highly skilled workers tend to be the rich that the SDMB excoriates. The assumption seems to be that workers deserve raises for every increase in productivity, no matter if that increase came about because of management revamping their processes to be more efficient. That’s not how it works. If Joe Blow can produce $15 an hour in output and asks to be paid $10 an hour, and Bill Blow can also produce $15 an hour in the same job using the same tools and systems but wants $12 an hour, Joe gets hired and Bill doesn’t. Labor costs are subject to the law of supply and demand, and the market is amoral. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2016, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wall-street-the-main-cause-of-u-s-income-wealth-inequality/745926/107 "2016-02-17T18:32:34Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Increases in productivity in the recent past are not due to improving workers; they are largely due to expert systems, computers, high-tech manufacturing, and so on - not anything that would create higher demand for unskilled workers. This has usually been the case with increases in productivity hasn’t it? People had to learn how to work an assembly line, people had to learn how to operate switchboards, people had to learn how to do all sort of things that allowed them to be more productive and they got their share of that increase in productivity. > [@](#): > > Highly skilled employees have experienced wage growth. But highly skilled workers tend to be the rich that the SDMB excoriates. The increase in productivity is not limited to the tiny sliver of people who have been experiencing wage growth above the level of increases in productivity. Only 10% of the wage gains have gone to the bottom 90% of the population. Are you trying to say that 90% of the increase in productivity since the 1970’s have been achieved by the top 10% of wage earners? The assumption seems to be that workers deserve raises for every increase in productivity, no matter if that increase came about because of management revamping their processes to be more efficient. That’s not how it works. If Joe Blow can produce $15 an hour in output and asks to be paid $10 an hour, and Bill Blow can also produce $15 an hour in the same job using the same tools and systems but wants $12 an hour, Joe gets hired and Bill doesn’t. Labor costs are subject to the law of supply and demand, and the market is amoral. Regards, Shodan [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2016, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wall-street-the-main-cause-of-u-s-income-wealth-inequality/745926/108 "2016-02-17T18:38:12Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > The assumption seems to be that workers deserve raises for every increase in productivity, no matter if that increase came about because of management revamping their processes to be more efficient. That’s not how it works. That is how it worked until the 1970’s. Most of the productivity gains were the result of technological advances, better machines and shit like that. Its not like people became significant more efficient workers. > [@](#): > > If Joe Blow can produce $15 an hour in output and asks to be paid $10 an hour, and Bill Blow can also produce $15 an hour in the same job using the same tools and systems but wants $12 an hour, Joe gets hired and Bill doesn’t. > > Labor costs are subject to the law of supply and demand, and the market is amoral. And labor is not simply another factor of production. Labor is not fungible and subject to liquid pricing. What Joe and Bill should do is unionize so that they don’t have to compete with each other on wages in a race to the bottom in order to feed their families. Regards, Shodan [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2016, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wall-street-the-main-cause-of-u-s-income-wealth-inequality/745926/109 "2016-02-17T19:22:42Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > And labor is not simply another factor of production. Labor is not fungible and subject to liquid pricing. Unskilled labor is, in fact, fungible, and labor costs are indeed another factor in production. > [@](#): > > What Joe and Bill should do is unionize so that they don’t have to compete with each other on wages in a race to the bottom in order to feed their families. Or else drive the business that employs them overseas, or to right to work states. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Deeg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deeg/32/2955_2.png) [@Deeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deeg)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2016, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wall-street-the-main-cause-of-u-s-income-wealth-inequality/745926/110 "2016-02-17T20:32:34Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > And labor is not simply another factor of production. Labor is not fungible and subject to liquid pricing. What Joe and Bill should do is unionize so that they don’t have to compete with each other on wages in a race to the bottom in order to feed their families. If this was the normal situation then nobody would ever get paid more than minimum wage. There’s another situation that you don’t consider: three companies that have an opening and Joe and Bill play them off each other to get a better salary. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2016, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wall-street-the-main-cause-of-u-s-income-wealth-inequality/745926/111 "2016-02-17T21:42:11Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Unskilled labor is, in fact, fungible, and labor costs are indeed another factor in production. I said they are not MERELY another factor of production. No other factor of production can vote or have children etc. > [@](#): > > Or else drive the business that employs them overseas, or to right to work states. Unless you get rid of right to work states and impose trade barriers. Those overseas employers don’t get to vote in our elections. Regards, Shodan [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2016, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wall-street-the-main-cause-of-u-s-income-wealth-inequality/745926/112 "2016-02-17T21:42:46Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > …Or else drive the business that employs them overseas, or to right to work states. > > Regards, > Shodan While I agree that increasing the cost of doing business due to regulation can drive away business, I feel like there is a tendency to take this sort of thinking to its logically extreme conclusion. Namely that the only thing that matters is keeping business (specifically, the owners and key financial stakeholders of the business) happy at the cost of the workers. At the end of the day, does it matter if an employee loses his or her job because the company moved out of state, outsourced their workforce to another country or fired the employee for not meeting some obscenely high level of performance expectations? ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2016, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wall-street-the-main-cause-of-u-s-income-wealth-inequality/745926/113 "2016-02-17T21:45:13Z")
> [@Deeg](#): > > If this was the normal situation then nobody would ever get paid more than minimum wage. There’s another situation that you don’t consider: three companies that have an opening and Joe and Bill play them off each other to get a better salary. Sure, that could happen but historically that has not been the case for the bulk of our labor force. Historically, without the labor movement, the bulk of our labor force (including children) worked in relatively dangerous conditions for subsistence wages for 60 or 70 hours a week. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2016, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wall-street-the-main-cause-of-u-s-income-wealth-inequality/745926/114 "2016-02-17T21:56:38Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > While I agree that increasing the cost of doing business due to regulation can drive away business, I feel like there is a tendency to take this sort of thinking to its logically extreme conclusion. Namely that the only thing that matters is keeping business (specifically, the owners and key financial stakeholders of the business) happy at the cost of the workers. > > At the end of the day, does it matter if an employee loses his or her job because the company moved out of state, outsourced their workforce to another country or fired the employee for not meeting some obscenely high level of performance expectations? So you’re assuming that it has to be one or the other? That policies that keep ‘business’ happy must come at the expense of the workers? Where we should be focusing our reform efforts should be crony capitalists and rules that tend to limit competition and enrich specific business owners at the expense of workers and other businesses. That means eliminating corporate subsidies, purging the federal register of rules and regulations that reward specific businesses or industries, creating a simpler tax system, etc. But what it means most of all is shrinking the power of the federal government in the domestic economy, because power corrupts. I don’t care how many ‘good government’ rules you try to put in place, so long as 535 people and a President have the power to shift billions or trillions of dollars from one hand to another, the process will be corrupted. So long as you have regulations that attempt to micro-manage industries, you will need the cooperation of industry insiders to draft them, and that will open the door to regulatory capture. Instead of recognizing that some organizations and entities are ‘too big to fail’ and therefore heavily regulate them or plan to bail them out, it would be much better to make the rule very clear - no company is too big to fail, and there will be no bailouts, period. Make sure the markets understand this and that there will be no exceptions, so they price the exposed risk and people can make better decisions. Keep markets free, use government to go after monopoly power and other market failures, and stop otherwise meddling to ‘improve’ the economy. Government industrial policy has failed every time it has been tried. Let’s not have to re-learn that lesson. That means no government-imposed ‘green economy’ paid for with subsidies, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Deeg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deeg/32/2955_2.png) [@Deeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deeg)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2016, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wall-street-the-main-cause-of-u-s-income-wealth-inequality/745926/115 "2016-02-17T23:54:28Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Sure, that could happen but historically that has not been the case for the bulk of our labor force. Historically, without the labor movement, the bulk of our labor force (including children) worked in relatively dangerous conditions for subsistence wages for 60 or 70 hours a week. Ok, 100 years ago that might have happened but it no longer does (in the US) and we’re trying to create policies to solve today’s problems. Every job that pays more than minimum wage (and a vast majority do) is proof that the American job market is not a race to the bottom. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2016, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wall-street-the-main-cause-of-u-s-income-wealth-inequality/745926/116 "2016-02-18T03:40:29Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > But what it means most of all is shrinking the power of the federal government in the domestic economy, because power corrupts. I don’t care how many ‘good government’ rules you try to put in place, so long as 535 people and a President have the power to shift billions or trillions of dollars from one hand to another, the process will be corrupted. So long as you have regulations that attempt to micro-manage industries, you will need the cooperation of industry insiders to draft them, and that will open the door to regulatory capture. > > Instead of recognizing that some organizations and entities are ‘too big to fail’ and therefore heavily regulate them or plan to bail them out, it would be much better to make the rule very clear - no company is too big to fail, and there will be no bailouts, period. Make sure the markets understand this and that there will be no exceptions, so they price the exposed risk and people can make better decisions. > > Keep markets free, use government to go after monopoly power and other market failures, and stop otherwise meddling to ‘improve’ the economy. Government industrial policy has failed every time it has been tried. Let’s not have to re-learn that lesson. That means no government-imposed ‘green economy’ paid for with subsidies, etc. That’s a bit simplistic (and inaccurate) to say that “government industrial policy has failed every time it has been tried”. And why is it ok to use government to go after monopoly power and other market failures but not regulate those industries? How does one even do that without government regulation and oversight? The fact of the matter is that financial services companies have not shown themselves willing to adequately price risk without external prompting. And often the instruments being traded are too complex for the markets to adequately understand them. This is what led to the 2008 financial crisis. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2016, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wall-street-the-main-cause-of-u-s-income-wealth-inequality/745926/117 "2016-02-18T15:17:55Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > CBO ([PDF](https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/112th-congress-2011-2012/reports/10-25-HouseholdIncome_0.pdf)) already added most of it up … it’s faster for the rich. And that brings us back to the OP: IS Wall Street the main cause? > [@Shodan](#): > > Increases in productivity in the recent past are not due to improving workers; they are largely due to expert systems, computers, high-tech manufacturing, and so on - not anything that would create higher demand for unskilled workers. > > Highly skilled employees have experienced wage growth. … > > … Labor costs are subject to the law of supply and demand, and the market is amoral. That CBO report is very useful, thank you for the link. So from that report, which specifically addresses income and not wealth (again, overlapping but different concepts) there has indeed been > [@](#): > > a rapid rise in income for the highest-income households, sluggish income growth for the middle 60 percent of the population, and an even smaller increase in after-tax income for the 20 percent of the population with the lowest income. Average real after-tax household income for the 1 percent of the population with the highest income grew by 275 percent between 1979 and 2007 … For other households in the highest-income quintile (the 81st through 99th percentiles), average after-tax income grew by 65 percent … For the 60 percent of the population in the middle of the income scale (the 21st through 80th percentiles), average after-tax household income grew 37 percent between 1979 and 2007 … in the lowest income quintile (the 1st through 20th percentiles) was 18 percent higher in 2007 than in 1979. After-tax income for that quintile dropped sharply during the 1980 and 1981– 1982 recessions; by 1983, that income was 15 percent lower than it had been in 1979, and it did not rebound to its 1979 level until 1995, some 16 years later. Average after-tax income for the lowest income quintile peaked in 1999, fell through 2003, and then began to rise again in 2004, … So rising waters have indeed raised all boats, just the some boats very little and some boats by a very very great deal. The CBO goes on to discuss the why. And yes some is the supply/demand for highly educated and skilled workers vs the supply/demand of unskilled workers, especially in a global context. There are many other factors discussed, for example: > [@](#): > > even accounting for the education and skills of the workforce, the compensation differential between the financial sector and the rest of the economy appears inexplicably large from 1990 onward. Here is another interesting finding > [@](#): > > shifts in the distribution of government transfer payments and federal taxes also contributed to the increase in after-tax income inequality … The redistributive effect of transfers and federal taxes was smaller in 2007 than in 1979 So supply/demand for skilled workers, and inexplicable increases specifically in the financial sector, and a less progressive tax system than previously existed, all have contributed to dramatically increased income inequality. And of course wealth inequality is [income inequality amplified manifold](http://fortune.com/2014/10/31/inequality-wealth-income-us/).The concentration of wealth within the top 0.1% is approached levels not seen since just before the Great Depression. [Another source.](http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/12/09/the-american-middle-class-is-losing-ground/) > [@Pew Research](#): > > only upper-income families realized notable gains in wealth over the span of 30 years from 1983 to 2013 (the period for which data on wealth are available). … When all is said and done, upper-income families, which had three times as much wealth as middle-income families in 1983, had seven times as much in 2013. You can see it graphically [here](http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-09-10/the-top-0-01-another-wealth-gap-matters-more), broken down in the very top percentiles. Even the top 1.0 to 0.5% has been flat on wealth. The increase has been only very dramatic for the top 0.01% > [@](#): > > While the merely rich haven’t seen their share of society’s wealth increase since 2000, the super-rich have seen their slice of the pie soar. Despite having (relatively very modest) income growth the middle class has dramatically decreasing wealth as they have to spend more to be competitive with education and skills in the marketplace and thereby also accumulate more debt. And of course have also lost wealth that was contained in the value of their homes. I posit that income inequality is, as suggested in the Fortune article, bad for business and bad for society (even if income has slightly increased for all), but that the even more, the greater degree of wealth inequality is even worse. The important part of _wealth_ is not having stuff, or numbers in an account; the important part about wealth is that wealth is power. And concentrated power tends work towards greater concentration. It is that increasing _power gap_ between the very top, that 0.1%, especially top 0.01%, that is dramatically accumulating the power, and everyone else, that threatens the long term well being of all. I remain unsure however of the best approaches to the issue. I fear simplistic answers that end up making things worse. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2016, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wall-street-the-main-cause-of-u-s-income-wealth-inequality/745926/118 "2016-02-18T15:49:16Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > I remain unsure however of the best approaches to the issue. I fear simplistic answers that end up making things worse. No no, you’re doing it wrong. Simplistic answers and shit-slinging until **tomndebb** and **Jonathan Chance** have to descend from the Mod Dimension (astride wingéd goats) to spank us. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2016, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wall-street-the-main-cause-of-u-s-income-wealth-inequality/745926/119 "2016-02-18T18:45:54Z")
> [@Deeg](#): > > Ok, 100 years ago that might have happened but it no longer does (in the US) and we’re trying to create policies to solve today’s problems. Every job that pays more than minimum wage (and a vast majority do) is proof that the American job market is not a race to the bottom. YOu don’t have to be at rock bottom for there to be a race to the bottom. there is an international corporate tax race to the bottom. Does that mean that the existence of a positive corporate tax rate means that there is no race to the bottom? ---
**Author:** ![Deeg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deeg/32/2955_2.png) [@Deeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deeg)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2016, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wall-street-the-main-cause-of-u-s-income-wealth-inequality/745926/120 "2016-02-18T18:54:08Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > YOu don’t have to be at rock bottom for there to be a race to the bottom. there is an international corporate tax race to the bottom. Does that mean that the existence of a positive corporate tax rate means that there is no race to the bottom? The vast majority of wages/salaries are above MW. What other proof could you need that we’re not in a race to the bottom? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wall-street-the-main-cause-of-u-s-income-wealth-inequality/745926.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wall-street-the-main-cause-of-u-s-income-wealth-inequality/745926.md?page=7)