Collapse of Middle Class Wealth
- Thread starter jerry55
- Start date
My question is this:
WHY is there a widening income gap in America? I'm not an expert, but I've read enough material and have enough empirical evidence to convince me the middle class really IS disappearing.
But why? What factors are contributing to this? Crony capitalism? Burdensome taxation? The debasing of the US dollar? lol
I'm definitely interested in a libertarian perspective on this.
WHY is there a widening income gap in America? I'm not an expert, but I've read enough material and have enough empirical evidence to convince me the middle class really IS disappearing.
But why? What factors are contributing to this? Crony capitalism? Burdensome taxation? The debasing of the US dollar? lol
I'm definitely interested in a libertarian perspective on this.
Wealth grows in a compound manner when managed/used wisely.
Not wealth doesn't.
EDIT:
Same doubling rate, different starting point. So if the lower number wasn't even doubling as fast as the bigger, the gap widens faster.
I want to know why people insist on seeing the population as a trio of classes based on income level.
Oh, I know why. It allows politicians to figure out who to pander to.
It would be better to talk about the permanent middle class, or the permanent underclass, but this doesn't happen much.
The great thing about economic freedom is the mobility it affords people, and the people who are "poor" today are not the same group of people who were poor 10 years ago.
I don't see a lot of value in discussing why "x class" is shrinking or rising or going on a trip to disneyland, because for a significant percentage of the people who make up "the middle class" or "the poor" it's a temporary stop on the way to someplace else.
Hawthorne summed it up better than I ever could, way back in 1850 when he wrote: "Families are always rising and falling in America.".
Much harder for those folks to manipulate "us" for their ends if they're not constantly reminding us of "them
Author of ‘Moral Tribes’ describes evolution’s effect on our moral behavior - Health & wellness - The Boston Globe
If we make it through this historical shitstorm without destroying the planet (unlikely) this will surely be known as an age of false paradigms.
Author of ‘Moral Tribes’ describes evolution’s effect on our moral behavior - Health & wellness - The Boston Globe
If we make it through this historical shitstorm without destroying the planet (unlikely) this will surely be known as an age of false paradigms.
While I have no doubt that the Equality Trust is 100% committed to providing sound research without a political agenda of any sort, I'm going to cite this report from the US Census that is full of interesting data like this:
- The percentage of people in
poverty all 36 months from
2009 to 2011 was 3.5 percent,
an increase from 3.0 percent
over the period of 2005 to
2007.
- For individuals experiencing a
poverty spell lasting 2 or more
consecutive months from 2009
to 2011, an estimated 44.0
percent of poverty spells ended
within 4 months
- From 2009 to 2011, the
median length of a given
poverty spell was 6.6 months
Now I realize that a line graph provided by a group given to making statements like "UK income inequality is among the highest in the developed world and evidence shows that this is bad for almost everyone." is probably going to be 10x more compelling than a .pdf file put together by a government agency that actually does original research into poverty and income levels, but that's a different problem for another thread.
It's an interesting topic.
Something I think about a lot about is what happens when computers can do everything people do, better than people do.
The idea of "going to work" at that point becomes pointless. It's inefficient. You can't start a business, because a computer can run a business better than you can. You can't become a trader, because a computer can do it better, etc etc..
How does the economy then function? Do people own computers, and get those computers to work on their behalf, leading to two very distinct classes -- the "has computers" and "doesn't have computers"? It feels a lot like we're slowly moving in that direction.
People talk about tech start-ups creating jobs, but actually they (net) destroy them, concentrating wealth among fewer people. Sure, Google may employ XX,XXX people -- but how many jobs have they destroyed with their search engine alone? Newspapers, directories, libraries, ... This concentrates wealth further into the hands of the stock holders in those "computers" effectively.
I'm by no means a socialist, but I'm not convinced that a strictly capitalist model will sustain the world forever.
Something I think about a lot about is what happens when computers can do everything people do, better than people do.
The idea of "going to work" at that point becomes pointless. It's inefficient. You can't start a business, because a computer can run a business better than you can. You can't become a trader, because a computer can do it better, etc etc..
How does the economy then function? Do people own computers, and get those computers to work on their behalf, leading to two very distinct classes -- the "has computers" and "doesn't have computers"? It feels a lot like we're slowly moving in that direction.
People talk about tech start-ups creating jobs, but actually they (net) destroy them, concentrating wealth among fewer people. Sure, Google may employ XX,XXX people -- but how many jobs have they destroyed with their search engine alone? Newspapers, directories, libraries, ... This concentrates wealth further into the hands of the stock holders in those "computers" effectively.
I'm by no means a socialist, but I'm not convinced that a strictly capitalist model will sustain the world forever.
A computer can't run a business and it won't be able to do it for a long, long time. Most of the scientist involved in AI, in one way or another, say we don't even know how to approach the problem. Computation is VERY different from a thought.
Jobs that don't require any expertise at all are on the way out. Cutting the number of medium-level expertise ones is next on the agenda.
It sounds really scary and it may seem like the robots are taking over, but I think the reality will be FAR from that. Just think about it. This already happened. It was called industrialization. Science did its thing and we figured a way to get things done WAY more efficiently. We changed manual labor for machines. This created hunger for new job types - machine engineers, mathematicians, maintenance and a lot more. This created a shift towards service-base economies. Virtually all of the developed economies in the world are heavily service-based.
Same thing will happen now - new job types will be created and they will need services too. I think the sector which the majority would flock to, will be social sciences. More people to analyze history, language, society, philosophy, theology, human psychology, anthropology, political sciences, economic sciences, law. More teachers, doctors. More writers, painters, musicians. Nature sciences probably will benefit a lot too - marine biology, ecology, forestry, agronomy. Data science helps all of them immensely.
I think great prosperity lies ahead for humanity, as a result of the great achievements in exact sciences in the past 200 years. (or skynet)
Jobs that don't require any expertise at all are on the way out. Cutting the number of medium-level expertise ones is next on the agenda.
It sounds really scary and it may seem like the robots are taking over, but I think the reality will be FAR from that. Just think about it. This already happened. It was called industrialization. Science did its thing and we figured a way to get things done WAY more efficiently. We changed manual labor for machines. This created hunger for new job types - machine engineers, mathematicians, maintenance and a lot more. This created a shift towards service-base economies. Virtually all of the developed economies in the world are heavily service-based.
Same thing will happen now - new job types will be created and they will need services too. I think the sector which the majority would flock to, will be social sciences. More people to analyze history, language, society, philosophy, theology, human psychology, anthropology, political sciences, economic sciences, law. More teachers, doctors. More writers, painters, musicians. Nature sciences probably will benefit a lot too - marine biology, ecology, forestry, agronomy. Data science helps all of them immensely.
I think great prosperity lies ahead for humanity, as a result of the great achievements in exact sciences in the past 200 years. (or skynet)
So you're saying that social mobility in the US is on par with other developed nations because people on the poverty line are entering and leaving it frequently? That could easily be linked to changes in circumstances.
It's a total fallacy to say "a significant percentage of the people who make up "the middle class" or "the poor" it's a temporary stop on the way to someplace else."
No, I'm saying that "social mobility" is a bullshit term that can't be defined accurately.
It doesn't mean anything.
The data I posted has to do with economic mobility, which IS something that can be measured.
As far as poverty goes, the statistics for poverty in the US measure households before aid is given.
Just to put that in perspective, the US state with the smallest welfare benefits package in 2013 was Mississippi, at around $17k per year.
That figure alone is enough to put a single person with zero income about $5k above the poverty line.
The poverty line is more arbitrary than social mobility indicators. One is short term, the other is long term. Statistics you posted don't account for many long term factors including how frequently people re-enter poverty or how long they stay out of it.
They would be explained by a temporary change in circumstance rather than any progression within society.
Actually, the SIPP report I linked to goes into all of the above and more, I don't have time to summarize the entire 32 page document for you, which is why I posted the link.