Enough

[John Raabe]

Very powerful article on the concept of "enough". When do we have enough...
enough to share...

http://www.thepowerofourcollectivewisdom.com/2011/06/dayenu-in-reverse.html

[Native_NM]

He is in the top 0.04% in terms of income in the world. I wonder if he turns down his next raise?

[rwanders]

Certainly a good philosophical/moral position. It is when the coercive power of the law is utilized to impose that on all that the argument loses it's power. The position proposes that some of us have the moral right to judge for others when enough is enough and to have, therefore, the right to take from some and give to others----in that direction you can find the sad history of most of the abusive regimes of the world. If I am to be the arbiter of your life to that extent and add my self-proclaimed moral authority as justification then there is no real limit to what I or a government can do to you.

RW

Life is not and never will be "fair". Only children cling to that belief and demagogues depend on appealing to that child in all of us to cede power to them.

[Native_NM]

I stated in a another post that perspective is missing from politics, particularly the politics of social justice. In America, unions argue for more salary and benefits, often noting the salaries and wealth of owners and management. I googled "average public sector salary", and the first hit was a USA Today piece from early this year. They indicate the average salary is $66,591. According to the "Rich List", this places the average US public worker in the top 0.87% of income in the world. the Rich List (www.globalrichlist.com) is a UK project that was intended to illustrate the disparity between developed nations and the rest of the planet.  

In 2010, half of the planet lived on less than $2 a day. If someday those people were to mass collectively, they might argue that WE are the top 1%.  Should that occur, I wonder how many of us would be willing to alter our standard of living to afford them a better life?  I doubt very many.  Sixty percent of the planet can ask in no uncertain terms "when do Americans have enough?".

I am reaching a point in my life where "enough" is closer than it was ten years ago. I'm not wealthy by Forbes standards, but by global standards I am better off than most. Most Americans are.  The decision to simplify and live more simple is one of personal choice and freewill. If we reach the point we legislate choice in the name of fairness, the last 225 years was a failed experiment. Americans are FREE to make choices, to benefit from their labor, to start their own business, and chart their own course. When that ends, we are just another dictatorship or nation of indentured slaves.

[rwanders]

NM, you said it better then I did.  Good words indeed!

RW

[archimedes]

I agree with your general premise of self determination,  but the problem is that the very wealthy and well connection have rigged the game to only benefit them.

I recognize that the world is not fair - and never will be.

But lately,  we seem to be living in a world where,  if we were to use a baseball game analogy,   some people get 9 "outs"  and everyone else gets only 2 "outs".  And the people with the 9 "outs" are the ones calling the balls and strikes.  

You can't change the fact that some people are just plain better at baseball than others.   That's life.   But if the rules of the game,  and umpiring aren't legit,  then you're talk a whole different situation.

And for the record,  the rules have worked very well for me personally,  but I'm honest enough to acknowledge that that doesn't necessarily mean the rules are equitable.  

And I think that is the point that Senator Sanders is trying to make.

Just my two cents.  

[dug]

Good post John!

agree with your general premise of self determination,  but the problem is that the very wealthy and well connection have rigged the game to only benefit them.

I recognize that the world is not fair - and never will be.

But lately,  we seem to be living in a world where,  if we were to use a baseball game analogy,   some people get 9 "outs"  and everyone else gets only 2 "outs".  And the people with the 9 "outs" are the ones calling the balls and strikes. 

You can't change the fact that some people are just plain better at baseball then others.  That's life.  But if the games rules,  and umpiring aren't legit,  then you're talk a whole different situation.

And for the record,  the rules have worked very well for me personally,  but I'm honest enough to acknowledge that that doesn't necessarily mean the rules are equitable. 

And I think that is the point that Senator Sanders is trying to make.

Just my two cents.   
Posted on: Today at 08:38:03 AM

Nailed it- IMHO

[John Raabe]

Government is a necessity of life that all of us support with the taxation system. There are things that must be done in the name of the common good - defense, emergency preparedness, roads, bridges, science and health research, etc. We (almost) all agree on that. We also all agree that we should have complete freedom to make and keep money and start a new business.

None of this is at stake when we ask questions of fairness in the taxation system.

All of us will also want to keep our taxes as low as possible - that is true of everyone in the world. The question is should those who make the greatest wealth be asked to pay more of this burden than those at the lower end of the income spectrum?

In most societies the answer is yes. America, when it was stronger economically and had a more open society, asked considerably more of it wealthier classes than it does today. How is it that we have come to see it as patriotic to destroy the middle class supports of our society while giving more power to the corporate elite who can then purchase law makers to give them even more control to set their own class specific taxes? Is that fair?

In my opinion America is becoming a tool of the corporate elite. Somehow the struggling middle class (what there is left of it) has been hypnotized into seeing this corporate takeover as protecting their freedoms and the traditional lifestyle of patriotic "real Americans". To see what is really going on you have to "follow the money" and avoid getting caught up in emotionally charged media stereotypes.

The following points (made in the article) demonstrate this massive but hidden redistribution of wealth.

• In 2007, the top 1% of all income earners in the U.S. made 23.5% of all income. (Higher now)
• The percentage of income going to the top 1% has nearly tripled since the mid-1970's. (and continuing higher)
• 80% of all new income earned from 1980 to 2005 has gone to the top 1 percent.

[Native_NM]

The truth is usually boring and doesn't sell papers:

[John Raabe]

Good informaiton Native_NM

Here is a bit more data based on the same Wolff study (he appears to be the go-to expert).

http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2010/04/30/top-1-increased-their-share-of-wealth-in-financial-crisis/

"According to his analysis, the top 1% held 34.6% of all national wealth in 2007. By Dec. 31, 2009, they held 35.6%. Meanwhile, share of national wealth held by the bottom 90% fell to 25% from 27%.

The reason is that the wealthy benefited disproportionately from the rebound in financial markets. Their wealth generally is mostly in stocks and businesses, the values of which have surged since the depths of the crisis.

Real estate, which accounts for the bulk of household wealth for the nonrich, hasn't recovered. From 2007 through the end of 2009, owner-occupied homes fell 26% in value, while other real estate also fell 26%. Yet stocks fell only 24%, while other financial securities shed 14%.

The rich, in other words, suffered a smaller percentage decline than did the bottom 90%. The question now is what will happen to inequality when economic growth resumes. Will it go even higher?"

As you said, probably more accurate data but doesn't sell papers.

[rwanders]

NM and John, thanks for the reality check. Just one more reason to never take, at face value, the writings and speeches of advocates of particular viewpoints. That is specifically true of politicians and others pushing governmental policies. The application of some intellectual honesty will usually reveal the flaws or deliberate propaganda in their words.

The good ones will always have some degree of truth in their words so they can profess their honest intentions but, assume they speak the whole reality at your own risk. Just repeating their distortions, from right or left or any other political viewpoint only makes you part of the problem. Garbage in=Garbage out and it will not solve our problems.  The truth will not be found by swallowing the distortions and half truths shouted at us from the partisans of the left and right. A pox on both their houses.

RW

[dug]

The truth is usually boring and doesn't sell papers:

I was going to come up with some snappy response  but I started reading the excellent study that the chart you posted was referenced from. here is the unedited version-

http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

- a few of the interesting (and shocking) findings.

Here are some dramatic facts that sum up how the wealth distribution became even more concentrated between 1983 and 2004, in good part due to the tax cuts for the wealthy and the defeat of labor unions: Of all the new financial wealth created by the American economy in that 21-year-period, fully 42% of it went to the top 1%. A whopping 94% went to the top 20%, which of course means that the bottom 80% received only 6% of all the new financial wealth generated in the United States during the '80s, '90s, and early 2000s (Wolff, 2007).

[/i]

From "The relationship between wealth and power"-

First, wealth can be seen as a "resource" that is very useful in exercising power. That's obvious when we think of donations to political parties, payments to lobbyists, and grants to experts who are employed to think up new policies beneficial to the wealthy. Wealth also can be useful in shaping the general social environment to the benefit of the wealthy, whether through hiring public relations firms or donating money for universities, museums, music halls, and art galleries.

Second, certain kinds of wealth, such as stock ownership, can be used to control corporations, which of course have a major impact on how the society functions. Tables 5a and 5b show what the distribution of stock ownership looks like. Note how the top one percent's share of stock equity increased (and the bottom 80 percent's share decreased) between 2001 and 2007.

[/i]

And the rate of increase is even higher for the very richest of the rich: the top 400 income earners in the United States. According to another analysis by Johnston (2010a), the average income of the top 400 tripled during the Clinton Administration and doubled during the first seven years of the Bush Administration. So by 2007, the top 400 averaged $344.8 million per person, up 31% from an average of $263.3 million just one year earlier. (For another recent revealing study by Johnston, read "Is Our Tax System Helping Us Create Wealth?").

How are these huge gains possible for the top 400? It's due to cuts in the tax rates on capital gains and dividends, which were down to a mere 15% in 2007 thanks to the tax cuts proposed by the Bush Administration and passed by Congress in 2003. Since almost 75% of the income for the top 400 comes from capital gains and dividends, it's not hard to see why tax cuts on income sources available to only a tiny percent of Americans mattered greatly for the high-earning few. Overall, the effective tax rate on high incomes fell by 7% during the Clinton presidency and 6% in the Bush era, so the top 400 had a tax rate of 20% or less in 2007, far lower than the marginal tax rate of 35% that the highest income earners (over $372,650) supposedly pay

The study supports my suspicions that the rich are indeed getting disproportionally richer, and more powerful, while the rest of the country grows poorer.

[Native_NM]

The study supports my suspicions that the rich are indeed getting disproportionally richer, and more powerful, while the rest of the country grows poorer.

The statistics support my suspicions that people use statistics to support their political agenda.  Over the last 90 years, the wealth is LESS concentrated than it is today.  Not by much, still less. Some might call that progress. 

Over the last 45 years, despite the PC revolution, offshoring, cheap Chinese labor, the tech boom, the greedy 80's, the dot-com 90's, social media billionaires, and Soros et al, the top 1% still own almost the EXACT same percentage of the wealth that they did in 1965.  Please elaborate further.

[ScottA]

Interesting arguments on all sides. The view from where I sit shows even the poorest Americans are better off now than they where 40 years ago in terms of standard of living. There are quite a few people in America who earn no income at all yet still live fairly well compared to most of the world. I know a family where none of them work. They are all on some sort of government payment yet they own land, homes and cars. Seems hard to believe but it's very true. We have a large population that earns their living by simply cashing a check. No fair!

We also have rich people who do pretty much the same thing these poor people do just on a larger scale. They game the system. Somewhere in the middle are the people who do all the work in this country and so are paying all the bills? Or are they?

Ever stop to consider why TV's, air conditioners, radios and all the other stuff that keeps the masses happy are cheaper now than they where 40 years ago? America is stealing the labor and resources of the rest of the world by simply printing the money we buy these things with. We pay China in dollars for their cheap junk but we have nothing to sell them but more dollars in the form of debt.

It starts to become clear why things are the way they are and the middle class is getting squeezed. It's because the middle class is the hardest to keep happy. If you have only 2 classes, rich and poor it's much easier to rule. To keep the poor happy you simply need to provide food which is cheap and stuff which is cheaper. To keep the rich happy you just need to make sure they stay rich. The middle class wants both. The only way to make the middle class rich is to make the rich poorer. Which isn't going to happen.

When you step back and look at the system from a distance it looks very much like it has always looked. Masters and slaves except the slaves now have cell phones and AC and don't know they are slaves. And since you can't kill the lazy ones without exposing the truth you simply have the slaves that will work provide for the ones who won't. The owning of slaves is an ever evolving art form. As humans have become more efficient at meeting their needs the standard of living and the thickness of the wool over the eyes of the slaves increases. 

[John Raabe]

Well, nobody can say we can't have a spirited but respectful discussion.

Even reading the same well documented study we have come up with two very different interpretations. And I think both Native_NM and dug have made good points and support it with good data from the same source... Interesting!

ScottA has a dark but most intriguing viewpoint. It is certainly true that the ever expanding bubble of technological materialism has made life both better and more comfortable for all the economic classes. The "bread and circuses" that kept the Roman masses from revolting are so much easier to deliver now.

Let them eat Happy meals and play with their iPhones!

That argument would seem to lead to the system continuing its current game until the materialistic bubble is popped by some major external disruption such as the end of cheap oil.

[ScottA]

Actually John, the effort to curb the "materialistic bubble" has been underway for some time. All the "green" talk we've been hearing for the past few years is an effort to get the masses to be happy with less. By making people think they are saving the planet by having less. It's a nice con.

[Native_NM]

The illegal immigration issue ties right into Scott's comments.  Our standard of living increase over the last few decades is a result of cheap energy and cheap labor. I find it ironic that the same political party who chastises the other side for outsourcing supports a far worse tactic: insourcing.  Illegal immigration is pure exploitation. When we outsource, the target country eventually grows economically as they develop infrastructure and skilled labor.  We are starting to see evidence of this in China. Some Chinese factories are now outsourcing to cheaper labor sources, primarily in SE Asia.   When we insource, we bring cheap labor to our doorstep.  Because they are illegal, they never really have the opportunity to participate in the American Dream.  I'm opposed to illegal immigration from a moral standpoint. Exploiting anyone is wrong.  Ironic the democrats have used them as political pawns the way they have.  I'm fairly conservative fiscally speaking and don't see any long-term benefit to illegal immigration.  Mexico and the other countries move closer to failed states as entire generations of their citizens move north, leaving dictators and drug cartels with increasing power. 

We could easily curtail 75% of the problem simply by mandating E-Verify.  I downloaded a dataset that indicated there were over 3.5 million duplicate Social Security numbers.  Pelosi was adamant that it would not pass as part of Obamacare.  Some SS numbers are currently in use in excess of 100 times simultaneously.  Failing to act on that fact is complicity with exploitation of innocent people. 

[rwanders]

The statistics support my suspicions that people use statistics to support their political agenda.  Over the last 90 years, the wealth is LESS concentrated than it is today.  Not by much, still less. Some might call that progress. 

Over the last 45 years, despite the PC revolution, offshoring, cheap Chinese labor, the tech boom, the greedy 80's, the dot-com 90's, social media billionaires, and Soros et al, the top 1% still own almost the EXACT same percentage of the wealth that they did in 1965.  Please elaborate further.

NM-----Shame on you. Haven't you noticed that both PC and "conventional wisdom" requires that we all accept, without question, that the greedy rich folks have vastly increased their share of wealth and income?  Indeed an entire panoply of politically correct beliefs depend upon our acceptance of that "fact'". 

Need more revenue?----make the "rich" pay their fair share.

Have a social problem?----must be due to the greedy rich exploitation of the morally superior middle class. 

Who are the "rich"?---evidently must be me since for several years I have been subject to the Alternative Minimum Tax, described as necessary to ensure that I pay my fair share. Since my wife and I saved and invested our money and receive a fair amount of dividend and interest income we must be rich. (I thought being rich was going to be a lot better than this).

Still not enough?-----Let's raise the tax rate for those rich parasites. They obviously have been unjustly enriched since no one can get rich through hard work and financial discipline.

Rich don't spend enough?---Tax them so we can spend it for them.

Rich spend their money on "luxury items"?-----Tax those things. (then we'll have the revenue to support the builders of those luxuries when their employers move offshore).

{Don't mention that the last two examples are counterproductive. That would be a clear violation of PC rules.}

And never never mention that almost 50% of us pay no income tax at all yet account for a major portion of government services.

Do mention often and loudly that since the rich obviously must receive the largest share of the benefits of government it is only fair that they pay for all of them. Must be true-----it's PC.

Not enough "rich" to produce sufficient revenues?----Redefine "rich", problem solved.

What to do when we are all "rich"?------find another group of villains to blame.

[Ajax]

Claims from the original linked piece

In 2007, the top 1% of all income earners in the U.S. made 23.5% of all income.
True

The percentage of income going to the top 1% has nearly tripled since the mid-1970's.
True, see above

80% of all new income earned from 1980 to 2005 has gone to the top 1 percent.
True

The top 1 percent now owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent.True


Wall Street executives now earn more than they did before the financial bail out of Wall Street firms.
Tough to say.  Quick google search shows the bonus pool was down this year

The United States now has, by far, the most unequal distribution of income and wealth of any major country on earth.
True

Now the bigger questions is "Is this a problem?"

[dug]

How about this one-

The bottom 40% holds just 0.3% of the wealth.


Regardless as to weather or not this is the way it has always been that is a staggering number, and not a good vital sign for developed country IMO. However it is well documented and established that the current income disparity gap is not as it's always been, though it was about the same as now just before the great depression.

[Native_NM]

In almost 100 years, nothing has changed.

True

In the last 45 years, nothing has changed.

True

We can both post statistics all day long.  Let me ask you, how much do you think the rich should own, and how much should the bottom 90% own?

[ScottA]

Dug the sad part is if you gave those bottom 40% a larger share they'd squander it until they where back to where they are now. A great many people have no clue how to deal with money and spend every cent they get.

[dug]

Insert Quote
Dug the sad part is if you gave those bottom 40% a larger share they'd squander it until they where back to where they are now. A great many people have no clue how to deal with money and spend every cent they get.

I agree there will always be rich and poor. Some will be smart with money, and diligent and aggressive in their pursuit of it. Others blow their cash foolishly, and look for handouts. This is reality, the latest version of survival of the fittest and I see nothing unnatural or wrong about it. I've always agreed with the "Give a man a fish..." motto and don't think giving money away is an answer to anything.

But when I see figures like the one I just posted it strikes me as odd, out of sorts from what most would think of as a healthy, natural balance. Surveys have shown that when people were asked what they thought the wealth distribution ratio should be, and what they thought it really was they were not even remotely close on either one. 40 % is 120 million people, many of which are my friends and neighbors, and a whisker or 2 above that line is me. Around here no one asks for handouts, or can afford to be loose with their money.

We can both post statistics all day long.

But it would help to quote a source. I agree that there is such an overload of junk information out there that it's getting near impossible to get a straight answer. But honestly on this issue I have found that nearly every supposedly reputable source posts nearly the exact same figures, which all show that the income disparity now matches a high experienced in the 20's. And it is rising. It's hard to state anything as absolute fact these days but I think this is pretty close to one.

Let me ask you, how much do you think the rich should own, and how much should the bottom 90% own?

To me it's not so much about the numbers, though I think they are indicators, but having a fair playing field. Not just in the financial realm but in the ability to have a say in how our country is run, not a big say mind you but a fair and due one. I am aware that the table has always been rigged but there is substantial evidence suggesting that it is getting more so. Skyrocketing CEO pay amidst flat or falling pay among the middle class just seems wrong. Unhealthy.

I'm not down with Exxon/Mobil having influence on who we go to war with next, or Monsanto being responsible for an FDA to report that says GM foods are just fine for me. I think this is relevant because of the money-power connection, and the increase in wealth concentration is resulting in an increase in the concentration of power. That is my beef. Corporate giants are becoming the royalty we fled from, their CEO's- kings.

By the way- at what ratio of wealth owned by the top 10% would you be uncomfortable with? 90%? 95%?  There has to be a number somewhere that would make you cringe.

[dug]

Can I plug my "help with electrical question" in the general forum here? I seem to get better response!   

[Ajax]

In almost 100 years, nothing has changed.

True

In the last 45 years, nothing has changed.

True

Oh really?

We can both post statistics all day long.  Let me ask you, how much do you think the rich should own, and how much should the bottom 90% own?

Interesting question, that's been asked and answered, by the public.

The actual United States wealth distribution plotted against the estimated and ideal distributions.

Note: In the "Actual" line, the bottom two quintiles are not visible because the lowest quintile owns just 0.1% of all wealth, and the second-lowest quintile owns 0.2%.
Source: Norton & Ariely, 2010.