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The Only Thing, Historically, That's Curbed Inequality: Catastrophe (theatlantic.com)
ColdWetDog writes: The Atlantic has an interesting article on how societies have decreased economic equality. From the report: "Calls to make America great again hark back to a time when income inequality receded even as the economy boomed and the middle class expanded. Yet it is all too easy to forget just how deeply this newfound equality was rooted in the cataclysm of the world wars. The pressures of total war became a uniquely powerful catalyst of equalizing reform, spurring unionization, extensions of voting rights, and the creation of the welfare state. During and after wartime, aggressive government intervention in the private sector and disruptions to capital holdings wiped out upper-class wealth and funneled resources to workers; even in countries that escaped physical devastation and crippling inflation, marginal tax rates surged upward. Concentrated for the most part between 1914 and 1945, this 'Great Compression' (as economists call it) of inequality took several more decades to fully run its course across the developed world until the 1970s and 1980s, when it stalled and began to go into reverse. This equalizing was a rare outcome in modern times but by no means unique over the long run of history. Inequality has been written into the DNA of civilization ever since humans first settled down to farm the land. Throughout history, only massive, violent shocks that upended the established order proved powerful enough to flatten disparities in income and wealth. They appeared in four different guises: mass-mobilization warfare, violent and transformative revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic epidemics. Hundreds of millions perished in their wake, and by the time these crises had passed, the gap between rich and poor had shrunk."
Slashdot reader ColdWetDog notes: "Yep, the intro is a bit of a swipe at Trump. But this should get the preppers and paranoids in the group all wound up. Grab your foil! Run for the hills!"
Slashdot reader ColdWetDog notes: "Yep, the intro is a bit of a swipe at Trump. But this should get the preppers and paranoids in the group all wound up. Grab your foil! Run for the hills!"
Seriously this article makes it sound like life just after a devastating conflict is better than economic prosperity because most people are equally poor.
That's pretty fucked up, and I'm calling BS.
Theory also helped, whether it be Marxist, Socialist or whatever. Societies have to be ready for change, and theories promoting equality and income redistribution help prepare the ground for the political actions that are required. Combine that with widespread education so people have time to learn and internalise ideas. Not just formal schooling so people can read the newspapers and books, but workers' institutes, town hall meetings, the works.
If you want to have constructive conversation, you don't try to get people "wound up" and you don't start it with insulting them, either. I'm sure it wasn't intentional, but it does come off as the kind of smug crap that I see everywhere these days.
Love sees no species.
Why is income equality necessarily a good thing?
So far the very concept of "income equality" seems to be solely used for advancing political agendas. Leftists use it to justify lavish spending, bigger government and invasion of private civil life. Rightists use it to justify authoritarian control, beggar-thy-neighbor economy, and crony capitalism.
Why is it even worth pursuing? I can't see any inherent virtual in this concept.
Where we eat the rich, literally.
inequality. Employees tend to get "common stock" while investors get "preferred stock." I've worked for start-ups since May 1986 after graduating with a Comp Sci degree so I've dealt with this a lot. In every single case, the common stock got diluted so much that it wasn't worth the option price. In the case of drugstore.com, which was the most successful start-up I've worked for, my boss left with $11 million in stock that was not long after that worth less than my option price, so I got nothing. We need better laws to protect people that own stock or have options in private companies. There are less than 4000 companies are actively traded in NYSE or Nasdaq so the vast majority of people in tech aren't protected by the SEC.
Is that Trump's policies, if enacted (and it's not clear they will be) will increase income inequality AT THE EXPENSE OF HIS BASE. And that includes a lot of people posting here.
Those people are idiots, morons. They keep saying things like "Oh, the liberals hate Trump, gotta love it! That means we're winning and they're losing!" No, it means that we'll probably win even more economically, b/c we already have a market-friendly skill set and lots of passive investments that Trump and the GOP want to blow through the roof. You people are going to lose even more, and when you do when know you're not going to say Gee, Trump fooled us. We shouldn't have listened to Trump. You're going to say, Trump was right. He was going to make America great but it got derailed by all the liberal interests yadda yadda yadda.
Trump is nothing but a salesman who knows a lot about the baser levels of human psychology. Go look at his entire career, what did he accomplish. The best he did was make some big sales which turned out poorly for his customers, lenders, and suppliers.
What I take away from this summary (didn't RTFA) is that people thinking that they could solve the serious, endemic problem of growing inequality without any chaos in the whitehouse and elsewhere are delusional. A career politician who knows how to talk the talk and walk the walk was never going to make any difference.
OTOH, do we really want a catastrophe just to fix the growing inequality? That depends on the observer i suppose; and there seem to be enough really unhappy people in America who say "Yes".
False equivalency. The push for equality is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. Conflicts after the Civil war are just as likely to have quelled movements toward equality as well as helped them.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
There was a war on poverty. However, the leftists failed to keep the poor mired adequately in poverty to keep voting for them. The more forward thinking recognized, about a decade ago, that the poor weren't that poor, and that the intelligent weren't buying their bullshit power grab anymore. So, they went straight to greed. You have to hate someone who has more than you, because it's not fair that they had an advantage, or worked harder, or didn't gamble away everything they earned.
"Income Inequality" will drive the progressives for another decade, and they'll start to succeed at stealing from everyone who works constructively. However, this ploy, too, will fail when those who are willing to work realize that they're being stolen from merely to keep the leftists in power, and in about 16 years, we'll have another Trump, but the next one will be Milosevic level dangerous.
Right, so what we have shown here is that wars and collectivism is the way to destroy wealth. Destroying wealth should not be the goal though if you want a wealthy society. Inequality is not the issue, it never was and never will be the real issue. The real issue is destruction of individual freedoms.
You can't handle the truth.
Income inequality is an indirect, at best, and irrelevant at worst, measurement.
One cares about the average health, wealth, and longevity of a population. That continues to skyrocket as much of the third world becomes modernized due to economic freedom, the one measurement directly proportional to such measurements.
This continues to improve in the west, too. Their health is stalling, but due to too much cheap food and a lack of needing to physically labor.
Both of these are historically novel "problems", where most places and all other time periods, dollars per calorie and dollars per nutrition were the limiting factor to average health and longevity.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I have read the original article at the Atlantic. This is a horrific horrific article, written by the sympathizers and apologists of the red terror in France, Soviet regimes (China and Soviet Union). Article also says that reduction of the number of the workers was a factor increasing the income the working class and decreased inequality.
First, it casually mentions Soviet and Chinese revolutions with their confiscation and redistribution. Article fails to mention, that such changes were followed by the civil wars against peasantry and the workers, the use of chemical weapons against insurgents, massive red terror, massive incarcerations, loss of the academic, scientific, professional, business and cultural elite by both troika death sentences and emigrations. Don't try to mention this "equality measure" in Russia, for you risk to be roughed up by those who hate communism. Also, article fails to mention, that these revolutions created a super-elite class which keeps most of the wealth in these countries, basically brainy yet criminally dishonest former communist party members who got filthy rich.
Secondly the article mentions confiscatory rate as the solution. Author simply fails to mention that if a marginal rate exceeds 50% people are less likely to try to make more money, and, most importantly, marginal income tax rate does not touch the principle, which is rarely if ever taxed.
This topic of inequality has been covered ad nauseum by Austrian economists, with the one and only conclusion: it is the excessive government regulation that is causing inequality. Here are some basic examples:... medical profession is completely regulated in the USA. The number of medical school graduates is strictly regulated in order not to produce surplus professionals. Many other factors, such as regulations and, for example, requirement to a have malpractice insurance, do add up to the medical practice costs and, subsequently, to the prices. As such, even now with Obamacare in effect, healthcare is un-affordable luxury for many, and some people are suffering from lack of it. If the profession is completely unregulated, and would allow unlimited immigration of medical specialists from anywhere in the world, combined with loosened importation of medications, malpractice reform, would seriously give death blow to the healthcare industry, which does not provide a meaningful increase in the longevity of lives of Americans compared to the countries such as Costa Rica or Albania.
Finally article fails to mention that there are countries where catastrophe was not required to have exceedingly high standard for their citizens. Switzerland. Super low federal taxes, most of the decisions are done locally by the cantons, historically libertarian governmental approach by the Government. There was never a catastrophe in Switzerland, but their living standard is one of the highest in the world. Also, inequality is not considered an issue, there are plenty of rich people, who live there with many regular Swiss minding their own business and not worrying about inequality: why would they?
The US after the world wars might have been an exception (since we were hardly touched), but when you have devastation from war, your infrastructure and systems get thrown out of whack, the "equal" after might be worse than the "poor" beforehand.
In debates about Christianity, there are two groups: those looking for answers, and those looking to just ask questions.
You are the only one that mentioned equality of outcome, which is an anti-American theme. The only way to ensure equality of outcome is to violate other people's rights.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
More than 5 moderator points for this story.
So I'm very familiar with two countries, Vietnam and Thailand.
Vietnam, as you all know, went through a difficult occupation by the French, then the Americans, before having their country divided in two and then suffering a devastating civil war which killed millions of people (4 million?) before unification. The result? Everyone, more or less, started out very poor (during the late 70s and early 80s starvation was a real fear). So everyone was equal. Now though, inequality is climbing (fast) as the winners have "capitalized" (ironic comment intended on the supposedly communist country) on their ability to extract a greater and greater portion of the country's rising wealth. Still, for a time, society was remarkably fluid and anyone could be anyone (for example the ex-prime minister came from humble beginnings).
Thailand has not been conquered by a foreign power (ever?), certainly not by the westerners who did so to every other country in S.E. Asia. (That was due to the astuteness of their past king(s) who played the foreigners off against each other). So the power structures in Thailand have remained static for hundreds of years. In the last century, because of the great increase in wealth coming from modernization and technology, much of it was captured by the ruling class. Thus you have an urban elite that was (until recently) running the show from Bangkok (the "Hi So" or High Society) and getting richer and richer in the process. A populist (yet corrupt) billionaire politician used this great divide to sweep himself into power (sound familiar) only to be ultimately blocked by the military (acting on behest of the existing power structures).
I care about me and my family and we're not doing so hot. Income inequality is a hot button issue with me because the gains since 2008 have all gone to the upper class, of which I am not. My kid just hit college and she'll not only spend her life making somebody else rich but the first 10 years paying them for the privilege. I'm struggling and she's going to struggle. Putting it in historical context doesn't make my objective reality any better.
Maybe if you're in Europe things are getting better. Here in the States millennials make 20% less than boomers adjusted for inflation. We're losing ground while our ruling class is gaining. Those aren't feelings. Those are cold, hard facts. 20 minutes in google will prove that.
I want Americans to stop settling for less. I want us to stop fighting among ourselves while the ruling class take everything. Everything you just wrote and every sentiment you just expressed makes it that much less likely that they will.
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Attempting to analyze the causes and effects of war on Economies would require a rhetorical eloquence no less than those that authored the Federalist Papers, and, at the very least, the same volume of words. Fudging it all down to something as small as your typical The Atlantic commentary read is proportionally equal to asking a five year old to draft their own theories of government.
But, let's at least have a little fun with this, and perhaps attempt at sharing something of insight. Here goes:
A brief study of the history of the United States economy would generally yield a result looking no different in approximation than an increasing sine wave, generally increasing at an exponential rate. While there are upward trends and downward trends, of more-or-less of equal duration of time, the economy has been trending upwards since its inception. As for why it's continually trending upwards, no matter how complex the argument, it generally boils down to one simple word:
Balance.
Our country maintains a relative balance between free market and regulation; between public and private sector; between state and federal governments; between taxable income and disposable income...and so on and so forth.
Naturally, given the general liberties our citizens possess, we from time to time will express our displeasure with the existing status quo. Displeasure among a proportion of the populace is inevitable. We all come from different walks of life and form opinions and biases preferring a bias against the balance in the direction of some extremism. As passionate citizens, we may attempt to swing the pendulum hard in a particular direction, as others naturally try to swing it in the opposite. We exercise this through electing representatives who share our views, posting our views online, speaking out at public meetings, attending rallies, drafting petitions, etc, etc. While these motions are a natural result of the state of government that presently exists, they generally do not threaten the state of government itself.
But, occasionally, it does. And it does, because factions within our society generate enough power among the citizens to disrupt the balance in favor of their zealous points of view. Thankfully, the founding fathers created a system of government that generally impedes factions. (To see a much more thorough and more eloquent analysis of this argument, please see Federalist Papers 9 & 10.)
I'm concerned that we may be living in one of those times. Our country is very unbalanced in its political view right now, and the inflammatory rhetoric from a zealous self-righteous minority faction is pouring fuel onto the fire. To make matters worse, one of those zealots is none other than our president. But, I digress.
When it comes to tax policies, balance is key. The United States economy fared very well following both wars, because both wars were funded by high income taxes. The United States economy also fared very well in the 20's, in the 90's, and before 2008, because income tax rates were very low, freeing up vast amounts of investment capital. And then the economies after all these booms crashed hard, much in part due to deregulation and poor investing. My point being this: Creating economic policies that directly reflect the present conditions with the intention of returning to a balanced economy are the keys to success. A zealous application of a tax policy for the sake of the tax policy alone will not contribute to economic success.
Yes, just kill everybody. We're all equal when we're dead. Might put a stopper on that global warming thing too.
This. Common stock has no value. After nearly thirty years of working for tech companies, I haven't made a penny iff of stock options.
Was helping correct inequality. FINALLY!
Then the ever-incompetent powers that be, printed TRILLIONS of fake digital currency to "bail us out" ans now inequality is worse than EVER.
The correct course of action would have been to do NOTHING, so the entire system would practically implode, and we could start over from a clean slate.
But obviously, TPTB would never allow this, as they had the most to lose, and the most to gain from a bailout.
"Never let a good crisis go to waste"
Wages in Europe were extremely low before the Black Death due to massive overpopulation versus amount of available jobs. After the Black Death there were more jobs than people to work them. Not only that there were less competition for limited resources like land. It could be argued Renaissance would not have happened without the Black Death. Families like the Medici would not have succeeded without some upending of the old world order.
My employer had an investment round done by them and were bought-out by Charles Schwab. They made money but the common stock share owners made nothing.
What will it be, fires?, floods?, pestilence?, mass riots?, Trump?
Table-ized A.I.
During Catastrophe middle class does not spend on non-essentials trinkets and hence do not have anything to sell/enrich themselves.
Hey you know who sold you out so why not quit being a pussy and go sign their kids up on that backpage site they don't care as long as they get their cut you just go grab a rich dude's kid and knock em out then some guy online pays you to let him knock em up.
Every time this comes up, I can't help but think that people are trying to hide a rash by using makeup.
There are other indicators such as age of owning first home, yearly earnings, age of US auto fleet, and so on. You could change these indicators, say by buying everyone a new car, thus lowering the age of cars on the road. But does that fix the fundamental problem in the system or just masks it?
The problem is that the US hasn't put its collective foot down. Politicians are acting in the interests of multinational corporations or their own greed/power base. Trade needs to be rebalanced. Illegal immigration and visa immigration needs to be reduced or eliminated. That should improve the economic situation in the country and boost wages.
Based on the current situation we are compelled to conclude that a state of catastrophe already exists.
Microsoft screwed us with stock options. It wicked working there surrounded by people getting screwed since they were so miserable and wanted to make everyone around them miserable.
> I care about me and my family and we're not doing so hot.
I'm very sorry to hear that. I've been there - I lived in a vacant lot under a tarp for a while, then moved into a dilapidated mobile home I shared with a roommate (rent $125/month). A few years later I was evicted from a house when I couldn't pay the rent. That was about 15 years ago.
> the gains since 2008 have all gone to the upper class, of which I am not.
Several years ago I learned that there are a few specific things that rich people do to get amd stay rich. I was surprised to learn that over 80% of millionaires never made more than $100,000 / year. I've tried to apply some of those principles and while I've not been very good at applying them consistently, I rarely very have to *worry* about money anymore. Now I'm concerned mostly about making less progress than planned toward becoming a millionaire so I can retire comfortably.
Actually I found out there are two distinct groups of "rich people" - roughly those who are financially comfortable and those who have more than $100 million dollars. The mega rich almost always give up everything else in their life to obsessively pursue money. Screw that, I don't want to do that. The people who have a few million get there by much more reasonable steps such as using a written budget with automatic saving as the first item. I can do that.
> My kid just hit college and she'll not only spend her life making somebody else rich but the first 10 years paying them for the privilege.
Ouch! You say she just started college. My college career was interrupted 25 years ago, so I'm just about to graduate now. At WGU (a state school) tuition and fees is $6,000/year. I get student loans of $3,000/year. The other $3,000/year is covered by the tax credit, my employer's tuition reimbursement, and me paying a bit of cash each year from working. I'll graduate with total student loans of $12,000. Well, I would have, but when I got some extra money (outside of my normal paycheck) I paid off $6,000, so I'll graduate with $6,000 in debt. With the degree I chose, that's about 2 1/2 weeks of income. You *could* talk to your daughter about debt and double check if the plan she has is something she's going to be happy about five or ten years from now. She doesn't *have* to have significant debt to get a college education. Of course she can go into major debt if she wants to.
When I left Microsoft in 2003, my option price was over $30, but the stock was trading at $26.35. Just found the old email. HR actually had the guts to ask if I wanted to exercise my options and pay over $4 more per share than the trading price.
Maybe, I grew up in a different USSR. What "luxury goods"? Name one private label, that existed in USSR in 1952...
They were called "collective farms" and weren't "private" at all. Though ostensibly the farm's chairman was elected, in reality the sole candidate was introduced by the Communist Party's representative for the members of the collective to rubber-stamp. Whatever they collectively farmed could only be sold to the government as well.
Neither Coca-Cola nor Pepsi owned anything — USSR-owned factories were producing the drinks under license.
Nope. Some Soviet models tried to emulate foreign cars, but Fiat didn't own any stake in the factories.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Lima, OH? I got screwed by that deal too.
War and civilization collapse were desirable things, just because everyone starts dirt poor and has a chance to start anew.
What a load of BS. The developed world is different now precisely because we have had an unprecedented chance to build instead of rebuild, resulting in an increase in relative disparities, but also, in overall quality of life for everyone.
But if you value equality at all cost, even if that is in abject poverty, suffering and death, so be it. Have a portion of your own ideological cake.
What the Declaration enshrines is the Equality of Opportunity : we all have the same rights and obligations, our results depend on what we do with them.
What Altantic and other crypto-commies are talking about is Equality of Results — whatever you do in life, your results will be roughly the same as those of everybody else. If you prosper, the government will tax you. If you suck, the government will subsidize you.
False equivalency indeed!
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I thought war was a racket. Should I be hoping for WW3?
Emotions aren't bad. We all should be angry at that.
Yes, technology levels the playing field.
That is because, like major wars and catastrophes, it can devalue established wealth and power and empowers others to succeed based on their ability. The great thing about technology though is that it usually does this with far fewer people dying and it does not require wars to spur it on even though they often do.
It was a long overdue correction to an illegitimate government.
The guillotine did wonders to reduce inequality.
Of course, if you were rich, you might not have seen it that way.
* you can draw everybody to the bottom with a catastrophe
* or you can try to give opportunities to people to draw them up
While it is very easy to see why method 1 will reduce inequalities (everybody is dead is also reducing inequalities to zero) but it is quite clear that in our modern societies we strive to point 2, which is something relatively new compared to history.
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How many times a man can repeat himself? Everyone is equal when they are equally dead.
In any other case you can always find inequality.
Sure, after the war, everyone in Germany was equal. Equally broke, equally without a job, equally without a stable home, equally without a stable government, equally...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's not the only thing but it's well known that catastrophes have a very strong tendency to in a sense shake the bush and have good things to arise out of them.
A rapid major shift does not have to be driven by catastrophe however catastrophe is a likely form of rapid major shift. Slower effects not caused by catastrophe are less visible. However in these complex systems of resource accumulation and distribution there is normally a natural pattern towards those with more gaining more and more and more.
There's a saying that it takes money to make money. Generally this is true not only in the straight forward sense but the more money you have to easier it is to make more money with it and the more money you can make with it proportionately until opportunities are exhausted.
These days people have very controversial or absurd definitions of inequality. These definitions seem to get more attention than some I would consider more worthwhile.
I haven't looked closely at this research but there's a few risks. You have to look at all catastrophes and redistribution rather than only the intersection. Some be interesting to see how often an extreme inbalance leads to the catastophe that rebalances everything.
Inequality is not a problem or even the question.
The absolute level of wealth of people is the question.
If those who are poor are well off in absolute terms, who gives a damn about inequality?
So during wartime massive government intervention creates equality but today it does not? Perhaps it is just that massive government intervention and welfare state does not create equality. (writing from Denmark where inequality has increased dramatically with the expansion of the now omnipresent state)
The only thing in history that has ever curbed inequality is obedience to God and His instructions for us on how we are supposed to live. God's word is the only source of absolute equality for everyone in His eyes. The only reason inequality exists is because of our own, personal sin.
Isn't it telling that the people who are most "anti-God" are also the most racist, bigoted, and discriminatory people out there, while the most obedient, faithful, and dedicated followers of Jesus are the least?
We all fall short of the glory of God, but giving all of our effort back to Him in obedience to His word is what will eliminate racism and discrimination.
This is what decreases inequality. Not catastrophe.
However catastrophe does indeed spur prosperity in many cases.
I suppose the trick is to figure out another way to get the economic engine running other than wars and disasters.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Fascinating how you completely miss the problem. The problem is that in the US the fantastically rich get admired. There is no sane reason to do so. You can only get fantastically rich by inheriting (not your accomplishment) or reducing a lot of people from middle-class to poor.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Based on the brief summary in my head, that's kind of what the plague did. It killed everybody, rich and poor alike. I think the result was a labor shortage which drove wages up and reduced the power of the elites to continue to enforce the old order.
Or at least semi-intelligent people?
They knew in their hearts he was kind of incompetent, but they also were so cynical about any establishment politician being able to effect meaningful change that the only way to achieve it was to empower an incompetent with the idea that it would break the system.
Of course, breaking the system has lots of unplanned side effects, too.
SMH Whatever happened to true Journalism - Actual research and editorials based on fact instead of hack job propaganda... Sorry, rethorical question.
What the article is discussing is bringing the successful down to the level of the unsuccessful. Not finding solutions for why some people don't become successful. Things like free government money and housing reducing the incentive to make one's own way.
The establishment of equal wealth does not elevate the low skilled, unmotivated people. It reduces the efforts of the highly skilled, motivated people. Eventually, the highly skilled, motivated people will rise above once again.
Just as they always have done throughout history.
Instead of treating the successful with disdain, diminishing their accomplishments, and complaining about how they have everything, it's better to strive to be more successful. Or, instead of blaming others for your poor decisions, learn from them and move on.
It's one thing to give people a leg up when times are difficult and expect them to grow. It's another to make entire segments of a population dependent upon other people and and instill a sense of defeat in them.
The later is what many government assistance programs do and why they are drains on an economy instead of growing it. I've known a few people that were very happy to collect their unemployment checks until they were in danger of losing them. Interesting how a timeline of decreasing benefits can be an incentive to try and be successful.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
You don't need a war. Financial "catastrophe" also causes compression and a more equal society. We've be much more equal right now if our last 2 presidents hadn't taken up a policy of bailing out the monied elite with our public funds.
I see the logic of this: Start a war, get half of the poor people killed, and on average the whole population will now be twice as rich! Genius!
... whatever that may be in specific cases.
Every person needs to feel loved and needs to feel competent, preferably by doing useful work they can handle and is thankfully recieved by their community while being and feeling mentally and physically healthy. With food, shelter, security, fulfilment and good regular sex at the foundation. Aside from that, hardly anyone really cares how rich the next guys is vis-a-vis himself.
If I can have all that, I seriously couldn't care less if everyone else was a billionaire but me. And I suspect it's like that for most people.
Bottom line:
Equality != Quality of life inside a society.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
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My income has quadrupled since I started, and I'm not too far from $125K today, with a year of school left to go.
One nice thing about WGU is that many of the classes end in industry certifications such as Cisco CNNA and Linux Professional Institute (LPI) Certifications. I have about eight professional certifications from WGU courses right now. In about two weeks I'll have my Cisco VNNA Security. Listing those certifications on LinkedIn absolutely does get recruiters calling.
Then when I have interviews, it's me, with fresh knowledge about the subject (and a respected certification) vs the guy who padded his resume claiming "networking knowledge" because he set up his Linksys. At my last interview, I was asked how a piece of data travels the network. When it became clear I knew everything end-to-end, when I could talk about the details of how a packet is processed inside the router, and how switches decide where to forward frames, the interview team was very impressed. They offered me a job at nearly twice the salary I had been making. A lot of that networking knowledge I learned at WGU.
Similar for other topics - the other guy *said* he knew Windows servers and Linux. I said I knew Windows servers and Linux *and* had certifications from Microsoft and LPI to back it up.
"only massive, violent shocks ... proved powerful enough to flatten disparities in income and wealth. They appeared in four different guises: mass-mobilization warfare, violent and transformative revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic epidemics."
For the USA, I vote for "state collapse". Economist Laurence Kotlikoff estimates that when the unfunded future liabilities (minus future revenues) in SS & Medicare are accounted for, the USA national debt is close to $200 trillion. Obviously that can't be funded through taxation, even if all private wealth was confiscated. That means outright default or Zimbabwe style hyperinflation, either of which would almost surely mean mass warfare or violent revolution.
This is not paranoia, it's mathematics. Ignore the doom & gloom at your own peril.
You have a choice and people around you have a choice. Right now you do not.
http://www.primitivism.com/ori...
"Hunter-gatherers consume less energy per capita per year than any other group of human beings. Yet when you come to examine it the original affluent society was none other than the hunter's -- in which all the people's material wants were easily satisfied. To accept that hunters are affluent is therefore to recognise that the present human condition of man slaving to bridge the gap between his unlimited wants and his insufficient means is a tragedy of modern times.... The world's most primitive people have few possessions. but they are not poor. Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all it is a relation between people. Poverty is a social status. As such it is the invention of civilisation. It has grown with civilisation, at once as an invidious distinction between classes and more importantly as a tributary relation that can render agrarian peasants more susceptible to natural catastrophes than any winter camp of Alaskan Eskimo."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Article *never* does a good vs evil judgement. Never advocates anything.
Article simply states: "Inequality was only curbed by catastrophe. Even in the title, it calls all of those events *Catastrophes*!
The point of the Article is to say that constant, mild and progressive policies have seldom had any impact vs catastrophes. The article calls the chinese and soviet revolutions "bloody affairs" and "murderous mechanisms"
Makes you wonder why you're
Why would you hand pick only one school out of inequality when there are many other economists in other countries producing more investigations that we could take into consideration? Many of them have also investigated inequality as a cause and an effect of market failures, that is, failure by the market to maximize the value creation (ie: an inefficient economy).
Switzerland benefited quite a lot from the influx of foreign wealth, not produced by the swiss economy itself. During some of the catastrophes talked about in the article, a lot of the spoils were transferred to Switzerland, and it has a place in the world economy as the most famous tax haven were the beneficiaries of inequality elsewhere stored their wealth. Also, its economy is *far* from unregulated, not quite a libertarian utopia. You will be able to find many more countries with less industrial, environmental, labor and even financial regulations, why didn't you choose one of those instead?
This cataclysms did nothing to impact inequity, which still dominates (and is protected) in the US today.
Sure catastrophe is great for establishing equality. It's also great for establishing dictatorship, or oligarchy.
Consider Japan. Japan is a major industrial power with no energy resources (other than renewables) of its own, so it got 30% of its energy from nuclear power, and it was on its way to making that 40%. Then there was the Fukushima Daiichi catastrophe and now nuclear is essentially dead in Japan.
Is that good? Bad? Either way the indisputable thing is that Fukushima made a difference. Catastrophe is practically the only thing that makes people undertake drastic change; absent disaster people will simply tweak things until they seem to more or less work.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
What is clear here is not the take-away that only war will bring improved equality, but that capitalism is the issue that needs to be addressed and that neoliberalism has reversed most of the good work done to create a more equitable society after the war.
The issue being that capitalism concentrates wealth into the hands of a fewer and fewer people. Only be intervening in the process can the ill effects of the ever increasing appropriation of wealth by the wealthy be mitigated. War provides the impetus to make radical and far reaching curbs in capitalist excess. The conditions of catastrophe mean that there is no alternative, but to take the steps necessary to change the material conditions for the working class (which actually includes nearly all of the self-professed Middle Class), because to fail to do this would lead to civil war and a continuation of catastrophe.
Even after the Black Death decimated the population of Europe, we can see the relationship between the peasants and the ruling class change, eventually laying the ground for the industrial revolution to usher in the capitalist age. Catastrophe allows an equalisation of the economic conditions of society, by necessitating the curbing of excessive extraction/misappropriation of wealth by the wealthy/ruling class and a redistribution of that wealth to the benefit of lower or working classes.
In fact, in the modern world it is the capitalist extraction and concentration of wealth and power that builds and drives the catastrophe which then allows the interventions necessary to mitigate the previous capitalist excess.
The trick is to now achieve that mitigation without having to suffer the death and destruction attendant to catastrophe. Unfortunately the capitalist will not give up his wealth and power without a fight - and so precipitating another catastrophe.
No seriously, if you want to start fixing equality you stop immigration. To see why, just look over at Japan.
Japan has had a massive issue with population aging since their culture hasn't adapted to the needs of working women as they've increased workforce population drastically since the 90's. This has resulted in a huge post 60year old population, projected to reach 58% by 2025.
Now, what the DATA shows, is that as the workforce DECREASES, Not only do more WOMEN participate in the workforce, but the Paygap closes drastically.
SO ergo, putting a drastic cut on our immigration to the same levels that we see in OTHER western countries who have much STRICTER standards than us will start a trend that will eventually result in more equal wages.
We are the only country in the western world which is not seeing a trend in population aging, and we're also supposedly one of the ones with a large wage gap. It's not a coincidence. Cut immigration to 100,000 per year instead of almost a million and we'd still be leaps and bounds ahead of other countries such as Canada, Sweden, et el.
And here comes the other person who didn't read the article. It doesn't have a Marxist slant. If you read the article, instead of wildly guessing and hilariously putting your foot in your mouth like ArmoredDragon did, it basically says certain people are looking back with nostalgia at one of the relatively unimportant measurements resulting from totally shitty times of death and suffering.
Amusingly, it even lists the Russian revolution of 1917! (I am not making this up; I swear.) So much for your uninformed guess that the article would be pro-Marxist. Even without reading it, the submitter's own introduction (see the italicized part after the summary) tells you up front that it's a swipe at Comrade Trump. So you basically didn't read anything.
You know where you'll find a utopia of perfect economic equality, with absolute precision and not a single outlier? Go to any graveyard. Let's make America grieve again!
Death is a very efficient way to redistribute wealth. Works every time it is tried.
Bill Gates is only going to buy so many TVs, cars, and houses. Doubling his wealth is not going to change his spending habits.
Actually, I can say with high confidence that his spending habits would change. If his income increased by 100%, the amount he gives to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation would increase by more than 100%.
That's simply how philanthropy works. A group of poor people, as much as they might want to engage in philanthropy, simply doesn't have the means to. If their situation improves, such that their own basic needs are taken care of, they tend to become philanthropists who donate a small percentage of their income. If the group's situation improves further, such that their basic needs as well as their more frivolous wants are taken care of, they tend to become philanthropists who donate a large percentage of their income. (There are, of course, exceptions to every rule.)
I look forward to the day when the economy has grown to the point where the social safety net can be funded entirely by voluntary contributions, as opposed to tax revenue that is collected coercively, even while providing more robust services than it does today.
That idea is not farfetched. Americans gave $373.25 billion to charity in 2015. I.e., about 16% of wealth redistribution was voluntary, while the other 84% was coercive. (Ok, the second statistic was from 2012; sorry I don't have something more current.) A few more decades of robust growth in Americans' incomes -- which would result in even more robust growth in their charitable contributions -- would bring us into a much better situation, where it is no longer necessary to redistribute any assets coercively. Imagine how much political rancor would dry up in that situation.
It's true that Boards of Directors often approve very large compensation packages for CEOs. They don't do this for lulz, or because they like to squander the company's resources. They do it because of a sincere belief that it's worth it; that the overall health of the company will be optimized by providing the kind of compensation it takes to attract a top-quality CEO.
Critical thinking should be applied to everything, including those who would second-guess Boards of Directors. What makes them qualified to do so? Have they ever even served on a Board of Directors? They often claim that CEO pay structure is not based on actual scarcities. Actually, top-quality CEOs are quite scarce. It's not a job I could do.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Libertarianism is an important and necessary philosophical counterpoint to overwhelming collective power. However, governments are classically defined as local monopolies on the use of force, so "non-coercive government" is actually an oxymoron.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
I think this article is quite good because it points out both the difficulty in addressing income inequality as well as reminding people that the 1950s - 1970s was a historical anomaly for the Western world created by unusual circumstances.
What I read also reminded me of what I've seen and heard about Korea during the 1940s and 1950s. Prior to the 20th century, Korea had a highly entrenched class system made up of landed aristocracy. That system was literally dismantled and blown up by the combination exploitation under Japanese occupation, the civil war, and Communist takeover in the north. When you got to the 1950s, you had an unusually flat society in South Korea with many former landed elites scraping by after their wealth was destroyed. Yet as the country rebuilt, wealth became reconcentrated in the hands of a new group of industrialists who were able to ride the economic growth. Now, its heavily re-entrenched in Korea, albeit with new elites.
You saw a similar sort of flattening and re-stratification among Korean immigrants to the United States as well. During the post-war wave, people from both traditional educated gentry and the poorest of the poor fled the country and lived together in an initially relatively narrow wealth band. Yet as people rose to success, whether through business savvy or education, the immigrant community has begun to diverge again between new money business elites and white collar professionals on one end and poor small business owners and laborers on the other. While you still see some mobility between the two, its clear that the children of the former have a lot of advantages over the children of the latter, and I believe in another generation or two, you'll see that stratification harden.
Parent wrote:
"Sure, back when having a job was more coveted, and fewer people would bother to switch jobs."
Ha ha. Like people don't covet a job now. What bubble do you live in, Slacker Prince? I have actual expenses like saving for retirement and raising a family. Maybe one or more of these don't apply to you, but they sure do to most.
As for fewer people "bothering" to switch jobs back then, well, employment was more stable and it was fairly possible to have a career (get training, get promoted, get a pension) at a company. That generally doesn't apply to most now, so they *have* to switch jobs more frequently than in the past. Less of a choice and more of a necessity.
And I own a house and have no problem switching jobs because of owning. I chose a metro area with a good job market.
but trades are all well and good for physically strong men. She's got a raft of health issues (which will also preclude military, else I'd send her to the Navy). Even if she didn't she's never going to be a welder or a plumber. She's not physically strong enough.
She works her god damned ass off. Harder than me. A lot harder.
And why the fuck shouldn't everybody win? Why the hell does society have to be dog eat dog. Better question, who gains from it? It sure as hell isn't me and it sure as hell isn't anyone with a real job.
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This. Common stock has no value. After nearly thirty years of working for tech companies, I haven't made a penny iff of stock options.
I'm sorry to hear that. Even at big, established companies, options are a gamble. Fortunately, it's pennies from heaven when it pays off.
You want to know how I actually turned paper profits into real ones? I bought a house and was forced to cash some options. I was just going to let them ride as long as I could. Fortunately, my wife wanted a house upgrade, we cashed in some, and the stock crashed soon thereafter. That should have taught me a lesson ("Take the money and run!") but I still struggle with selling at a small profit. For me, greed often wins out over fear.
In my wise old age (no giggles, please), I'm not crying that FASB made stock options obsolete. RSUs and ESPPs have worked out much better than options for me.
"Hundreds of millions perished in their wake, and by the time these crises had passed, the gap between rich and poor had shrunk"
Probably because a lot of people die in the process! The source of labor decreases while the demand in a post-war, post-revolution etc.. wasted land usually increases due to reconstruction (of all sort) needs.
"...mass-mobilization warfare, violent and transformative revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic epidemics. Hundreds of millions perished in their wake, and by the time these crises had passed, the gap between rich and poor had shrunk." ...by the time the catastrophe was over, the wealth was gone. So naturally the gap had shrunk.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
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Behind every great fortune there is crime;
1% owns 60% wealth http://qz.com/843902/1-of-indi...
Casteism
Some quotes that sum up your inverted priorities and empathy, starting with the daily terror French peasants lived in before the revolution:
For the bourgeois living in their bubbles, the tragedy of the French and Russian revolutions isn't that 90% of the people were crushed for hundreds of years under the boot heel of aristocracy, it's that the rich and upper class got the shit end of the stick for once, instead of the poor. Because, as MLK laid out, your priority is order, justice can go to the back of the bus.
It's the same sense of priorities that may make you tut tut when you read about cops literally beating people to death in the street for no goddamn reason and getting away with it, but are outraged when a protestor breaks a window or makes you ten minutes late on your morning commute. One more quote to sum it up:
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." - JFK