19 ms·

This level of inequality makes me sad. Really sad. I know I can't be the only working stiff in the valley whose poor siblings and family think they are rich for

This level of inequality makes me sad. Really sad. I know I can't be the only working stiff in the valley whose poor siblings and family think they are rich for earning in the $100-150k range. Nevermind that I can't afford to buy a house here. I can't enjoy my success because of the near-desperate financial situations I see my relatives enduring. My sister gave me a $50 gift for christmas, and it brought tears to my eyes because she's a single mother making the federal minimum wage of $7.15/hr. That comes out to $290/wk, before taxes, if she's lucky and gets a full week's worth of hours. To earn that pittance, she is physically laboring and might have to work 7 days a week to get enough hours in the schedule. It makes me feel like a douche every time I think about it. Me sitting there in my Aeron chair, eating free snacks while reading code. And making ~10x what she does. When I really think about it, from similar beginnings, only a relatively small number of key decisions separate our two economic outcomes. I try to give generously to assuage my guilt. But I've found that there are limits to what can be given without stirring resentment, or provoking attempts at reciprocity. That's how this $50 gift came about... I bought some nice stuff for her kid, and she wanted to show her gratitude.

yummyfajitas 11y ago
Would you be more sad if her salary went up to $15/hour (~2x), but yours went up to $210/hour (~3x, assuming you started from $70 ~= 10 x $7)? If this would not make you sad, then inequality isn't really the problem.
- anon4 11y ago
  Well, of course inequality itself is not the problem. If a loaf of bread costs 0.20$ and rent is 50$/month, while keeping all salaries at their current level. However, inequality has a definite effect on economics and prices, so we can deduce that if the ratio of the two salaries were greater than it already is, while the job remains the exact same, then his mother would be in a worse position.
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    I should have clarified that I meant those dollar figures in real terms. In the scenario I'm describing one of them can buy 2x as many things while the other can buy 3x. Inflation is a separate problem.
    - ACow_Adonis 11y ago
      Well of course inflation is a separate problem if you define figures in real terms...that's essentially a tautology, since real is defined as nominal minus inflation. Back in the real world however, the relative price/value/production of things is not a separate problem...and since I'm guessing most people's objections to inequality is not its effects in some hypothetical world where all concepts are independent, but in the real world where they all connected, I'm not sure hypotheticals of this nature are often that useful...
      - yummyfajitas 11y ago
        Hypotheticals of this nature are useful for figuring out our terminal values. If the situation I described does not make the OP more sad, then inequality is not the ultimate problem. If you want to claim that inequality somehow causes poverty (and poverty is the real problem), make that case.
    - sangnoir 11y ago
      >> However, inequality has a definite effect on economics and prices, so we can deduce that if the ratio of the two salaries were greater than it already is, while the job remains the exact same, then his mother would be in a worse position > Inflation is a separate problem It's not just inflation: supply/demand dynamics will be changed across income levels. For example bidding wars might cause rentals to go up, and the mother will be outbid (see: gentrification or recent news on San Franciso rents)
- philsnow 11y ago
  In terms of relative buying power, going from $7.50/h to $15/h is a much bigger jump than going from $70/h to $210/h. This is sort of a sick twist on the idea that "the house always wins" or "the market can remain illogical longer than you can remain solvent": at lower incomes, it sometimes only takes one car maintenance, one unexpected trip to the dentist, before you have to start picking and choosing what bills to pay. At the higher end, you're picking and choosing what vacations to put off for a little while. Incremental money at the lower end is worth way more. Inequality is the problem.
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    You just agreed that a situation which increases inequality (rich person gaining 3x, poor person 2x) helps the poorer person more. How do you reconcile this with the claim that inequality is the problem?
    - SCHiM 11y ago
      That's just basic economy. And it was also adequately explained in the post you just responded to. The more you already have of something the less it's worth to you, that goes for almost everything including money in this case.
    - Nutmog 11y ago
      Isn't inequality just a polite word for jealousy? We're all peasants compared to some possible future generations 100 years in the future with all their cancer cures and Mars holidays.
      - phaer 11y ago
        No, it is not. "Jealousy" is a subjective feeling, "inequality" says something about the bigger economy.
      - phaer 11y ago
        No, it is not. "Jealousy" is a subjective feeling, "inequality" says something about the bigger economy.
- w_t_payne 11y ago
  We can't have the jobs that we want and make the things that we want if the market can't afford to buy them. As well as focussing our discussion on economic equality and social justice, we can also approach the problem from a perspective of enlightened self-interest. Widely distributed economic equality implies a greater ability to spend, and a greater ability to borrow, and a greater ability to create wealth in aggregate. A wider distribution of wealth, on average, yields greater wealth overall. This doesn't imply equality -- just a distribution of wealth that is closer to a Normal/Gaussian distribution, with less of it's "energy" disappearing off into the upper tail of the wealthy -- a tail which is necessarily inefficient due to its' bandwidth constraints and limited decision making capacity.
- lmm 11y ago
  I suspect I'd be sadder, though certainly there's some ratio at which my happiness at our gain in overall wealth would outweigh my sadness at our increased inequality. Let me suggest one of those data-driven analyses you like: for a set of equal-population regions or some such (ideally not just countries, although that might be the only way data is available), plot a happiness measure against mean wealth (income might be easier to get figures for) and Gini coefficient, and do a linear regression or similar. That should give a formula for how efficient wealth redistribution policies need to be (i.e. how much they need to lower the Gini per dollar-per-capita expended[1]) to be worthwhile in terms of increasing overall happiness. [1] Of course actually redistributed dollars aren't expended and don't change average wealth at all. But the redistribution programme would involve a certain amount of labour that could otherwise be used productively being redirected to administration, court battles, police etc. and the value of that labour is expended.
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    Suppose I ran the same analysis, but put "% black people" on the x-axis. Suppose that this gives me a better fit than your proposed analysis. Would you then accept that as a formula for how efficient re-segregation would be? Or in this case, would you recognize that correlation isn't causation?
    - lmm 11y ago
      > Suppose I ran the same analysis, but put "% black people" on the x-axis. Suppose that this gives me a better fit than your proposed analysis. Would you then accept that as a formula for how efficient re-segregation would be? Yes, although surely segregation just moves people around and can't change the average percentage, and so the net effect would always be zero. > Or in this case, would you recognize that correlation isn't causation? Do you think the causal factors are different then? I think inequality directly causes unhappiness in and of itself. That matches my subjective experience and the rhetoric I hear from many others.
randycupertino 11y ago
I feel you. My brother is a restaurant manager in the middle of Kansas making 30k a year. And he is a smart guy who was a MATH MAJOR at a state school! He could come out here and get a job at a startup and make 80k easily. But he won't leave his inlaws family, so he's stuck in Kansas. There is some strain and resentment in our relationship over our income differential, sure... especially when I want to complain that I'll never be able to afford a 1.4 million dollar house on the Peninsula because I only make 150k. It's just pointless to even bring that up to him because I know I will come off as an ass. However in some ways, he has it better than me. He and his wife bought a nice 4 bedroom rancher on a half-acre lot with an inground pool for 120k- which I will never ever be able to afford around here in my lifetime barring some unicorn ipo.
- x0x0 11y ago
  I similarly have family in a rural state that make shit. On the bright side, they own/will own homes and don't live their entire lives around work. It's refreshing to go home, meet strangers, and have discussions that never mention our jobs. On the downside, the state is economically depressed and is probably never going to get better. NAFTA plus the decimation of american car manufacturing really fucked them. My family have jobs but they don't pay well (I've bought groceries for a sibling) and it's not likely they will ever be paid even $50k/year -- enough to own a modest home, buy a car every 10 years, pay bills, and have savings -- in a relatively stable job. My brother similarly can't leave because of a joint custody agreement.
  - dpark 11y ago
    >On the bright side, they own/will own homes and don't live their entire lives around work. Also on the downside, these wages make it impossible to ever really retire. You can't save for retirement if you area barely making ends meet. I don't know anyone working a low wage job that looks forward to doing the same job until they die.
- 746F7475 11y ago
  Completely off-topic, but whenever I see these amounts I feel like either I don't understand how U.S. economy works or I've been living in poverty my whole life. I'm recently graduated B.Sc in compsci and I'm doing software testing and to me 30k/year is plenty. Like I have money to buy all kind of unnecessary stuff for my hobbies. Is 30k/year really low salary in U.S.? Or am I just being under paid? I always though my family was above middle class, but I guess we've been under it or something...
throwaway999888 11y ago
Ah, I see things are working as planned. The upper middle class and lower feeling guilt at their salaries, even though it's just a pittance in the larger pool. But I've been thinking about how much money I really need. I could have indulged in some expensive hobbies, but I can also get by with lesser equipment and practice the same hobbies, as long as I don't obsess over how "bad" that equipment is. And there are a lot of hobbies that either cost little to maintain, or that benefits other people. So there seems to be a lot of potential for reducing spending on oneself ones immediates and funneling some of it elsewhere (either through money, labour or time).
brightball 11y ago
There's a lot of truth behind those small decisions. My dad wanted to be a mechanic like his dad (who owned an auto shop) was but ended up changing his mind and deciding to become a doctor instead. Not joking. Because my dad became a doctor he was able to put me and 5 of my cousins through college. He makes the original decision and my entire family is completely different today. Granted, we wouldn't know the difference.
inanutshellus 11y ago
RE: Christmas - I'm sort of on the opposite end of that problem, but the way we solved that is to do a Dirty Santa party instead of giving individual gifts to everyone. That way the affluent relatives don't feel guilty for providing cool gifts to everyone and the less affluent don't feel ashamed for providing what they can. ("Dirty Santa" is where everyone brings one gift -- we do $10 -- and then you play a game where you either open a random gift from the pile or steal someone's opened gift. It's pretty fun. To me it's more fun than "real" christmas gifting...)
- SilasX 11y ago
  I've heard of that by the name White Elephant gift exchange. Edit: Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_elephant_gift_exchange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_elephant_gift_exchange
kamaal 11y ago
>>only a relatively small number of key decisions separate our two economic outcomes. Not just key, those are life altering decisions. I still remember my friends who chose civil/mechanical engineering over CS'ish fields(Electronic, IT, Computer science) because they wanted a better college, than a better course. I remember friends and cousins who chose to go into fields like literature/arts. I remember kids in my school who dropped out because their father's business was good enough. Most of them aren't doing good. But back then they justified their decision on all sorts of grounds, yet they didn't have to make them at all. At each step it felt like I was getting lonelier along the way. It was tough, but it was worth it. People make stupid decision and they make them for no rational reasons at all. Here is another hint, your sister and you are probably even now making small decisions over time which will make you 10x worth more than her, another 15-20 years from now. Small decision add up to big things. Especially the kind of decisions which can change the direction of your life.
BryanBigs 11y ago
Having been both 'poor' and 'rich', here's some advice from experience: don't give your sister anything for her immediate needs not asked for. If she asks, that's different. When someone is telling you to take money "because you need it",etc., it's hard to not feel like you are being judged as a screwup. Instead as a way to help, set up accounts for her children. Start putting money in a college fund (like a 529). Even in the strongest relationships people get weird about unsolicited money for the here and now, but helping to tackle a future problem won't have the same "superiority" effect. It doesn't feel like charity because it's not a immediate need, but more like a vote of confidence in your nephew/nieces - hard to explain why but at least that's been my experience. You also don't have to tell her about it right away. There won't be any question that you are doing it to boost your own ego rather than totally out of the kindness of your heart if you wait a couple years to let her know you've been saving for their future. It'll probably have the same caring impact on her as the $50 gift she gave to you affected you. Just my unsolicited advice :)

yummyfajitas 11y ago

Would you be more sad if her salary went up to $15/hour (~2x), but yours went up to $210/hour (~3x, assuming you started from $70 ~= 10 x $7)? If this would not make you sad, then inequality isn't really the problem.

anon4 11y ago
Well, of course inequality itself is not the problem. If a loaf of bread costs 0.20$ and rent is 50$/month, while keeping all salaries at their current level. However, inequality has a definite effect on economics and prices, so we can deduce that if the ratio of the two salaries were greater than it already is, while the job remains the exact same, then his mother would be in a worse position.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  I should have clarified that I meant those dollar figures in real terms. In the scenario I'm describing one of them can buy 2x as many things while the other can buy 3x. Inflation is a separate problem.
  - ACow_Adonis 11y ago
    Well of course inflation is a separate problem if you define figures in real terms...that's essentially a tautology, since real is defined as nominal minus inflation. Back in the real world however, the relative price/value/production of things is not a separate problem...and since I'm guessing most people's objections to inequality is not its effects in some hypothetical world where all concepts are independent, but in the real world where they all connected, I'm not sure hypotheticals of this nature are often that useful...
    - yummyfajitas 11y ago
      Hypotheticals of this nature are useful for figuring out our terminal values. If the situation I described does not make the OP more sad, then inequality is not the ultimate problem. If you want to claim that inequality somehow causes poverty (and poverty is the real problem), make that case.
  - sangnoir 11y ago
    >> However, inequality has a definite effect on economics and prices, so we can deduce that if the ratio of the two salaries were greater than it already is, while the job remains the exact same, then his mother would be in a worse position > Inflation is a separate problem It's not just inflation: supply/demand dynamics will be changed across income levels. For example bidding wars might cause rentals to go up, and the mother will be outbid (see: gentrification or recent news on San Franciso rents)
philsnow 11y ago
In terms of relative buying power, going from $7.50/h to $15/h is a much bigger jump than going from $70/h to $210/h. This is sort of a sick twist on the idea that "the house always wins" or "the market can remain illogical longer than you can remain solvent": at lower incomes, it sometimes only takes one car maintenance, one unexpected trip to the dentist, before you have to start picking and choosing what bills to pay. At the higher end, you're picking and choosing what vacations to put off for a little while. Incremental money at the lower end is worth way more. Inequality is the problem.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  You just agreed that a situation which increases inequality (rich person gaining 3x, poor person 2x) helps the poorer person more. How do you reconcile this with the claim that inequality is the problem?
  - SCHiM 11y ago
    That's just basic economy. And it was also adequately explained in the post you just responded to. The more you already have of something the less it's worth to you, that goes for almost everything including money in this case.
  - Nutmog 11y ago
    Isn't inequality just a polite word for jealousy? We're all peasants compared to some possible future generations 100 years in the future with all their cancer cures and Mars holidays.
    - phaer 11y ago
      No, it is not. "Jealousy" is a subjective feeling, "inequality" says something about the bigger economy.
    - phaer 11y ago
      No, it is not. "Jealousy" is a subjective feeling, "inequality" says something about the bigger economy.
w_t_payne 11y ago
We can't have the jobs that we want and make the things that we want if the market can't afford to buy them. As well as focussing our discussion on economic equality and social justice, we can also approach the problem from a perspective of enlightened self-interest. Widely distributed economic equality implies a greater ability to spend, and a greater ability to borrow, and a greater ability to create wealth in aggregate. A wider distribution of wealth, on average, yields greater wealth overall. This doesn't imply equality -- just a distribution of wealth that is closer to a Normal/Gaussian distribution, with less of it's "energy" disappearing off into the upper tail of the wealthy -- a tail which is necessarily inefficient due to its' bandwidth constraints and limited decision making capacity.
lmm 11y ago
I suspect I'd be sadder, though certainly there's some ratio at which my happiness at our gain in overall wealth would outweigh my sadness at our increased inequality. Let me suggest one of those data-driven analyses you like: for a set of equal-population regions or some such (ideally not just countries, although that might be the only way data is available), plot a happiness measure against mean wealth (income might be easier to get figures for) and Gini coefficient, and do a linear regression or similar. That should give a formula for how efficient wealth redistribution policies need to be (i.e. how much they need to lower the Gini per dollar-per-capita expended[1]) to be worthwhile in terms of increasing overall happiness. [1] Of course actually redistributed dollars aren't expended and don't change average wealth at all. But the redistribution programme would involve a certain amount of labour that could otherwise be used productively being redirected to administration, court battles, police etc. and the value of that labour is expended.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  Suppose I ran the same analysis, but put "% black people" on the x-axis. Suppose that this gives me a better fit than your proposed analysis. Would you then accept that as a formula for how efficient re-segregation would be? Or in this case, would you recognize that correlation isn't causation?
  - lmm 11y ago
    > Suppose I ran the same analysis, but put "% black people" on the x-axis. Suppose that this gives me a better fit than your proposed analysis. Would you then accept that as a formula for how efficient re-segregation would be? Yes, although surely segregation just moves people around and can't change the average percentage, and so the net effect would always be zero. > Or in this case, would you recognize that correlation isn't causation? Do you think the causal factors are different then? I think inequality directly causes unhappiness in and of itself. That matches my subjective experience and the rhetoric I hear from many others.

randycupertino 11y ago

I feel you. My brother is a restaurant manager in the middle of Kansas making 30k a year. And he is a smart guy who was a MATH MAJOR at a state school! He could come out here and get a job at a startup and make 80k easily. But he won't leave his inlaws family, so he's stuck in Kansas. There is some strain and resentment in our relationship over our income differential, sure... especially when I want to complain that I'll never be able to afford a 1.4 million dollar house on the Peninsula because I only make 150k. It's just pointless to even bring that up to him because I know I will come off as an ass. However in some ways, he has it better than me. He and his wife bought a nice 4 bedroom rancher on a half-acre lot with an inground pool for 120k- which I will never ever be able to afford around here in my lifetime barring some unicorn ipo.

x0x0 11y ago
I similarly have family in a rural state that make shit. On the bright side, they own/will own homes and don't live their entire lives around work. It's refreshing to go home, meet strangers, and have discussions that never mention our jobs. On the downside, the state is economically depressed and is probably never going to get better. NAFTA plus the decimation of american car manufacturing really fucked them. My family have jobs but they don't pay well (I've bought groceries for a sibling) and it's not likely they will ever be paid even $50k/year -- enough to own a modest home, buy a car every 10 years, pay bills, and have savings -- in a relatively stable job. My brother similarly can't leave because of a joint custody agreement.
- dpark 11y ago
  >On the bright side, they own/will own homes and don't live their entire lives around work. Also on the downside, these wages make it impossible to ever really retire. You can't save for retirement if you area barely making ends meet. I don't know anyone working a low wage job that looks forward to doing the same job until they die.
746F7475 11y ago
Completely off-topic, but whenever I see these amounts I feel like either I don't understand how U.S. economy works or I've been living in poverty my whole life. I'm recently graduated B.Sc in compsci and I'm doing software testing and to me 30k/year is plenty. Like I have money to buy all kind of unnecessary stuff for my hobbies. Is 30k/year really low salary in U.S.? Or am I just being under paid? I always though my family was above middle class, but I guess we've been under it or something...

throwaway999888 11y ago

Ah, I see things are working as planned. The upper middle class and lower feeling guilt at their salaries, even though it's just a pittance in the larger pool. But I've been thinking about how much money I really need. I could have indulged in some expensive hobbies, but I can also get by with lesser equipment and practice the same hobbies, as long as I don't obsess over how "bad" that equipment is. And there are a lot of hobbies that either cost little to maintain, or that benefits other people. So there seems to be a lot of potential for reducing spending on oneself ones immediates and funneling some of it elsewhere (either through money, labour or time).

brightball 11y ago

There's a lot of truth behind those small decisions. My dad wanted to be a mechanic like his dad (who owned an auto shop) was but ended up changing his mind and deciding to become a doctor instead. Not joking. Because my dad became a doctor he was able to put me and 5 of my cousins through college. He makes the original decision and my entire family is completely different today. Granted, we wouldn't know the difference.

inanutshellus 11y ago

RE: Christmas - I'm sort of on the opposite end of that problem, but the way we solved that is to do a Dirty Santa party instead of giving individual gifts to everyone. That way the affluent relatives don't feel guilty for providing cool gifts to everyone and the less affluent don't feel ashamed for providing what they can. ("Dirty Santa" is where everyone brings one gift -- we do $10 -- and then you play a game where you either open a random gift from the pile or steal someone's opened gift. It's pretty fun. To me it's more fun than "real" christmas gifting...)

SilasX 11y ago
I've heard of that by the name White Elephant gift exchange. Edit: Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_elephant_gift_exchange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_elephant_gift_exchange

kamaal 11y ago

>>only a relatively small number of key decisions separate our two economic outcomes. Not just key, those are life altering decisions. I still remember my friends who chose civil/mechanical engineering over CS'ish fields(Electronic, IT, Computer science) because they wanted a better college, than a better course. I remember friends and cousins who chose to go into fields like literature/arts. I remember kids in my school who dropped out because their father's business was good enough. Most of them aren't doing good. But back then they justified their decision on all sorts of grounds, yet they didn't have to make them at all. At each step it felt like I was getting lonelier along the way. It was tough, but it was worth it. People make stupid decision and they make them for no rational reasons at all. Here is another hint, your sister and you are probably even now making small decisions over time which will make you 10x worth more than her, another 15-20 years from now. Small decision add up to big things. Especially the kind of decisions which can change the direction of your life.

BryanBigs 11y ago

Having been both 'poor' and 'rich', here's some advice from experience: don't give your sister anything for her immediate needs not asked for. If she asks, that's different. When someone is telling you to take money "because you need it",etc., it's hard to not feel like you are being judged as a screwup. Instead as a way to help, set up accounts for her children. Start putting money in a college fund (like a 529). Even in the strongest relationships people get weird about unsolicited money for the here and now, but helping to tackle a future problem won't have the same "superiority" effect. It doesn't feel like charity because it's not a immediate need, but more like a vote of confidence in your nephew/nieces - hard to explain why but at least that's been my experience. You also don't have to tell her about it right away. There won't be any question that you are doing it to boost your own ego rather than totally out of the kindness of your heart if you wait a couple years to let her know you've been saving for their future. It'll probably have the same caring impact on her as the $50 gift she gave to you affected you. Just my unsolicited advice :)