Posted on 06/10/2016 7:03:13 AM PDT by george76
The phrase Income Inequality has become a standard battle cry for politicians these days, with the implicit assumption that inequality is a bad thing, but is the basic concept of inequality truly a bad thing?
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We hear a lot of lip service from various politicians about the ills of income inequality, so let’s look at actual recent track records. The U.S. Census Bureau uses four measures of income inequality, Gini, Theil, Mean Logarithmic Deviation of Income (MLD) and Atkinson Measure.
◾Since the financial crisis, income inequality (as measured by the US Census Bureau using 3 different types of metrics) has risen faster than during the prior ten years for all metrics. All three measures also rose faster under Clinton than Reagan, which illustrates that income inequality isn’t something improved by a democrat in the White House, despite convention wisdom.
◾In the first 6 years of Obama’s presidency the annual rate of transfer payments increased by $500 billion so that today roughly 18% of all personal income in the United States is a transfer. That means that roughly 1 out of every 5 people in the US is effectively living off the other 4.
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For all the lip service about addressing the supposed ills of income inequality, it is the very controls placed by government on people trying to earn a living that are helping to increase inequality.
(Excerpt) Read more at elleseconomy.com ...
My income is inequal to Trump’s. I demand justice.
(really need the /s?)
A manufactured non-problem.
I worked 3 jobs to put myself through school. Got a job and worked my tail off and I now making great money.
If someone chooses NOT to go to school, but rather, hang out at a low paying job, why should they be entitled to MY hard fought success?
Let's call it what it really is :AMBITION INEQUALITY
99% of us are born equal...that is where equality ends.
Personally, I think anyone who accepts any transfer payment (welfare, food stamps, etc.) must show up everyday at 7AM at a public place and wash floors, sweep streets, clean toilets, etc. I think this workfare system would truly define those who need help versus those who are just getting a free ride.
I also think that, if you don't pay Federal income taxes, you don't vote in Federal elections. Same for state and local. After all, nothing in the game, why should you have a voice in the rules?
I worked very hard to achieve “income inequality”. My job was physically taxing and involved rotating shifts and unpleasant work conditions but good pay. Literally anyone physically fit and available for work could have gotten the job (i.e. The job was available to most) Most people gave it a pass - that was free choice.
I guess now I’ll have to listen to Nancy Pelosi or Obama about how I “didn’t earn that”.
“Income inequality” in other countries (Brazil, for example) is far worse in other countries than it is in the United States.
It is also more difficult to measure “income inequality” in those countries because (a) they don’t collect as much information about it, (b) their collection system is corrupt and vulnerable to “adjustment” for political reasons, and (c) their wealthiest elites receive much of their goodies in the form of privileges that are unavailable to the unconnected, thereby removing the price mechanism from the transaction; this means that their advantages can’t really be quantified, in many cases.
We all have different aptitudes, different responses to different incentives & inhibitors; different perspectives, focus, objective, motivations, etc.. The very notion that income inequality is a problem reflects a dearth of reason on the subject of human achievement.
Conservatives need to stop allowing "politically correct" bullies to intimidate dissent from Collectivist/Egalitarian efforts to tear down our culture of achievement. Understand the neurotic compulsion they have employed to control the susceptible; understand that it is not a rational thing; not an idealistic thing; not an altruistic thing.
See Compassion Or Compulsion?.
This is the same compulsion that justifies our loony immigration policy; our bull in a china closet efforts at "nation building"; our insane Federal meddling in local education, law enforcement, health care, and the social re-engeneering of local communities.
Exactly. If you have no skin in the game you should get no vote or say whatsoever. This country was started with the cry of no taxation without representation. Now we have the reverse problem, people who get representation without taxation. If you don’t or didn’t pay, you get no say.
You are both right in part.
It is a manufactured problem, not in the sense that the imposition of the “Great Society” intended destroy the middle class, but it perverted the incentives and kept a greater portion of the population on welfare.
Combined with minimum wage laws that price low skilled and young workers out of the workforce, (and increase automation) it is more beneficial to stay on welfare, food stamps, public housing, etc... than to try and get work.
This impacted the poor in the 70s and 80s but since Obama waivered the 90s welfare reform out of existence, it is now biting the lower middle class. Combine this with the lack of actual border control which increases the population of low skilled and inexperienced workers.
This sucks everyone down, except for the very wealthy. It is Obama and his fellow travelers who are creating the inequality they condemn.
For reasons I don’t understand, we romanticize the poor in this country.
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There seems to be an assumption in some quarters that if you’re poor you must be a virtuous victim of someone else’s greed and avarice. Of course that’s an exaggeration often made for political purposes.
On the one hand they question whether or not income inequality is a bad thing.
On the other hand they blame the Left for income inequality.
This is a collection of talking points that doesn’t know what it wants to be when it grows up!
One word: MYTH
There are two kinds of poor in this country. Those who are poor, but don't live poorly (they work hard, but have no desire for wealth, and just want to be left alone, and live a good life on their terms), and there are those who are "poor" who live their lives with nothing more in mind than their next scam and how to get away with doing nothing. The first group, I have a great deal of respect for, that's how they want it, and they harm no one.
The second group, piss on 'em.
Economic inequality is less extreme under freedom of competition and opportunity, and free market in labor, than under coercion and government interventionism.
Income inequality is the gas that runs the engine of the economy.
Without it there is no productive work.
Actually “income inequality” is a leftist canard because it does not include the value of government transfer payments (i.e. welfare, Section 8 housing, etc.) When the value of such payments is included, inequality hasn’t changed in many decades.
Income inequality is but one attribute of the inequality among people.
If you lack brains, initiative, education, you are going to have unequal income.
If there are large cultural groups with unequal income, it can be taken as a fact that those people are unequal in other very important ways.( In spite of what stephen J gould preaches)
The interviewee asked how much it paid and the owner told him he'd pay him what he was worth.
The interviewee remarked, "I can't live on that"......
“What he is saying is that he would rather the poor be poorer, provided the rich were less rich. That is the liberal policy.”
“Once they start to talk about the gap, they would rather that the gap were that [indicating a small gap] down here [indicating low], not this [indicating a larger gap] but [indicating a smaller gap]. So long as the gap is smaller, they would rather have the poor poorer. One does not create wealth and opportunity that way.”
— Margaret Thatcher
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okHGCz6xxiw
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