Exhaustion 2012 (or, It's Not Forcible Rape if the SuperPAC is Willing) - by june gloom
Vivian on 2/9/2012 at 13:15
I make about 28k and I'm pretty fucked for money, all the time. Having to travel to germany and back every few months probably has a lot to do with it, as does trying to renovate my flat, but I'm still living on sainsburies basics rice and beans. And this is ostensibly a pretty good job - junior researcher at a major institution. So in terms of education, job-type and the people I associate with, I am deffo middle class. But the lifestyle I've got at the moment doesn't feel particularly middle class.
LarryG on 2/9/2012 at 13:15
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
It's true, and every single economic policy enacted in the past 30 years has favored those 3 groups as well. We give stimulus packages/cut taxes for the rich (with the idea that it will help everyone else, as if those people are already using their vast wealth for the good of mankind) and enact social welfare for the poor. Everyone else is kind of fucked.
While JM overstates the case somewhat, he is correct, except for the the poor. The truly poor don't vote and the social safety net has been steadily eroded in order to pay for tax cuts to the fabulously rich and the richer. Any family in the US not in the top 5% has seen a real decrease in wealth and associated standard of living over the past 30 years. The long term charts are even more suggestive should you decide to overlay the history of US tax policy on top of them.
(
http://www.thestreet.com/story/11480568/1/us-standard-of-living-has-fallen-more-than-50-opinion.html) U.S. Standard of Living Has Fallen
(
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31010.htm) U.S. Standard of Living Has Fallen More Than 50%
(
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html) Wealth, Income, and Power
(
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/14/opinion/la-oe-kinsley-column-20120614) Kinsley: The wealth gap
(
http://workingthoughts.com/2009/04/24/wealth-distribution-charts-and-graphs-1991-2008/) Wealth Distribution Charts and Graphs (1991-2008)
(
http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/pikettyqje.pdf) INCOME INEQUALITY IN THE UNITED STATES, 1913-1998
If you want raw data: (
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/income_expenditures_poverty_wealth.html) Income, Expenditures, Poverty, & Wealth
But it's not just the US which is seeing this. Our world wide economic policies should be termed "champagne glass economics" because that has been the result.
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Edit:
But these 11 charts may explain it best: (
http://politicsdownanddirty.blogspot.com/2012/03/its-inequality-stupid.html) Eleven charts that explain what's wrong with America.
SubJeff on 2/9/2012 at 14:53
One of those graphs is hilarious. Apparently 4.3% of people who are in the 1% highest earning bracket are not working or deceased. Ha ha.
Of course the champagne glass exists. It's natural if you have a normal distribution. What is more of interest is how skewed it is.
LarryG on 2/9/2012 at 18:02
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
Of course the champagne glass exists. It's natural if you have a normal distribution. What is more of interest is how skewed it is.
Actually, it is completely different from Gaussian ("normal") distribution phenomena. It is a (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law) power law relationship, and an expected outcome when applying the (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle) Pareto principle or 80-20 rule. This "rule" was originally a statement about land ownership in 1906 Italy, about how 80% of the land was owned by 20% of the population. Wealth inequality is not new. It is a natural outcome of capitalism, mercantilism, and feudalism, but not of tribal economic systems. The question is not whether it exists, or even if it should exist, but to what degree should our economic system should be regulated to mitigate the inequities and tend more towards what most people would consider fair return for hard work. There is nothing sacred or natural about 80-20. We could make it 60-40 with appropriate policies. And I suspect that most would consider that more fair. (Edit: In fact, (
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Pareto.html) Pareto's data on British income taxes in his
Cours d'économie politique indicates that, at the time of his study, about 30% of the population had about 70% of the income. That has since changed.)
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
One of those graphs is hilarious. Apparently 4.3% of people who are in the 1% highest earning bracket are not working or deceased. Ha ha.
Since you don't specify which chart you have issue with, I can only speculate that the difference arises (if you read the chart correctly) from lack of "earned" or wage income amongst the ultra rich. I'm not surprised that quite a few of them don't hold wage earning jobs. They live off of capital investments.
heywood on 2/9/2012 at 21:12
EDIT: Never mind. Was responding to LarryG but need to make a plot to do it properly.
SubJeff on 2/9/2012 at 23:13
Quote Posted by LarryG
Since you don't specify which chart you have issue with, I can only speculate that the difference arises (if you read the chart correctly) from lack of "earned" or wage income amongst the ultra rich. I'm not surprised that quite a few of them don't hold wage earning jobs. They live off of capital investments.
It's the WHO ARE THE 1 PRECENT? graph. And the subtitle is "Occupations of taxpayers in top 1 percent of income".
Apparently 4.3% of taxpayers in this group are not working or dead. I don't know if that counts as an occupation in the USA.
As to the distribution curve; you're misreading me. I'm talking about the distribution of salary per year and it's a bell shaped curve that is heavily skewed to the right. This results in the champagne distribution of wealth because the few people in the tail of the curve earn a vastly disproportionate amount of money, and that happens because hello capitalism.
LarryG on 3/9/2012 at 00:35
Not Working = living off of investments
SubJeff on 3/9/2012 at 00:43
The sun will come up tomorrow. I have a computer. Any other obvious statements we should be making that I'm not aware of?
faetal on 3/9/2012 at 09:58
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this. I believe that the ongoing monarchy is much more interesting to tourists than a former monarchy would be.
Hmmmmm. I've often though about this.
The chances of being in the physical presence of one or more royals is vanishingly small for tourists. However, if you could GO INSIDE Buckingham Palace and see where the Royal Family used to live - this would be a real tourist attraction.
Personally, if I was in charge, we'd have the best of both worlds: you can go inside Buckingham Palace, but the Royals are still living there, in a large series of inter-connecting perspex tubes which separate them from the public.
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