Artificial- made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally, typically as a copy of something natural.
My use of the word was in line with the use of it in the comment I was responding to, but I agree that it’s not a very good use of it.
Current statistics but the Joe Blow count at about 10 million if you define Joe Blow as “working poor.” About 4% of the full time employees fall below the poverty line and 15% of part time employees. Top reason for those folks being in poverty, low wages.
It’s a hard problem to quantify since so many minimum wage earners aren’t in poverty, but they aren’t impoverish because of their income. They usually have help else where.
Idk, I guess for me, that’s besides the point. This country has been very prosperous, especially for the upper class. I get that being a cashier or a stocker is low skill, but at the end of the day, those low skill jobs are pretty important to companies like Wal-Mart. While places like Wal-Mart will not pay their employees a living wage, purposely avoid employing full time and will not offer benefits, they readily refer their employees to social services to supplement their employees so they can work there and sell their wares so cheap that they undercut and close down other small businesses and reap the benefits of their employees spending the money they are paid (or the government pays them)in the place they work. The stats seem pretty clear and when buying power and income are considered, the upper class have made out and the lower and middle classes have been either stagnant or declining. Raising the minimum wage will not answer all the issues of those that are poor, but it seems like a fair starting point.
Although, in effort to accurately report and debate, Wal-Mart has actually stepped up and is already moving to raise its wage nation wide to $10/hr and look to provide more accommodating scheduling for its employees.
Eh. A bit. Lower wage earners are not the capital reservoirs you seem to think.
Inflation makes hoarding money unfeasible, it incentivizes people who have wealth to invest rather than draw modest interest bond returns. It also incentivizes loans from the middle and lower classes to start new industry.
Blaming the morality of WalMart for income inequality, or saying employers have some “obligation,” totally misses the point. Indeed if WalMart management gave unneccessary raises to its employees, it might be sued by its stockholders for abandoning their fiduciary duty!
And please don’t say WalMart itself would be more profitable if it were kinder! WalMart stock split 2:1 eight times during the 1980’s and 1990’s.
For those who really want to understand income inequality in America, I again recommend Stiglitz’s book. He doesn’t mention WalMart at all, except to indicate the extent of inequality by noting that the children of Sam Walton own more wealth than the bottom 30% of American households combined. Instead, one of his focusses is on “rent-seeking”, often assisted by the power of lobbyists.
For example, in the operations of many retail stores more profit is gained by banks (whose cards are swiped at the check-out counter) than is gained by the store itself. (Yet I’ve heard Dopers complain vehemently when a store doesn’t accept a card, or tries to add on a surcharge.)
I can’t begin to summarize Stiglitz’ book, but I’d suggest a mind-set change. Don’t blame inequality on greed: it’s human nature for the financier getting a $10 million bonus to prefer a $15 million bonus just as much as the WalMart employee would prefer a $15 wage to a $10 wage. Instead look for structural flaws in our political and economic systems.
And the political and regulatory flaws are the deliberate results of the influence of lobbyists and campaign donors. Don’t kid yourself; this is the major root of most of America’s economics problems.
It sounds like fun. I’ll play the role of down trodden blue collar worker. Now, if we can only find a high minded liberal arts major from an prestigious university . . .
The word “move” is potentially misleading here. An increasing proportion of upper-class people in the population doesn’t necessarily imply actual economic mobility of existing individuals from middle-class to upper-class.
Some part of that change could be due just to upper-class people reproducing at a higher rate, so that when middle-class people die, some of them are replaced in the population by upper-class people. And at least some evidence supports this hypothesis:
Upper class people have higher reproduction rates than middle or lower class people? That’s pretty counter intuitive…I thought the trend is that the richer a society, and the richer a class I guess, the lower it’s reproduction. Also, I thought that there was data showing that people move from the upper class to the middle or even lower at fairly frequent rates, similar to the rates that middle and lower move into the (arbitrary) upper? I’ll see if I can dig up some cites on that…maybe I’m mis-remembering or have it wrong.
That cite refers to women with advanced degrees, not necessarily “upper class” women. But more importantly, their fertility rates are still lower than average, so I don’t know how the math would work out that they are having more women than less educated women. The article claims that women with advanced degrees have fertility rates that have increased recently, but that increase still leaves their fertility rate lower than average. It does not claim that upper class women are reproducing at a higher rate than women in other classes.
And, of course, there is an implicit assumption that you stay in the class you are born into.
Sure, you could do it once. Then people would wise up that nothing they do will ever get them above average in terms of income, and adjust. They shift their income to non-taxable benefits, hire lawyers to exploit the inevitable loopholes, and generally game the system to avoid the taxes. Or figure out how to recruit doctors who graduate with $250K in medical school debt while offering them $72K a year. Of course we could get the taxpayer to pay for medical school tuition, but then that is $250K per doctor that we can’t redistribute.
Etc. If your small business is successful, there is no incentive to expand after a certain point - you don’t make any more money off it.
I understand that you are not recommending it. I doubt anyone who has given it any thought would.
[QUOTE=Omar Little]
You are correct in one sense, but in a world where inequality is a relative measure in which society is evaluated, you now have $100k less whereas before you only had $50k less. To correct this imbalance a system should be designed where I am taxed an additional $25k and it is redistributed to you, so that your adjusted income is now $75k and mine is now $125k. This restores the original income inequality of $50k. And society is whole once again. Everyone should be happy.
[/quote]
So you’re saying that being given a $25,000 net raise is discouraging innovation & hard work?
Reminds me of when pro athletes complain about offers of multi-million dollar contracts being disrespectful or not enough to make ends meet.
Part of the problem with society today in regards to the upper class is that they feel that they have an entitlement to greed.
I will also note the old quote from George Santayana in 1905:
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Years ago retail DID pay well. Working at Sears or Montgomery Wards one could make a good living because they paid a good wage plus commissions. But after WalMart came on the scene that changed.
Yes, giving someone a big raise for doing nothing is a good way to discourage innovation. But more to the point, taking a big raise away from someone who actually innovated is an even better way to discourage it.
Anyone with a positive net worth has more wealth than perhaps the bottom 25% of American households combined. That’s a problem, but the Waltons are a total red herring. It’s not income inequality that’s the problem; it’s the fact that a big segment of the American public has negative net worth.
