A video has "gone viral" that examines the distribution of wealth in the United States. "Viral" suggests you may have to search for it, but that should be easily done. Meantime I have provided a link below.
It's
pretty astonishing, alright, if we accept the numbers. We don't know
who is speaking and we arent told how to access the Harvard study. Just
saying. Snopes dot com has nothing I could find.
I don't doubt what is
being shown is factual however.Make of it what you will.
I
guess if you could quiz this gentleman you'd find the cure for the
problem is to be higher taxation of the 1%. Problem is, what he is
showing is not income, but wealth. That means the cure actually is
confiscation; redistributing income would have an incomplete effect.
Myself,
I do not begrudge people for what they have. Certainly confiscation of
property to provide equality of wealth is out of the question IMO.
Redistribution of income is Socialism. Redistribution of property is
totally Commie. It has a certain appeal, though, I don't deny it. There
are times when I wonder if I would have made a good Communist. Just
because "it ain't me" doesnt mean it couldnt have been me or you. Just
saying.
People
with grotesque incomes do get my goat. Maybe most of us feel the same
way, after all we do have redistribution of income. But for me, it is
when it is somebody who just has a job like the rest of us. I won't include highly
paid sports figures and such, seeing as how they negotiate it fairly.
But overpaid CEOs in particular send me to the moon. They really just
have a job like the rest of us but can make hundreds of millions of
dollars.
Getting
back to the video, I think one reason we are all shocked is the way
Class is being presented today. In most cases, it seems, it benefits
whomever for the public to think they are higher in social status than
they are. Everybody seems to think they are middle class, I have been
going on about this for a long time. One reason for my problem is that
the first time I ever saw facts and figures on the matter, it showed the
upper class/middle class/lower class distinctions as a pyramid. Where
did I see that? Might have been in the old encyclopedias of my younger years. The
upper class was at the tip top only and the lower class was
monumentally the greatest number of people down in the fat part of the
pyramid. This is wealth distribution pretty much as shown in the video. I
wouldn't want to get into who is middle class and who isn't, but I will
say that for the vast majority with this opinion a case can be made they
are perhaps in the upper lower class.
Looking in to this, the confusion seems to come when classes are divided not into a pyramid but a cylinder. The various classes are all huge because it is an arbitrary distribution of numbers of people.
The maker of this video does the same thing. When he shows midway how
America is the lower class, the middle class, the rich, and the wealthy -
his terms and divisions - they are not even all equal numbers of
people! The middle class is shown as the group with the greatest numbers. And why wouldnt he? We all think we are middle class.
Fact is, it may be new that it is getting worse in this country, but [as he admits] it has always been this way.
5 comments:
note well:
this video looks mostly at *wealth* not *income*
The Harvard guy that did this study was on the Newshour a long time ago on one Paul Solomon's pieces. It was quite fascinating.
I think it is looking at both wealth and income. With the level of wealth distribution being so vastly different from what it was 30 + years ago, I do think you have to look at income as one of the causes. I've read many people argue that globalization has caused CEO pay to skyrocket from 20-ish times the average worker pay to 380 + times now, but European CEO's are not paid as extravagantly as their American counterparts, so where does it come from?
Lastly, I would argue that paying taxes is not truly socialism. As a society, we are pulling our resources to pay fro the things that everyone takes advantage of. Now, of course, I don't have kids, so I don't directly take advantage of schools, but as a society there is a benefit to educating the future work force. Show me one society that didn't collect resources; whether money, crops, animals, etc. to provide resources; protection, roads, etc. Bottom line is if this is a socialist society, it's failing miserably.
I got several replies by private email, thanks.
If it is true that in the name of justice this wealth disparity has to go, but also true that the only bullets in our proletarian guns are to force higher taxes on the wealthy, looks like we have to hope those same people have high incomes too.
Can they be forced to produce higher incomes by liquidating more assets? Small question.
Big question. How much can society take? Phil Mickelson recently complained he was going to be paying taxes at more than a 60% rate. This of course includes everything, not just the federal. According to the article, see link, he probably has exaggerated and pays something around 50%. Could be more than 50%, though. That is a lot for sure. So how much is too much?
If you have trouble with the link just google the question.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/100398096/What_Does_Phil_Mickelson_Actually_Pay_in_Taxes
I think the one area where you are possibly conflating things is the effect of taxation. Income is taxed, not wealth. The disparate rate between income generated by wealth versus income generated by employment is where people who have wealth can quickly accumulate more. One could argue that those disparate tax rates actually discourages work.
Ultimately, there is a rate at which it is a disincentive to work, but that rate is higher than most people think. If I can find a link there was an economics professor who looked at this. He argues that lower tax rates are actually a disincentive to working harder. The argument goes that if the tax rate is higher (up to a point) people will actually work harder to maintain the lifestyle that they want to live. If they can work less because of a lower tax rate, it does not benefit the economy.
Anyway, I don't anyone is arguing that wealth should be taxed, just income.
well, there are property taxes. And the wealthy get nailed on inheritance taxes.
I'm radical enough to say that if the 1% just keep getting richer exponentially, these two items can be ratcheted up to be made even more progressive [inheritance] and made progressive [property]. The latter is not progressive to my knowledge.
I am not in favor of new types of property taxes but would listen [g]
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