Plan B Forum

"... First in a series on what Harvard scholars are doing to identify and understand inequality, in seeking solutions to one of America’s most vexing problems.

It’s a seemingly nondescript chart, buried in a Harvard Business School (HBS) professor’s academic paper.

A rectangle, divided into parts, depicts U.S. wealth for each fifth of the population. But it appears to show only three divisions. The bottom two, representing the accumulated wealth of 124 million people, are so small that they almost don’t even show up.

Other charts in other journals illustrate different aspects of American inequality. They might depict income, housing quality, rates of imprisonment, or levels of political influence, but they all look very much the same.

Perhaps most damning are those that reflect opportunity — whether involving education, health, race, or gender — because the inequity represented there belies our national identity. America, we believe, is a land where everyone gets a fair start and then rises or falls according to his or her own talent and industry. But if you’re poor, if you’re uneducated, if you’re black, if you’re Hispanic, if you’re a woman, there often is no fair start... A blizzard of statistics illustrates the problem and, with each monthly release from the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, or any number of think tanks, the pile of reports grows higher. Their by-now-familiar theme is that the rich have gotten richer — dramatically so — in recent decades, while the poor have gotten poorer. And the middle class has just been hanging on.
Wages for most relatively stagnant

The details show that real wages for most U.S. workers have been relatively stagnant since the 1970s, while those for the top 1 percent have increased 156 percent, and those for the top 0.1 percent have increased 362 percent, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute.

Those trends resulted in the poorest 20 percent of Americans receiving just 3.6 percent of the national income in 2014, down from 5.7 percent in 1974. The upper 20 percent, meanwhile, received nearly half of U.S. income in 2014, up from about 40 percent in 1974, according to Census Bureau statistics.

But some analysts, such as Hochschild and Piketty, the French economist, say the area of greatest concern is overall wealth, not income alone.

“From a poverty perspective, income means a lot — making $15,000 versus $20,000,” said Hochschild, who directs the HKS-based Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality and Social Policy. But “from an inequality perspective — writ large — it’s about wealth. … As a ’60s kid, I care a whole lot about ownership of the means of productivity.”...."

rubato wrote:The path forward if we do not solve this problem is very ugly indeed. When the 2/5ths, 40%, at the bottom realize how badly they are being screwed and how hopeless their situation is they will find violence very palatable.


Lets find a way to give them what they deserve before everything gets smashed.



yrs,
rubato

Gob wrote:

rubato wrote:The path forward if we do not solve this problem is very ugly indeed. When the 2/5ths, 40%, at the bottom realize how badly they are being screwed and how hopeless their situation is they will find violence very palatable.


Lets find a way to give them what they deserve before everything gets smashed.



yrs,
rubato

Qualify "deserve"?

Gob wrote:Come on ruby, I asked first. How do these people "deserve" these freebies you're distributing?

verb (used with object), deserved, deserving.

1. to merit, be qualified for, or have a claim to (reward, assistance, punishment, etc.) because of actions, qualities, or situation:
to deserve exile; to deserve charity; a theory that deserves consideration.


verb (used without object), deserved, deserving.

2. to be worthy of, qualified for, or have a claim to reward, punishment, recompense, etc.:

dales wrote:

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. People have the right to expect that these wants will be provided for by this wisdom. ~ Jimmy Carter

is it fair if 10 people all work 40 hours a week to produce a pie and 1 person gets 91% of It and
the other 9 get 1% each?

Is it more fair if they all get the same amount because they contributed the same fraction of their lives in making the pie?

Lord Jim wrote:

is it fair if 10 people all work 40 hours a week to produce a pie and 1 person gets 91% of It and
the other 9 get 1% each?

Is it more fair if they all get the same amount because they contributed the same fraction of their lives in making the pie?

So, (assuming for the sake of argument, every one of these people works the exact same number of hours) the master baker with 20 years experience who came up with the crust recipe, and oversees every step of the process in baking the pies from fruit selection to setting the baking temperature and times, and quality reviewing the finished product, should be paid exactly the same as the teenager who folds the boxes to put the pies in...

Because "fair" compensation should be based not on how much value your time adds to the product, but upon the "fraction of your life" that you spend involved with producing the end product...

And that ladies and gentlemen, is an excellent example of "rubenomics"...

Gezzus, I don't think even a mediocre hack like The Liar Krugman would come up with something that lame brained...

Gob wrote:So people deserve what is "fair"?

Wrong, you obviously have no clue as to the basic meaning of words, which I why I asked you to define "deserve".

verb (used with object), deserved, deserving.

1. to merit, be qualified for, or have a claim to (reward, assistance, punishment, etc.) because of actions, qualities, or situation:
to deserve exile; to deserve charity; a theory that deserves consideration.


verb (used without object), deserved, deserving.

2. to be worthy of, qualified for, or have a claim to reward, punishment, recompense, etc.:

Now again, please quantify "deserve" in light of your statement; "Lets find a way to give them what they deserve before everything gets smashed."

Back to the drawing board Aspergers boy, you've shat the bed again.

those are questions, not assertions.

rubato wrote:

Quantify? You don't even qualify to begin a discussion of fairness. You mean "define" not "quantify". And I have defined "deserve" as receiving what is fair. But you are too witless to even understand that you don't know what is fair. Because you have never thought about it.

A Libertarian would say that what is "Fair" is determined by an agreement made between people where there is no coercion. And thus one "Deserves" to receive what was agreed upon. And what was agreed upon is "fair" because they agreed. "Fairness" = what is agreed upon without coercion.

Someone else might say that definition is deficient because if there is an asymmetry of knowledge between the two one might exploit the other's lack of knowledge. Or there might be an asymmetry of economic power between the two. A person who is starving will agree to terms which would appear grossly exploitive to someone who is not.

And still others would say that 'fairness' is merely even-handedness. Treating everyone the same.

So, now really try and think about what is fair. What do you think?


yrs,
rubato

quantify


1. to determine, indicate, or express the quantity of.
2. Logic. to make explicit the quantity of (a proposition).
3. to give quantity to (something regarded as having only quality).

Lets find a way to give them what they deserve before everything gets smashed.