As much as I enjoyed her books, I have to agree that IRL, she had many fruitcake qualities.
I tend to agree, and that’s why I’ve tried to point out to fessie a number of times that her (I assume the OP is a she) OP is basically a strawman. She seems more confused than anything else, though. I like the fact that she has said that some of the posts have made her rethink her ideas. You don’t hear that much around here. 
Surely this applies to rich people as well as middle class people. We need to soak the rich, so they’ll work harder and innovate more and take risks! (Hey, this is the best argument for soaking the rich I’ve come across – thanks, John! 
Also, where did I advocate simply GIVING middle class people money?
It can be argued that many of the things that make for what we consider a comfortable middle-class life were obtained as concessions made by the wealthy when socialism became VERY popular in America during the Depression – and by the rise of labor unions. Things like the eight hour work day, the five day work week and a living wage. These things have been eroding steadily as labor unions have lost support in America, but if the rich get their way too completely, they’ll be back … in spades.
No I can’t give a cite because I couldn’t be bothered searching for one :rolleyes:
It was a hypothetical situation I was using to illustrate the point that the poor shouldn’t have to rely on the charity of wealthy benefactors alone because there’s no guarantee of any help this way. It can be given or not on a whim. It’s great when it happens and yes, wealthy people do sometimes give generaously to charity, but you just can’t rely on it and it certainly should never take the place of government funding. That’s all I was saying.
Nice try.
here:
I know you said “game the system to give” and not just “give”, but I don’t see the difference. “Give” doesn’t need to be the operative word. My point was that the more money people have, the less likely they are to bust there ass to get ahead, hence the less likely they are to contribute to any innovation.
I cited the Master on the growing inequality of wealth in America. If you wanna challenge, feel free … there’s a whole SECTION of this site devoted to discussion Cecil’s columns. As for the wealth tying up too many resources … look at what is happening right now. Nowadays, BOTH parents in a family have to work to make enough to live on. Frequently, people working low-income jobs have to work TWO full-time jobs just to make ends meet … that is, their every waking moment is devoted to making enough money to keep themselves fed, clothed and sheltered … laudable, to some, I’m sure, but arguably as bad as or worse than slavery (slaves got time off in some cultures).
Now, somebody who’s spending ALL their time working for the basic necessities has ver little incentive to advance themselves in life … their interests outside work would consist of eating and sleeping, and very little else. This is Not a Good Thing, as such people aren’t going to get farther up the economic ladder – no opportunity. If their jobs paid enough to let them hold down just one job, they could go to school in their free time, or study, or follow their own weird and invent some new way of doing things that would enrich us all far beyond their ability to say “Would you like fries with that?” 16 hours a day. Such people are victims, and also under-utilized resources. And people deserve more than to be treated as industrial workbots during their every waking hour.
And when both parents in a family work, they spend much of THEIR free time doing the chores and so forth that are necessary to make a family work (I know this from personal experience). They’re not nearly so bad off as the person working two jobs, but their free time is limited. Wouldn’t it be better if THEY had free time to come up with new ways of doing things? (Granted, many would just zone out in front of the TV set, beer in hand, but the few that wouldn’t are pure gold – we NEED those people.
So while middle clas people have moved to two-working parent mode and lower class people are moving to working two jobs to stay in a place with walls and a ceiling, the wealthy elite are raking in a larger and larger share of our society, as Cecil Adams says: " Having dropped a bit after World War I, the Fortunate One Thousandth’s share spiked up to more than 8 percent in 1928, then declined to less than 3 percent in 1953 and less than 2 percent in 1973. Thereafter it rose again, most sharply in the latter Reagan years, reaching 6 percent by 1998."
If Cecil’s column about the Gilded Age doesn’t establish that the rich are gaming the system for you, what does? I mean, what level of proof do you need here? Seems to me I’ve put up proof, YOU’RE that one that needs to counter.
Now as for the detrimental gaming, I’ve explained that above. The free time and wealth that allowed Gates, Wozniak and others to innovate was a product of middle class affluence. Rich people typically are in a position to do what they want with their time … they don’t NEED a job to live.
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All of those things you list could be argued to show just the opposite. Who says CEO’s salaries are ‘hyperinflated’ for instance? Based on what? The companies hireing them? The Stockholders? You? What?
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Read it and weep. And there’s a ton of other cites on this issue out there. this issue is well known.
Most economists think Bush’s tax break for the rich was an economic disaster. YMMV but you’re headed into tinfoil hat territory on this one.
I don’t care who backs corporate welfare, I think it’s a bad idea.
yes, because when the government gets money, they set fire to it. :rolleyes:
I’ve given you cites, all I’ve seen from you is arm-waving.
I know enough to know that anything other than unfettered free market capitalism doesn’t constitute either socialism or communism. The way these terms are currently being used in this thread is as stupid scare words designed to stop both thought and debate – ADVANCING ignorance instead of fighting it.
I think you know a lot of things that aren’t so. And what specific measure that I’ve proposed have led to such economic slowdowns?
Go back and read that quote about the Gilded Age. It specifically addresses relative share of the economy during the 70s. When come back bring argument.
Agreed. If you don’t think there are any barriers between personal relationships and commercial relationships, there’s not much we can say to one another.
Not necessarily guaranteed, just that this should be the established standard for minimum wage, not just “anything the millionaires in Congress thinks sounds good.”
Not necessarily a guaranteed living wage, but SOME way of staying fed, clothed and sheltered while searching for work. I’m open to a wide variety of ideas.
I’m OPEN to the idea of doing this, but it’s not really important to the idea of gaming the free market to work to the middle class’ advantage. The rich can get as rich as they want, so long as it does not impede the success of society as a whole. OTOH, I do not hold the idea of unlimited wealth for individuals to be sacred, as some clearly do.
Moot, since that “extra” biz isn’t important to me.
Moot, for the same reason.
I know that for the Atlanta metro area, where I live, the living wage has been established at $10.50 an hour. Why is this so impossible to establish nationwide? What good are economists if they can’t do this sort of thing? Their ability as predictors of the economy is famously off, and most of their other activities seem to consist of coming up with rationalizations for not soaking the rich.
Another way of promoting a living wage might be to end corporate welfare and “perfectly legal” tax dodges, and substitute tax benefits for those businesses that pay a living wage to the employees. No coercion, then, eh, just carrot?
Oh, I agree, set the bar low. So long as there is work that needs doing, have people do it. Frankly, government programs like the road building that created the interstate highways are EXCELLENT ways of taking advantage of a labor force that the free market doesn’t. But by ALL means, have people work at whatever if they can, if they want that living wage. The only diffo I would make is, exceptions for the handicapped and reasonable provisos about worker safety, etc. I’m not against work, I’m against waste … of people.
Sadly, this section is moot, as explained above. However, I guess my issue is … what does one person NEED with hundreds of millions of dollars in personal wealth? Most of the things you can buy that are enormously expensive are more reasonably rented or leased. Frex, I can BUY a luxury yacht as a rich industrialist, but I probably won’t be spending a lot of time on it, so why not just RENT one when I need one, for considerably less money? Same with beach homes, etc. Perhaps it’s a product of my middle class lifestyle, but I find the amount of wealth some people seem to require to be ridiculous overkill. As one wealthy person put it, “After you make your first million, the lifestyle doesn’t change much.”
Moot again, but actually, some objective thought along these lines sounds like a good idea.
I will try, but frankly, it isn’t easy.
Your problem is that you seem to think that the only alternative to a free market economy is imposing a demand economy on superficial capitalism – something I do not advocate. I am afraid much of your effort has been wasted because you are arguing against something I do not advocate.
Tax incentives for corporations could help with the living wage.
A single-payer health insurance system could bring health costs down, way down. Givng the poor access to preventive medical treatment as well as emergency room services would pay for itself many times over, by allowing them to avoid illnesses cheaply, rather than treating them expensively in emergency rooms.
There is a LOT we could do that we are not doing because too many people are psychologically bound to our present inefficeint system.
Actually, most of my aim is at the middle class. The poor will rapidly and easily integrate into the middle class, if the middle class is robust. THAT’S the real solution to the problem, rather than handouts, along with an effective safety net during the transitional phase.
I did a search of the Straight Dope archive on gilded age. I assume you mean this article?
Hey, I’m as big a fan of Cecil and the Straight Dope as anyone…but this article doesn’t say what you think it says. Not only that, you are shifting the arguement away from the points I made…I never claimed that the gap between the poor and the rich wasn’t widening…in fact I acknowledged that earlier in this thread.
This article is talking about a widening gap between rich and poor…no where does he say in here that the poor are getting poorer (which was the point you made and the one I called you on)…just that the gap between the richest and poorest is widening. Or, if I’m wrong, kindly point out where it says the poor (or the middle class for that matter) are getting poorer…I must have missed it.
And look at the last paragraph…here, let me quote something that addresses your issue of the rich controlling more of the system today: “Other differences include 20th-century antitrust policies and the vastly increased scale and complexity of modern American business. The robber barons weren’t just rich, **they controlled the U.S. economy to an extent that today’s superrich can only dream about. ** Today Microsoft may dominate the operating-system market with Windows, but in the context of the total U.S. economy the company’s a drop in the bucket. In contrast, when Standard Oil had a 64 percent market share in 1911, John D. Rockefeller’s net worth amounted to more than 2 percent of annual U.S. output and in inflation-corrected dollars was more than twice that of Bill Gates.”
My bolding. Plainly put, you are wrong and this ‘cite’ doesn’t help your case. When come back, bring real cite mkay?
As for your assertions that people are having to work harder today than in the past to make ends meet…its ridiculous. You obviously don’t know that in the past there were no mandatory 40 hour weeks, nor 5 day work schedules. The ‘poor’ in your gilded age worked a HELL of a lot harder even than someone holding down two jobs today works…and they DID work for just the basics, as opposed to todays poor who work for a better standard of living (car, TV, cable, etc…not exactly the ‘basics’ like merely food and shelter). No? Then perhaps, again, you could back this up?
And its NOT in the Cecil Adams article you’ve ‘cited’ so you need to look elsewhere. All I want is a cite showing that people are working more today than ever before for less money…and that primarily the ‘poor’ are working multiple jobs just to make enough for the basic cost of living, and not for other material desires…like a better standard of living. Well, that and something to back up your claim that the poor are getting poorer. Should be easy enough, no?
You are making a lot of assertions in this thread and then getting pissy when you are called on them and back them up with a Straight Dope article which doesn’t really get into anything specific. Its a popularist article, writting for the masses, and devoid of any meat. I love them, but they aren’t exactly good cites.
You claim people are working harder than ever (with references to slavery and other blather) but you don’t back that up. You don’t even go into the possibility that people work 2 jobs or have both parents work not because they can’t afford food, clothing and shelther but because they want OTHER material things (like 2 nice cars, a boat, a bigger house, vacations, a pool in the back , a big screen TV, etc etc)…you merely state that this ‘proves’ that the poor and middle classes are getting poorer and the rich are gaming the system…two statements that just don’t combined no matter how much glue you attempt to use. Certainly you haven’t PROVED it by any stretch with the ‘cites’ you’ve given.
-XT
And there it is. Well stated, Bricker. Economics 101.
I’ve thought about this thread occasionally and wondered how it aged. Any replies?
It’s immoral to be wealthy because other than the fact that extraction of surplus labor value as profit is theft it isn’t right that a relative few have more than they could feasibly need or spend while billions of people live in poverty and millions die every year from preventable causes. No one needs or deserves millions of dollars in a world of such deprivation and needless suffering. Obviously the answer is a fundamental restructuring of society rather than just asking the wealthy to donate more. The necessity of charity is in and of itself a failure of the state and wouldn’t exist in an ideal society.
I guess I view greed as a state of mind, and thus not something you can put a dollar value on. Something everyone does and not exclusive to billionaires.
Is a billionaire that sort of wants another house when he already has four more or less greedy than a 6 year old that really, really, and I mean really, wants another lollipop when he already has four?
I think greed is a driving force behind the accumulation of wealth. Attaining a goal of wealth makes a person successful and greedy.
It’s not a proximate problem that there are super wealthy people, it is that to become super wealthy one must at the very least be a capitalist pig. No one became a billionaire by toiling away in a bio lab trying to cure cancer, or by working 12-hour days in a non-profit that feeds the world’s poor. I personally know people who turned down 8-figure salaries (and of course the sky is the limit) but also people who didn’t…
I used to think so too, minus the “capitalist pig” part. If we cherry pick only the best from the past 100 or so years of industrialized democracies, we could have a healthy welfare state and healthy labor rights and an adequately high tax structure to support them without impinging on the capitalist structure of most businesses. No need to demonize people at any moment in their life as long as they pay their fair share.
But then Elon Musk came and proved that individuals can have a dangerous level of power simply by their wealth. He single handedly changed my mind about the wealth tax, in that before him, it was simply an exercise in my mind about how to tackle the deficit, but now, it would have the added impetus and relevance of breaking up the vast concentrations of wealth that can be directly used to push dangerous agendas. It’s never going to happen, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t happen.
Is Taylor Swift a “capitalist pig”?
What is a “capitalist pig” anyone, aside from a leftist term used to derisively describe wealthy business people? Are we to assume there is something inherently amoral about raising capital and running a multi-billion company that provides the lab and other infrastructure for scientists to research cancer cures? Is it amoral for the company to want to turn a profit from those drugs so they can pay their employees and fund other drugs?
Businesses do not make a profit for the purpose of paying employees, or funding other projects.
They pay employees and fund new projects for the purpose of making more profit.
The instant they can make more profit without paying employees, they will do that. Managers might lay awake at night feeling bad about the layoffs, but those layoffs will happen, because that’s how business is done.
Thanks for the business lesson.
Yeah, that’s how a business works. If the business is not making enough money, it will let go of the employees it thinks are not adding enough value.
Much in the same way when Taylor Swift’s tour ends, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t keep paying all the dancers and lighting guys and stage hands.
I was actually thinking of Wall-Street-type microsecond arbitrage as not contributing that much to the long-term benefit of the human race. It is a stressful work environment, at least when you are starting out, but some people view it simply as an interesting game, which is fine with me if that is what they want to do. I have no problem with arts and entertainment (except that many talented people often fail even to make a basic living at it).
Is it amoral for a company (and/or the capitalists that run it) to want to turn a profit from drugs? There is something inherently amoral about for-profit corporate entities; they are not operating for the sake of humanity or even for their own employees. For proof you can, for example, ask any sick patient whose price for insulin has been jacked up, and compare that to the (IMO correct and only moral) actions of the discoverers of insulin, who declared, “Insulin does not belong to me, it belongs to the world”, refused multiple offers of dump-trucks full of money from Wall Street capitalists, and arranged a symbolic patent (Banting deliberately left his name off the patent) so that no one could exploit the rights.
I apologise for using a provocative word like “pig”, that is not the level of discussion we need, but, no, it is not moral to make money off of sick people. Even if you throw a few millions here and there at random state universities in the name of research.
There’s no such thing as “enough money”. Businesses will let go of anyone they can let go of, cut any cost they can cut, regardless of how much money they’re currently making, because that’s how business works.
That’s not evil, it’s just business. It’s competition. If I don’t keep improving, the next guy will and my business is sunk.