SOCIETAL MOBILITY All too often I'm told that "America isn't a democracy, it's a republic" This sort of mindless-BS is well-established in the US. Where True Democracy seems to mean uniquely able to make a BigBundle of money. So, why am I saying this? Because it is the human attitude towards wealth/riches that is FUNDAMENTAL to any nation. Far more so than most other subjects that try-our-patience. To far too many, riches are the ultimate sign of "Wow! Look at me! I made it!" Which has become a pressing social-objective for some. Not for all - there is a great part of our collective society that is very concerned about other matters far closer to their to their conscience. For instance, "fairness". Is our economy really fair to all its participants? Well no, it isn't so. America's distribution of income is not the least bit fair - and economics point-that-finger-of-blame. And, it is not just one aspect but a complication of multiple-aspects of our economy. And some are asking, "How can anyone say that with the economy - despite Covid - doing so well? And the short answer is that the magnitude of Economic Gain (ie. its "totality") is not the most important part. How it is being shared is key! And this is the point that more than a century ago started Russia to dispense with its sitting Tsar and turn viciously to Communism! Yes, it took almost six-decades before even Russia understood that such was not the right economic answer to the problem. But still, what makes Americans think today that the present system is "fair and equitable" when the science of economics says it isn't! See here from Forbes: The Troubling Economic Trend Is Unfairness, Not Inequality Excerpt:
All very true and it has reached a sickening point. I expect soon they will just stop reporting the riches of the 1% because it is such an insult too 99%. As long as 1 / 10,000 "make it big" 5M or more yearly income, a business venture that can be put front and center for the Elite Globalist Cabal to run on one of their 5 news net-workitz, all we be gullible to the "it is all good because They and or Trump says it is... I can do it too, I just need try harder. It is sad and why I have saved so much metal for my kid. i worry what it will be like for her. She has the education to survive, and land / Metal. Ironically just this past weekend for the first time she sounded the "maybe i wont have kids song" I knew it would come. Why i so want her to head to Canada...
Free enterprise and keeping socialists from making a total mess of things is still the best policy. Anybody singing the praises of Karl Marx these days has been let out of the insane asylum prematurely.
I have a question: What is the cost of this social/economic mobility? especially since it might not even make things better for everyone as a whole (if one person's advancement only comes at the cost of someone else). I think in any system there will be some inevitable trade-off between "fairness" as efficiency. Let me also point out that "equality of opportunity" is still not necessarily equality. For example, I could select one person out of a group of three to get a prize, based on some unfair trait about them (who's the tallest, who's the prettiest), or I could select one of them at random to win the prize. The last way would be completely "fair" (they all had an equal chance) but it still does not provide any net benefit to the group. There are still two people who lost and one person who won, the same as there would have been without making it "fair".
related thread, I suspect no one will reply to, and people will prefer to ignore: You can't understand Inequality without understanding Immigration
There is a little complication here, and that is that as you "share" more of it, the amount of economic gain produced becomes less. (The tragedy of commons, in economics)
Probably true, but I've seen some good articles in The Atlantic about poverty and people struggling. I don't agree with the gist behind this article though, or at least the conclusion it's obviously trying to make readers draw. But I suppose whether The Atlantic is a good publication or a bad one isn't really the subject of discussion in this thread. LafayetteBis seems to have injected a lot of his own opinion into it.
Calling the kettle black does not mean it's leaking. The article is on-target. You disagree with what it says. So, obviously, it's a pile of you-know-what. Pathetic rebuttal. Do try to prove your point with cogent factual evidence instead of usual diatribe ...
Simplistic. When there is economic gain, the data shows that at the bottom there is very little enhancement. The real gain is at the top. Whyzatt? Because at the bottom there is very little increase in income whereas at the opposite end - the "top" - there is far more than enough ...
LOL, rebutting partisan drivel doesn’t require “cogent facts”. It just requires pointing out its nature.
Is it your contention that the bottom creates wealth but somehow the free market system allocates it to the top? Can you explain to me how the bottom can create wealth but the free market system (voluntary exchange) does not allocate it to them? (sorry, I know this is leading into a complicated issue and we can discuss it another thread if you want)
THE BOOB-TUBE I can sympathize with that comment. Under present voting-law the manipulation of politics in the US has become technical. How to win the presidency? Just decide where to spend the money bringing out the vote and where not! And the answer to that question is simple! On the Boob-Tube! What-in-hell kind of democracy is THAT? One for "adult-children" ... !
Do you insist on simultaneously discussing three different topics in the same thread? Let's see: The US election system, who the President was and his policies, and the whole complicated bit about social mobility. Hard to have a coherent discussion discussing so many big issues at the same time. Look, I wouldn't be saying anything about this if you only brought up two big issues, or you hadn't already started eleven past threads combining other totally unrelated issues with complaints about the US election system, like in this thread.
VERY CLEVER PEOPLE WIN BIG! Dead easy! It is at the bottom of the pay-spectrum that a nation's people work to run an economy that benefits profit-wise a select rich-elite. Distribution of Annual Household Income (from Wikipedia here): Nobody "decides" the pay-scale, it has always been like the above! What is different lately are the last two vertical-blocks showing revenues to a select-elite who work in the $200K and over range. Which includes people like Donald-Dork who got started on that track because he was bequeathed by his father over $400M. And are these "select elite" bad-people? No, for the most part they are really quite ordinary American gals-'n-guys who were either clever or very lucky (and the parents bequeathed them the BigMoney). And of course, they will leave their millions to their kids! Who else? Some of whom will try to become PotUS, because - with all that money - they don't know what-in-hell to do with themselves ... !
And do note the percent of Americans in that graphic above who live below the income-level of $25K per year. Which is the Poverty Threshold income level! They are about one-quarter (25%) of the income-earning population! Count the figures! See for yourself! No, people, that is NOT the way the income cookie should crumble ...
Fairness only seems to weigh heavily on the minds of the discontented. Most of the people I know are middle class or lower, yet many of them still manage to be far too busy enjoying their life to worry about someone else's. Happiness doesnt come from equality any more than it comes from wealth. It comes from within.
Okay, but that is not necessarily the same thing as the "unfairness" ("social mobility") you are talking about. They are two separate issues. Can you really conflate them so easily? I guess it really depends on if your strategy to "increase social mobility" decreases the number of poorer people. But then why not just focus on trying to reduce the number of poorer people? Why all this talk and so much effort put into trying to "increase social mobility"? I think it is a little bit of an equivocation fallacy, because "increasing social mobility" might imply that you are trying to raise people up, when in actuality it is really about your notion of "fairness", something that is different.
I agree. The problem is the mentality that you side with isn't only going to go after those with tens of millions of dollars, but also much more middle class people, and aspiring people who are "wealthy", but of much more modest means. The type of policies which your side would support would very likely interfere with people's ability to better themselves and try to improve their economics. Yes, this includes people who are already financially better off than the typical person. It would have a tendency to force everyone into a sort of subpar "mediocrity", from which no one could escape.
That's just false. Canada and Australia have more immigration than the USA, but are far more equal. India, Egypt, Pakistan, etc. have effectively no immigration, but are very unequal. So immigration is a red herring. Immigration is population growth, especially of working-age people, and increasing the workforce, however it happens -- immigration, birth rate, women entering the workforce -- tends to reduce wages and increase land rents, as Henry George explained in "Progress and Poverty" more than 140 years ago: Lower wages + higher land rents --> more inequality. So the key factor increasing inequality in capitalist economies is not immigration, it is the exorbitant, increasing, and unsustainable subsidization of idle landowning.
Because they are intelligent enough to understand they have something to be discontented about: injustice. They have been told all their lives that all their problems are their own fault, and they are not intelligent enough to understand why that is not the case, but certain people want them to believe that it is. It comes from justice.
That doesn't prove the claim is false. I shouldn't even have to point this out, but that's an incredibly weak argument logically.
Sure it does. When most highly unequal countries have effectively no immigration, it proves you don't have to understand immigration to understand inequality. No it's not. What's an incredibly weak argument logically is a claim without any factual or logical evidence at all -- like yours. What you need to understand to understand inequality is privilege, not immigration.
And when some of the highest-immigration countries, like Australia and Canada, are also some of the most equal... Couldn't have said it better myself.
