I think Shodan’s point is that, absent context, as he says if we get given $1000 it’s silly to complain if your neighbour gets $10,000, so long as that keeps you within your means. If you have what you want, it doesn’t matter if someone else has much more than that.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with real wages for the rich rising while real wages for the rest of us haven’t. Where the wrong part could come in is when you start bringing in devaluation of currency, questions of worthiness by individual and not in comparison, tax schemes, the comparative effects on worth, and so on. I’m not sure to what extent **Shodan **considers liberals (or whomever) to be annoyed at income disparity simply because of the disparity, but apparently enough to make the post.
Anyway, I think I would tend to agree with olivesmarch4th. The point so far as “liberal” programs go isn’t to give everyone everything they want. It’s to provide a) a basic level of “chance” in life and b) some method to try and prevent drain on the coffers, as unintuitive as that may sound. Income disparity is, in pretty much anything but an utterly communist society, inevitable and not necessarily bad. If nothing else, it can be something to aspire to, and it can be a just reward for appropriate work. But it can also be, not a problem in and of itself, but a sign of other problems.
And everything that followed was me advancing a hypothetical in an effort to suss out what you were trying to say. I was not saying “Liberals do X”, I was asking “Are you saying that Liberals do X”, because before I can respond to your claims, I’d like to ascertain what precisely those claims are, which was (and still is) unclear to me beyond some vague notion of “liberals are bad”, or something.
Heh, no… you don’t get to imply X, have someone ask you if you meant X, then accuse them of bringing up X in the first place. Or at least you don’t get to do it without being called on it. That’s Weasel Tactics 101.
Fine, I will read your link, analyze it and respond accordingly.
Well, prior to your offer of a working definition of “liberal”, you, in fact, did. I’m not personally inclined to jump to the defense of an undefined group that in fact may not actually exist, i.e. whatever a “liberal” is to you. As I wrote, though, I’ll read your link and use that as the basis for further commentary in future posts, as well as future threads, possibly.
Oh, I’m afraid I have to call bullshit on this, in light of the original post where you wrote:
Coupled with the thread title (“Liberal Programs Deserve Blame for Income Inequality”), are you now claiming that you didn’t actually say liberals (mainstream or otherwise) are the ones deserving of blame, or the ones bemoaning? This is amateurish. It’s akin to starting a thread with:
…and then claiming innocence because you never actually said black people are murderers - you just strongly implied it, with the expectation of a knee-jerk response that you can then characterize as a strawman, because the response will be to what you obviously intended instead of what you actually wrote. Well, perhaps I was being rather uncooperative in my #2 post, where I tried to determine exactly what it was you were implying, rather than simply react to what you were obviously implying.
Is this your initial question (which is actually a compound question, with two uses of “or” in there):
Before I tackle this, can you clarify who it is that is allegedly bemoaning the level in income inequality? American liberals? I suppose there must be somebody somewhere would would “jump for joy” with across-the-board consistent rises in income. I’m not sure what qualifications that person would have to discuss economic issues, but okay… I’ll concede for the sake of argument the existence of someone who would jump for joy or bemoan or claim as you suggest. I’m just unclear that these are “liberal” positions, held by large numbers of Americans on the leftish side of your country’s political spectrum. They sound more like “ignorant of both macro- and micro-economic principles” positions, and those are common all across the spectrum.
Heh, I waited until I finished the above post before clicking on OMG’s “American Liberal” link. I was amused that it led to the wiki page “Liberalism in the United States”. Just for laughs, here’s the first paragraph, as it stands at the writing of this post:
I don’t see anything in that paragraph (or indeed anywhere in the entire article) about bemoaning the income levels of the rich or wanting to equalize income levels for everyone. I can only assume that the people OMG is asking about in his OP who do such things are in fact not American liberals, by the definition he himself has provided.
With all due respect, I feel like this is slipping into pedantic territory. It’s clear that the whole point of OMGs thread is that Great Society programs are allegedly exacerbating wealth inequality. And it’s very true that many liberals bemoan wealth inequality (I am one of them.) So he is trying to take liberals [who bemoan wealth inequality] to task for supporting programs that seem to do the opposite of their stated intentions.
Now, whether or not these programs do, in fact, exacerbate wealth inequality is another matter entirely.
Unless he explicitly says that’s his point, I see no reason to assume so.
Is that your point, OMG?
His OP and several follow-up posts explicitly say “income inequality” numerous times. I can’t find any occasion in this thread where he said “wealth inequality.”
I know what you said. You set up four criteria, none of which were mentioned by me, then proceeded to pick the third one as the one liberals would go for. I’m perfectly fine with that, but don’t try hiding behind the “Well, I wasn’t really making an argument. Rather, I was trying to figure out what you were trying to say!” rebuttal. Because it isn’t much of one.
If you can look at my OP and find a positive claim of anything (i.e., “Liberals believe…”), I will give you an e-cookie. We’ve done this dance enough times already, and I’m not akin to playing it this time. You can read and you can see the questions laid out to you. As others had no problem with the question, it makes me wonder why you-- seemingly always-- do.
Riiight. Here, I will help you out. Go to the OP, look at the link contained therein and click on it. I’m guessing you didn’t realize that the title of the thread just so happened to be the title of the linked to article. Of course, that could have just been a coincidence. Maybe. Or maybe it wasn’t. But anyway, the only thing “implied” was in the title of the thread, which just so happened to be the title of the article, which you haven’t taken issue with. Yet, anyway. But moving on.
Riiight. Okay. Let’s try this again.
What I actually wrote was two questions. What was, as you want to insist, implied was that liberal policies lead to income inequality. You’ve yet to attempt to answer the questions and the latter contention you haven’t contested. So what are you doing again? Seems like you’re just wasting time.
Post #18
(And did you really ask for proof of liberals in the U.S. becoming the level of income inequality?)
No, I’m not going to change my username. I was responding to your post about taxing the rich to counteract the effects of Federal programs for the elderly and instituting a means tested in order to solve income inequality in the U.S.. That wasn’t me putting forth a serious proposal, but rather poking fun at what you said, as what you said would not solve income inequality in the U.S. (or even make it close to the levels of, say, Europe) unless you were going to tax away a large portion of the rich’s income.
You said what you said, and I quoted it. And I was not talking about “solving” income inequality. I was talking about addressing the specific point that we now transfer more money to the elderly than we did in the past.
No, I asked you if my four criteria (and the surrounding sentences) were a clear restatement of your OP and its implied commentary on liberals, which I found to be murky at best.
Well, that does happen to be a precise description of my post #2 - I was making no rebuttals or arguments, merely trying to understand your argument by, hopefully, rephrasing it in a way that was more clear.
I can’t imagine how post #2 could be accurately said to contain arguments or rebuttals, in any case. What arguments or rebuttals are you seeing?
My point, expressed in more recent posts, is this is disingenuous on your part. You use the word “liberal” disparagingly in your thread title, the word “liberal” is used dispragingly in the text you quoted, and yet, somehow, your questions are not actually about liberals, or so you claim.
I am unfooled. Sorry.
Becasue I decline the trap of arguing against what you merely imply and not actually state.
Already did. I’d kinda like to ask the author to define “liberal”, as I asked you. He sure attirubtes a lot of fretting and fussing to “liberals”. I’m mildly curious if he has a clear image in mind of what a liberal is, or it’s just some amorphous leftist blob of killjoy. And, again, I’d ask that if Canada is a relatively liberal (i.e leftist)country compared to the U.S., should we have more income equality here, or at least more of the problems he attributes to liberal actions and beliefs.
Or maybe he doesn’t mean liberal and leftist are synonymous. I dunno, he doesn’t define his terms. I gather his intended audience knows what he means.
Hey, you wrote it out, not as “Hey, this guy says Liberal Programs Deserve…” but as a flat statement. Should we have assumed you don’t personally believe it, support it, endorse it, argue it? You’re grasping at straws, I think.
I invite you next time, if you are using a title written by someone else that you aren’t intending to actually argue, to at least put it in quotes.
Are you suggesting I should be debating the points in the linked article, rather than your interpreation of it? If so (and please note, I’m asking “If so”), I invite you to note that author of the article is not a member here (as far as I know), so I can’t really debate him, but you’re here, along with your interpreations of his article.
If I must venture an opinion on the article itself, I find it to be a not-particularly-well-written or -supported mishmash. The author attributes a lot of emotions to his ill-defined “liberal” subjects, typically fear and worry and such. There’s nothing in it I recognize in myself, and theoretically as a moderate Canadian, I am (or at least I thought I’d be) somewhere on the “liberal” spectrum as the Americans generally use the term.
If anything, the author cuts short before reaching the obvious (to me, anyway) conclusion: an upper-income tax hike is warranted.
I’m having trouble parsing this paragraph. Is your actual key question “do liberal policies lead to income inequality?” If it is, I’d be happy to take a shot at answering it. Up to now, I haven’t avoided answering any of your questions - I’ve simply tried to figure out what are your questions, and what are the meanings of the terms used in your questions. In this case, for example, I’d specifically ask if “liberal policies” mean the Great Society and related programs put forth by LBJ and later presidents. If so, it sets the scope of the question in a useful way.
I’m quite certain that is not unreasonable to request that questions be expressed as clearly as possible before tackling them.
And besides, this is the SDMB. It’s a waste of time by definition.
I assume the bolded word was meant to be “bemoaning.” And, yes, I was asking about that. I’m sure there are plenty of artists and writers and pundits and even some officials who do indeed bemoan income inequality, or at least comment nonmoaningly that it’s a problem that should be addressed, but the author of the article suggests that it’s not a mere handful of liberals, but a large bloc of politically powerful liberals (and their supporting voters) who have managed to effect actual change in the U.S. over the last 50 years, change that is now creating the very problems it was meant to address.
Thing is, the author has envisioned a moaning liberal and assumed that individual is typical of all liberals, not leaving any real room for someone who likes capitalism, who likes the idea of wealth, and yet has some misgivings that financial manipulation and government handouts and tax breaks are allowing someone who has $3 billion to get to $4 billion, while millions of Americans are without health insurance. Some very valid concerns are being hidden behind a hypothetically huge number of stereotypical liberals, which is why I would ask the author (as I asked you) to define what a “liberal” is. I figure if the definition is some stereotypical Ann Coulter-ish bugaboo (i.e. a liberal is someone who attends a middle-school track meet and demands all the first-place winners get detention for hurting the feelings of the students they’ve defeated), then the number of Americans who actually meet this stereotype is so small that they have no appreciable political influence, or if the definition is fairly broad (i.e. a liberal is someone who belongs to a union and votes Democrat) then generalizations about “bemoaning” are clearly false.
Anyway, what precisely is/are the question(s) you started this thread to ask? If you ask them in a direct manner, I’ll give them a shot. Looking at your more recent posts, I’m not sure who is advocating that income inequality be “solved” (if I had to guess, I’d say… “liberals” ?). Rather, the more useful question can be if the rich should more heavily taxed so government can cover the current and future expenses of social programs and entitlements and such.
But if we’re to address income inequality as a problem in and of itself, I’d suggest that the reason it is a potential problem is straightforward:
It leads to a concentration of wealth in fewer hands, creating an ultra-rich cohort.
This cohort, naturally enough, will have disproportionate political influence. They can, after all, afford to fund political campaigns on a large scale.
This cohort, naturally enough, will seek legislative advantages to protect its wealth and interests. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, any American who donates to a political campagn or even votes for a particular candidate is doing so with their own interests in mind. The ultrawealthy cohort, though, is able to do so in gross disproportion to their numbers, compared to the overall population.
We can see this happening (and in fact have seen it happening for decades) already in American politics - corporations getting favourable legislation and tax breaks on a scale the vast majority of individual Americans cannot. For the financial sector especially (but by no means uniquely), legislation that does away with regulation can be especially destructive to the country as a whole.
So, yes, I can see income inequality being a problem (or more accurately, the early warning sign of the larger problem of wealth and power concentration). I don’t know if I am what the author of the article, let along OMG, thinks of as a “liberal”, though.
Where did I make an argument. I do believe I asked a question. Two, in fact.
You might want to try this again. I said I made no positive claims about liberals in my post, not that my questions weren’t directed towards liberals.
Well, you usually like to argue against things I don’t type out, so I guess that’d be a step up for you, all things considered.
And I directed you to Wikipedia simply because I don’t feel like getting involved in a thoroughly useless debate on political labels and what you must do be labeled as each.
…Oh, and like that guy from the South Park movie said, “Fuck Canada!”.
(Okay, not really. I’m sure it’s a lovely country when it’s not snowing.)
Is it necessary to define a liberal and a conservative in every started thread? Because, if it is, there are, maybe, a hundred or so threads I would like to direct you towards, as you are needed to tell people that they need to define what a conservative is.
…Oh, and it’s a she.
You can debate the whole article if you wish. Can’t say I’ll pay attention, though.
An upper income tax-hike to do… what?
If a sentence ends in a question mark or a interrobang, it’s safe to say it’s a question.
Well, seeing as how you’re the only one who didn’t seem to understand them, I think the problem may be on your end.
Maybe so, but you waste more time than need be.
So you’re asking the writer of the article to conform to a standard which liberal writers, bloggers and posters on this forum aren’t held to? lolwut?
/onlyreadthefirstsentence
[QUOTE=Me]
The first, asked in the article (I’m sure I’ve asked the same thing elsewhere), is whether not those who bemoan the level of income inequality in the U.S. would jump for joy if, on a year to year basis, everyone’s income increased by the same percentage? Or would they bemoan the fact that the rich would be making comparatively more than the poor even given the same percent increases in their income level? Or would they claim that everyone should make the same amount of money?
The second is whether or not those “Great Society” programs should be done away with, since they just add to the income equality gap? Really, I’m not expecting a serious answer to that question, for obvious reasons, but here’s hoping.
[/quote]
Post #18.
No, not really, since this thread has nothing to do with the solvency of entitlement programs. Though I can see you wish it were.
Interesting, but what’s that got to do with my OP? You’re kind of wasting your time writing huge paragraphs that don’t really have anything to do with the thread. However, if you’re a masochist like that, then who am I to stop you?
Let me get this straight. The OP quotes the following: “The post-liberalization successes of India and China have convinced even ardent liberals that markets play a crucial role in raising productivity and relieving scarcity, vastly expanding the proverbial social pie so that everyone has more to go around.” right at the beginning.
So the OMGABC is having another hissy-fit about the Democrats and is presenting the policies of the People’s Republic of China as a preferable alternative?
What next? Will we see OMGABC praising Ho Chi Minh as a conservative icon for the way he stood up to the Johnson administration?
[QUOTE=Omg a Black Conservative]
The first, asked in the article (I’m sure I’ve asked the same thing elsewhere), is whether not those who bemoan the level of income inequality in the U.S. would jump for joy if, on a year to year basis, everyone’s income increased by the same percentage? Or would they bemoan the fact that the rich would be making comparatively more than the poor even given the same percent increases in their income level? Or would they claim that everyone should make the same amount of money?
The second is whether or not those “Great Society” programs should be done away with, since they just add to the income equality gap? Really, I’m not expecting a serious answer to that question, for obvious reasons, but here’s hoping.
[/QUOTE]
“First”: The experiment about which you inquire was already performed during the 1940-1980 era. Few bemoaned income inequality in general (race- and gender-based inequalities were issues); there was much “Jumping for joy” though it was often late at night and due to thrills of sex, rather than the thrills of rising income.
“Second”: False premise; false conclusion; serious; obvious. Hope this helps.
OP mentions China and India, but in context these are inapplicable, for obvious reasons.
Asked and answered now; Mods can close the thread.
If I may ask, what were you reading? The point was that income inequality isn’t necessarily a bad thing and that you can see disparities in income which have followed economic booms in China and India; not that Ho Chi Minh is a bastion of conservatism or whatever.
(In case you’re wondering, the quoted was part of a larger quote, but the mod decided to edit out the important parts because it was “too long”. Just to clarify if you’re confused.)
What experiment? I merely asked that, if everyone’s incomes increased by the same percentage amount from year to year, if this would be an acceptable level of income inequality for liberals? For example, let’s assume I’m rich and you’re poor. I have $100 and you have $10. Together we both have $110. If, next year, we both increase our income by 10%, I’ll have $110, you’ll have $11 and together we have $121. While we’re both better off this year, I’m even more better off than you, as now I have $99 more than you while, last year, I had $90 more.
I’m curious; how do you consider it a false premise?
Well, no. The full quote, before it was butchered, was:
It is not about income redistribution in the form of, “take $10 from Shodan and give it to Whack-a-Mole.”
It is about leveling the playing field.
And:
So, Americans are more productive but they are not gaining the benefits of that.
If you made Widgets and I asked you to double production from 100 to 200 but told you I would not pay you one extra cent for the lot what would you tell me?
Recent complaints have not been about the income gap, so much as the fact that that gap is increasing, even in relative terms. Your comments throughout this thread seem to ignore that the gap is increasing, and that that is the major complaint.
Great Society programs do not increase the income gap.
Rising prosperity in underdeveloped countries is caused primarily by the low starting level. You can blow more air into an empty balloon than into a full balloon. Commentators who seem not even to understand this are laughable.
As to “convinced even ardent liberals that markets play a crucial role in raising productivity”, I would say that it’s long been the case that “many ardent liberals”, especially on this board, are far better informed than average conservatives. To pretend that “ardent liberals” need lessons from conservatives on 8th-grade economic truths is too absurd even to be insulting – again it just makes the writer sound like an idiot.
I’m sleepy, so I’ll highlight a particularly obvious moment of self-contradiction and call it a night:
After this earlier comment:
With that “yet”, were you inviting me to take issue with the article (or at least its title), just to turn around and dismiss such issue as something not worth paying attention to?
Why would you suggest I take issue with the article (which is apparently the basis and source of your thread premise) and then shrug it off? Please indicate in clear language exactly what you think we should be debating here, if you have any clear idea of what that might be.
