In Depth Analysis of American Income and Taxation [Archive]

shanek

23rd September 2003, 02:36 PM

Originally posted by Malachi151
Um no, putting it on a logarithmic scale is misleading. None of the charts should be ona log scale, they should all be linear and they are all linear.

That is total BS. Those charts show relatioships between items (such as the average income of different groups) and therefore the graph must reflect that. Since it's not normalized; say, it's not a percentage or per 100,000 or anything like that, they are very misleading as to what they mean.

For example, in your first graph the relationship between the second, third, and fourth percentile is very similar. They rise to the next category at about 60%, 61%, and 58% of the following level, respectively. Note that in my version of the graph the increase up to the next category is about the same. That's what you want. Yours does not show this relationship; your chart actually suggests an increase in the ratio between the categories, and that just isn't the case. Most misleading is the last category, the top 1%. It's about five times as large as the preceding category, but the differences in scales between that bar and the previous one show a misleading relationship. Instead of a 2:5 ratio, which is what they are, your graph makes it look like a much, much bigger increase.

You've demonstrated before that your intention is to show the disparity between the top 1% and the rest; unless you at least acknowledge this problem with the graphs, instead of insisting that they should be linear when they should really be ratio scales, then you have demonstrated the levels of intellectual dishonesty you are willing to sink to in order to make your points.

iankaplan

23rd September 2003, 03:28 PM

Shanek, I disagree with you.

Your logarithmic version of the graph is VERY misleading. It makes it look like the average person in the top 1% makes 30% more than those in the next 4%, when really, they make closer to 500% more. Malachi's graph makes this ratio very clear and easy to see and understand. Your graph has the dollar amounts along the y-axis, so I could figure out the true ratio if I wanted to, but why add an extra step to the process of explanation?

Maybe I'm wrong, but perhaps if you explained a little better why your version makes more sense, you could persuade me.

Malachi151

23rd September 2003, 03:56 PM

Originally posted by iankaplan
Shanek, I disagree with you.

Your logarithmic version of the graph is VERY misleading. It makes it look like the average person in the top 1% makes 30% more than those in the next 4%, when really, they make closer to 500% more. Malachi's graph makes this ratio very clear and easy to see and understand. Your graph has the dollar amounts along the y-axis, so I could figure out the true ratio if I wanted to, but why add an extra step to the process of explanation?

Maybe I'm wrong, but perhaps if you explained a little better why your version makes more sense, you could persuade me.

His version makes more sense because it makes it look like someone making over a million dolllars a year is not really making that much more than someone making $50,000....

Nothing can be more straight forward than a simple one to one scale where very dollar is depicted equally. To say anything else is just trying to confuse the issue. The whole point of the graph is to the difference between the amounts, obviously by tweaking the scale you totally that purpose.

There is no sense is even having a graph like the one he made since it gives no sense of scale, you may as well just list numbers in a table.

Grammatron

23rd September 2003, 04:01 PM

What would really be interesting to see along with those graphs is how much each of those groups spends yearly in contrast to their income. Because someone can make $1million dollars and lose $4million in the process.

shanek

23rd September 2003, 04:23 PM

Originally posted by iankaplan
Your logarithmic version of the graph is VERY misleading.

No, it isn't.

It makes it look like the average person in the top 1% makes 30% more than those in the next 4%,

No, it doesn't. It shows that the difference in height between the two bars properly shows the correct ratio. You're looking at the graph wrong; the Y scale doesn't go down to 0. In fact, that's impossible on a logarithmic scale; the graph would have to be infinitely tall to do so.

Malachi's graph makes this ratio very clear and easy to see and understand.

Malachi's graph doesn't show ratios at all!!! MINE uses the ratio scale and shows the correct ratios in the difference between the different pay scales. Malachi's version makes the ratio between $200,000 and $1,000,000 look ten times as large as the ratio between $20,000 and $100,000, when in fact they should be the same! My graph shows the ratios between those values to be equal, as in fact they are.

Your graph has the dollar amounts along the y-axis, so I could figure out the true ratio if I wanted to,

You don't have to. Just looking at my graph gives you the proper ratio. Malachi's misleads you into thinking the ratios are something other than what they are.

Maybe I'm wrong, but perhaps if you explained a little better why your version makes more sense, you could persuade me.

It's as I explained above. From the lowest to the second quintile, the increase is about 2.21; for the second to the third, 1.67; from the third to the fourth, 1.64; from the fourth to the next 15%, 1.73; from that to the next 4%, 2.16; and from that to the top 1%, 5.32. Note the similarity in the growth rates between the second and the "next 15%" on the graph: Malachi's graph makes it look as though the ratio is increasing; mine shows that the ratios are, in fact, similar. This also works if you're comparing, say, the second quintile to the "next 15%;" that is a ratio of 4.73, and as you can see my graph shows it being only slightly less than the 5.32 ratio I mentioned above, whereas Malachi's graph makes the ratio between the last two categories seem much, much greater than the ratio between the second and "next 15%."

This is particularly important given his words on the site:

As you can see from the graph below, despite the fact that people tend to think of professionals such as doctors and lawyers who make two or three hundred thousand dollars a year as being "rich", the incomes of those professionals are closer to that of the average middle class school teacher than they are to those of the average or above average income earner in the top 1%.

But the income of a professional making $200,000 to a teacher making $40,000 is the exact same ratio as a rich person making $1,000,000 to a professional making $200,000.

Another graph he has a problem with is this one:

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/THIS_W3.GIF

Note that the claim is:

As you can see though the incomes reported by the bottom 80% of American working households have changed only slightly since the 1960s even with an increase in two and three worker households, while the incomes of the top 5% of households has gone up dramatically.

But we can't see that properly without a ratio scale. He doesn't source the original numbers, so I can't recreate the graph properly, but if you look at the graph closely you'll see that the last bit the red line goes up from about $220,000 to $260,000, an increase of about 18%. During the same time period, the 5th quintile went up from about $125,000 to $150,000, which an inrease of about 20%. Very very similar, but Malachi's graph makes the former look like a much more dramatic increase than the latter. The smaller quintiles are harder to resolve because the smaller scale makes them look almost even, although they are rising slightly during that same period. If he were being honest, he would have done the graph with a ratio scale so that he could show the true growth in Mean Household Income.

Now, compare all of that to one of the graphs where a ratio scale is unnecessary:

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/egtrra.gif

The changes here are shown as a percentage, being the proportion of the tax break they got to their total income. In this case, no ratio scale is necessary because the ratio is built into the numbers. We would expect the rich to get a bigger nominal amount back in taxes because of the higher income; this graph properly (assuming the data is correct) shows the relationship as a percent. As a percentage of their respective incomes, the rich got back five times as much as the second quintile; this is shown as a 5:1 ratio even though the actual numbers would have shown a relationship much, much greater than 5:1.

Make sense now?

[Edited to add image tags]

shanek

23rd September 2003, 04:34 PM

Originally posted by Malachi151
Nothing can be more straight forward than a simple one to one scale where very dollar is depicted equally.

As Einstein said, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." Just because it's easier to understand doesn't mean it's right.

The whole point of the graph is to the difference between the amounts,

Which is exactly why you need a ratio scale—to show the proper differences in proportion. Your scale doesn't do that.

There is no sense is even having a graph like the one he made since it gives no sense of scale, you may as well just list numbers in a table.

Then why do economists and other professionals consistently use ratio scales for such graphs?

dsm

23rd September 2003, 04:50 PM

Originally posted by Malachi151

Check it out and let me what you think, or if you see something wrong or know of info you think should be included. I do plan to include historical minimum wage data as well, I just haven't gotten to that yet.

So what is the point of the paper? What are you trying to prove? Or are you trying to prove anything other than who makes how much money in the US?

Also, you need to give the paper a better read through. There are numerous missing words, dropped letters, and (I think) a few spelling errors.

Finally, on your final graph, are the numbers supposed to have 3 more zeroes?

shanek

23rd September 2003, 04:56 PM

Originally posted by dsm
So what is the point of the paper?

As near as I can figure, his point, as usual, is that those who make more money have higher incomes than those who don't make as much money. That, and if you continually decrease the amount of people in your final category—top quintile, top 5%, top 1%, top 400, then you can make that last bar bigger and bigger and bigger, which is true with any distributed array of numbers.

Oh, and if you use linear graph scales instead of ratios, you can make it look really, really scary.

Malachi151

24th September 2003, 11:48 AM

I just updated the page with some better info, I found historical data on total federal taxes as opposed to just income taxes, so I added that.

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/american_income_taxation.htm

So what is the point of the paper?

To simply shed some light onto this issue since the majority of information out there on it is misinformation. Its simply a presentation of facts so that people can be informed.

BPSCG

24th September 2003, 12:14 PM

Originally posted by Cain

I have not read Malachi's page yet, but your analysis here is misleading. Wages stagnated for the majority of Americans throughout the eighties and most of the nineties.
As Randi would say, that's an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary proof. Are you saying that most Americans were making the same money in 1999 as they were in 1980? I'd love to see any evidence to support that claim.

The rich, however, have achieved nearly unprecedented prosperity in the last two decades. The net wealth of the 400 richest Americans, for instance, tripled between 1983 and 1989. It tripled again under Clinton's term.
That's a meaningless assertion. MY net wealth probably increased fiftyfold in that time (I was pretty broke after my divorce, doing much better now). But I'm not rich (okay, Al Gore would probably say I am). And I'll bet there are a lot of people in the same boat as me, including the millions who entered the workforce in 1983 with a net worth near zero. So what's the point of saying 400-odd very rich people did very well in that time?

As wealth and income percolate up, we should expect the tax burden to disproportionately fall on the rich. But the concentration, in the last twenty years especially, has far outpaced their tax burden. So are you saying that taxation should be based on wealth, rather than income?

dsm

24th September 2003, 12:40 PM

Originally posted by Malachi151

To simply shed some light onto this issue since the majority of information out there on it is misinformation. Its simply a presentation of facts so that people can be informed.

But statistics without interpretation has little value in a forum atmosphere. Without a premise for looking at the statistics, the statistics can be interpretted in (almost) any manner the reader chooses.

:confused:

Jaggy Bunnet

24th September 2003, 01:29 PM

Malachi151

24th September 2003, 01:31 PM

As Randi would say, that's an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary proof. Are you saying that most Americans were making the same money in 1999 as they were in 1980? I'd love to see any evidence to support that claim.

That's a meaningless assertion. MY net wealth probably increased fiftyfold in that time (I was pretty broke after my divorce, doing much better now). But I'm not rich (okay, Al Gore would probably say I am). And I'll bet there are a lot of people in the same boat as me, including the millions who entered the workforce in 1983 with a net worth near zero. So what's the point of saying 400-odd very rich people did very well in that time?

The issue is not individuals, but rather segments. The top 400 is always the top 400, but the top 400 people in 2000 may be totally different than in 1980. Likely wise we always expect people to move up in slary over time generally. You start out low and move higher in pay as you get older.

The issue is not tracking individuals through the economic system, but tracking segments of the economics system. People move in and out of segments, but the issue is saying what was the middle of the road person making in America in 1980 and what is the middle of the road person making now? That does not mean looking at the same person, it means looking at whoever is now the middle.

You can interpret the data however you like, but that is what is being looked at in a graph like the media income over time graph, which shows stagnation from the 1970s through today.

And while that segment of the economy has been stagnate in terms of compensation the top segment has grown enormously.

That does not mean that some person from 1980 made that much more money by 2000 it means that the compensation level for whoever is in the top 1% at that time is much higher in 2000 than it was in 1980.

In other words the average compensation for the top 1% in 1980 was about $80,000 a year(? not sure of that figure), now the average compensation for the top 1% is over $1 million a year.

However, for people in the middle of the income scale they were making abotu $32,000 in 2000 dollars in 1980 and the people in the middle are still making $32,000.

To think of it another way, the salaries of basket ball players has gone way in the past 50 years, from I think about $40,000 a year in the 60s to $2.5 million a year now. That does not mean that individuals who made $40,000 a year in the 60s are now making 2.5 millon, it means that a backetball player could expect to make $40,000 then and now one can expect to make $2.5 million.

You aren't tracking the same individuals you are just comparing compensation for the same group at different times to see how it has changed over time. For people in the top in America it has gone way up, for the bottom 80% of the job market it is about the same now as it was in 1970.

BPSCG

25th September 2003, 05:15 AM

Originally posted by Malachi151
In other words the average compensation for the top 1% in 1980 was about $80,000 a year(? not sure of that figure), now the average compensation for the top 1% is over $1 million a year.

However, for people in the middle of the income scale they were making abotu $32,000 in 2000 dollars in 1980 and the people in the middle are still making $32,000.This is all a fancy way of saying that the richest people are better at getting richer than the average person. Two (maybe three) questions for you:
1) Is this supposed to be something we didn't already know?
2) Is this supposed to be a bad thing?
3) If it is a bad thing, what do you propose we should do about it?

Malachi151

25th September 2003, 05:58 AM

Here is the actual data that you were looking for:

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/aftertaxinc97.gif

Actually the average income of the bottom quintile has gone down between 1979 and 1997, the 2nd and 4rd have stayed about the same, and the 4th went up by a couple thousand.

What its saying is that we are paying people like teachers about the same now as we did 20+ years ago, but people like CEOs are making about 10 or 20 times what they made 20 years ago. You can interpret that however you like.

Edit: I should also add that an increased percentage of the income for the top 5% has come comes from capital gains over the past 20 years as well, so that's not all paid income a lot of it is based on the stock market, etc.

I also just added this graph, which I think is one of the best of all.

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/incomevspop.gif

Tez

25th September 2003, 06:52 AM

Originally posted by shanek
[B]
Malachi's graph doesn't show ratios at all!!! MINE uses the ratio scale and shows the correct ratios in the difference between the different pay scales. Malachi's version makes the ratio between $200,000 and $1,000,000 look ten times as large as the ratio between $20,000 and $100,000, when in fact they should be the same! My graph shows the ratios between those values to be equal, as in fact they are.

Shane, most people here are intelligent enough to be able to read graphs on either scale, so I'm not interested in that debate. Clearly the log scale is better if you're interested in examining the ratios, as you've stated.

What I don't understand is why you think examining income ratios is useful? Or at least more useful than looking at the absolute dollar amounts.

Generally (in science anyway) being concerned about the ratios would make sense if we were interested in scaling properties - in particular, if there was no absolute scale through which to interpret the problem. My sense is that in this case there is such a scale - the members of this society are all paying the same types and numbers of dollars for a loaf of bread.

shanek

25th September 2003, 03:00 PM

Originally posted by Malachi151
To simply shed some light onto this issue since the majority of information out there on it is misinformation.

Which your site is simply adding to.

shanek

25th September 2003, 03:05 PM

Originally posted by Malachi151
Here is the actual data that you were looking for:

This still doesn't give the raw numbers.

Actually the average income of the bottom quintile has gone down between 1979 and 1997,

You can't tell this on the graph, though. Your scale makes this more or less straight. A ratio scale would make the difference more obvious.

the 2nd and 4rd have stayed about the same,

Depends on what you mean by "about the same." Again, since it isn't a ratio scale, we can't really tell that.

I also just added this graph, which I think is one of the best of all.

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/incomevspop.gif

I don't understand this one. What does "share of households" mean and why is its relationship to after-tax income significant?

shanek

25th September 2003, 03:06 PM

Originally posted by Tez
What I don't understand is why you think examining income ratios is useful? Or at least more useful than looking at the absolute dollar amounts.

All other reasons aside, how about because that's exactly what Malachi is trying to base his claims on?

corplinx

25th September 2003, 03:37 PM

Liberals love to leave in the outliers. In theory the top 1 percent shouldnt even be on the chart ;).

I guess its easier to create "us vs them" when the "them" is a faceless 1 percent who 99 percent of people are envious of.

Malachi151: ever thought of renaming your schtick, irrational revelation ?

Cain

25th September 2003, 04:11 PM

Originally posted by BPSCG

As Randi would say, that's an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary proof. Are you saying that most Americans were making the same money in 1999 as they were in 1980? I'd love to see any evidence to support that claim.

No, that's what Carl Sagan said. I am not saying people made the same wages as they did in 1980 as they did in 1999. I haven't read my post in a few days, but I know enough not to compare those dates (the scholarly practice is to compare the peaks in the business cycle). Throughout the nineties wages were below 1979 levels, but at the very end of the decade they picked up. Anyone who reads the business knows this. If you want an excellent source then I suggest Paul Krugman's _Peddlnig Prosperity_ (1994). His new book might slide the fact in as well. At the height of the boom adjusted wages did indeed surpass 1979 levels. This was one of the largest expansions in history, but it was extremely concentrated at the top, and inequalities today are the worst they've been since the depression. The economist Edward N. Wolff from NYU, I believe, writes regularly about these issues and I'm sure you can find a column or two about it online in either the _American Prospect_ or _Dissent_. He'll probably also mention stagnating wages.

That's a meaningless assertion. MY net wealth probably increased fiftyfold in that time (I was pretty broke after my divorce, doing much better now). But I'm not rich (okay, Al Gore would probably say I am). And I'll bet there are a lot of people in the same boat as me, including the millions who entered the workforce in 1983 with a net worth near zero. So what's the point of saying 400-odd very rich people did very well in that time?

Are you kidding? The four hundred richest individuals tripling their net wealth in seven years is not the same as a particular individual who just escaped from a costly divorce. It's indicative of a pattern-- wealth concentrating on top. Jesus, nobody denies the rich got much, much, much richer than all other people in the last two decades. Perhaps you should look at Wolff's book _Top Heavy_.

So are you saying that taxation should be based on [b]wealth, rather than income?

Wealth is aggregated income. If we increase the marginal tax brackets, we'll close the wealth gap between the rich and poor. But in addition to income taxes, yes, I firmly believe in, for example, the estate tax.

Malachi151

25th September 2003, 06:38 PM

Originally posted by corplinx
Liberals love to leave in the outliers. In theory the top 1 percent shouldnt even be on the chart ;).

I guess its easier to create "us vs them" when the "them" is a faceless 1 percent who 99 percent of people are envious of.

Malachi151: ever thought of renaming your schtick, irrational revelation ?

LOL, okay, just showing your true colors. When you start saying that analyzing the ratios of the income of various segments of the population is a "liberal" thing its obvious that you have no idea what you are talking about.

Keep in mind that I am simply graphing and analyzing data that is collected and presented by various government agencies. Maybe "liberals" have been the ones collecting and presenting this information all along these past 100 years... Who knew?

shanek

25th September 2003, 07:04 PM

Originally posted by Malachi151
Keep in mind that I am simply graphing and analyzing data that is collected and presented by various government agencies.

Then why do you refuse to modify the presentation of said data after it is pointed out how your presentation is misleading?

dsm

25th September 2003, 07:38 PM

Originally posted by Malachi151

Keep in mind that I am simply graphing and analyzing data that is collected and presented by various government agencies. Maybe "liberals" have been the ones collecting and presenting this information all along these past 100 years... Who knew?

How does your presentation differ from how the "various government agencies" present the data?

(that's a variation on Shanek's question)

peptoabysmal

25th September 2003, 08:12 PM

Cain

25th September 2003, 10:49 PM

Originally posted by peptoabysmal

LOL irrational revelation!

Beautiful.

hahahahaha

hahahaha, indeed. That's about as creative and unobvious as it is funny :rolleyes:

peptoabysmal

25th September 2003, 10:57 PM

Originally posted by Cain

hahahaha, indeed. That's about as creative and unobvious as it is funny :rolleyes:

You must be in the rapture of the revelation. :p

Jaggy Bunnet

26th September 2003, 02:02 AM

Originally posted by Cain
Are you kidding? The four hundred richest individuals tripling their net wealth in seven years is not the same as a particular individual who just escaped from a costly divorce. It's indicative of a pattern-- wealth concentrating on top. Jesus, nobody denies the rich got much, much, much richer than all other people in the last two decades. Perhaps you should look at Wolff's book _Top Heavy_.

The four hundred richest individuals in each year are probably very different people from the previous year and even more probably different people from seven years before. As analysis of the returns shows, most of the income on the largest returns is from capital gains which are highly unlikely to recur every year. It therefore does not indicate any sort of concentration of wealth - if the highest income people are different every year it indicates that wealth is NOT being concentrated.

What its saying is that we are paying people like teachers about the same now as we did 20+ years ago, but people like CEOs are making about 10 or 20 times what they made 20 years ago. You can interpret that however you like.

Actually that is not what it shows at all as there is nothing to suggest the best paid people are CEO's. As you note it is far more likely they have made their money from capital gains, not salaries. So it is more likely that these people have set up / built / owned businesses and make their cash when they come to sell them - do you object to that?

Malachi151

26th September 2003, 05:23 AM

Originally posted by dsm

How does your presentation differ from how the "various government agencies" present the data?

(that's a variation on Shanek's question)

Ummm... its in graph form instead of just tables of numbers....

All my data sources are linked within the document, you can go and examine any of the data yourself.

I also did comparisons, whereas the raw data is just that, raw with no comparisons, so instead of having just two tables, one with share of income and one with share of taxes I combined the two to show share of tax vs share of income, etc, that's called analysis.

I find it funny that people try to take issue with the data. It's just data. The numbers are what they are. I'm not changing the numbers I'm just graphing them.

I also did things like breaking out the high end groups, if they did not already do it, instead of just using Top 20% Top 10% Top 5% and Top 1%, I broke though out into 80 to 89th percentile, 90 to 94th percentile, 95 to 99th percentile, etc, so that there is no data overlap, which distorts the data.

26th September 2003, 06:08 AM

Malichi,

I seem to always ask the same question when you share your flashes of the blindingly obvious.

So what?

Should we execute these rich people? Tax them into a boring sameness with the rest of us? Worship them?

What?

Do you have any point here? You are sorta like T'ai Chi who trolls suggestive stuff and never takes a position. Do you have a position or do you simply like redigesting government numbers, sort of like a bovine social critic.

There is nothing new or illuminating that I have gained from all of your posting of various graphs. Why not say what it is that you are getting at? As you might have noticed, very few of the people that respond to you evidence any sense of outrage at what you are presenting. Are you outraged? Then grow a pair and say so, and while you are at it suggest what you would do about it. Your approach to, what I can only surmise as, your problem is fairly cowardly, in my opinion.

Cain

26th September 2003, 07:20 AM

Originally posted by Jaggy Bunnet
The four hundred richest individuals in each year are probably very different people from the previous year and even more probably different people from seven years before. As analysis of the returns shows, most of the income on the largest returns is from capital gains which are highly unlikely to recur every year. It therefore does not indicate any sort of concentration of wealth - if the highest income people are different every year it indicates that wealth is NOT being concentrated.

The four hundred richest individuals refers to the four hundred wealthiest people in America. Yes, it's probably correct that income is more volatile than wealth, but this list doesn't change a great deal from year to year (Forbes publishes who falls off. One of the primary reasons is, ahem, dying).

I believe this year in fact four individuals who had appeared on this list since it was first published disappeared. All four died, but one of them wouldn't have made it if he lived. And even within these top 400 wealth is highly concentrated up at the top. I'd bet the the top 50 have more than the next 350.

Actually that is not what it shows at all as there is nothing to suggest the best paid people are CEO's. As you note it is far more likely they have made their money from capital gains, not salaries. So it is more likely that these people have set up / built / owned businesses and make their cash when they come to sell them - do you object to that? [/B]

Actually, I vastly underestimated the meteroic pay rise of CEOs. It's a well known fact that CEOs once made "only" 40 times their average employee. Today they make more than 500 times. That's the result of relative flat wages for typical workers and insane compensation for CEOs.

My objection is that Americans today are working harder than ever and we should share the gains more equitably. The vast majority of gains went to the very slim segment of fat cats.

Jaggy Bunnet

26th September 2003, 07:33 AM

Originally posted by Cain

The four hundred richest individuals refers to the four hundred wealthiest people in America. Yes, it's probably correct that income is more volatile than wealth, but this list doesn't change a great deal from year to year (Forbes publishes who falls off. One of the primary reasons is, ahem, dying).

In the graphs shown on this thread the top 400 does not refer to wealth at all, only to income. The figures used to prepare the graphs are prepared from income tax returns. The figures used for the top 400 are the returns which for that year have the highest income. Approx 60 - 70% (from memory) of the income of those 400 came from capital gains. It is unlikely that the same people would figure in this year on year even if the Forbes wealth list remains unchanged.

shanek

26th September 2003, 07:42 AM

Originally posted by Malachi151
I find it funny that people try to take issue with the data. It's just data. The numbers are what they are. I'm not changing the numbers I'm just graphing them.

In a misleading way. That's the problem. No one is taking you to task for your data; only with your presentation and interpretation of it. And pretending otherwise just compounds your intellectual dishonesty.

BPSCG

26th September 2003, 07:51 AM

Originally posted by Cain

Wealth is aggregated income. If we increase the marginal tax brackets, we'll close the wealth gap between the rich and poor. Why do we want to do that? Do you doubt that even if the government were to somehow confiscate ALL of everyone's wealth today, next week there would a few fabulously wealthy people? Are you suggesting that periodically, the government should sweep in and re-level the playing field by slamming everyone who has above-average wealth with a punishing tax, just in the name of "closing the wealth gap"? By your reasoning, they'll have to, because those damn rich people will just keep popping up again.* Whack-A-Mole!

* ...at least until they wise up and realize there's no point in being productive and contributing to a prosperous society when the government just takes everything away...

Malachi151

26th September 2003, 07:54 AM

Right, Cain, the data I was presenting was from the top 400 filers.

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/TaxFacts/overview/top400.cfm

At any rate, what else is interesting is that for example in 1994 only 10% of the total AGI for the top 400 filers, on average, came from salaries and wages, in 2000 it was 16% (due to stock market tumble no doubt).

So that's an issue that I'm sure many people don't exactly understand. So when we talk about capital gain, its often easy to get capital gains cuts compared to other types of tax cuts, many people don't really understand the real significance of that.

When only 10% of your yearly earnings come from you "job" and the rest is from capital gains and interest/dividends, its a a different ballgame. What if 10% of yoru incoem came from dividends, then yes eliminating all taxes on dividends in a pretty big issue, that makes a difference of tens of millions of dollars a year at the levels of these people. So basically a change in a law is the difference between getting an extra $10 million dollars next year or not. How many other Americans can relate to those situations?

And when you are talking about things like interest, that's essentially just income that is made from letting money sit in a bank or other type of investment, there is no work being done to get that.

To me though its not an issue of right or wrong or what should or should not be, the issue is simply accurately presenting the information so that people can see it and make their own decisions.

I made a few comments in the piece, but for the most part I just explained the data and left it up to the reader to make of it what they want to.

So even assuming guys like CEO's get paid 500 times more than the average guy, that's still only accounting for a small fraction of their income, because salaries and wages are a small portion of the income of the super rich. The majority of their income comes from sources where it requires money to make money, which is a large part of the cause for disparity. The people at the bottom don't have extra money to use it to make more money and those at the top do. Again, right or wrong is not the issue, its just a simple matter of the facts about how the system works. Share of ownership by the top 5% has gone up dramaticlaly in teh past 20 years. The bottom 85% owns less of the total property in America than ever before, so what does that mean, and these types of things tend to have a snowball effect were as the top gets more money and owns more they have more power to continue to own more and generate more money, this is a trend as old as time.

I also find it funny that people in the 3rd or 4th quintile, or perhaps even the 80th to 90th percentile try to argue that the people who are screwing them are just better then they are and so they deserve to be screwed :p lol, talk about masochism...

Jaggy Bunnet

26th September 2003, 08:47 AM

Originally posted by Malachi151

I also find it funny that people in the 3rd or 4th quintile, or perhaps even the 80th to 90th percentile try to argue that the people who are screwing them are just better then they are and so they deserve to be screwed :p lol, talk about masochism...

And here is the crux of the problem. You think I am getting screwed if I have £100,000 and someone I have never met nor am ever likely to meet has £100m instead of say £1m.

I think that I have got £100k in either case so I am no better or worse off no matter how much the other person has.

Malachi151

26th September 2003, 08:58 AM

Originally posted by Jaggy Bunnet

And here is the crux of the problem. You think I am getting screwed if I have £100,000 and someone I have never met nor am ever likely to meet has £100m instead of say £1m.

I think that I have got £100k in either case so I am no better or worse off no matter how much the other person has.

You're not even in America, why are you part of this conversation?

How does the fact that you have or have not met people factor into anything anyway?

Jaggy Bunnet

26th September 2003, 09:07 AM

Originally posted by Malachi151

You're not even in America, why are you part of this conversation?

How does the fact that you have or have not met people factor into anything anyway?

Sorry, I thought you were trying to construct an intellectual argument not simply have a whinge that your taxes were too high. :( Of course outside America nobody pays tax and everybody earns exactly the same so the issue is not relevant.

It doesn't. How are you screwed because somebody else has more money?

Malachi151

26th September 2003, 11:28 AM

Here is some similar analysis done by the CBO that I just found:

http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=4514&sequence=1&from=0

http://www.cbo.gov/docimages/451402.gif

http://www.cbo.gov/docimages/451405.gif

http://www.cbo.gov/docimages/451406.gif

http://www.cbo.gov/docimages/451407.gif

http://www.cbo.gov/docimages/451408.gif

http://www.cbo.gov/docimages/451409.gif

I guess you guys can now continue to complain to the CBO for analyzing data too....

Edit: Whoops, I didin't realize that the titles were not part of the graphs.

26th September 2003, 11:34 AM

These are not analyses, they are parroting of data. There is no meaning added.

Come on Malachi, grow a pair, have an opinion.

shanek

26th September 2003, 12:44 PM

Originally posted by Malachi151
I guess you guys can now continue to complain to the CBO for analyzing data too....

Nice try, whiner, but the data in those graphs were normalized as a percentage and yours weren't. Notice that the change in levels in the graphs match my graph above more closely than yours.

Look at what they did and then think long and hard about what you have done.

Mike B.

27th September 2003, 05:50 AM

Originally posted by Malachi151

You're not even in America, why are you part of this conversation?

How does the fact that you have or have not met people factor into anything anyway?

Malachi,
WOAH...

Do you really want this to be a precedent?
Only Americans can comment on American issues?
That sounds rather xenophobic.

Or more likely, are you upset he is a non-American that disagrees with you?

Malachi151

27th September 2003, 08:34 AM

Originally posted by Mike B.

Malachi,
WOAH...

Do you really want this to be a precedent?
Only Americans can comment on American issues?
That sounds rather xenophobic.

Or more likely, are you upset he is a non-American that disagrees with you?

Sure, participation in a debate on economics is fine, opinions on economic climate though are useless. He doens't live here he is not aware of the econmic climate here, nor am I aware of the economic climate there.

Income and wealth disparity in America is many times greater than it is in England or anywhere in Europe, in fact anywhere in the world except 3rd world countries.

I may as well tell someone from South Africa that racism is not bad there based on my views on racism in America... :rolleyes:

Cain

27th September 2003, 09:00 AM

Originally posted by Jaggy Bunnet

In the graphs shown on this thread the top 400 does not refer to wealth at all, only to income. The figures used to prepare the graphs are prepared from income tax returns. The figures used for the top 400 are the returns which for that year have the highest income. Approx 60 - 70% (from memory) of the income of those 400 came from capital gains. It is unlikely that the same people would figure in this year on year even if the Forbes wealth list remains unchanged.

Okay, I see how we may have mis-communicated. But you first replied to me, and in the text you quoted I clearly referred to the 400 wealthiest individuals.

A refresher:
The four hundred richest individuals tripling their net wealth in seven years is not the same as a particular individual who just escaped from a costly divorce. It's indicative of a pattern-- wealth concentrating on top.

And the person I was responding to explicitly referred to his wealth.

Speaking of whom...

Why do we want to do that [close the wealth gap]? Do you doubt that even if the government were to somehow confiscate ALL of everyone's wealth today, next week there would a few fabulously wealthy people?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, confiscate. :rolleyes: phew.

Are you suggesting that periodically, the government should sweep in and re-level the playing field by slamming everyone who has above-average wealth with a punishing tax, just in the name of "closing the wealth gap"?

Where do I even come close to suggesting anything like this? I mentioned raising the top marginal rates, and no where did I say or imply anything approaching punitive taxation.

Now I guess you feel obligated to build upon your self-constructed cairicture:

By your reasoning, they'll have to, because those damn rich people will just keep popping up again.* Whack-A-Mole!

Uh, yeah. And I want to kill them too. All of them and that includes their children. With guns. No, machetes. Yeah, machetes.

* ...at least until they wise up and realize there's no point in being productive and contributing to a prosperous society when the government just takes everything away...

Because that's what I said! Raising the top marginal income bracket means the government is confiscating everything! It does!- just go ahead and read inbetween the lines. :rolleyes:

BPSCG

29th September 2003, 06:00 AM

Originally posted by Cain
Yeah, yeah, yeah, confiscate. :rolleyes: phew.

Where do I even come close to suggesting anything like this?

When you talk about "closing the wealth gap between the rich and poor." I asked you why we should want to do that. If you have $500,000 in total wealth and I have $100,000, then there is a "wealth gap" of $400,000. How do you propose to close that gap except by having the government take $200,000 from you and giving it to me? And again, why do you think that's a good idea?

I mentioned raising the top marginal rates, and no where did I say or imply anything approaching punitive taxation.
Then you will never "close the wealth gap", even temporarily. For all its other faults, periodic confiscation and redistribution of excessive wealth would at least temporarily close the wealth gap.

Raising the top marginal income bracket means the government is confiscating everything! It does!- just go ahead and read inbetween the lines. :rolleyes: There is a difference between "reading between the lines" and pointing out the logical quicksand your reasoning leads to. I originally asked you why "closing the wealth gap" is something desireable. You didn't answer that question, so I'm asking you again.

As for my question regarding periodic punitive government confiscation, I'll rephrase for you: If periodically re-levelling everyone's wealth won't permanently "close the wealth gap", then why do you think simply raising the marginal rates on the wealthiest will?

Malachi151

29th September 2003, 09:22 AM

When you talk about "closing the wealth gap between the rich and poor." I asked you why we should want to do that. If you have $500,000 in total wealth and I have $100,000, then there is a "wealth gap" of $400,000. How do you propose to close that gap except by having the government take $200,000 from you and giving it to me? And again, why do you think that's a good idea?

The same way that it was closed before:

http://www.pbs.org/fmc/book/images/9mone7.gif

Through the use of programs that increase oppertunities for everyone, provide social services, increase the level of education, and protect the rights of workers:

http://www.pbs.org/fmc/book/images/2work13.gif

The fact is that we are living in a middle class America that was created by all the things that you claim are so horrible.

You want to go back to the depression era of breadlines, massive poverty, child labor, and no hope for millions of Americans:

http://www.pbs.org/fmc/book/images/8heal4.gif

Go ahead big boy.

Think that econmic inequalty does not make in impact? See any correlation between times of economic strift and suicide rates there?

Then you will never "close the wealth gap", even temporarily. For all its other faults, periodic confiscation and redistribution of excessive wealth would at least temporarily close the wealth gap.

Here is why you are an idiot.

#1 in 1960 the effective federal tax rate on the top 1% was 86%, today it is 33%. You want to talk about confiscatory, talk about that, and talk about the fact that the lives of tens of millions of Americans improved dramatically during those times.

#2 the really wealthy today are not making $500,000 a year, they are making $200,000,000 a year.

#3 You assume that income is always fair by definition, which if the root of your entire ideology. THAT is the real issue, not taxation, but income. When one person is making 200 million dollars ina year and hundreds of schools around America can't meet their budgets to give children a proper education, while taxes on the wealthy have fallen over the past 20 years dramatically, who is robbing who? Why are children born into a world where they have no control at fault because they were born poor and now they have to go to an underfunded public school, while some other dude is making 200 million a year because he owns factories in China and Indonesia where he pays dirt wages and offers no benefits so he can sell Nike shoes for $100 a piece that cost him $5 to make and bring to market?

If not for the very programs that you claim to despise you would most likely have grown up in poverty yourself as would I and the majority of Americans. Don't think so? Take a real look at America prior to the implementation of the New Deal.

Teddy Rooselvelt and Franklin Roosevelt made this country what it is today, by supporting unions, busting monopolies, promoting social program, increasing funding to public schools, public works, and implimenting progressive taxation.

All periods in America history that did not have progressive taxtion had, or were shortly followed, by widespread poverty and/or the majority of Americans were farmers who lived off the land.

Those are the facts, deal with it.

Tmy

29th September 2003, 09:41 AM

Why all the focus on Fed income tax all the time. If all i did was pay Fed incoem tax Id have no complaints. Instead there are sales, excise, property, gas, utilities, service taxes all sorts of taxes. 1/2 of them hidden. Those are alwyas ignored in the "rich vs poor % of tax" arguments.

Wheres the chart following all those taxes. Could you possibly follow those hidden taxes.

Malachi151

29th September 2003, 09:52 AM

Originally posted by Tmy
Why all the focus on Fed income tax all the time. If all i did was pay Fed incoem tax Id have no complaints. Instead there are sales, excise, property, gas, utilities, service taxes all sorts of taxes. 1/2 of them hidden. Those are alwyas ignored in the "rich vs poor % of tax" arguments.

Wheres the chart following all those taxes. Could you possibly follow those hidden taxes.

I have that on my website, at least for all the federal taxes. I didn't get into state and local taxes though. I have a graph of TOTAL federal tax rates and burdens and tables of the breakdowns and links to the data.

shanek

29th September 2003, 09:56 AM

Originally posted by Malachi151
You want to go back to the depression era of breadlines, massive poverty, child labor, and no hope for millions of Americans:

How? How does a wealth gap lead to a depression? BY YOUR OWN ADMISSION, the wealth of lower income earners is increasing, just not at the same rate as the top income earners. But they're still welathier! So, what need, then, for breadlines? Where does the poverty come in?

BPSCG

29th September 2003, 11:09 AM

Originally posted by Malachi151
When you talk about "closing the wealth gap between the rich and poor." I asked you why we should want to do that. If you have $500,000 in total wealth and I have $100,000, then there is a "wealth gap" of $400,000. How do you propose to close that gap except by having the government take $200,000 from you and giving it to me? And again, why do you think that's a good idea?

The same way that it was closed before:

http://www.pbs.org/fmc/book/images/9mone7.gif
All this demonstrates is that if you take two specific comparison points, you can make the lower line and the upper line meet. You choose to use the top 5% and the bottom 40%. But if the lines didn't meet, you could have used different numbers - the top 8% and the bottom 45%, say, just for the sake of the argument. But the fact remains, there would STILL be a wealth gap until the wealth of the top x% equals the wealth of the bottom x% for EVERY figure you care to substitute for x. You haven't demonstrated a closing of the "wealth gap". You've simply demonstrated that wealth is not distributed equally.

Through the use of programs that increase oppertunities for everyone, provide social services, increase the level of education, and protect the rights of workers:Noble sentiments, but until everyone creates wealth at the same rate as everyone else, wealth will always be unequally distributed unless you confiscate wealth from those who create lots of it and distribute it to those who create less of it. You do believe that wealth is created, that a finite amount of it didn't just spring into being once upon a time, don't you?

The fact is that we are living in a middle class America that was created by all the things that you claim are so horrible.
No, we live in a middle class America that was created by the intellect and work of creative people.
You want to go back to the depression era of breadlines, massive poverty, child labor, and no hope for millions of Americans:
No, I do NOT "want to go back to the depression era of breadlines, massive poverty, child labor, and no hope for millions". And, unless I am very much mistaken, and I bet I'm not, I am the world's leading authority on what I want. Frankly, I want the exact opposite, and what I've observed is that since the end of WWII, as more and more of the world turns away from communism and other forms of totalitariansism, more and more of the world is becoming prosperous.

Here is why you are an idiot.
Ah, now I am persuaded by the logic and force of your arguments.

#1 in 1960 the effective federal tax rate on the top 1% was 86%, today it is 33%. You want to talk about confiscatory, talk about that, and talk about the fact that the lives of tens of millions of Americans improved dramatically during those times. So what you're saying is that "the lives of tens of millions of Americans improved dramatically" during the time that marginal tax rates went down? Why are you arguing against your own position?

#2 the really wealthy today are not making $500,000 a year, they are making $200,000,000 a year.I was using an example to make a point. Here, let me help you out: If you have $500 million and I have $100 million, the only way to close that "wealth gap" is to take $200 million from you and to give it to me. Then there would be no "wealth gap" between us. Of course, then having $300 million, I'd have to give some of it to someone who has less to eliminate the wealth gap between him and me. And until we've repeated the process until everyone has the same amount of money, there will be a "wealth gap", which you and Cain evidently believe is a bad thing.

#3 You assume that income is always fair by definition, which if the root of your entire ideology.
When did I ever say that or even imply it? In any case, I don't believe income distribution is fair; if it were, how come people who are no more deserving than I am have won the lottery?

Income, however, although not perfectly fair, is a good measure of the value that society places on the goods or services you provide. That's why, at the extremes of the graph, Bill Gates has a high income and the wino on the park bench does not. When you propose to take away wealth from he who has created it and give it to he who has not, you'd better have a good reason. "Closing the wealth gap" is an end in itself. What is its purpose? And is that end justified? How?

THAT is the real issue, not taxation, but income. When one person is making 200 million dollars ina year and hundreds of schools around America can't meet their budgets to give children a proper education, while taxes on the wealthy have fallen over the past 20 years dramatically, who is robbing who?
Well, gee, if you look at the steadily increasing amount of money spent on education over the last thirty years, you wonder where the money is going.

so he can sell Nike shoes for $100 a piece that cost him $5 to make and bring to market?
Should he sell his shoes for less? How much less? Who should decide this?

If not for the very programs that you claim to despise you would most likely have grown up in poverty yourself as would I and the majority of Americans. Don't think so?

Nope. I can go even farther than saying "I don't think so."
I know you're wrong on that.

My father came to this country in 1940 from France with his parents, poor Jews literally running for their lives. They had nothing when they got here. They barely even spoke the language. After WWII, my dad got a job with the UN as a translator, having worked hard to learn English. He met my mother in France after the war, and they came here in 1950, still dirt poor.

Dad went to school at night, learned accounting. Mom took out her sewing machine and made dresses for other women, then when my sister and I were old enough to be left alone after school, got a job teaching French while she went to school at night to get her degree and teaching certificate.

Both my parents came to the U.S. without the proverbial pot to pee in or the window to pour it out of. They worked like dogs all their working lives because they believed that if they worked hard in the US, they could live well. And they were right.

So don't give me any nonsense about "programs" that supposedly kept me from growing up in poverty. My parents' hard work kept me from growing up in poverty. And my work and that of my wife is all that's keeping us from poverty today.

Cain

30th September 2003, 03:30 AM

Originally posted by BPSCG
When you talk about "closing the wealth gap between the rich and poor." I asked you why we should want to do that. If you have $500,000 in total wealth and I have $100,000, then there is a "wealth gap" of $400,000. How do you propose to close that gap except by having the government take $200,000 from you and giving it to me? And again, why do you think that's a good idea?

*sigh* Higher marginal rates on income taxes *closes* the wealth gap. Why is it a good idea? I dunno, I tend to think it's more efficient in the long-run to give people healthcare and children good schools. Now, what's inherently wrong with wide gaps? It's an obstacle to democracy. Political equality is based, in part, on economic equality.

Then you will never "close the wealth gap", even temporarily. For all its other faults, periodic confiscation and redistribution of excessive wealth would at least temporarily close the wealth gap.

? I have no idea what this means.

As for my question regarding periodic punitive government confiscation, I'll rephrase for you: If periodically re-levelling everyone's wealth won't permanently "close the wealth gap", then why do you think simply raising the marginal rates on the wealthiest will?

Here you go again implying I said something I clearly did not. Originally, you blathered the following:

Are you suggesting that periodically, the government should sweep in and re-level the playing field by slamming everyone who has above-average wealth with a punishing tax, just in the name of "closing the wealth gap"?

By "periodically" do you mean "yearly"? The "sweep in" imagery implies that government comes in and "fixes things" on a whim: "Uh oh, this gap is to large -- let's intervene." My opinion is crystal clear, and already stated more than twice. Finally, marginal income tax rates are not necessarily raised on the wealthiest. There's a difference between wealth and income, which has, again, been noted on several different occasions. Is this an ideal solution? Hardly. It's a liberal/progressive answer to curbing the worst excesses of capitalism. Ideally equality would be more formalized, workplaces democratically controlled and so on.

Shane Costello

30th September 2003, 04:34 AM

Originally psoted by Cain:
Ideally equality would be more formalized, workplaces democratically controlled and so on.

Workplaces democratically controlled? How? Take the example of academic research. Should the opinions of a bottle washer as to the directions a research lab or group should follow really be considered equal to those of a noble laureate in chemistry, for example?

Cain

30th September 2003, 07:18 AM

I am quite hesistant to regard the opinions of a poet, even a noble poet, as much better than a bottle washer in the case of plotting direction for a research lab. Anyway, I think we're getting side-tracked...

shanek

30th September 2003, 09:49 AM

Originally posted by Cain
*sigh* Higher marginal rates on income taxes *closes* the wealth gap. Why is it a good idea? I dunno, I tend to think it's more efficient in the long-run to give people healthcare and children good schools.

Except that what's actually happening is the denial of healthcare and the providing of bad schools.

It's an obstacle to democracy. Political equality is based, in part, on economic equality.

That's why our founders didn't want a democracy. They specifically set up this country so that that wouldn't be a problem.

BPSCG

30th September 2003, 10:58 AM

Originally posted by Cain
*sigh* Good Al Gore impersonation...

Higher marginal rates on income taxes *closes* the wealth gap.
Really? When has the "wealth gap" ever been closed? That is, when did the highest wealthiest 1% of this country's population own 1% of the wealth, the next wealthiest 1% own 1%, etc., etc., all the way down the line, to the point that everyone had the same wealth? And could you please tell me what the marginal rates were at that time - I can't seem to find it.
Why is it a good idea? I dunno, I tend to think it's more efficient in the long-run to give people healthcare and children good schools.
How does making everyone equally wealthy do that? And, FWIW, nobody gives me good health care and good schools - I have to pay for them. I pay for some of it from my taxes, and some out of my pocket.
Now, what's inherently wrong with wide gaps? It's an obstacle to democracy. Political equality is based, in part, on economic equality.
Last time I checked, Bill Gates doesn't get any more votes than I do. And I don't get any more than the wino on the park bench (in fact, in some places, he gets more votes, depending on how corrupt the local politicos are and how much bribe money they have...). And if wide gaps are bad, than small gaps are good, I guess. So the Soviet Union, which did everything necessary to eliminate the "wealth gap", including murdering millions of its own citizens, must have been more democratic than the U.S., with its stupendously large "wealth gap". Or am I confused?
Then you will never "close the wealth gap", even temporarily. For all its other faults, periodic confiscation and redistribution of excessive wealth would at least temporarily close the wealth gap.

? I have no idea what this means.
Fiddling with marginal rates will never close the "wealth gap". The only way you could (theoretically) close it would be to periodically confiscate everyone's wealth and redistribute it. I'm not saying it's a good idea, or even workable, simply that that's the only way you could do it.

And what would happen then? The smart people and the industrious people would once again grow wealthy while the ignorant and the lazy would not. You would then have a new "wealth gap".

What I'm saying is that even something as radical and sweeping as periodic confiscation and redistribution would not permanently close the gap. So why do you think that anything less, such as simple fiddling with the marginal rates would do it?

I'm not just talking hypotheically here. Sweeping confiscation and redistribution have been tried. Soviet Union again, remember?Finally, marginal income tax rates are not necessarily raised on the wealthiest. There's a difference between wealth and income, which has, again, been noted on several different occasions.
True, but I'm not the one who coined the term "wealth gap" (which is why you might note I always put it in quotations).
workplaces democratically controlled and so on.
I don't want to work in a democratically-controlled workplace. I once worked in an office where a supervisor tried dealing with a huge backlog of work by finding a democratic solution. We couldn't agree on a damned thing, and finally, after around three or four fruitless staff meetings to figure out how to deal with the problem, I got sick of the wheel-spinning and announced I would handle the entire backlog as long as my other work was reduced accordingly. Everyone looked stunned for a minute (wish I'd had a camera...), then breathed a sigh of relief. All because the supervisor wanted to settle the problem democratically.

Look, theoretically at least, and Dilbert notwithstanding, a supervisor is a supervisor because he/she knows more about how to run things than the guy in the trenches. Doesn't mean the guy in the trenches doesn't have good ideas, but the idea that a business can run democratically is ridiculous. The idea of democracy is that everyone's opinion gets equal weight when we choose our leaders. In a business, the supervisor might solicit everyone's input, but if he/she starts putting his decisions to a vote, the results will be disasterous.

30th September 2003, 11:51 AM

Originally posted by BPSCG
Good Al Gore impersonation...
[/B] In a business, the supervisor might solicit everyone's input, but if he/she starts putting his decisions to a vote, the results will be disasterous. [/B]

If he puts his "decisions" to a vote, he is unnecessary

shanek

30th September 2003, 01:55 PM

Okay, so if increasing tax rates can close the wealth gap then we would expect the top wage earners to have their share of income change inversely to the highest Income Tax bracket. The following graph has two lines. The red one is the percent of income paid in taxes by those in the highest bracket, according to the Federal Tax Policy. The blue line is the percent share of income acording to the Congressional Budget Office. Note the fairly steady rise in share of income, which is not only unaffected by the rate increase in 1993 but also was not exacerbated by the cuts in 1982 and 1987. In fact, there was even a tiny decrease in 1987.

Malachi151

30th September 2003, 02:13 PM

First of all shane, you are not graphing real data, you are graphing the top tax BRACKET, which is not the same thing as the rate of taxes actually paid, as I pointed in in my paper.

In1979 when the top tax bracket was 70% the rate of taxes paid by the top 1% was still only about 37%, the 70% number is meaningless as a real figure. That whole graph is meaningless in that sense.

The blue line is the share of income for who? The op 10% top 1% top 50%?

Afor for you point, which is not supported by your graph, but I'll address it anyway, that IS the point, tax rates on the top 1% have been TRENDING down over the past 20 years.

And more to the point, is that tax rates on the majority of Americans have gone pretty much nowhere or in some cases have gone up. The system is getting more flat. As we are saying as the system gets more flat the more the wealthy are able to take advantage of it.

Income is not a product of taxation, reducing or increasing taxation is not going to change pre-tax income directly on anyone. Lowering taxes is not going to make incomes go up, and rasing taxes is not going to make them go down, but what does change is that the more oppertunity that more people have the better they can perform and the more they can then contribute. Oppertunity is provided by the wealthy helping those who are not wealthy by paying a larger rate of taxes. That's exactly how the American Middle Class was createdafter WWII, through the GI bill and other such programs.

As I said:

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/chngshrfed.gif

shanek

30th September 2003, 02:19 PM

Originally posted by Malachi151
First of all shane, you are not graphing real data, you are graphing the top tax BRACKET, which is not the same thing as the rate of taxes actually paid, as I pointed in in my paper.

I was rebutting Cain's assertion that increasing the top tax bracket lessened the income gap. As my graph shows, he's wrong. Changing the tax rate is NOT a solution for the "problem" of the income gap.

dsm

30th September 2003, 02:23 PM

Originally posted by BPSCG
Last time I checked, Bill Gates doesn't get any more votes than I do.

Hmmm. How many people work for Microsoft and owe their jobs to Bill Gates...?

Cain

30th September 2003, 02:42 PM

Originally posted by BPSCG
Good Al Gore impersonation...

I'm not sure if this is supposed to sound clever. At least, I hope that wasn't the intention. Please God, I pray that really bad Hillary jokes do not follow.

Really? When has the "wealth gap" ever been closed? That is, when did the highest wealthiest 1% of this country's population own 1% of the wealth, the next wealthiest 1% own 1%, etc., etc., all the way down the line, to the point that everyone had the same wealth?

There you again speaking nonsense. When I mention, in passing, that we need to close the wealth gap, I am not suggesting by any stretch of the imagination that everyone's income becomes the same. But after World War II, we enjoyed a considerably more equal distribution of wealth and income (the highest marginal tax rates in the fifties was also 91% for awhile).

How does making everyone equally wealthy do that?

Where did I say this again? Oh yeah, I didn't.

And, FWIW, nobody gives me good health care and good schools - I have to pay for them. I pay for some of it from my taxes, and some out of my pocket.

I have no idea what that acronym stands for. I know, I know -- "give" is one of those evil words. Let's change it to "provide" and forget this bit of nonsense.

Last time I checked, Bill Gates doesn't get any more votes than I do. And I don't get any more than the wino on the park bench (in fact, in some places, he gets more votes, depending on how corrupt the local politicos are and how much bribe money they have...). And if wide gaps are bad, than small gaps are good, I guess. So the Soviet Union, which did everything necessary to eliminate the "wealth gap", including murdering millions of its own citizens, must have been more democratic than the U.S., with its stupendously large "wealth gap". Or am I confused?

The Bill Gates comparison is silly, obviously, unless a person is foolish enough to buy into the propaganda that voting influences government more than money. Anyone familiar with the gold rule knows better: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0226243176/qid=1064957480/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/002-4776449-2993631?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

The comparison to the Soviet Union is instructive in other ways, however. Political ideologies are often contrasted on the level of government intervention, laissez-faire often on one hand and communsim as practiced by the Soviet Union on the other. Well, as I've said in previous posts, that's certainly one mode of analysis. Another mode, though, is to examine who makes the important decisions under these regimes. I think any fair-minded investigation shows that most of the real power is concentrated among a few elites. That's to say both systems are rather autocratic, one decided by wealthy elites, the other by party elites. Okay, fine, so the Soviet Union had relatively equal economic wealth (broadly speaking. Party elites hardly lived in squalor or waited in bread lines). But each system primarily serves a narrow sector in it's own way.

[skip over more of this silliness about "periodically confisicating" wealth.] sigh

I don't want to work in a democratically-controlled workplace. I once worked in an office where a supervisor tried dealing with a huge backlog of work by finding a democratic solution. We couldn't agree on a damned thing, and finally, after around three or four fruitless staff meetings to figure out how to deal with the problem, I got sick of the wheel-spinning and announced I would handle the entire backlog as long as my other work was reduced accordingly. Everyone looked stunned for a minute (wish I'd had a camera...), then breathed a sigh of relief. All because the supervisor wanted to settle the problem democratically.

Nobody ever said democracy is easy. It's often messy. Fundamentally, people have to want to be free. If you'd rather take orders, be subordinate to the authority of others (often arbitrary), fine. But a separate thread should be created for this topic.

______________________________

Shanek- earlier I said the net wealth of the 400 richest Americans tripled under Clinton's term -- in spite of his slight tax hike on the highest income bracket. Does that mean increasing taxes on the rich does not close the wealth gap? That makes about as much sense as saying the tax increase caused the economic expansion of the 90s. Any sane comparative analysis would examine european countries, which often have a much steeper graduated income tax and much lower disparity of wealth.

P.S. Thanks God. You are a good God. A very, very kind God. A non-replying God... but I owe you one.

Grammatron

30th September 2003, 02:45 PM

Originally posted by dsm

Hmmm. How many people work for Microsoft and owe their jobs to Bill Gates...?

Who cares? Bill Gates can ask people to vote for X but there is no way he can know if people did vote for X.

dsm

30th September 2003, 03:50 PM

Originally posted by Grammatron

Who cares? Bill Gates can ask people to vote for X but there is no way he can know if people did vote for X.

No, but when you have that much influence on that many people, you're bound to swing a large percentage of them in the direction you want if you try hard enough. A rich person doesn't necessarily control more than one vote (ie. their own), but they can bring an enormous amount of influence to bear (both legal and illegal) on a larger number of people than a poor person can. Factor that in with the advertising ploy that "a lie, repeated often enough, will be accepted as true" and even bad ideas, when sponsored by the rich, are given a lot of consideration.

Grammatron

30th September 2003, 04:05 PM

Originally posted by dsm

No, but when you have that much influence on that many people, you're bound to swing a large percentage of them in the direction you want if you try hard enough. A rich person doesn't necessarily control more than one vote (ie. their own), but they can bring an enormous amount of influence to bear (both legal and illegal) on a larger number of people than a poor person can. Factor that in with the advertising ploy that "a lie, repeated often enough, will be accepted as true" and even bad ideas, when sponsored by the rich, are given a lot of consideration.

What illegal influences do rich people use?

dsm

30th September 2003, 04:14 PM

Originally posted by Grammatron

What illegal influences do rich people use?

Well, I have heard of vote buying in the past, but I'll back off the "illegal" since it's not terribly germane to the issue. Political influence can be bought when there isn't sufficient groundswell to counter it.

Malachi151

30th September 2003, 04:14 PM

Obviously money can help people gain credibility and open doors for them, that's where it really makes a difference.

I personally think Bill Gates is an okay guy, but I'll use him here as an example anyway.

Let's say that Bill gates wants Howard Dean for president (totally randome dude, I doubt he does).

He can thing introduce Dean to better analysts, better managers, better speech writers, donate money to him, and get his rich friends to donate money to him and hold benefits for him, and he can influence his friends to do the same.

How do you think Bush get's all this money, that money then is used to run ads, pay campain workers, pay writers, donate money to churches, who are now big voting blocks, etc, etc.

That's all just a small part, where the REAL rubber hits the road though is in policy making, regardless of who is in the office, and it goes all the way down to the local level.

You as a rich person can donate not just to the president but to the senators, representatives, state officials, local officials, etc. That's how the Republicans have been doing well, they have been focusing on local seats using big money donations and a large supportive program to make sure that all Repubicans from the town sheriff up to president get significant financial support, its controlling the base that makes the big difference, and it takes big money to make those levels of contributions.

Its also about influencing laws when issues come up, thats what all politicians do, they make deals and concessions with voting blocks and wealthy individuals. A union or a company or group of companies oor the NRA keeps pressure on politicians nd says we won't vote for you or give you money unless you do this X, and so they do that, and money makes a big difference there.

Do you really think that you and the head of Exxon have the same influnce in our politcal system? :p lol

Grammatron

30th September 2003, 04:22 PM

Originally posted by Malachi151
Obviously money can help people gain credibility and open doors for them, that's where it really makes a difference.

I personally think Bill Gates is an okay guy, but I'll use him here as an example anyway.

Let's say that Bill gates wants Howard Dean for president (totally randome dude, I doubt he does).

He can thing introduce Dean to better analysts, better managers, better speech writers, donate money to him, and get his rich friends to donate money to him and hold benefits for him, and he can influence his friends to do the same.

How do you think Bush get's all this money, that money then is used to run ads, pay campain workers, pay writers, donate money to churches, who are now big voting blocks, etc, etc.

That's all just a small part, where the REAL rubber hits the road though is in policy making, regardless of who is in the office, and it goes all the way down to the local level.

You as a rich person can donate not just to the president but to the senators, representatives, state officials, local officials, etc. That's how the Republicans have been doing well, they have been focusing on local seats using big money donations and a large supportive program to make sure that all Repubicans from the town sheriff up to president get significant financial support, its controlling the base that makes the big difference, and it takes big money to make those levels of contributions.

Its also about influencing laws when issues come up, thats what all politicians do, they make deals and concessions with voting blocks and wealthy individuals. A union or a company or group of companies oor the NRA keeps pressure on politicians nd says we won't vote for you or give you money unless you do this X, and so they do that, and money makes a big difference there.

Do you really think that you and the head of Exxon have the same influnce in our politcal system? :p lol

Then why wasn't Ross Perot elected president?

30th September 2003, 04:25 PM

Originally posted by Malachi151
Do you really think that you and the head of Exxon have the same influnce in our politcal system? :p lol

So? Your solution is .... what?

Malachi151

30th September 2003, 04:36 PM

Originally posted by Grammatron

Then why wasn't Ross Perot elected president?

That's an awefully stupid question. One one said that the person with the most money automatically wins, its one one element, and Ross had his own money but without the support of others its not much good. Money can help open doors, I mean why do I need to even explain that, its like telling people that water quinches your thirst.

Money allows you to get closer to policitians to have influence, or do you also go to dinner parties with prominate political people on a weekly or monthly basis?

It works like pharmacutical sales reps or any other high dollar sales rep, you get in, you brown nose, you make friends, you make connections, and make ties, I mean duh.

I'm betting, just better, that the average multi-millionaire has had about ten times as many personal contacts with a prominate politician than you or I, if not more... hmm... think I'm wrong?

That's always going to happen, its always going to be like that, that's the way life works, but obviously increasing income disparity amplifies that problem, and the more disparity there is the more difference in agendas theer are between people, the more the issues of the average person are different from those of the elite.

Having wealthy supporters helps, and being wealthy gives you a bigger influence on who is successful because you can choose who you support and your choices have a bigger impact, but its all just a matter of influence, not direct control. The wealthy have a stronger influence, but it does not mean they have total control. Influnce though is a powerful thing.

How many elections are won or lost on name recognition alone? A lot at all levels, and the wealthy have a big impact on how names get recognized.

shanek

30th September 2003, 06:05 PM

Originally posted by Cain
But after World War II, we enjoyed a considerably more equal distribution of wealth and income

And only the rich could have TV sets and refrigerators, things the vast majority of poor people have. We've come a long way since then. Our poor people to day are arguably much richer than the rich of that time.

I have no idea what that acronym stands for.

FWIW = For What It's Worth. Old BBS chat lingo.

Shanek- earlier I said the net wealth of the 400 richest Americans tripled under Clinton's term -- in spite of his slight tax hike on the highest income bracket. Does that mean increasing taxes on the rich does not close the wealth gap?

I was referring to this claim of yours:

*sigh* Higher marginal rates on income taxes *closes* the wealth gap. Why is it a good idea? I dunno, I tend to think it's more efficient in the long-run to give people healthcare and children good schools.

If you misspoke or I misunderstood, then by all means please clarify. But that is the claim my graph was meant to rebut.

shanek

30th September 2003, 06:07 PM

Originally posted by Grammatron
Then why wasn't Ross Perot elected president?

IMO, it's because he quit and came back. That destroyed his credibility.

Ed Clark was richer and spend much more money, though, and didn't do nearly as well as Perot. So money, although it helps, is not the magic bullet that propels you into office.

Cain

1st October 2003, 02:19 AM

And only the rich could have TV sets and refrigerators, things the vast majority of poor people have. We've come a long way since then. Our poor people to day are arguably much richer than the rich of that time.

So? Communism transformed the Soviet Union from a third world country into the world's other super-power. The standard of living also increased over that time -- and subsequently discreased after "shock therapy." It's a basket case now.

Or consider the dramatic improvements in the standard of living for slaves. Slaves lived much, much better in the 19th century than the 18th, even better than some poor whites, so is that a good argument for slavery? My argument pertains to personal autonomy: spreading the wealth more evenly offers people more opportunities for self-mastery.

If you misspoke or I misunderstood, then by all means please clarify. But that is the claim my graph was meant to rebut.

First, I've already pointed out that the long-term trend (not captured in your graph) has seen the concentration of wealth increasing in the top 1%. Second, what does the blue line represent? The percentage of the country's wealth controlled by the top 20%? That line is unclear. Third, incorporate other countries into your analysis. Let's compare the United Staters to other first-world democracies.

Malachi151

1st October 2003, 05:29 AM

And only the rich could have TV sets and refrigerators, things the vast majority of poor people have. We've come a long way since then. Our poor people to day are arguably much richer than the rich of that time.

What load of crap.

Firstly, TV sets and refrigerators were new inventions at the time, adn secondly the late 1940s and early 1950s was when all those things first became available to the masses in America. The 1950s was the era of television. :rolleyes:

Shane you have absolutly no idea what you are talking, pretty much ever, on any subject.

BPSCG

1st October 2003, 07:17 AM

Originally posted by Cain
Please God, I pray that really bad Hillary jokes do not follow. You prefer good Hillary jokes, then? Lemme know, I got a bunch...

There you again speaking nonsense. When I mention, in passing, that we need to close the wealth gap, I am not suggesting by any stretch of the imagination that everyone's income becomes the same.

Good, you're coming around. So how close should they be? How much more income should Bill Gates have than his newly-hired mailroom clerk? How much richer should my wife be than I am?
Where did I say this again? Oh yeah, I didn't. Okay, I'll take your word for it that you're not in favor of periodic sweeping taxation to make everyone equal again. So what's the tax rate you propose that would get us all on the same playing field, or close enough to it to satisfy you?

Another mode, though, is to examine who makes the important decisions under these regimes. I think any fair-minded investigation shows that most of the real power is concentrated among a few elites. That's to say both systems are rather autocratic, one decided by wealthy elites, the other by party elites.

So in this country, power is concentrated among the power elites like the banking industry, the energy companies, the tobacco companies, and so on. Or is it concentrated among the trial lawyers, the public employee unions, and the entertainment industry? These are all immensely rich institutions that generally throw their financial support in two diametrically opposed directions. So is it accurate to say that political power is concentrated? Or is it more accurate to say that it is dissipated among countless interest groups having countless, often opposed objectives? Which, BTW, is exactly what Madison, Hamilton, and Jay intended when they wrote The Federalist Papers.

Okay, fine, so the Soviet Union had relatively equal economic wealth (broadly speaking. Party elites hardly lived in squalor or waited in bread lines).
Oh, I thought you'd said earlier that the USSR was a superpower. I was always under the impression that countries where everyone except the elites lived in squalor and waited on bread lines wouldn't qualify as superpowers. Sounds to me like it was more of a third-world country with lots of big bombs.

But each system primarily serves a narrow sector in it's own way.
This is laughable. Do you really see no fundamental difference between the two systems?

Nobody ever said democracy is easy. It's often messy. Fundamentally, people have to want to be free. If you'd rather take orders, be subordinate to the authority of others (often arbitrary), fine.
I will always happily be subordinate to the authority of others who know more than I do. That's usually why they're my boss. I will also happily challenge them when I think they're wrong about something. But I will never delude myself into believing my place of employment would run better if it were a democracy and we voted on all the management decisions.

But a separate thread should be created for this topic.
Agreed, this (discussion of whether workplaces should be democratically-run) is starting to get OT.

Any sane comparative analysis would examine european countries, which often have a much steeper graduated income tax and much lower disparity of wealth.
Okay, and are the Europeans better off as a result? Are poor Europeans better off than poor Americans? Are there fewer poor Europeans per capita than there are poor Americans? Are the middle classes better off in Europe than in America? My guess is the answer to all these questions is "no", though I'd be hard-put to quantify it. I guess one way of finding the answer is to check the net immigration/emigration to/from the U.S. and Europe. Does Europe get more immigrants from the U.S. than the U.S. gets from Europe? Or is it vice versa?

In any case, I still don't get why you're so enamored over equality of wealth. Why should I care if Bill Gates's richer brother has a jillion skillion googol dollars as long as I'm happy with what I have and he doesn't use his riches to have me beaten by hired thugs every morning?

BPSCG

1st October 2003, 07:24 AM

Originally posted by Malachi151
And only the rich could have TV sets and refrigerators, things the vast majority of poor people have. We've come a long way since then. Our poor people to day are arguably much richer than the rich of that time.

What load of crap.

Firstly, TV sets and refrigerators were new inventions at the time, adn secondly the late 1940s and early 1950s was when all those things first became available to the masses in America. The 1950s was the era of television. :rolleyes:

Shane you have absolutly no idea what you are talking, pretty much ever, on any subject. Funny, he strikes me as being someone who has a way of ticking people off by presenting them with facts inconvenient to their world views. :cs:

shanek

1st October 2003, 07:29 AM

Originally posted by Cain
Slaves lived much, much better in the 19th century than the 18th, even better than some poor whites, so is that a good argument for slavery?

No, because slavery is an initiation of force. The free market isn't.

My argument pertains to personal autonomy: spreading the wealth more evenly offers people more opportunities for self-mastery.

Except that it really doesn't when you look at how it works.

Second, what does the blue line represent?

The share of income for the top 5% income earners.

DavidJames

1st October 2003, 07:35 AM

"Funny, he strikes me as being someone who has a way of ticking people off by presenting them with facts inconvenient to their world views"

Shane epitomizes the axiom "figures don't lie, but liars can figure". If Libertarians believed the earth was a triangle, Shane could find "facts" to prove that belief.

This quote of his is typical of the hyperbole that destroys his credibility.

"Our poor people to day are arguably much richer than the rich of that time."

I fully expect to see charts and figures "proving" that point. But the point by itself is useless hyperbole. Not unlike his fixation on use of "force" in the why aren't you a Libertarian thread.

Malachi151

1st October 2003, 08:12 AM

Originally posted by DavidJames
"Funny, he strikes me as being someone who has a way of ticking people off by presenting them with facts inconvenient to their world views"

Shane epitomizes the axiom "figures don't lie, but liars can figure". If Libertarians believed the earth was a triangle, Shane could find "facts" to prove that belief.

This quote of his is typical of the hyperbole that destroys his credibility.

"Our poor people to day are arguably much richer than the rich of that time."

I fully expect to see charts and figures "proving" that point. But the point by itself is useless hyperbole. Not unlike his fixation on use of "force" in the why aren't you a Libertarian thread.

Let's see, the poor today are better of than the rich of the 1950s... let's put that to a test.

Can the poor today travel around the world whenever they want and spend months in the French Riviera drinking expensive wine on the beaches?

Can the poor today build large mansions filled with servants?

Can the poor today buy famous rare art at auctions?

Can the poor today influence the world as individuals the way that the rich of the 1950s did?

Can the poor today send their children to Yale and Oxford even without a scholarship?

Can the poor today go without working for years at a time?

Can the poor today throw fabulous parties for thousand of guests?

I mean thats what the rich of the 1950s were doing, and your claim is that today the poor are better off than the rich of the 1950s were.

Oh, you mean air condition, microwaves, etc....

Do those things really create quality of life?

Personally I'd rather have been a king of Egypt 4,000 years ago than a poor person today or at any time, ever, past, present , or future.

Being poor sucks, it always sucks, it always will suck.

Let's give everyone a choice, option A you can go back to 1950 and be one of the richest people in America, or option B you can be one of the poorest people in America today.

Which do you choose?

Duh...

And of course the most absurd thing is that today IS A PRODUCT of the past, which is the whole point. The increases in standard of living is exactly what we are talking about. The things that CAUSED the increase in the standard of living so that the majority of people in general live better off today than they did in 1950 are public programs, as I already said, such as the GI Bill and the federal Highway system, and all the public services that were paid for by the wealthy of that time to help the poor of that time become the middle class of today.

The increase in government spending, and a highly progressive tax system, during the 1940s though 1960s was enormous, and the majory of Americans benefited greatly from that, thats where our modern society has come from, that's what built it.

At the start the majority were poor, now the majority are no longer poor becuase the system worked.

BPSCG

1st October 2003, 08:14 AM

Originally posted by DavidJames
This quote of his is typical of the hyperbole that destroys his credibility.

"Our poor people to day are arguably much richer than the rich of that time."IIRC, the "time" in question was the 1950's.

Okay, I'll stipulate that a poor person today may not be better off than Nelson Rockefeller was 50 years ago.

But is he better off than Andrew Carnegie was in 1890?
Well, his food is safer.
His medical care is better.
He has better TV reception.
Carnegie lived in a more luxurious house, but the poor person's apartment is more likely to be air-conditioned.
Carnegie had better clothing.

Point is, despite the vast disparity of income in this country, the lot of the poor is getting better all the time.

And if you want to do a comparison to 50 years ago, in 1950, if you had high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and arteriosclerosis, the best your doctors could do for you was to tell you not to work too hard. FDR died of just that in 1945 (see Jim Bishop's FDR's Last Year). Today, even poor people have easy access to blood pressure and cholesterol medication. And even poor people don't get polio these days.

Malachi151

1st October 2003, 09:22 AM

Point is, despite the vast disparity of income in this country, the lot of the poor is getting better all the time.

Well that can be said of just about every place on earth.

The poor in India are better off to day they they were 100 years ago, in fact you can't really name any place on earth where this is not true, not even places like Afganistan. That is just general progress and can be demonstrated in almost any society in any point in time with the exception of civilizations that are in great decline, fall of the Roman Empire, etc.

Russians of 1990 had more creature comforts then those of 1890 as well, so what?

And again, what is so stupid about this line of reasoning is again the fact that the greatest gaines for Americans in terms fo standard of living came about through the exact opposite kinds of actions that you are saying are the reasons for the advancment of standard of living.

During Carngegie's day his workers lived in near povert, he rejected unions and constantly cut wages, in fact people were even killed by his security guards in protests against his practices.

Then guys like Teddy Roosevelt came along and supported unions, supported labor rights, supported workplace safety laws, and supported progressive taxation, and low and behold conditions for the majority of Americans began to improve.

Then the anti-taxers came in, cut those programs, cut taxes on the rich, and by 1929 we were in the biggest depression ever with massive poverty.

Then FDR comes along, creates the New Deal, anf after WWII unions, labor laws, progressive taxation, again becomes a strong part of the government, and again we see major advances for the majority of Americans with major improvements in quality of life for everyone.

Hello....!

Can you not understand anything being said in this thread? You seem to have missed the point of that past 10 posts!

You keep saying, the poor atre better off then they were, and we keep saying, yes we know that, duh, and this is the reason.... And you then go back and say but they are better off then they were, and again we say WE KNOW! THATS THE POINT! :p LOL

Malachi151

1st October 2003, 09:48 AM

Here you go:

http://www.pbs.org/fmc/book/images/11gov1.gif

compare:

http://www.pbs.org/fmc/book/images/14bus1.gif

michaellee

1st October 2003, 09:53 AM

Originally posted by Cain

My argument pertains to personal autonomy: spreading the wealth more evenly offers people more opportunities for self-mastery.

autonomy

n 1: immunity from arbitrary exercise of authority: political independence [syn: liberty]
2: personal independence [syn: self-direction, self-reliance, self-sufficiency]

Source: WordNet ® 1.6, © 1997 Princeton University

So personal autonomy is best achieved:
1. under the arbitrary exercise of authority by government;
2. by not being self-reliant or self-sufficient.

Or did I interpret your argument incorrectly?
If not, then what do you believe offers people less opportunities for self-mastery?
Liberty and independence?

If so, then please clarify.

shanek

1st October 2003, 10:01 AM

Originally posted by DavidJames
This quote of his is typical of the hyperbole that destroys his credibility.

"Our poor people to day are arguably much richer than the rich of that time."

I fully expect to see charts and figures "proving" that point.

I started an entire thread on that subject, complete with all the figures anyone could want.

Malachi151

1st October 2003, 10:26 AM

Originally posted by michaellee
Originally posted by Cain

autonomy

n 1: immunity from arbitrary exercise of authority: political independence [syn: liberty]
2: personal independence [syn: self-direction, self-reliance, self-sufficiency]

Source: WordNet ® 1.6, © 1997 Princeton University

So personal autonomy is best achieved:
1. under the arbitrary exercise of authority by government;
2. by not being self-reliant or self-sufficient.

Or did I interpret your argument incorrectly?
If not, then what do you believe offers people less opportunities for self-mastery?
Liberty and independence?

If so, then please clarify.

That's quite simple, you can just use the sandbox analogy.

A group of kids in a sandbox. The biggest kid is a bully, and he grabs all the toys and will not share.

The other kids group together and "force" him to share, or they "take" the toys from him as a group.

Okay, so the bully was "forced" to share, but at the same time freedom was increaed for the group. The bully lost his freedom not to share, by forcing him to share the others gained their freedom to use the resources.

What do you say, that we, as a group shoul not be allowed to defend ourselves from private abuse?

That's what democratic government is, its people joining together to achieve goals.

We decide as a society what we want and then we do it. If one person is not sharing then we FORCE them to share, becaue if we don't then OUR liberties are compromised.

Your failure is in faling to recognize that private individuals can, and do, aslo compromise your liberties. The public system is how to combat private infringement on our liberties.

shanek

1st October 2003, 10:30 AM

Originally posted by Malachi151
A group of kids in a sandbox. The biggest kid is a bully, and he grabs all the toys and will not share.

The other kids group together and "force" him to share, or they "take" the toys from him as a group.

Okay, so the bully was "forced" to share, but at the same time freedom was increaed for the group. The bully lost his freedom not to share, by forcing him to share the others gained their freedom to use the resources.

What do you say, that we, as a group shoul not be allowed to defend ourselves from private abuse?

Huge stinking problem with your analogy: The bully didn't own the toys to begin with.

BPSCG

1st October 2003, 10:31 AM

Originally posted by Malachi151
Point is, despite the vast disparity of income in this country, the lot of the poor is getting better all the time.

Well that can be said of just about every place on earth.
What? Despite the increasing disparity in wealth? How can that be?

You never actually say it, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but your whole complaint here seems to be that the rich get richer at the expense of the poor. I asked you earlier if you believed that wealth is actually created, as opposed to just having sprung out of nothingness once upon a time, and you didn't reply. So I'm asking you again: Do you believe that wealth is created, and that the sum of all wealth actually grows through the years? Or do you believe there is a finite, unchanging amount of wealth that an ever-increasing world's population must fight over?

During Carngegie's day his workers lived in near povert, he rejected unions and constantly cut wages, in fact people were even killed by his security guards in protests against his practices.

Ah, now when did I ever say the labor movement hurt economic progress? In fact, I agree, the labor movement was a necessary counterweight to the growth of corporations in 19th century America. Until the time people got the idea of pooling their capital and other resources to maximize production, those who paid wages and those who earned them were on a more or less even footing. With the arrival of the industrial age, the relatively few people who owned and ran the factories were in a previously-unknown position of power; they could decide the price of labor ALL BY THEMSELVES.

Labor, like anything else that goes into production, is a commodity, and like any other commodity, has a price. Prices are set by a buyer and a seller, ideally both having the same relative bargaining strength. When factory owners could decide the price of labor all by themselves, this caused a distortion in the price of labor, because those buying the labor and those selling it were in vastly different positions of strength. The factory owner, with his security forces and his pile of money, could tell the solitary, unorganized, weak worker to take a wage or leave it.

The union movement of the 19th century changed all that. Today, we know what the value of labor is, because the price paid for it is the amount that two parties of relatively equal strength agree on.

That's where today's workers' prosperity comes from. Not from the government's telling the factory owner he's not taxed enough and redistributing his money to everyone who needs it, regardless of whether they've earned any of it.

Then the anti-taxers came in, cut those programs, cut taxes on the rich, and by 1929 we were in the biggest depression ever with massive poverty.If ever there was a clearer example of post hoc, ergo propter hoc reasoning, I've yet to see it...

You keep saying, the poor atre better off then they were, and we keep saying, yes we know that, duh, and this is the reason.... And you then go back and say but they are better off then they were, and again we say WE KNOW! THATS THE POINT! :p LOL And you ignore the point that many of the people who are rich today were poor a generation or so ago, and that just about everyone who got off the boat in this country got here poor (don't recall many princes and dukes coming over here for a better life), and all any government program ever did was mitigate some of the excesses of capitalism and keep some of the poor from starving. But I never heard of anyone building plutocratic fortunes from a government program.

Grammatron

1st October 2003, 10:44 AM

Originally posted by Cain

So? Communism transformed the Soviet Union from a third world country into the world's other super-power. The standard of living also increased over that time -- and subsequently discreased after "shock therapy." It's a basket case now.

As someone who the "privilege" of living in Soviet "communism" I can tell you that there is a world of differences between how an average person lived there and the way poor people live here (USA).

With in a few month of moving here my family had a car, TV, a nice air-conditioned apartment any food any time with out the joy of long lines, etc.

Am I living better now? Yes but it's all relative. I don't see anyone in the USA suffering unless they a) Have some sort of addiction or mental problems or b) Put themselves in a bad position; broke the law, have acquired massive debts, refuse to get an education.

In the end, as someone who started from zero I don't see why people can't achieve what they want if they just put in a bit of hard work into it.

BPSCG

1st October 2003, 11:01 AM

Originally posted by Grammatron
As someone who the "privilege" of living in Soviet "communism" I can tell you that there is a world of differences between how an average person lived there and the way poor people live here (USA).

With in a few month of moving here my family had a car, TV, a nice air-conditioned apartment any food any time with out the joy of long lines, etc.

Am I living better now? Yes but it's all relative. I don't see anyone in the USA suffering unless they a) Have some sort of addiction or mental problems or b) Put themselves in a bad position; broke the law, have acquired massive debts, refuse to get an education.

In the end, as someone who started from zero I don't see why people can't achieve what they want if they just put in a bit of hard work into it. Thanks for saying that. I wanted to say something similar to Cain, but I think it carries more weight coming from someone who's actually enjoyed the alleged pleasures of living under communism.

Or maybe it doesn't. Who knows what he thinks? :rolleyes:

Malachi151

1st October 2003, 11:06 AM

As someone who the "privilege" of living in Soviet "communism" I can tell you that there is a world of differences between how an average person lived there and the way poor people live here (USA).

That was not the point. The point was that he was saying that the fact that the American poor are better off today than they were 100 yeras ago is proof of... something, I dunno what, yet what is obvious is that the same can be said of anywhere, the Russian poor were better off in 1990 than the they were in 1890 as well.

It was not a cross country comparison, is was a comparison of the relative improvements of the poor within a system.

Grammatron

1st October 2003, 12:33 PM

Originally posted by Malachi151
As someone who the "privilege" of living in Soviet "communism" I can tell you that there is a world of differences between how an average person lived there and the way poor people live here (USA).

That was not the point. The point was that he was saying that the fact that the American poor are better off today than they were 100 yeras ago is proof of... something, I dunno what, yet what is obvious is that the same can be said of anywhere, the Russian poor were better off in 1990 than the they were in 1890 as well.

It was not a cross country comparison, is was a comparison of the relative improvements of the poor within a system.

That post was in responce to Cain.

I don't think that any attempt at closing the so-called wealth gap would do any good for the USA. Poor are not suffering there for it would just give poor a bit extra money and hurt business owners immensely. Any and all effort would be better directed in telling people how they should get an education. There more people understand it, the less "poor" people this country will have.

BPSCG

2nd October 2003, 07:15 AM

Originally posted by Malachi151
As someone who the "privilege" of living in Soviet "communism" I can tell you that there is a world of differences between how an average person lived there and the way poor people live here (USA).

That was not the point. The point was that he was saying that the fact that the American poor are better off today than they were 100 yeras ago is proof of... something, I dunno what, yet what is obvious is that the same can be said of anywhere, the Russian poor were better off in 1990 than the they were in 1890 as well.

It was not a cross country comparison, is was a comparison of the relative improvements of the poor within a system. No, Cain was arguing that the US and the USSR were really not all that different from each other, in that political power in both countries was concentrated in a small elite, a claim which I addressed and (I hope) refuted.

Typical leftist tactic, to make a slanderous comparison between the U.S. and some vile dictatorship, then when someone points out what a monstrous comparison it is, the lefty tries to change the subject.

John Edward likes to do that, too, when he's caught out - ignore the error and change the subject. Hey, whatever works, right?

Cain

2nd October 2003, 02:09 PM

Posted by M-something:
So personal autonomy is best achieved:
1. under the arbitrary exercise of authority by government;
2. by not being self-reliant or self-sufficient.

Shanek- this is known as a straw man. Refer to it for future arguments:

guy with the initials that starts with B writes:

Good, you're coming around. So how close should they be? How much more income should Bill Gates have than his newly-hired mailroom clerk? How much richer should my wife be than I am?

*sigh* (Al Gore sigh??) This is obvious nonsense. You want me to offer precise figures for particular individuals. So if I say, "Americans need to eat less," maybe I should tell you the exact number of calories Jim Jones ought to get daily. :rolleyes:

So in this country, power is concentrated among the power elites like the banking industry, the energy companies, the tobacco companies, and so on. Or is it concentrated among the trial lawyers, the public employee unions, and the entertainment industry? These are all immensely rich institutions that generally throw their financial support in two diametrically opposed directions. So is it accurate to say that political power is concentrated? Or is it more accurate to say that it is dissipated among countless interest groups having countless, often opposed objectives? Which, BTW, is exactly what Madison, Hamilton, and Jay intended when they wrote The Federalist Papers.

Talk about missing the point. Do you need a brief lesson in democracy. Okay, here it goes. Listen carefully: Democracy entails widespread population, not elites in particular interest groups making all the decisions that affect people's lives. John Jay also said, "The people who own this country ought to run it." Madison famously decried the "tyranny of the majority" in Federalist #10. Of course, anyone with a passing familiarity of world history knows there are rare instances of majoritarian tyranny. Governments are almost without exception controlled by a small class of elites. This especially holds true for the point about communism as practiced in the Soviet Union.

Oh, I thought you'd said earlier that the USSR was a superpower. I was always under the impression that countries where everyone except the elites lived in squalor and waited on bread lines wouldn't qualify as superpowers. Sounds to me like it was more of a third-world country with lots of big bombs.

The standard of living improved in Russia after "communism", and has since declined with the induction of "capitalism." Is that material wealth a good argument for communism. Not anymore than the increased standard of living among african americans is a good argument for slavery.

Okay, and are the Europeans better off as a result? Are poor Europeans better off than poor Americans? Are there fewer poor Europeans per capita than there are poor Americans? Are the middle classes better off in Europe than in America? My guess is the answer to all these questions is "no", though I'd be hard-put to quantify it.

Consult the CIA world factbook and compare poverty statistics in western Europe to the United States. Just go ahead. U.N. Human development Report, released a couple of months ago ranks the United States seventh. The richest country in the world falls below Norway, Iceland, Sweden, the Netherlands and others in human development.

I guess one way of finding the answer is to check the net immigration/emigration to/from the U.S. and Europe. Does Europe get more immigrants from the U.S. than the U.S. gets from Europe? Or is it vice versa?

I suppose a person could compare immigration rates. The word "rigorous" doesn't exactly enter my mind for such an arbitrary comparison, but hey, your style is your style.

To "Grammatron": freedom is not measured in televisions.

BCOGSGOCGS(whatever) subsequently mumbled something about "refuting" parallels between the decision making process in the US versus Soviet Russia. [insert light-hearted laughter here]

malachi correctly understood the purpose of my comparison. But I think this bit of wisdom deserves some kind of award for irony.

Typical leftist tactic, to make a slanderous comparison between the U.S. and some vile dictatorship, then when someone points out what a monstrous comparison it is, the lefty tries to change the subject.

John Edward likes to do that, too, when he's caught out - ignore the error and change the subject. Hey, whatever works, right?

After slandering "typical leftist tactic[s]" (and using slander in the same sentence!), BCOSGSGOG resorts to his own monstrous comparison.