Wealth Inequality in the US

[CA renter]

[quote=spdrun]I’m not sure if the poor work less — if you’re being paid $8/hr, you need to work a lot MORE (often two jobs) to make ends meet than if you’re making $50/hr.[/quote]

Totally agree with this.

The rich tend to have far more leisure time than the poor who often have to work MORE hours and tend to have much more physically demanding jobs.

It’s funny how the media has managed to convince so many people that all poor people are lazy and/or unemployed.

The hardest working people I’ve ever known tended to also be some of the poorest.

[livinincali]

[quote=SK in CV]
Consumer choices drive inequality? I don’t think so. What’s happened over the last few decades, and magnfied over the last decade is that the share of corporate revenues that end up in the hands of the workers who actually produce that revenue has declined dramatically.

See charts here: http://dispatches.us/post/11571145361/workers-wages-fall-corporate-profits-soar

Corporate profits are at record levels, measured both in real dollars and as a share of GDP. The delta in that income has remained in the hands of business owners, while wages have shrunk. The result is that the wealth built by those record profits remain in the hands of those who own the stock. That has always been the case, except that prior to the last few decades, workers have shared in that growth. That’s not the case now.

It has almost nothing to do with irresponsible consumption.[/quote]

You’re looking at one side of the balance sheet and I’m looking at the other. Where do corporate profits come from. They come from people consuming their goods or services. If you wanted greater wealth equality you would have many people selling each other goods. Instead we have tended to be more and more monopolistic, i.e. one person selling many people a particular good or service. In general a consumer makes a personal choice to support the growth of the monopoly. Monopolies are the primary driver of income inequality. If there’s one guy that controls most of the oil or most of the consumer goods he’s obviously going to be extremely rich because there’s millions of people that buy things from him that he sells for a profit.

Your solution seems to be allow the monopoly to exist but somehow force them to distribute their wealth more fairly. Another solution would be to break up the monopoly. Another would be to allow the monopolies to fail. Unfortunately pension funds and 401Ks rely heavily on those near monopolies existing and thriving. You can fix wealth inequality by allowing debt deleveraging and failure of over leveraged companies but you’re going to destroy your retirement fund in the process.

The scam is that 401Ks and pensions make you have a vested interest in maintaining the wealth inequality

[moneymaker]

Since most stocks are owned by the rich, I’m doing my part to take their money. Totally agree with most of the posts here. I’m currently trading stocks manually with limit orders, anybody here trading using software and is it working for you? I don’t see myself making it into the 1% group by trading stocks like Warren Buffet did, but I figure I do make minimum wage,so it’s like a second job without the labor intensive stuff.

[dumbrenter]

[quote=Jazzman]Econprof if you read the commentary, the film maker had to edit down to three minutes, and the video does reference income. One would hope it is a teaser to sequels that flesh out who these super rich are, how they accumulated their wealth, and how a more even distribution is achieved. I think what is unsettling is the notion that concentrations of wealth and its corollary power, are reminiscent of an era we associate with a less evolved society, where access to the political process, education, and opportunity is discriminatory. I don’t think we are devolving in that sense, but the wealth concentration phenomenon needs to be examined in the context of the overall health of a society. Ironically, you might find similarly huge disparities in China and Russia, and if comparing rich and poor countries the divide is very apparent again. Time magazine recently did a study of the Nordic model where societal mores are in lockstep with a consensual process. A hybrid Freidman socialism. It works, but the question of adapting it on a large scale presents challenges.[/quote]

Does the nordic model you refer to take into account that at one point they shipped off their poor to the US? What kind of societal mores allow for that?
And if US were to copy that model, where do you suggest we ship our poor off to? Because, once the bottom 20% is removed, the inequality might not looks as bad as it seems.

[spdrun]

Horseshit – plenty of countries had a lot of inequality even AFTER they shipped their poor overseas. i.e. Ireland.

[Parabolica]

Jazzman-
Can you give more details about the Nordic explusion of their poor to the US. I always had this idea that they were people seeking a better deal in a new land. At least it sounds like that is the way it was for Swedes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_emigration_to_the_United_States

[CA renter]

[quote=Parabolica]Jazzman-
Can you give more details about the Nordic explusion of their poor to the US. I always had this idea that they were people seeking a better deal in a new land. At least it sounds like that is the way it was for Swedes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_emigration_to_the_United_States%5B/quote%5D

Which expulsion are you referring to?

According to your link, the PTB in Sweden were opposed to the emigration of Swedes to the Americas.

[From your link:]

“During the later 19th century, the major shipping lines financed Swedish emigrant agents and paid for the production of large quantities of emigration propaganda. Much of this promotional material, such as leaflets, was produced by immigration promoters in the U.S. Propaganda and advertising by shipping line agents was often blamed for emigration by the conservative Swedish ruling class, which grew increasingly alarmed at seeing the agricultural labor force leave the country.“

…

[Also from your link:]

“Swedish mass migration took off in the spring of 1841 with the departure of Uppsala University graduate Gustaf Unonius (1810–1902) together with his wife, a maid, and two students. This small group founded a settlement they named New Upsala in Waukesha County, Wisconsin, and began to clear the wilderness, full of enthusiasm for frontier life in “one of the most beautiful valleys the world can offer.”[13] After moving to Chicago, Unonius soon became disillusioned with life in the U.S., but his reports in praise of the simple and virtuous pioneer life, published in the liberal newspaper Aftonbladet, had already begun to draw Swedes westward.

The rising Swedish exodus was caused by economic, political, and religious conditions affecting particularly the rural population. Europe was in the grip of an economic depression. In Sweden, population growth and repeated crop failures were making it increasingly difficult to make a living from the tiny land plots on which at least three quarters of the inhabitants depended. Rural conditions were especially bleak in the stony and unforgiving Småland province, which became the heartland of emigration. The American Midwest was an agricultural antipode to Småland, for it, Unonius reported in 1842, “more closely than any other country in the world approaches the ideal which nature seems to have intended for the happiness and comfort of humanity.”[14] Prairie land in the Midwest was ample, loamy, and government-owned. From 1841 it was sold to squatters for $1.25 per acre, ($28 per acre ($69/ha) as of 2013), following the Preemption Act of 1841 (later replaced by the Homestead Act). The inexpensive and fertile land of Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin was irresistible to landless and impoverished European peasants. It also attracted more well-established farmers.”

…..

[And this, also from your link.]

The political freedom of the American republic exerted a similar pull. Swedish peasants were some of the most literate in Europe, and consequently had access to the European egalitarian and radical ideas that culminated in the Revolutions of 1848.[15] The clash between Swedish liberalism and a repressive monarchist regime raised political awareness among the disadvantaged, many of whom looked to the U.S. to realize their republican ideals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_emigration_to_the_United_States

…………..

It appears that many of the Swedes emigrated because they were trying to find a more egalitarian system. More on that in another post…

[Parabolica]

Yes, no suprises there. I liked the bit in the article about Swedes who returned to Sweden after living in the US and couldn’t take the class-rigid society they found.

As best I know, no nordic countries ever directly compelled their poor to come to the US, which is what I took Jazzman to be saying.

[CA renter]

[quote=Parabolica]Yes, no suprises there. I liked the bit in the article about Swedes who returned to Sweden after living in the US and couldn’t take the class-rigid society they found.

As best I know, no nordic countries ever directly compelled their poor to come to the US, which is what I took Jazzman to be saying.[/quote]

Ah, I think you, Jazzman, and I are on the same page (I had thought you were supporting dumbrenter’s post). It was dumbrenter who wrote the post about “shipping off their poor,” not Jazzman. 🙂

[Parabolica]

Oops, right over my head.

[dumbrenter]

[quote=spdrun]Horseshit – plenty of countries had a lot of inequality even AFTER they shipped their poor overseas. i.e. Ireland.[/quote]

Then why use nordic countries as an example and why not Ireland?
The fact is that many of the euro countries being touted as examples today for US to follow now did have an outlet for their population as their societies were transitioning. The US does not have that. And of course your equality stats look better once you have gotten rid of poor over time.

And people compare a homogenous sweden of 10mil people to a country of 300+ million people which is not as homogenous in any sense.
Horseshit indeed, Ikea style.

[dumbrenter]

[quote=CA renter][quote=Parabolica]Yes, no suprises there. I liked the bit in the article about Swedes who returned to Sweden after living in the US and couldn’t take the class-rigid society they found.

As best I know, no nordic countries ever directly compelled their poor to come to the US, which is what I took Jazzman to be saying.[/quote]

Ah, I think you, Jazzman, and I are on the same page (I had thought you were supporting dumbrenter’s post). It was dumbrenter who wrote the post about “shipping off their poor,” not Jazzman. :)[/quote]

You caught the culprit!
I agree with what Jazzman wrote.
My comment was about the Time study of nordic model and what they called “societal mores”.
Having a study without accounting that over time, they had an outlet for their poor lends itself open to survivor bias.

[poorgradstudent]

Man, being poor sounds awesome.

I’m gonna quit my job and go be poor! Who is with me?

[EmilyHicks]

The problem is that our poorest people keep having more children.

[Author]

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