What do people think about income inequality?

[webstersII]

"In the US right now, the average CEO compensation
package is over 400 times that received by their employees. 400 times?! Does one really need to make that
much more than everyone else in order to be motivated?"

This situation will not survive much longer, and the adjustment will be due to the free market. I know you see it as some sort of moral failure that we let CEOs make that much money, when in reality it's not a moral issue at all, and the situation will correct itself due to foreign competition.

Outsourcing has gone from moving the lowest-level jobs overseas to the current situation where the higher level jobs are being shipped offshore. But there is one more level of outsoucing to take place: The next outsourcing we will see will be companies, not just employees, and then there will be whole industries (this has already happened, I'm just saying it will be more pronounced) which will move offshore. Companies can be started elsewhere and they won't have to pay CEO's outrageous salaries, increasing the efficiency of the operation dramatically.

This is how capitalism works. It finds the inefficiencies and turns them into positives. During the transition, though, there is great turmoil and lots of people's lives affected. You say, "but there's an alternative". Not really. You can't let the inefficiencies of a system remain forever. Eventually the structures will fall down.

You want to talk about wealth inequity? Go visit Europe sometime. Look at all the castles, palaces, and fine estates over there. This is because the vast majority of the capital in those countries was held in a very few hands, namely the nobility, for centuries. You may think our system is extremely inequitable but we have comparatively few castles and estates in this country, and the wealth is spread around a greater number of people.

Also, you want to talk about inequity? Why is it that the bottom half of income earners pay NO income tax? Does that seem equitable to you? If so, why? Those people are using the same services as the wealthy, yet they pay nothing for the use of the services. Fairness goes both ways, not just one.

[PLMerite]

Bump for later to see if he comes back.

[radiohead]

Now, if I were living in Europe ... I would actually be receiving a modest stipend to cover my living costs while I was in school.

I need to correct you here. I have a Norwegian friend who is going to school w/me here. She says that in Norway they still have to take out student loans in order to live. The "modest" stipend doesn't' begin to cover the cost of living, which is quite high.

In addition, there are a lot of things they have to pay for now, that used to be covered by the government. Even with the money from oil, the government just can't provide everything for everybody anymore.

You do a lot of complaining for a grad student. This is only part of your life. If you have to take a loan to finish school (or god forbid, get a job), you can still finish your program and you will have an income on the other side. Your current state of 'financial embarrassment' is transitory.

Most of my classmates gave up good jobs to go back for their PhDs. Being temporarily w/o funds is part of the package. I hardly expect the government to start redistributing the wealth because I choose to forgo a big income for a few years. Everyone makes choices. Some people choose to have 3 kids and not get married. Some people choose to drop out of high school.

I can't get too worked up over the choices other people make as it effects their income. Why are you afraid to let people live with the consequences of their choices?

[agarrett]

ping for later

[MEG33]

#96 might be particularly instructive to a socialist dreamer.

[oldcomputerguy]

"People should take ANY job they can find, or 2 or yes, 3."

Have you had to take 2 or 3 to make ends meet? Easy to say, hard to do. The point is not whether jobs are available but what kind of jobs are left.

[John Lenin]

Excellent comeback to the obvious answer.

[RogerWilko]

True enough, and I suppose he's young enough to be educable. Maybe he'll stick around for the ride.

I wouldn't doubt if he's been sticking around for the ride thru all these posts. He probably doesn't want to have to answer all the logical questions everyone's asked him. I'll bet he had to read alright... Read thru this thread without having to come back with some good responses!

[Sloth]

Does this sort of thing not bother conservatives?

There is a difference between being 'bothered' that something is the case, versus wanting to use the force of government to change it.

Does it bother me that some hateful moron like Barbra Streisand has tens of millions of dollars at her disposal while I drown in debt and my disabled wife is unable to find a job? Sort of.

Does that mean that I can use a gun to go take BS's money and use it for my own needs? No. And confiscatory taxation amounts to the same thing. BS acquired her money legally, so far as I know, and nobody has the right to take it from her simply because they think I and other less wealthy people deserve it more.

I've read studies which suggest that Americans by and large don't mind extremes of personal wealth as, this being the land of opportunity, we harbor some hope of one day rising to those lofty summits of affluence ourselves, so don't feel we should judge others for achieving that to which we ourselves aspire. Does that sound about right to you all?

Generally, although it should not be based upon a hope of becoming wealthy ourselves. Even if I knew I'd never be rich, it would still be wrong to rob those who are.

[Willie Green]

But, please, don't call it "rigging" - that suggests something tawdry, and goodness knows, our legislators would never be party to anything tawdry!

"In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens and to give it to the other."

-- Voltaire - "Philosophical Dictionary" (1764)

[Auntie Mame]

Have you had to take 2 or 3 to make ends meet?

I have. I worked hard, raised a kid by myself, and bought a home, then bought another one in a better area. Then I had to work even harder and more. Now, after many years, it's paying off, my house payment 20 years ago was almost the entire salary of one job, now it's a mere pittance.

Easy to say, hard to do.

Not really, although I wouldn't want to do it today. That's what youth is for.

[Politicalmom]

Oh, shut up. Why don't you let the parents decide that? I am a supporter of home schooling, but it is not possible in our case.

Our public school still has bible verses included in some of the art projects, and my children are getting an excellent education. I am not going to tell anyone where we are, then they will come and try to turn our school into cesspools like the ones in CA.

[stig]

According to the US Treasury Department, the richest 2% of the country own 80% of the wealth in the US. That's honestly not just some liberal's opinion, that's really true, you can check the statistics yourself if you don't belive me. Flip that around and that means that the remaining 98% of us have only 20% to go around amongst all the rest of us. In the last three years, the income of the wealthiest .001% has increased by 600%, in other words, for every $10 million/year they were making before, they're now making $60 million/year.

The flaw is that you make it sound like the wealthiest .001% are the same people. Twenty Five years ago Bill Gates was not in the 0.001% Now he's the richest man in America. Ten years or so ago Warren Buffet was the richest. The point being the top 0.001% is a dynamic group. The people who come out on top of the next big industrial wave will supplant all the people that are there today.

I'll ask you a question: If you were lucky enough to discover the cure for cancer should you be able to profit from it??

[stig]

We are promised equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. I read somewhere a long time ago that if you pooled all the money in the world and gave everyone his fair portion of it, the same people would eventually wind up being rich, and the same being poor. With minor exceptions (like inheritance), I agree. Some people know how to succeed and others don't.

This is a myth. If you took the richest 100 people burned their address book and forced them to develop all new contacts. Gave them each $200,000 (the price of a college education) and made them start over. I would venture to say that many wouldn't make it back to the upper ranks of wealth. They would do ok. But let's face it the ideas that rocket you into the super wealthy category don't happen all that often.

[Nataku X]

I'm a graduate student as well, but I have to ask--why are you doing graduate study in POLITICAL SCIENCE? Polysci as a stepping stone to law school, fine, but... oh, well.

It is quite possible to go to graduate school without a debt. All you have to do is go to school part-time and work on the side.

I feel that the government & business have a push-pull effect to some extent. The business "pushed" too far in the times of Charles Dicken. The government "pushed" too far in the 1970s. Now, I think that in some regards, the government has too much influence, and in others business has too much influence.

For example, you mentioned food stamp applications being passed out with job applications to Wal-Mart workers. Food stamps is an obvious subsidy to business--and so is Medicare/Medicaid. No, small businesses can't afford the additional tax burden, but Wal-Mart certainly can. And of course there's the amnesty etc... again, small businesses and "normal" people cannot afford to support the massive influx of welfare-loving Mexicans the amnesty program will bring (and is bringing), but big businesses and extremely wealthy individuals (like Ted Turner) don't care.

So in many ways I think that big business and nanny government wash each others' backs--a view that will be unpopular with both Freepers and Democrats, I know.

What's the solution? I don't really know if there is one, except to let things go their natural course and hope that I'm wrong on this one and that the globalists are right about all this ending in 22 million high-paying new jobs America.

And, no, despite being in computer science, I don't have a problem with employment or job offers. But, I did have more programming-related work entries than I could fit in 2 pages of resume by the time I graduated high school... so I always got the plum internships and high-paying part-time jobs in college.

[Ohioan]

My web site is directed towards answering all such questions. It is intended, primarily to be a useful tool for the Conservative on campus to sort out his or her own thinking, and perhaps engage in debate with those of other persuasions.

Having said that, and inviting you to come pay a visit, I will add one other thing. There is in addition to the traditional argument for the Capitalist system, and an acquisitive tendency for people to accumulate and pass on the fruits of their labor and ideas--things we support unequivocally, a somewhat less desirable factor at work in the present self-focused American society. In my opinion, this is in part a reflection of the "liberal" denigration of traditional social values--especially those which went to a sense of community, as opposed to a broader focus on a bigger, less personal involvement with "humanity" in general.

But the present pattern, whereby the upper echelons of Corporate management, award themselves with compensation packages, whereby a functuary without any real genius, pads his estate by taking compensation amounting to a multiple of more than 100 times, what other employees of the Corporation are receiving, displays a level of greed that may be legal, but is properly a subject of disdain by other members of society. It is the modern equivalent--without even the claimed rationalization--of the arrogant indifference to other considerations, which was captured at the beginning of Dickens A Tale Of Two Cities, where the Marquis' carriage recklessly runs over a small child, and he tosses a few coins to the crowd, and drives off without the trace of normal compassion.

A sense of proportion, would tell some of these management types, that they may be able to persuade the Board's to go along, because the Boards are full of those with the same self-serving, self-centered lack of real accountability to the defused stockholders; but the managers really are not worth that type of money; and if shareholder groups were as well organized as some other people in our society, some of those management positions would be turning over very frequently indeed, until they found a group who were willing to work for something better related to what they actually do.

Let us put this in another perspective. Some of these outragous pay packages are performance related. But that is illusional. Very few of the recipients, who rake it in during the good years, kick anything back to the shareholders, when the bubbles burst, and there is a net negative rate of return to the latter.

I make these points, not to encourage your anti-Capitalist skepticism. I am all for a boy making billions of dollars by ethical means. The practice I have just attacked is at its core a cutting of corners by fiduciaries, in positions of trust, to line their own pockets. That is not Capitalism. It is skull-duggery, pure and simple. But it is a factor in the statistics that concern you.

William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site

[Anitius Severinus Boethius]

I disagree. People who become wealthy tend to understand a few things about money that the rest of us miss.

I bet if you took the richest 100 people, took away all their possessions and gave them $10,000 cash, 90 of them would be millionaires within a decade.

[petercooper]

Yes I had to work 2 jobs at one time. It's not fun, but you do it.

[Theophilus]

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.

[metesky]

Running out at post #20 confirms, in my mind, my original suspicion. And if he can read and digest 1000 pages between now and Monday morning, may the good Lord bless him.

I have to go now, I have to read "War and Peace" in the original before Monday morning...
;O)