Wealth inequality in America

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Originally Posted by Yossarian

Sounds like classic newspeak to me.

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Newspeak? Seems to me I recall some folks talking about this sort of thing a couple of thousand years ago, and its been a very common matter of consideration for at least the last four hundred years.

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Originally Posted by Yossarian

Fairness is providing equal opportunity and allowing people who work hard and save and make good decisions to benefit from their efforts. Fairness is not imposing equal outcomes on people who have made different decisions and contributed different amounts of effort or value.

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Fairness is neither of the extremes you outlined. Fairness is promoting and affirming the worth and dignity of all members of society, and recognizing the parameters of human decency society affords its members are not to be affected by relative success or failure in financial ventures.

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Originally Posted by LDAHL

If we insist on handicapping the game of life, aren't there better ways of doing that than the tax code?

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I wouldn't call society fulfilling fundamental obligations of decency to be "handicapping" or a "game", but I do agree that there could be other ways of serving those moral imperatives other than a tug-o-war over tax laws. Unfortunately, such approaches are likely opposed even more heavily by those who benefit from unfairness, but what did you have in mind?

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Originally Posted by bUU

Fairness is promoting and affirming the worth and dignity of all members of society, and recognizing the parameters of human decency society affords its members are not to be affected by relative success or failure in financial ventures.

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Success and failure carry purely individual definitions. Your idea if success and mine may be quite different. All I want from a government is for it to not hinder either of us in our pursuit. That would be fair and decent. As soon as a government tries to guarantee we will end up in the same place it has overstepped its purpose. It is every bit as indecent to apply an artificial disadvantage to those who strive for success as it is to chastise those who don't.

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Originally Posted by Gregg

As soon as a government tries to guarantee we will end up in the same place it has overstepped its purpose.

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However, that's a Straw Man. No one talks about guaranteeing everyone ends up in the same place, but rather that no one is forced to live below a certain threshold. While surely the threshold is a matter of opinion, compromise should establish a common threshold and society should be structured to build the variety you're talking about starting from that threshold and going up from there.

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Originally Posted by bUU

It is every bit as indecent to apply an artificial disadvantage to those who strive for success as it is to chastise those who don't.

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Another Straw Man. This isn't about protecting those who don't strive for success but rather about those who don't achieve it.

And working from there, it is absolutely not indecent to work to address the basic needs of some over working to safeguard the incremental comfort and luxury of others.

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Originally Posted by bUU

I wouldn't call society fulfilling fundamental obligations of decency to be "handicapping" or a "game", but I do agree that there could be other ways of serving those moral imperatives other than a tug-o-war over tax laws. Unfortunately, such approaches are likely opposed even more heavily by those who benefit from unfairness, but what did you have in mind?

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I would agree with Yossarian on providing equal opportunity through things like education and a legal framework that allows people to compete fairly. I don't see a focus on tearing down the rich as all that productive in that pursuit. I don't see government as a provider of "worth and dignity". Those are things you have to derive from your own accomplishments, although not necessarily in the financial sphere.

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Originally Posted by LDAHL

... I don't see government as a provider of "worth and dignity". Those are things you have to derive from your own accomplishments, although not necessarily in the financial sphere.

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I agree with this, wholeheartedly.

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Originally Posted by LDAHL

I would agree with Yossarian on providing equal opportunity through things like education and a legal framework that allows people to compete fairly.

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I'm all for that too, but first, such efforts at imposing fairness are not always successful, and society's failure in that regard results in an obligation to make up for its failure through its social safety net, and second, a prosperous society has no right to employ barbarism of "survival of the luckiest" with regard to access to the basics human decency demands. We're not talking about luxury automobiles or Caribbean vacations here. We're talking about living with dignity, something all human beings are worthy of.

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Originally Posted by LDAHL

I don't see a focus on tearing down the rich as all that productive in that pursuit.

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Me neither. Neither has anyone else in the conversation, unless one equates people with their money, and therefore see any kind of taxation as tearing part of the income earner down. I find the idea of reducing people down to money very offensive.

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Originally Posted by LDAHL

I don't see government as a provider of "worth and dignity".

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Those aren't things that are provided but rather things that are served. Society does absolutely have a role in determining whether such things are accessible, especially with regard to the less fortunate.

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Originally Posted by bUU

I'm all for that too, but first, such efforts at imposing fairness are not always successful, and society's failure in that regard results in an obligation to make up for its failure through its social safety net, and second, a prosperous society has no right to employ barbarism of "survival of the luckiest" with regard to access to the basics human decency demands. We're not talking about luxury automobiles or Caribbean vacations here. We're talking about living with dignity, something all human beings are worthy of.

Me neither. Neither has anyone else in the conversation, unless one equates people with their money, and therefore see any kind of taxation as tearing part of the income earner down. I find the idea of reducing people down to money very offensive.

Those aren't things that are provided but rather things that are served. Society does absolutely have a role in determining whether such things are accessible, especially with regard to the less fortunate.

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Here is a current example: marriage equality. The government is critical in establishing legitimacy of marriage for legal & financial purposes.

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Another Straw Man. This isn't about protecting those who don't strive for success but rather about those who don't achieve it.

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Not that there's anything wrong with protecting those who don't strive for sucess. I mean yea the picture gets unflattering if you assume they are exclusively those sitting around eating bon-bons and laying on the couch all day, but remember success here is actually being defined extremely narrowly, purely monetarily, someone could have never earned much because they strived at something that did a lot of good but just wasn't high on renumeration.

People should work hard, and save and take risks and blah blah. Yea well, working hard and saving aren't super controversal, though it may not get you where you think it will, but I'm not sure if most people don't subconsciously, often below the level of full conscious awareness, conclude that risk taking in American society is a really bad deal. Because there's no safety net and you fall hard? Well that's it at the level of economics. But also because of the utter and complete social disgust and scorn with which a failed risk is treated. It's the fricken scarlet letter. Look how we treat say some kid who gets a liberal arts degree and can't get a job for it, just pure blame that he got a liberal arts degree. But he was taking a risk that could have paid off, well maybe he was by going for his dream, which after all he was socially programmed to do as well, but in many cases of these youngsters I think we're just dealing with naifs much of the time rather than conscious risk tasking. But that's how naifs that fail are treated, why would anyone sign themselves up voluntarily in full adulthood aware of this, for any risk of failure? 9-5 gets you basic social respect, you work for a living. A business that fails where you end up in poverty, gets you not just poverty, no healthcare, etc. but the social scorn we heap upon the poor. All such undercurrents run deep in the collective unconscious.

Suffice to say that other countries are surpassing the U.S. in income mobility (the ability mostly to move to a higher income bracket), many countries equal or surpass it in business formation, and they do it with guaranteed healthcare. Not that I don't like some aspects of the U.S. um government (uh no!), economic system (not really!), character (actually yes).

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Originally Posted by bUU

Those aren't things that are provided but rather things that are served. Society does absolutely have a role in determining whether such things are accessible, especially with regard to the less fortunate.

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How do you legislate dignity? That would seem to flow from an individual's sense of himself.

I think the real issue isn't so much wealth per se, defined as a person's absolute net worth or standing terms of what percentile he or she occupies. It's about proportion. I don't oppose the wealth gap because some people have more than others, but because I don't think it's socially healthy for some people to have so much more than others. The upward transfer of wealth that's taken place in the US over the past three decades has bloated the bank accounts of a tiny minority while middle-class wages have stagnated. The huge productivity gains made possible by technology have not been equitably distributed--not even close.

I think the situation is analogous to the two wars this country was involved in during the past decade. A tiny minority of military families bore the sacrifice while most of the rest of the population remained oblivious. My view is that when a country is at war, everybody fights or nobody fights. If everybody doesn't fight, you've no business going to war in the first place. Similarly, when the economy prospers, everybody should reap some share of the benefits. We've moved farther and farther away from that ideal.