Oh god I just had this horrible vision.
The year: 2040. The Presidential nominee: Malia Obama. Rumor has it she wants to reform the nation’s Basic Income Guarantee to include the children of illegal immigrants (because they were specifically excluded despite the 14th amendment).
There is a protest. There is a familiar-looking lineup of retirees and NASCAR fans, holding signs saying “SOCIALIST OBAMA KEEP GOVERNMENT HANDS OFF MY BASIC INCOME!”
Come now. Most wealthy people get that way by inheriting money. They do not have to work for a living. Do you believe the wealthy are lazy, apathetic and stupid? Or is it just poor people who are at risk for this hazard?
I wonder if conservatives would be amenable to this idea if no tax money were involved? My suspicion is that the idea of sweltering masses laboring grudgingly under their boot heels gives 'em a big, fat chubby, hence anything that lifts the lower and middle classes out of wage slavery would set their teeth on edge.
Do you have a cite for your assertion that ‘most’ wealthy people get that way by simply inheriting their wealth?
-XT
Italy has opera singers, France has artists, Germany engineers, Ireland poets. America has salesmen.
So, what you are saying is that only folks who make the Forbes list actually count as ‘most wealthy people’? So, that would mean that, to you, ‘most’ only equals 42%, because only those born on ‘home plate’ could make the list:
Of course, if we define ‘wealthy’ or ‘rich’ somewhere else…say, at a million dollars in personal wealth…then it’s going to be a bit more difficult for you to back up your assertion. It doesn’t even work when you try to define it solely as those who make the Forbes list, but it gets worse when you don’t go with such a ridiculous standard.
It was an interesting article though, thanks for posting it.
-XT
Well I think the definition of “wealthy” is the rub here, and let’s face it, with so many $350,000 homes sold to people who clearly could not afford them, the numbers are kinda skewed right now. I’d suspect that a lot of small business owners that owns their own homes might have enough assets to be classified as millionaires of a sort … but I don’t know that the businesses and homes are worth what the loan papers say they are right now. The Great Recession and the Great Wealth Grab by the top 1 or 2 percent of Americans has fucked things up pretty good.
But even using your high bar definition only 42% started with wealth enough to make that list, which means that you are using the term ‘most’ to indicate less than half. And this particular list really doesn’t say anything about the actual percentage of people (just in the US) who inherited their wealth or didn’t inherit it, so it really doesn’t give us much data one way or the other.
As to the rest, what you seem to be saying there is that the recession helps your case because many who would be considered ‘rich’ or ‘wealthy’ and who didn’t simply inherit all their wealth might be having hard times. Well…ok. I doubt it’s going to skew the results far enough to constitute ‘most’, but it would certainly have an impact.
-XT
Last time I checked, below average intelligence and lack of interest were character flaws. As are drug use, teen pregnency, lack of education, and other results of poor decision making.
But I suppose that regardless of the reasons, there is always going to be a bottom of every barrel. And from a practical standpoint, I suppose when you add in the costs of unemployment, welfare, prison, security, or even simply rounding them up to be ground into mulch and burried in landfills, there is an economic benefit to simply providing them with a “shut up, stay out of sight and don’t get into trouble” payoff.
I find it interesting that you think the fact that 31% or nearly one third of the Forbes 400 started with nothing is insignificant. Clearly it is easier to become wealthy if you already start with great wealth, however a significant number of wealthy people do not start with great wealh. To me that 31% indicates that there is still a great deal of opportunity for people to create wealth. And the Forbes 400 is a small percentage of wealthy people. It does not even touch the millions of Americans who manage to get by on just being millionares.
which means that you are using the term ‘most’ to indicate less than half.
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Ahem. You can be REALLY FUCKING WEALTHY and still not not be on the Fortune 500. The articles said 70% started out by inheriting ‘substantial wealth’. That’s “most” by most definitions.
500 people would be taken by many scientists to be a "statistically signficant sample. As I noted in my previous post, near the bottom things are likely to get fuzzy.
No, I’m saying that inflated housing and real estate prices prior to the Bush’s Great Recession might have created quite a few millionaires based on the amounts shown on their loan papers who ain’t any more. At the bottom end it gets really hard to distinguish between “wealthy” and “affluent” in any event.
Intelligence is largely determined by genetics. Lack of interest could be due to depression, or attention deficit disorder, etc which is not voluntary.
I believe that no human being, no matter their character flaws, should go without the basic neccesities for living (food, clothing, and shelter and medicine). If they want anything beyond the bare minimum subsistance, though, they should have to work for it. Maybe 1 or 2% of the population would be happy living that way. So be it. They were probably already sucking up money from the public coffers anyway so I doubt it’ll make that much of a difference.
So 42%, I bet it would have been a very different story 100 years ago. Yes more people are better off than ever before, it is that the poorer people have not progressed at the same speed.
But you have a lot more beliefs than that. You also believe that everyone else in your society (even if they don’t share your belief above) should be forced to contribute to realize your goals.
The irony of the situation is that a certain degree of laziness, apathy and stupidity must be encouraged to sustain a work-based society, or else people will just realize that many jobs are completely pointless. Consider the progression outlined by Blalron:
If everyone in the agricultural industry quit their jobs, a bunch of people would eventually die of starvation.
If everyone in the manufacturing industry quit their jobs, we might survive but our lifestyles would be pretty massively disrupted and we’d lose some pretty neat things.
If everyone in the food service industry quit their jobs… we all save money by making our own coffee and sandwiches at home? Oh, that one’s actually not so bad!
If/when service is fully automated out of existence, our likely options will be either Basic Income, or convincing people to do other pointless jobs that’d we’d get along just fine with no one doing.
I can’t believe this stupid idea has so much traction. Jobs are NOT going away. Until the recession hit, the U.S. was near full employment. I had this same conversation in college dorm rooms in 1985, and people made the same claim - by the year 2000 automation would take over everything, and no one would have a job. It never happened then, and it’s not going to happen now. Hell, the Luddites believed it was happening in the 19th century. They were destroying powered looms and factories because they were utterly convinced they were doing society a favor because if you automated everything no one would be able to work.
In fact, economists refer to the belief that automation will result in net job loss as “The Luddite Fallacy”. You’d think that after 200 years of constantly being proven wrong, this fallacy would have died out. But it never does - it’s always resurfaces, with a new day of reckoning pronounced that’s always just down the road, but not quite here yet.
“People’s Capitalism” is just central planning and state-owned production wrapped in a fancy new bow. It shares all the flaws of the other state-run economies. It’s closer to Fascism than Communism, I suppose, as it ostensibly leaves production in private hands - but controlled by the state. In practice it would be nothing more than crony capitalism at best, and even more wealth would collect at the top, except the top tier would also include the politically powerful and the well connected.
And giving people a guaranteed income that was reasonably high (say, enough to get you into the lower middle class) would destroy the incentive to work for a fairly large percentage of the population. And people are hired because they improve the productivity of a company. If you set up a system where 20% of the people stop working, you’ll lose massive amounts of productivity, and the standard of living will fall. Forget the class warfare nonsense about rich and poor - just consider the fact that all those workers are creating wealth. Take them out of the job market, and the wealth doesn’t get created.
So in the end, what you’d wind up with is a huge welfare state with large structural unemployment, coupled with a state/capitalism system where companies gain not by being better and meeting the needs of the people, but through political manipulation, bribes, and connections. It would be an economic disaster.
What if this causes a rise in the price of goods that negates the guaranteed income? Does this come in place of welfare benefits for the poor?
Now I’m going to go slap myself for asking these questions and for saying that I am not in favor of this system.
I am in favor of heavier taxes toward the rich but using those taxes to create jobs here in the United States for American citizens, and to bolster the dying middle-range jobs industries that are the bridge for the poor to cross into the middle class. Whether or not JOBS ARE NOT GOING AWAY!!! [tm], it is absolutely true that the middle class has been shrinking for a long time in the U.S. This is not a Luddite or Nativist or Liberal Commie Fantasy… the shrinking middle class and the growth of a plutocracy is happening right now. And it is something the Capitalists dare not talk about.
We can create a more equitable economy by being OBSESSED about creating jobs in this country and distributing wealth toward the bottom. But this won’t happen because the rich believe that since they can simply move to Mexico and continue to feed off the American working class, they can do so into perpetuity.
They will be singing a different tune if America descends into a plutocracy with Mexico-level ratios of rich and poor people. Here you’ll see a revolution; and here there are firearms galore plus small nukes just waiting to be abandoned by fleeing troops and picked up by angry but moderately educated ruffians… which we have aplenty.
Once again… America’s middle class is shrinking. FAST. Alaska’s income guarantee program is not the solution. Trickle-up is the solution.
Well, long before we have violent revolution in the street we will have more massive economic problems because the engine that makes our economy works is middle class people buying stuff, and we’ve lsot the ability to buy nice houses, and eventually we will lose the ability to buy new cars and high end TVS and so forth, at which point the economy will implode and it will be a real Depression.
Worldwide, no less. China lost 20 million jobs because the American middle class lost ground in this recession. Imagine what will happen, long term, to all the poor nations who depend on America for exports, as the middle class continues to shrink.
Oh, sure, someone will come along and say the shrinking middle class is not a problem. Just like when they sent the string quartet to play in the first class lounge of the Titanic. In due time you’ll also hear someone say that a plutocracy is not a bad thing…