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Marvin the Martian

Marvin the Martian

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Yesterday I watched this Ted Talk on income inequality. There seems to be a correlation between countries (and states) with higher levels of inequality than those with lower levels. Now correlation does not equal cause, but it is interesting that a Norway and a Japan have much lower levels of inequality and have less mental illness, less obesity, and less other similar negative issues than a US. He then points out income per capita does not show that correlation. A rich society with high inequality has these problems, a moderate society with relative equality does not.

I mention Japan and Norway above, because he suggests there are huge differences between the countries. Japan values the nuclear family, women are less likely to work, Japan's social programs aren't nearly as robust. Japan's wages are more equal, Norway has a tremendous wage gap but they use taxation and social programs to narrow the difference.

Then yesterday an IU professor of finance wrote an opinion peace about the minimum wage. He's against the concept, though he does point out that in November four states that voted Republican then went out and also voted to raise their state's minimum wage at the exact same time. That is interesting.

But beyond that, he makes the standard claim that a minimum wage, any minimum wage, costs jobs. He suggests what we need is to eliminate the minimum wage but use the Earned Income Tax Credit even more to offset that. I found that an interesting point. My concern is that we'll never fund the EITC enough to offset people making $3/hour. But I was curious, who here would accept that idea? We eliminate the minimum wage but increase the EITC to make up for it?

There does seem to be some idea to the Ted Talk, income inequality creates some social issues. Would we be better off to have a minimum wage that tries to close that gap, eliminate the minimum and use an EITC to close that gap, or are we better off to be social darwinists and eliminate the minimum wage and let people work for $3/hour and that's just too bad.

I do believe that income inequality is part of a problem we face, I buy into the Ted Talk premise. I'm not sure we have the political will to adequately fund EITC if we were to eliminate the minimum wage. I'm not sure I buy into the idea of no minimum wage, and I'm really not sure I can trust any promises made to increase EITC as part of a plan to eliminate minimum wage, I'm not sure the idea is so bad that we shouldn't discuss it. Would such a plan get people into jobs and moving upward? I don't want a situation where the government just subsidizes all corporate jobs, isn't there a risk that corporations may view it that way?
 
I've often said

that income inequality is not an economic problem but a social one. I am not one bit surprised that Norway and Japan have little income inequality. Those two nations are among the most ethnic homogeneous on earth. The notion that "diversity is our strength" is not all that it is cracked up to be.

"ncome inequality creates some social issues." That is true. But as far as cause and effect is concerned, I am convinced that income inequality is the result of social issues, not the cause of them.

I would be generally in favor of substituting EITC or other entitlement for the minimum wage. But we need to be careful with that. A welfare state causes the water to swirl in the economic toilet bowl. The most important thing we need to do with the minimum wage is to understand that it isn't intended to be a permanent livelihood for anybody. If people in their 30's are working for entry level minimum wages, they have problems that a minimum wage can't fix.

BTW, we still need welders. In case nobody has noticed, we are in a midst of a building boom and I am consulting on a $14 million project now. The problem is that there are no people working in the trades anymore. The recession flushed many of them into retirement. Trying to find welders, electricians, plumbers, metal workers, and more to build big buildings is a problem and holding back the industry and maybe the recovery. How did we get to the point where we have college educated kids waiting tables and working the aisles at Home Depot and no skilled labor?
 
What are the demographics of Japan and Norway?


Are both societies mulit-racial and multi-cultural with large numbers of immigrants and open borders?
 
America hs a terrible shortage

of skilled labor. Right this minute on the Indiana Department of Workforce Development website there are 80,000 jobs listed which go unfilled day after day.

Truck drivers - there is a growing scarcity of over the road truckers. The pay usually runs about 55 cents per mile. 8 hours at the 70mph or so they run on the interstate is 560 mile x .55 = $308 per day. That runs to somewhere around 65-70 thousand per year. considering downtime and slower travel. Yet, the trucking companies ALL have ads for drivers and are desperate as their workforce is aging rapidly.

Not that many folks can get a Class A commercial driver's license. It requires passing a drug test.
 
Income equality being a social issue...

...is pretty much identical to it being a moral issue. As to it not being being an economic issue, a poor well educated preacher who lives by the word might disagree as he finds it difficult to provide for his family.
 
It isn't a shortage

it is a lack of will.

And with Obama paying them 99 weeks NOT to work, why would they? Plus almost everything else these days are free.

We have killed any NEED to work in this country.
 
I think that is a fair point

I hesitate to go here as I will not explain it as carefully as I should and it will lead to people being very angry. We are a multi-racial and multi-cultural society in many ways. But we aren't in many other ways. It is as if we want to claim we have no biases and everyone is welcome, but then we don't really want them unless they look or sound within very precise limits. And this isn't political, I've certainly heard liberals make fun of southern dialects as much as I've heard conservatives laugh at "ask" pronounced "axe".

So we want to be multi-cultural, but we want our language to be English and spoken/written in a very precise way. We want to accept people of different cultures, but we want them to cut their hair as we whites do.

I mention that last one, I have a brother in law who has this huge thing about hair. I don't see him often, but when I do it almost always involves watching college football. He is a Vice-President of a pretty large organization. Does he get worked up when players have their hair visible from below the back of the helmet. It doesn't matter if it's black or white, he launches into a tirade about how big of a disgrace it is and how such a player would never play on his team, if he were a coach. How he would instruct his players to always tackle them by the hair. Strangely, he's a marginal NFL fan that, when he pays attention, is a Steeler fan. I'm not sure how he reacts to Polamalu.

I use that to indicate the point. we are multi-cultural with an expectation everyone will be part of the single culture. It does seem to be the worst possible combination. We accept people have a right to have a cornrow, but we reserve the right to immediately judge the person poorly based on that single attribute. Tattoos used to be the same way, though it seems they have gained a bit of acceptance. I doubt we'll elect a heavily tattoo'd person president in the near future, but people higher up the food chain seem to have them in bigger numbers than before.
 
You're right

but its been going on for decades now and we have generations within families who have never worked. What do the kids learn from that? You don't have to work. The plantation owners (federal government and some state and local governments) will give you stuff using someone else's money so you have no exposure to risk and no consequences for failing to strive.

But that's no surprise. That is the intent of the left. Enslave the poor to the government and own their votes.They're good at it and have been since Roosevelt in the beginning and the War on Poverty in its current welfare state extreme.

We have the smallest workforce ever and no one seems worried about it.

We also have the largest deficit printing money to give democrat voters the stuff the want.
 
That's a fact.

My sister and her husband have a transportation company and they need truck drivers and there just aren't enough out there. The pay is way above the national average and would put them in the top half of earners in this country, but aren't enough people interested in doing it and/or trained to do it. Sure, they're on the road a lot and away from home, but it's a good job.

Same with other skilled labor. I don't know when we got away from vocational education in our high schools, but it was definitely after I graduated. I know several people from high school that are earning a very good living as welders, mechanics, carpenters and in body shops. They learned those skills in high school vocational education classes. A friend that works as a welder says that all the welders are either around his age or they're recent immigrants that learned to weld in their original countries. We should be training our young people for these good jobs too. Now the word is that all students should go to college and it's just not correct. Not all students are cut out for college and a lot of students like to do things with their hands but we don't give them the opportunity we used to give them and it seems they're looked down upon if they choose something other than college education.
 
Are you saying welfare reform isn't working?

I was led to believe turning welfare over to the states to make sure welfare mothers went to work (homes with able bodied males never did get what was called Aid to Families with Dependent Children [AFDC]) would solve the problem of families going from generation to generation on welfare.

Think you'll find the great majority of money which we call "welfare" goes to working families (SNAP, earned income credit, etc.) and/or persons who once worked (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment, disability).

The main reason we have a smaller percentage of our total population working is because we have an aging population. This is also the biggest obstacle in reducing the federal deficit in the years ahead. Like it or not, Social Security and Medicare reform are the elephants in the room, not welfare.
 
Anger is often a result of cognitive dissonance

"Those grapes likely taste bad"......you should not be intimidated by the anger potential...

Japan is 98.5% Japanese...and Norway is 86% ethnic Norweigan, and the balance is made up of similar ethnic groups including Sami, Forest Finns and Kvens.(Wiki). Their 'cultures' are relatively free of other value sets experience. Both cultures have a strong sense of 'oneness'. This materially affects income and other social stratification.

I would offer the opinion that in relatively open societies with multiple cultural, racial and religeous groups, there is a greater potential for wealth/income disparity. I'm thinking about Brazil as an example.
 
You're wrong evey time you say it

If rising income inequality resulted from social dysfunction among the poors, we'd see them falling away from everyone else, who were all rising together. Instead we see the top one percent soaring away from the 99 percent, whose incomes have stagnated for thirty years.

It's remarkable that, despite the coverage this issue has received, so many conservatives still have it flat dead wrong. What do you think accounts for this?
 
That's an interesting theory

But it doesn't apply to the United States between WWII and Ronald Reagan. In those decades, the rising tide really did lift all boats. Since then it has lifted only the yachts, leaving everyone else underwater. Do you really blame Mexicans for this? If so, please show your work.
 
As with most issues

it isn't really that black and white.

This problem is a combination of social issues AND economic issues. There isn't just one solution, and as with most things, it won't be an easy fix.
 
What I AM saying is that $22 TRILLION

has been spent on the war on poverty - several times the TOTAL money spent on all wars in American history and we have had a fairly constandt18-15 percent of the population at or below the poverty level. It did no good, but, as liberals always dream, it did spend $22 trillion dollars for no measured value.


The link is to an article that shows the harm done.

War on Poverty
 
Blaming Mexicans.....


The Globalist, by Branko Milanovich, March 15,2013

Among other conclusions: " ..migrants who are often ethnically and religeously different from native majorities bring different cultural

norms that undercut the welfare state.

The welfare state was built on the assumption of ethnic and cultural homogeneity of the population.

Homogeneity not only increases affinity among different segments of the population, it also ensures that more or less all follow

similar social norms."

Mr. Milanovich draws no distinction between the dilemma facing the United States and other multi-cultural, open borders states, nor does he appear to establish an era, such as post WWII and Ronald Reagan. He also discusses the threat to democratic forms by income inequality and pressure on the middle class....
 
The trillions spent...

...helped to provide food, shelter, and clothing for millions of people at a time when they needed it. If you were a kid in a family below the poverty line I don't think you would believe money which provided meals for you was money wasted.

Only the private sector can provide the number of jobs which will elevate people above the poverty and lower poverty rates. However, no where is it written that employers must hire people in poverty, so programs to help the poorest among us continue.

The harm done in the minds of many involves accepting the idea that these "welfare" programs make people dependent and and lazy to the point of never working or wanting to work. However, given the welfare reform of 1996 which cuts families off after two years in most states, how does this happen?
 
NO


the real harm is people, like yourself, not wanting to confront what the welfare system has actually done to our country. And losing the desire to fix it.

As you noted, the welfare system has done much good. But there are two sides to every coin, and a cost to everything. That cost has now come home and it is time for us to pay, and we are broke. :(

You're right, only the private sector can produce enough jobs. Something the democratic party has never understood. They have spent the better part of 70 years trying (and have finally been successful) in destroying our economic machine.

The real problem is, neither one of these problems are every talked about, so the democrats can continue to get votes. Mainly from #1 and by making demons out of those trying to fix #2.
 
Good lord . . .

that's a crock, Joe, and I suspect that even you know it . . . .

I have a new nickname for you . . . "Crocky" . . . .
 
Congratulations


You found another guy who blames Mexicans. That makes both of you wrong.
 
It's a worldview issue.

Conservatives firmly believe that every single person has the opportunity to gain whatever their own hard work and ingenuity can get them. Facts have to be interpreted in light of that worldview. If someone is poor, it must be their own fault. They must be lazy, or stupid, or dysfunctional in some other way, because if they weren't, they wouldn't be poor.

goat
 
so, did anyone have ideas about the other half

I keep wondering if no minimum wage but a stronger earned income tax credit could work. I do not think it is politically possible, but as policy could it work?
 
Did it really?

I feel like income disparity was lower during the middle of the 20th century, but the rising tide still didn't lift all boats, and much of the tide's boat discrimination was based on race. It seems to me - without any numbers to back this up, so please correct me if need be - that the lower income inequality was largely a result of the success of the middle class whites.

goat
 
Thanks for clearing that up

I didn't know I think poor people are lazy and dumb.

Maybe you can tell me what to buy my stoker for Christmas since you know me so well.
 
I surely won't defend racial inequality

But the basic facts are pretty compelling. For decades this country worked, in the aggregate, exactly as conservatives say it should. But since then, we've behaved like a banana republic.

blog1.png

This post was edited on 12/6 12:53 AM by Rockfish1
 
"I'm just describing what I read."

I said the roots of income inequality lie in social issues, not economic conditions. From there you claim I think all poor people are lazy and dumb. Hoookaaaay . . . . . . . .take another drag.
 
Yeah, that looks about right.

I only brought it up because "equality" has certain connotations, and I don't think that everyone got to sip at that wine bar, knowaddimean?
 
You're still wrong

If income inequality arose from social dysfunction among the poors, we'd see their incomes falling away from everyone else's. But in fact this isn't what we see. Instead we see the incomes of the 1 percent soaring away from the 99 percent, whose incomes have stagnated for decades.

Your blame the poors theory can't survive contact with reality. Why do you persist in being so obviously wrong?
 
How's it feel?

You've been misrepresenting my posts for quite some time now. If I'm reading too much into yours, all I have to say is, "Meh."

Also, it really does sound like you're blaming poor people for being poor. It would be nice if you went into more detail.
 
Not tonight

Been there, done that. Note: we are talking about inequality, not the causes of poverty; a highly nuanced but important difference. I can't control what you think of me or my posts, so I won't worry about it. But stay tuned. There likely will be another thread about this.
 
An liberals believe

that everyone on welfare/disability would work if they were offered a job. They might think there's one here and there that try to use/beat the system but it's very rare.

This post was edited on 12/6 6:22 AM by NPT
 
No. We have a stronger belief (apparently) in the capabilities . . .

of Americans to better their economic situation should they be provided the opportunity and incentives rather than disincentives. We believe that we should have a safety net for those that really don't have the capacity to improve their situation and that we should have a temporary safety net for others that find themselves in difficult economic circumstances from time to time. We believe that people move from one economic situation to another (actually that is a fact) and that the people at the bottom don't usually stay at the bottom and those at the top don't always stay at the top. Individual and family economic situations aren't usually permanent and we should have policies that encourage economic mobility rather than discourage it. Too many liberals seem to treat individual and family economic situations as more of a permanent situation and have policies which are more likely to make that so. Too many apparently don't believe disadvantaged Americans are essentially helpless and that we have to take care of them in all things. The voting laws are an example. Liberal Democrats (not most Democrats) believe that a significant number of Democratic voters aren't capable of obtaining a free legal photo ID. Heck, Zeke doesn't even think that a large number of college Democrats can even figure out that there's an election going on or how to comply with very simple rules of voting.

In my life I've gone from the bottom 5 percent for income, living in trailer parks and low-income housing, to the top 5 percent and I'm not the only one. I know many people I grew up with, black, white and other, that have done exactly the same. We had opportunities that we took advantage of. Many Americans that liberal Democrats seem to think are essentially helpless do the same all the time. Poverty doesn't have to be a permanent situation for most Americans, and it isn't. Neither is being rich, by the way.
 
if you watched the Ted Talk

It appears Denmark has far greater social mobility. Googling it, America is not real high on the social mobility scale.

So why do Canada, Germany, and Denmark (among others) kick our butts in social mobility? Some here suggest our diversity is a problem. If so, why? What is it about being Black or Latino in a White society that hampers mobility? If it is diversity, should we find mainly White states with higher mobility?

CO has suggested in the past our single parent rate. Could be, is our rate higher than Scandinavia, Germany, and Canada?

Others say our welfare system causes it. If that is so, is our welfare state stronger than the welfare state in Germany, Denmark, Canada?

Honestly I do not have a good handle. If welfare kills social mobility it seems Denmark would be far less mobile than us. If it is diversity, West Virginia should have better mobility than a lot of more diverse states. What answer fits the pattern? Somewhere there is a theory of everything.
 
Re: America hs a terrible shortage


Originally posted by Ladoga:
of skilled labor. Right this minute on the Indiana Department of Workforce Development website there are 80,000 jobs listed which go unfilled day after day.

Truck drivers - there is a growing scarcity of over the road truckers. The pay usually runs about 55 cents per mile. 8 hours at the 70mph or so they run on the interstate is 560 mile x .55 = $308 per day. That runs to somewhere around 65-70 thousand per year. considering downtime and slower travel. Yet, the trucking companies ALL have ads for drivers and are desperate as their workforce is aging rapidly.

Not that many folks can get a Class A commercial driver's license. It requires passing a drug test.
Click to expand...

.

obviously you don't believe in market economics.

if an industry can't get workers, skilled or unskilled, they aren't paying enough for the job.

especially when the number of workers far outnumbers the number of jobs.

and btw, diving a truck long haul is hardly a fun fulfilling job, is dangerous, is unhealthy, and has incredible pressure,

now go back to you AM radio for your next great insight into truth.
 
maybe we need to revamp social security

Some jobs pay well but have no real escape route. You know the old thing about there being no old drywall hangers. So someone getting into welding or trucking may be great at 25, is it at 55 or 65? Do welders and truck drivers have ways into management as they age.

I have no experience welding but I did work four years as a bus driver. I had back pain, nothing too severe but enough to go to the chiropractor. They told me truck/bus drivers were their biggest clients.

So either we need to get people in physical occupations to retire sooner, or convince corporate America not to pigeon hole workers. I may be wrong but I suspect a 45 year old truck driver with an MBA competing against a 25 year old fresh from college with an MBA would be at a disadvantage.

I think we as a society look down on manual work. Not in obvious ways, but I think it hurts in moving up. Mobility fromantic factory floor to penthouse does not seem as possible as it once was. We seem to have the old British navy attitude that officers and men are just different breeds.
 
I believe 80% is the cutoff

The graphs I saw in Googling on wage growth is that the top 20% has shown some growth, the more the higher you go. But at 80% and below, there has been no growth for a generation. People at 80% should be well educated wit training. Yet they are also being left behind.

I believe culturally we shifted. I believe we once accepted a general American spirit. We celebrated the common American, for example, the music Fanfare for the Common Man. Somewhere we changedo to believe the exemption all man drove America. So the gap between the exceptional and common mirrors our societal belief.
 
I think it is interesting that the very rich and the very poor in America

now find a common political home in the Democratic Party. Democrat and liberal polices are helping both, and this ipso facto furthers income inequality. In broad strokes, I think the Democrats appeal to the filthy rich because those people support and can deal with the social and economic complications of our ginormous government. Those complications keep out the small players. The poor are attracted to the Democrats because . . . . .well . . . .you know. The Democrats have gotten to this point because it has increasingly looked to the Clerisy for its policy and theories of government. This has culminated with the Obama administration having the fewest number of private sector people and advisors in responsible policy positions than ever before. We are paying a price for this as MIT's Gruber so clearly showed. Of course there is much more to this point than this simple observation and I haven't, and probably won't, take the time to further research or think about this. Suffice it to say that the Democrats are no longer the party of people like Hubert Humphrey.

If you are interested in examining the problems of income inequality without getting into liberals vs conservatives or Republicans vs. Democrats, look at this book. I haven't read it yet; but I've read a lot about it.
















This post was edited on 12/6 12:54 PM by CO. Hoosier
 
I'm not sure how much this has to do with your post but...

So I've been in recruiting for quite a long time mostly IT but for the last few years in Med Device more senior management positions. A few weeks ago my company asked if I could help with some IT orders and it amazed me that in a few years the salaries hadn't changed. Indy is a very small IT community and it was the same companies with the same jobs at the same salaries, I was amazed.

Why do I bring this up, well how do these salaries not go up with demand? These are not low level positions these are six figure openings. As a conservative I believe everyone should make as much as they can, legally...in saying that I hate seeing upper mgt getting 25, 30% raises I just don't know how to stop it. Sure you can raise minimum wage to $15/hr but that doesn't help the guy making say 60k...I think something should be done but no idea what or how.
 
I will look into that book

It seems intersting, the very rich want their taxes raised but the middlend does not want them to pay more?
 
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