8 ms·

PGs articles aren't wrong - but they are second order, when we need a first order response to a current evil [ before it leads to bloody revolution ] If you lo

by jgord 11y ago

PGs articles aren't wrong - but they are second order, when we need a first order response to a current evil [ before it leads to bloody revolution ] If you look at income distribution its a hockey stick - you really have to slap yourself on the face and realise there is no middle class - what you thought of as professional-middle-class-contributor is actually college-debt-burdened-lower-class - no matter how many years they work they will never pay off their debt, let alone own their own home. People aren't asking for "income equality" they are asking for some level of humanity and democracy to be restored to our version of Capitalism, to strengthen that capitalism. So, just as "All Lives Matter" is not a good response to the "Black Lives Matter" movement, its not useful to discuss "income inequality is not intrinsically a bad thing" when we are in a time when the lower class are basically slaves and the middle class has been in steady decline - your _only_ chance to have security is to win a lottery [ the Startup or the PowerBall variety ] So, what needs to be talked about is rather : how to take money out of politics, how to get poor people out of the ghetto, how to stop young black people from being shot by police on a weekly basis, how to bring back a reasonable level of tax on the super wealthy, and how to stop large companies from getting subsidies to pollute our environment. A small amount of Socialism is needed urgently to bring Capitalism back into a survivable form - if not, I really think we are headed for bloody revolution, because most of the populace are angry, and its a rational anger because their survival needs are barely being met, in many cases.

paulddraper 11y ago
"lower class are basically slaves" You're going to compare working graveyards at 7-Eleven to slavery? You should read a little bit about slavery and human trafficking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery I suspect most slaves would not agree with you.
- jgord 11y ago
  yes - in order to say something that is true, I need to say something that is false. You'd be right to call me on it, and I'd have it no other way.
  - PaulHoule 11y ago
    Back in the days of slavery you were expected to provide some care when they got old. If you're an employee you can be cast away to go die in the street.
    - lolc 11y ago
      "Fifty dollars reward, for the negro Jim Blake--has a piece cut out of each ear, and the middle finger of the left hand cut off to the second joint."
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - md224 11y ago
    > in order to say something that is true, I need to say something that is false. What does this mean?
    - jgord 11y ago
      I use the term 'slavery' because its descriptive, not because its literally true. I do understand that 711 shift workers don't have their feet cut off if they leave. When I say things like "we need a bit of Socialism right about now" .. I don't mean hardcore enforced-total-equality Socialism, I mean nice Socialism like the kind Bernie Sanders has been raving about.
      - chimeracoder 11y ago
        > I don't mean hardcore enforced-total-equality Socialism, I mean nice Socialism like the kind Bernie Sanders has been raving about. It's taboo to point this out, especially on HN, but I'm feeling bold today: You can't discuss the socialist policies of Western European countries without addressing their wealth. And you can't discuss the current wealth of Western European countries without acknowledging the process by which they acquired that wealth. The "nice socialism that Sanders has been raving about" is the kind that is practiced in countries with a long history of colonization and slavery[0]. During this timeframe, they "earned" a massive amount of money by extracting resources from people that they literally enslaved. This started before the 17th century and continued into the 20th century. Those people who were colonized and enslaved (and their countries) are still feeling the effects of that today, and they would not be so quick to describe that kind of socialism as "nice". [0] Denmark and Sweden are the two that Sanders has called out specifically by name.
- nickbauman 11y ago
  Masters actually bought slaves. They weren't cheap. So they had to, you know, feed them and care for them somewhat. Now when you aren't needed at the 7/11 you can almost just go die in a fire: have you seen was homelessness is like in the US? I have.
  - dnautics 11y ago
    You do understand that this is basically the argument that slaveowners used to justify continuing slavery in the 19th century?
    - marshray 11y ago
      Except that no one is justifying slavery, it's just the opposite.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - horsecaptin 11y ago
      You know it is a good time to re-think the current economical distribution when the slavery looks like a valid alternative to the status quo.
    - nickbauman 11y ago
      It would be a mistake to say I'm advocating slavery by making this comparison. The slave to a master is just like an automobile: you have to put gas into it to make it go. Turning a human being into something the equivalent of an automobile is an abomination. But I don't really think wage slavery is really all that different at the end of the day. My point is both are abominable.
      - dnautics 11y ago
        that may have not been your intent, but it does reveal the error in your thinking. You may call both abominable, but do you not see the fundamental reason why one is categorically worse than the other? If not then you are doomed to advocate for the very problems that were the root of the atrocity of slavery, just in other, possibly more cryptic and slyly paternalistic forms.
- chimeracoder 11y ago
  > I suspect most slaves would not agree with you. No kidding! Believe it or not, even in 2016, there are tens of millions of people around the world living in actual slavery[0]. Most of them would probably still literally give a kidney to trade places with one of these lower-class people in the US. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_slavery
- calibraxis 11y ago
  Both have in common the order-giver and order-obeyer. Of course, I agree wage slavery is better than chattel slavery. Better to have some choice of master than one imposed on you. (Though slaveowners made the interesting argument that they must take care of their workers because they own them, unlike the capitalist who merely rents them.) In the US, the prison system replaced slavery as the mechanism to control the black population. So the US has not improved much in that regard, with even children killed in broad daylight by the state.
  - Fjolsvith 11y ago
    > In the US, the prison system replaced slavery as the mechanism to control the black population. So the US has not improved much in that regard, with even children killed in broad daylight by the state. Source?
- staunch 11y ago
  > You're going to compare working graveyards at 7-Eleven to slavery? > I suspect most slaves would not agree with you. The abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass initially declared, "now I am my own master", upon taking a paying job. But later in life, he concluded to the contrary, "experience demonstrates that there may be a slavery of wages only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery
  - paulddraper 11y ago
    It's true that post Civil War blacks weren't doing well. (Actually, a lot of whites weren't doing well either.) But it's a real stretch of the imagination to say the current United States (especially post income tax and Social Security entitlements) is anywhere even close to post Civil War circumstances.
    - hitekker 11y ago
      His point was not about blacks, whites, or even the Civil War. > Wage slavery refers to a situation where a person's livelihood depends on wages or a salary, especially when the dependence is total and immediate. It is a pejorative term used to draw an analogy between slavery and wage labor by focusing on similarities between owning and renting a person. There is a difference between "slaves" in the popular sense (chains, beatings, whips, rape), and "slaves" in the economic sense, but both are premised upon the unjust abrogation of freedom at the hands of another. This article describes the latter case quite well: http://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicagarrison/the-new-american-slavery-invited-to-the-us-foreign-workers-f#.rx4lD3qvr http://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicagarrison/the-new-american-sla...
      - paulddraper 11y ago
        The quote was from Frederick Douglass, a black man living during the Civil War. Impossible to know for certain, but I suspect he wouldn't be terribly pleased with a comparison of the current "lower class" to real slaves.
- JabavuAdams 11y ago
  Why derail this over a word? Wage slavery is a well-known and widely-used term that is useful.
guelo 11y ago
What's interesting about this election is that so much of the anger, especially from lower class whites, is being channeled into the Republican party. It's not a cry for wealth distribution, it's a cry against immigrants supposedly taking our jobs. And that's a big failing by the Democrats to tap into that anger. But I think this is going to be typical of elections going forward, red hot anger being directed at the system. It's not healthy for society and I don't see it ending up anywhere good.
- jazzyk 11y ago
  Wealth distribution is a big problem, because the richest can essentially buy the government (and that's exactly what they have been doing) [http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/11/us/politics/2016-presidential-election-super-pac-donors.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/11/us/politics/20...] But if you took the money from the 1% and distributed it to everyone, it would probably amount to a few thousand dollars each, at best. The reason for lack of jobs is the they all went to India, China, etc. As for immigrants, don;t you think there is something awfully wrong with the fact that Massachusetts for years provided housing and money to the Tsarnaev family (the Boston bombers and their parents), yet war veterans are often homeless, because there is never any money left to take care of them?
  - mtarnovan 11y ago
    > But if you took the money from the 1% and distributed it to everyone, it would probably amount to a few thousand dollars each, at best. That's patently absurd, given that the top 1% own 90%+ of the wealth.
    - bzbarsky 11y ago
      > given that the top 1% own 90%+ of the wealth. Citation, please? https://publications.credit-suisse.com/tasks/render/file/?fileID=F2425415-DCA7-80B8-EAD989AF9341D47E https://publications.credit-suisse.com/tasks/render/file/?fi... page 24 claims that globally the top 8.1% own 84.6% of the wealth, while the top 0.7% own 45.2%. So the top 1% owns something between those two numbers. Within the US, the top 1% owns an even smaller fraction (of a bigger per-capita pie), because there are many fewer poor people. That said, the top 1% do own quite a bit of wealth. Same report, page 15, figure 2, looks to me like total global wealth is about $260 trillion as of 2015. World population is 7.3 billion. That comes out to $35000 per person or so. So globally this number would in fact come out higher than a few thousand dollars; per our calculations above it's about 0.5 to 0.85 times $35k (but note that this is including the the "1%" quite a large number of US retirees, for example; the threshold for 1% global wealth is not that high). If you look at the US, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_in_the_United_States#Wealth_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_in_the_United_States#We... has numbers for 2007 saying that the top 1% owned 34.6% of the total wealth but that grew to 37.1% after the Great Recession. Total wealth in the US according to the above Credit Suisse report is about $86 trillion; that gives about $100,000 per person if you redistribute the wealth of the top 1%.
Pyxl101 11y ago
> People aren't asking for "income equality" they are asking for some level of humanity and democracy to be restored to our version of Capitalism, to strengthen that capitalism. That phrase could mean anything in practice that anyone wants it to mean. If we're going to discuss these things, we should be specific. What specific policy is desired, and how is it going to help? "Humanity" and "democracy" are not economic policies, nor are they specific enough goals to design policies around. I am unsure whether economic equality is a goal that we should strive toward. I wonder if a better measure for our economy would be how well off people are at each place in the distribution. Almost all middle class people in America today still have really nice TVs, mobile phones, Internet, etc., which suggests that their standard of living is quite good in absolute terms. We should be looking at absolute terms, not relative terms. Taxing the wealthy has undesirable effects. It's not as if wealthy people take their money and put it under their mattress. No, they invest it. That investment money flows to other corporations who then spend it on goods and services, or spend it on their employees. All of the wealth that the rich accumulate makes its way back into the economy, except it's at the direction of the rich according to their investment decisions. The alternative, if you tax the rich, is that the same money flows to the government and the government spends it on programs. That's certainly valuable, and I believe it makes sense for the government to have tax revenue to spend on its programs, but I don't necessarily think that more revenue for more programs will lead to better results. I'd rather that we spend substantially less on wars, for example, and redirect that money into infrastructure for our own country. Take the F-35 development program - the government has basically thrown over a trillion dollars down the drain (I'm being hyperbolic, but it's really pretty bad). A trillion dollars!! The government would have plenty of tax revenue to spend on smart infrastructure investments if it stopped throwing money away on programs like that. I'd hazard a guess that wealthy investors through their investments are more effective at creating wealth and raising the standard of living in the country than the government is (on a marginal basis from where we are today). Investors are far better at examining where their money goes, what effect it has, and doubling down on investments that demonstrate promising results, and pulling the plug on pointless ones. The government by comparison keeps burning more and more money on programs that are clearly ineffective - examine the Healthcare.gov or F-35 boondoggles. Private investors do better. Let them keep their money to invest it smartly.
sarciszewski 11y ago
> I really think we are headed for bloody revolution, because most of the populace are angry, and its a rational anger because their survival needs are barely being met, in many cases. From someone who grew up poor and identifies strongly with outlaws, I concur. But unlike OP I think it needs to happen.
- mwcampbell 11y ago
  Surely a cool, calculated, orderly effort to solve the problems described by the GP would be better than bloody revolution, which is a mere outpouring of anger that might not even solve the problems and would probably create entirely new ones. Do you think that no other option is possible at this point? Edit: Talk of revolution makes me think of the song "Won't Get Fooled Again" by the Who, particularly the closing lines, "Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss."
  - geofft 11y ago
    Revolution may or may not improve things for the underclass, but it certainly ruins things for the upper class -- at least they are forced into playing political games all over again and cannot rest on previous political success (though, yes, if they are trained or predisposed towards politics at least they have a chance). And the credible threat of revolution forces that cool, calculated, and orderly effort to go somewhere, instead of merely watching the arc of history bend as slowly as the earth's surface. Britain, for instance, was not irredeemably terrible during the American Revolution, as evidenced by them being basically as reasonable a place as America today and not having had a revolution of their own since then. And they even managed to do some things better (e.g., they banned slavery before America did). But the American Revolution was still worthwhile, and that gave credibility to the American approach instead of the imperial one.
  - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
    >Surely a cool, calculated, orderly effort to solve the problems described by the GP would be better than bloody revolution Well yes, but talking about cool, calculated, orderly solutions has a tendency to get you labeled a "dirty socialist" by the Right and a "dirty reformist" by the Left, with the former being overwhelmingly stronger.
mwcampbell 11y ago
> So, just as "All Lives Matter" is not a good response to the "Black Lives Matter" movement, It's tangential, but can you please explain this part? It seems to me that "All Lives Matter" really is the more apt phrase, because it shifts the focus from an us-versus-them conflict to actual justice. Edit: Got it. I'll stop being part of the problem. The only remaining question is this: What's the most effective way to be part of the solution?
- SideburnsOfDoom 11y ago
  Canonical answer: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3du1qm/eli5_why_is_it_so_controversial_when_someone_says/ https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3du1qm/e... http://fusion.net/story/170591/the-next-time-someone-says-all-lives-matter-show-them-these-5-paragraphs/ http://fusion.net/story/170591/the-next-time-someone-says-al...
- jgord 11y ago
  The cost of saying "All Lives Matter" in response to "Black Lives Matter" is that you are seen to be ignoring the main issue. Its not that its wrong, its that its perhaps insensitive - a certain amount of empathy and solidarity could be a start in acknowledging the problem. So while "All Lives Matter" is truer, its less useful at the current moment in time when Black people are experiencing real pain, and we have a huge problem that needs to be addressed urgently.
- wfo 11y ago
  Of course everyone believes that all lives matter. But the context is important. If someone says "black lives matter" and your response is "ALL lives matter", you're not just saying you think all lives matter, you're saying you don't think it's a racial issue. And willfully ignoring the problem of racism is what has allowed racism to flourish in, say, police departments. So when you say "all lives matter" you're essentially saying "This problem that effects specifically black people doesn't matter. Let's focus on the more general and still important but less urgent problem that effects white people too, and maybe the problems facing black people will go away". It's like if someone comes to you with statistics about how horribly out of proportion police brutality is towards African Americans and your response is an anecdote about this one time the cops beat up a white guy. Or if someone brings up how serious sexual assault and harassment is for women and all you talk about is how men can be sexually harassed too. If you willfully refuse to recognize the problem, you're part of it.

by jgord 11y ago

paulddraper 11y ago

"lower class are basically slaves" You're going to compare working graveyards at 7-Eleven to slavery? You should read a little bit about slavery and human trafficking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery I suspect most slaves would not agree with you.

jgord 11y ago
yes - in order to say something that is true, I need to say something that is false. You'd be right to call me on it, and I'd have it no other way.
- PaulHoule 11y ago
  Back in the days of slavery you were expected to provide some care when they got old. If you're an employee you can be cast away to go die in the street.
  - lolc 11y ago
    "Fifty dollars reward, for the negro Jim Blake--has a piece cut out of each ear, and the middle finger of the left hand cut off to the second joint."
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- md224 11y ago
  > in order to say something that is true, I need to say something that is false. What does this mean?
  - jgord 11y ago
    I use the term 'slavery' because its descriptive, not because its literally true. I do understand that 711 shift workers don't have their feet cut off if they leave. When I say things like "we need a bit of Socialism right about now" .. I don't mean hardcore enforced-total-equality Socialism, I mean nice Socialism like the kind Bernie Sanders has been raving about.
    - chimeracoder 11y ago
      > I don't mean hardcore enforced-total-equality Socialism, I mean nice Socialism like the kind Bernie Sanders has been raving about. It's taboo to point this out, especially on HN, but I'm feeling bold today: You can't discuss the socialist policies of Western European countries without addressing their wealth. And you can't discuss the current wealth of Western European countries without acknowledging the process by which they acquired that wealth. The "nice socialism that Sanders has been raving about" is the kind that is practiced in countries with a long history of colonization and slavery[0]. During this timeframe, they "earned" a massive amount of money by extracting resources from people that they literally enslaved. This started before the 17th century and continued into the 20th century. Those people who were colonized and enslaved (and their countries) are still feeling the effects of that today, and they would not be so quick to describe that kind of socialism as "nice". [0] Denmark and Sweden are the two that Sanders has called out specifically by name.
nickbauman 11y ago
Masters actually bought slaves. They weren't cheap. So they had to, you know, feed them and care for them somewhat. Now when you aren't needed at the 7/11 you can almost just go die in a fire: have you seen was homelessness is like in the US? I have.
- dnautics 11y ago
  You do understand that this is basically the argument that slaveowners used to justify continuing slavery in the 19th century?
  - marshray 11y ago
    Except that no one is justifying slavery, it's just the opposite.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - horsecaptin 11y ago
    You know it is a good time to re-think the current economical distribution when the slavery looks like a valid alternative to the status quo.
  - nickbauman 11y ago
    It would be a mistake to say I'm advocating slavery by making this comparison. The slave to a master is just like an automobile: you have to put gas into it to make it go. Turning a human being into something the equivalent of an automobile is an abomination. But I don't really think wage slavery is really all that different at the end of the day. My point is both are abominable.
    - dnautics 11y ago
      that may have not been your intent, but it does reveal the error in your thinking. You may call both abominable, but do you not see the fundamental reason why one is categorically worse than the other? If not then you are doomed to advocate for the very problems that were the root of the atrocity of slavery, just in other, possibly more cryptic and slyly paternalistic forms.
chimeracoder 11y ago
> I suspect most slaves would not agree with you. No kidding! Believe it or not, even in 2016, there are tens of millions of people around the world living in actual slavery[0]. Most of them would probably still literally give a kidney to trade places with one of these lower-class people in the US. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_slavery
calibraxis 11y ago
Both have in common the order-giver and order-obeyer. Of course, I agree wage slavery is better than chattel slavery. Better to have some choice of master than one imposed on you. (Though slaveowners made the interesting argument that they must take care of their workers because they own them, unlike the capitalist who merely rents them.) In the US, the prison system replaced slavery as the mechanism to control the black population. So the US has not improved much in that regard, with even children killed in broad daylight by the state.
- Fjolsvith 11y ago
  > In the US, the prison system replaced slavery as the mechanism to control the black population. So the US has not improved much in that regard, with even children killed in broad daylight by the state. Source?
staunch 11y ago
> You're going to compare working graveyards at 7-Eleven to slavery? > I suspect most slaves would not agree with you. The abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass initially declared, "now I am my own master", upon taking a paying job. But later in life, he concluded to the contrary, "experience demonstrates that there may be a slavery of wages only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery
- paulddraper 11y ago
  It's true that post Civil War blacks weren't doing well. (Actually, a lot of whites weren't doing well either.) But it's a real stretch of the imagination to say the current United States (especially post income tax and Social Security entitlements) is anywhere even close to post Civil War circumstances.
  - hitekker 11y ago
    His point was not about blacks, whites, or even the Civil War. > Wage slavery refers to a situation where a person's livelihood depends on wages or a salary, especially when the dependence is total and immediate. It is a pejorative term used to draw an analogy between slavery and wage labor by focusing on similarities between owning and renting a person. There is a difference between "slaves" in the popular sense (chains, beatings, whips, rape), and "slaves" in the economic sense, but both are premised upon the unjust abrogation of freedom at the hands of another. This article describes the latter case quite well: http://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicagarrison/the-new-american-slavery-invited-to-the-us-foreign-workers-f#.rx4lD3qvr http://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicagarrison/the-new-american-sla...
    - paulddraper 11y ago
      The quote was from Frederick Douglass, a black man living during the Civil War. Impossible to know for certain, but I suspect he wouldn't be terribly pleased with a comparison of the current "lower class" to real slaves.
JabavuAdams 11y ago
Why derail this over a word? Wage slavery is a well-known and widely-used term that is useful.

guelo 11y ago

What's interesting about this election is that so much of the anger, especially from lower class whites, is being channeled into the Republican party. It's not a cry for wealth distribution, it's a cry against immigrants supposedly taking our jobs. And that's a big failing by the Democrats to tap into that anger. But I think this is going to be typical of elections going forward, red hot anger being directed at the system. It's not healthy for society and I don't see it ending up anywhere good.

jazzyk 11y ago
Wealth distribution is a big problem, because the richest can essentially buy the government (and that's exactly what they have been doing) [http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/11/us/politics/2016-presidential-election-super-pac-donors.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/11/us/politics/20...] But if you took the money from the 1% and distributed it to everyone, it would probably amount to a few thousand dollars each, at best. The reason for lack of jobs is the they all went to India, China, etc. As for immigrants, don;t you think there is something awfully wrong with the fact that Massachusetts for years provided housing and money to the Tsarnaev family (the Boston bombers and their parents), yet war veterans are often homeless, because there is never any money left to take care of them?
- mtarnovan 11y ago
  > But if you took the money from the 1% and distributed it to everyone, it would probably amount to a few thousand dollars each, at best. That's patently absurd, given that the top 1% own 90%+ of the wealth.
  - bzbarsky 11y ago
    > given that the top 1% own 90%+ of the wealth. Citation, please? https://publications.credit-suisse.com/tasks/render/file/?fileID=F2425415-DCA7-80B8-EAD989AF9341D47E https://publications.credit-suisse.com/tasks/render/file/?fi... page 24 claims that globally the top 8.1% own 84.6% of the wealth, while the top 0.7% own 45.2%. So the top 1% owns something between those two numbers. Within the US, the top 1% owns an even smaller fraction (of a bigger per-capita pie), because there are many fewer poor people. That said, the top 1% do own quite a bit of wealth. Same report, page 15, figure 2, looks to me like total global wealth is about $260 trillion as of 2015. World population is 7.3 billion. That comes out to $35000 per person or so. So globally this number would in fact come out higher than a few thousand dollars; per our calculations above it's about 0.5 to 0.85 times $35k (but note that this is including the the "1%" quite a large number of US retirees, for example; the threshold for 1% global wealth is not that high). If you look at the US, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_in_the_United_States#Wealth_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_in_the_United_States#We... has numbers for 2007 saying that the top 1% owned 34.6% of the total wealth but that grew to 37.1% after the Great Recession. Total wealth in the US according to the above Credit Suisse report is about $86 trillion; that gives about $100,000 per person if you redistribute the wealth of the top 1%.

Pyxl101 11y ago

> People aren't asking for "income equality" they are asking for some level of humanity and democracy to be restored to our version of Capitalism, to strengthen that capitalism. That phrase could mean anything in practice that anyone wants it to mean. If we're going to discuss these things, we should be specific. What specific policy is desired, and how is it going to help? "Humanity" and "democracy" are not economic policies, nor are they specific enough goals to design policies around. I am unsure whether economic equality is a goal that we should strive toward. I wonder if a better measure for our economy would be how well off people are at each place in the distribution. Almost all middle class people in America today still have really nice TVs, mobile phones, Internet, etc., which suggests that their standard of living is quite good in absolute terms. We should be looking at absolute terms, not relative terms. Taxing the wealthy has undesirable effects. It's not as if wealthy people take their money and put it under their mattress. No, they invest it. That investment money flows to other corporations who then spend it on goods and services, or spend it on their employees. All of the wealth that the rich accumulate makes its way back into the economy, except it's at the direction of the rich according to their investment decisions. The alternative, if you tax the rich, is that the same money flows to the government and the government spends it on programs. That's certainly valuable, and I believe it makes sense for the government to have tax revenue to spend on its programs, but I don't necessarily think that more revenue for more programs will lead to better results. I'd rather that we spend substantially less on wars, for example, and redirect that money into infrastructure for our own country. Take the F-35 development program - the government has basically thrown over a trillion dollars down the drain (I'm being hyperbolic, but it's really pretty bad). A trillion dollars!! The government would have plenty of tax revenue to spend on smart infrastructure investments if it stopped throwing money away on programs like that. I'd hazard a guess that wealthy investors through their investments are more effective at creating wealth and raising the standard of living in the country than the government is (on a marginal basis from where we are today). Investors are far better at examining where their money goes, what effect it has, and doubling down on investments that demonstrate promising results, and pulling the plug on pointless ones. The government by comparison keeps burning more and more money on programs that are clearly ineffective - examine the Healthcare.gov or F-35 boondoggles. Private investors do better. Let them keep their money to invest it smartly.

sarciszewski 11y ago

> I really think we are headed for bloody revolution, because most of the populace are angry, and its a rational anger because their survival needs are barely being met, in many cases. From someone who grew up poor and identifies strongly with outlaws, I concur. But unlike OP I think it needs to happen.

mwcampbell 11y ago
Surely a cool, calculated, orderly effort to solve the problems described by the GP would be better than bloody revolution, which is a mere outpouring of anger that might not even solve the problems and would probably create entirely new ones. Do you think that no other option is possible at this point? Edit: Talk of revolution makes me think of the song "Won't Get Fooled Again" by the Who, particularly the closing lines, "Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss."
- geofft 11y ago
  Revolution may or may not improve things for the underclass, but it certainly ruins things for the upper class -- at least they are forced into playing political games all over again and cannot rest on previous political success (though, yes, if they are trained or predisposed towards politics at least they have a chance). And the credible threat of revolution forces that cool, calculated, and orderly effort to go somewhere, instead of merely watching the arc of history bend as slowly as the earth's surface. Britain, for instance, was not irredeemably terrible during the American Revolution, as evidenced by them being basically as reasonable a place as America today and not having had a revolution of their own since then. And they even managed to do some things better (e.g., they banned slavery before America did). But the American Revolution was still worthwhile, and that gave credibility to the American approach instead of the imperial one.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  >Surely a cool, calculated, orderly effort to solve the problems described by the GP would be better than bloody revolution Well yes, but talking about cool, calculated, orderly solutions has a tendency to get you labeled a "dirty socialist" by the Right and a "dirty reformist" by the Left, with the former being overwhelmingly stronger.

mwcampbell 11y ago

> So, just as "All Lives Matter" is not a good response to the "Black Lives Matter" movement, It's tangential, but can you please explain this part? It seems to me that "All Lives Matter" really is the more apt phrase, because it shifts the focus from an us-versus-them conflict to actual justice. Edit: Got it. I'll stop being part of the problem. The only remaining question is this: What's the most effective way to be part of the solution?

SideburnsOfDoom 11y ago
Canonical answer: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3du1qm/eli5_why_is_it_so_controversial_when_someone_says/ https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3du1qm/e... http://fusion.net/story/170591/the-next-time-someone-says-all-lives-matter-show-them-these-5-paragraphs/ http://fusion.net/story/170591/the-next-time-someone-says-al...
jgord 11y ago
The cost of saying "All Lives Matter" in response to "Black Lives Matter" is that you are seen to be ignoring the main issue. Its not that its wrong, its that its perhaps insensitive - a certain amount of empathy and solidarity could be a start in acknowledging the problem. So while "All Lives Matter" is truer, its less useful at the current moment in time when Black people are experiencing real pain, and we have a huge problem that needs to be addressed urgently.
wfo 11y ago
Of course everyone believes that all lives matter. But the context is important. If someone says "black lives matter" and your response is "ALL lives matter", you're not just saying you think all lives matter, you're saying you don't think it's a racial issue. And willfully ignoring the problem of racism is what has allowed racism to flourish in, say, police departments. So when you say "all lives matter" you're essentially saying "This problem that effects specifically black people doesn't matter. Let's focus on the more general and still important but less urgent problem that effects white people too, and maybe the problems facing black people will go away". It's like if someone comes to you with statistics about how horribly out of proportion police brutality is towards African Americans and your response is an anecdote about this one time the cops beat up a white guy. Or if someone brings up how serious sexual assault and harassment is for women and all you talk about is how men can be sexually harassed too. If you willfully refuse to recognize the problem, you're part of it.