Conversely, it could be that person who vacations in France (and millions of similar people who aren’t quite the caricature you spun for) subsidizing the lifestyle of your person with their ‘shitty under-paying job’.
You haven’t actually demonstrated this in any way. Can you present an argument that the person with the low paying job subsidize the lifestyle of people who vacation in France?
I could make a similar unsubstantiated claim that “the rich subsidize the poor by choosing to spend money in areas employing an underclass.”* It has about as much substance as your claim.
*hypothetical - I don’t make this claim.
It’s math. If x number of people are producing y amount of goods and services, and those goods and services are distributed among people who are not producing, but are consuming, then the people who are producing must consume less than what they produce, in order to subsidize the consumption of the rest.
And I do want more people working. I also want them keeping a greater percentage of the value of what they produce.
Elizabeth Warren seems to think so.
No, it shouldn’t be this way. You shouldn’t be able to keep your pot of gold by enacting laws to keep the peasantry under your thumb. You shouldn’t be able to keep yourself enriched at the expense of everyone else.
I don’t get this, at all. Here’s a question for you: does the comparatively low wages Apple pays for their Foxconn slaves subsidize the cost of Apple products in the U.S?
LinusK, I had to chuckle when I read this. Welcome to my world. I have found that most people do not read cites. I don’t even bother anymore. Slightly off-topic: there was a thread awhile back regarding Picketty’s book regarding income inequality, bringing with it the usual peanut gallery shooting it down. Anyway, one poster, Shalmanese, wrote this post where s/he detailed the arguments in the book. The peanut gallery stepped right over Shalmanese’s post and continue prattling on about nonsense (shoulda, coulda, wouldas) for 100+ more posts. Hell, even I wrote this post bringing a graph (you know, a cite) from Picketty’s book for discussion, they stepped right over that, too. I’ve learned the peanut gallery likes to argue. They don’t give a shit about your cites (and, frankly, when “debating” against them, neither should you).
- Honesty
Wow. This is such a fundamental misunderstanding of how economics work, I’m not sure where to start. Seriously, you believe that the poor consume less because the rich guys gobble stuff up without producing their fair share, leaving the shelves bare? Here’s a question for you: When the well-to-do buy stuff, what do you suppose happens with the money they pay? What does that purchase trigger? Are you saying, essentially, “nothing is triggered, because at that point everything is used up”?
What’s the optimal percentage? Since obviously you don’t agree that ‘their salary’ is a metric of what their labor is worth (both to themselves and to their employer, since that’s the agreed upon exchange between them), how do you propose to set the value?
I’m trying to figure out if this is a rant about individual rich verse poor (the rich being consumers and the poor being producers, with the assumption that it really is that black and white to you), or if you are talking about rich nations that you figure are consumers verse poor nations that you figure are producers. Or maybe you meant it both ways…or neither for all I know. It’s unclear, though either way I agree with Stratocaster that there is a disconnect between your apparent view and reality.
No. You’ve just refused to understand what I’m saying, despite me repeating it over and over. What I said was the argument against minimum wage - usually asserted by economic conservatives - is merely an example of the kind of argument that relies on the idea that income equality requires unemployment. That’s it. That’s all I was using it for.
You’ve simply decided ignore everything else, and focus minimum wage laws, instead.
What I’ve said is that if I were in charge of economic policy (which of course I’m not) I’d focus on eliminating unemployment, rather than minimum wages. That would help both people who are unemployed, and people with low wage jobs, by raising wages for everyone, and increasing employment.
What you’ve said is that unemployment is “good” for the economy. Why?
If you’ve selected someone to lend money to, based on whatever criteria you think is appropriate, you’ve done work. People who do that professionally are called loan officers. (Or some such title.) They typically work at banks.
If you take your $100 to the bank, and get interest, you’ve done no work. What you have is called “unearned income”. (Income from sources other than work, like interest.) One of the things I’ve said upthread is that if I were in charge of economic policy, I’d keep interest rates low, permanently.
The idea that you should automatically get richer, just because you’re already rich, creates a culture of dependance and entitlement among the rich, which is unhealthy. If the rich want to get richer, they should be encouraged to be productive, rather than just relying on subsidies from the rest of us.
Your link says “full employment” means unemployment of up to 13%. What do you think it is?
She states it as fact without any support - at least based on that article. The question was - why was LinusK conflating income inequality with minimum wage. There has yet to be a response.
It’s a good thing that that’s not the position I or anyone else stated. If you think that people wont act in their own self interest (what I stated) then you are divorced from reality.
What part don’t you get? I can explain if you’ll elaborate.
It depends on how you are using the word ‘subsidize’. The labor of Apple’s foreign manufacturing plants are a contributor to the overall cost of producing their products. Apple’s cost of producing goods is a factor in the price they set. What’s your point?
(my bold)
Who is making this argument? You’ve stated it, but you have not actually advanced it. No one in this thread certainly. But it’s nice that it took till post 48 for you to back away from minimum wage as a foundation for your argument.
This is even more revealing. The term ‘unearned income’ does not mean that when you are the recipient that you’ve done no work. It is typically used for tax purposes to describe a certain type of income that is taxed differently than other ‘earned income’ as defined. It can also be used in accounting more typically called deferred revenue, but that’s probably not what you are talking about. In any case, unearned income is income none the less. And since you are including this type as part of the comparison when you are talking about income inequality, it really doesn’t matter the method of earning.
Even still, one can be a micro lender like through Kiva or other P2P lending. Is that earned in your world? It’s not for IRS purposes. I can either directly loan to someone, or I can hire others to make those loans on my behalf. You are drawing odd distinctions where in reality it doesn’t work this way (unless you are talking about taxes which has some less flexible rules).
No one automatically gets richer. Investment income is income none the less. Both the receiver and payor are engaging in a transaction where both parties believe is beneficial. That in itself is productive. You have failed to present any evidence that one group is subsidizing the other.
Context. Try reading in context. It says:
*Full employment, in macroeconomics, is the level of employment rates where there is no cyclical or deficient-demand unemployment.[1] It is defined by the majority of mainstream economists as being an acceptable level of unemployment somewhere above 0%
…
The 20th century British economist William Beveridge stated that an unemployment rate of 3% was full employment. Other economists have provided estimates between 2% and 13%, depending on the country, time period, and their political biases. For the United States, economist William T. Dickens found that full-employment unemployment rate varied a lot over time but equaled about 5.5 percent of the civilian labor force during the 2000s.
…
An alternative, more normative, definition (used by some labor economists) would see “full employment” as the attainment of the ideal unemployment rate, where the types of unemployment that reflect labor-market inefficiency (such as mismatch or structural unemployment) do not exist. That is, only some frictional or voluntary unemployment would exist, where workers are temporarily searching for new jobs and are thus voluntarily unemployed. This type of unemployment involves workers “shopping” for the best jobs at the same time that employers “shop” for the best possible employees to serve their needs. Its existence can allow the best possible correspondence between workers and jobs from the points of view of both employees and employers and thus promotes the economy’s efficiency.
…
And more importantly for the US:
The United States is, as a statutory matter, committed to full employment (defined as 3% unemployment for persons 20 and older, 4% for persons aged 16 and over); the government is empowered to effect this goal.[13] The relevant legislation is the Employment Act (1946), initially the “Full Employment Act,” later amended in the Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act (1978). The 1946 act was passed in the aftermath of World War II, when it was feared that demobilization would result in a depression, as it had following World War I in the Depression of 1920–21, while the 1978 act was passed following the 1973–75 recession and in the midst of continuing high inflation.*
So what do I think it is? Above zero for sure. As a statutory matter, as described above.
No, we understand what you are saying just fine. You just have never demonstrated it, and have (as you say) simply repeated it over and over.
Why is it “work” if you choose one investment after weighing the pros and cons, and not “work” if you choose another investment after weighing the pros and cons?
Regards,
Shodan
There’s a lot here, and I appreciate the fact you took the time to read what I’m saying. I don’t have a lot of time now, so I’ll respond to some of what you’re saying now, and some later.
I’m not proposing flat taxes. (God help me if I ever did such a thing.)
When you fill out your taxes, you have to choose between taking the “standard” deduction, or 'itemizing". Itemizing takes a lot of work, but for people who are intent on paying the least amount of tax possible, they have to itemize in order to find out which option saves them the most money. For most people, I suspect, (I’m sort of spit-balling, I have no hard data) the standard deduction is better. In general, you either have to be paying a massive amount of interest on your house(s) or giving tons of money to charity (and keeping receipts, of course) for itemizing to be worth it. People are always complaining about how complicated the tax system is (especially flat-taxers). Eliminating itemized deductions (while keeping the standard deduction) would make taxes easier for most people, without actually causing them to pay more taxes. I think using the tax system to encourage people to take out massive mortgages is sort of silly, and if you want to keep the charity deduction, on top of the standard deduction (or in addition to the standard deduction) I’m fine with that too. You can already deduct student loan interest without itemizing, so there’s no reason why you couldn’t do the same thing with donations to charities, too.
On copyright law, I’m curious what you think the right amount of time should be. Originally, it was (if I remember right) 14 years. The US constitution gave Congress the right to create copyrights, which it did a few years later. However, it (the constitution) said that copyrights should be for “limited times” and for the benefit of the public. In other words, it’s there to encourage people to create stuff, so that people can read it and see it, not merely to enrich a handful of people whose work is massively popular. Or, as is often the case, to enrich the corporations who own the copyrights of the people who produced the work.
Many of the greatest artists create work not because of money, but in spite of it. What I mean by that is that they’re not producing something in order to get rich, but because they’re creative people. They’re not setting out to create something that’s going to appeal to the mass market, but rather they’re trying to produce or create something that important, or beautiful, or true, to them.
David Foster Wallace, for example, wrote a 1000+ page novel, which included hundreds of pages of end-notes. Having read it several times, I’d argue it’s one of the best novels written. (Or at least, that I’ve read.) But it’s doubtful he wrote with the idea that it would be a best-seller. It’s possible, I suppose, but unlikely. Anyway, he’s dead, having killed himself a few years after writing it. Nevertheless, someone, somewhere, is still benefiting from the copyright. (Primarily, I suspect, the publisher.)
Herman Melville died penniless. Moby Dick was initially a commercial failure, perhaps because the publisher left off the last chapter. It wasn’t until later that it became a staple of American literature. Kurt Cobain did become a commercial success, during his lifetime. But the music he wrote and performed during wasn’t made or performed in order to join the ranks of rich pop-stars. It was written attacking the culture of industry of pop-music. And of course, people are still making money off him, despite his death. Picasso died in a gutter. Today, rich people trade his work for millions of dollars. Michael Jackson, before he died, bought the copyright for the music of the Beatles. I’m not sure who owns it now. Currently, according to this website, a corporation called Sony/ATV owns over 600,000 copyrights, including the music of Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan, among others.
Anyway, the point is that the copyright holders aren’t always (or even usually?) the people who made the original work. The best artists aren’t usually in it for the money. And, I would add, the people who are making the most money aren’t the artists, but the people who stand between the artists and the public. The producers, the labels, the networks, and the other corporations that either directly control the copyright, or indirectly control it by controlling distribution.
I’m not against people making money from their work. I’m all for it. I’d like to see more people making more money from their work, and fewer people making money off other people’s work. As it stands now, there’s a vast pool of artists and writers and musicians whose work nobody’s going to see, because the corporations that control distribution are only interested in producing stuff they think will make money. And, I’d add, have a famously poor record when it comes to judgment. (J.K. Rowling, as just one example, was rejected 12 times. Her books went on to make $25 billion dollars - mostly for people other than J.K. Rowling. The standard author’s royalty is 10%. For genre work, it’s less.)
Anyway, you mentioned “the life of the author”. That’s different from the law we have now. Would you prohibit artists from selling copyrights? Or corporations from buying them?
Would copyrights end as soon as the author died?
Cormac McCarthy is in his 80’s. His most recent book, “The Road” is the best he’s written. (And he’s written some pretty good ones.) Should he be penalized for being old?