6 ms·

> I don't see how the conclusion would be anything else, with merely a moment's thought. You'd be surprised how many people, even with all the actual data on t

by Mikeb85 11y ago

> I don't see how the conclusion would be anything else, with merely a moment's thought. You'd be surprised how many people, even with all the actual data on the subject, refuse to accept that millenials are 'worse off', citing technology advances or whatever. That being said, we are just returning to the 'normal' state of things. The reduction in inequality after WWII and subsequent economic boom was the exception in human economic history, we're simply reverting to the mean. Thomas Piketty and others point out that inequality is increasing and while that's true, we've been there before. Since there's not a whole lot more to say, here's a great Piketty related article by Robert Solow (Nobel winning economist, known for the Solow model of economic growth): https://newrepublic.com/article/117429/capital-twenty-first-century-thomas-piketty-reviewed https://newrepublic.com/article/117429/capital-twenty-first-...

theseatoms 11y ago
So you're sayin' we need a world war.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  That we send the Boomers to. /s Seriously though, during dinner last night my wife and I (and my parents in their late 50s/early 60s) watched the Fox News Town Hall with Sanders and Clinton. They could not fathom how worse off people our age (early 30s/late 20s) have it compared to them. Even after rattling off college costs, inability to secure a home, stagnant wages, poor job prospects, it was incredulous to them. "It can't possibly be that bad!" Is it an education issue? Perhaps. I think it'll get fixed the hard way though: one obituary at a time. Until then, we'll need a whole lot more social activism out there.
- Mikeb85 11y ago
  I upvoted you because I get the humour. We need to reverse the trend. Otherwise, eventually, it will lead to violence, as many observers have predicted over the years (and it did lead to revolutions in many countries years ago, and even the Arab spring more recently). Ways to do it: - Stop restricting competition through laws that limit entry into various sectors (there's an absurd amount of laws which serve no use other than protecting big business interests) - Heavy taxes on rent-seeking. There's an absurd amount of rent seeking in our economy, especially when it comes to commercial real estate in urban areas, patents, and many other behaviours (the tab above can be considered 'rent-seeking' since it introduces inefficiencies that favour incumbents) - Estate taxes. While we love antidotes of the middle-class entrepreneur becoming a billionaire, it's the exception to the rule. While there is a lot of churn and mobility amongst the billionaire class, when you take the top 1% as a whole, they, as a group, are increasing their lead over the rest of society. Yes someone who has $50 million in the family can turn it into a billion. And someone with a billion can lose enough to go back to being a multi-millionaire. But the upper classes in general, due to their large real estate holdings and ability to seek rents, generally stay rich. If one family falls, those assets are likely incorporated into another family. Dynastic wealth doesn't always last, but the 1% generally stays the 1%, due to various dynamics. - Real progressive taxation. While the lower classes pay lower percentages of income tax, it's stacked against them because their current rates still make up a larger percentage of their cost of living allowances. Not to mention, upper classes have more investment vehicles and tax avoidance vehicles at their disposal. Anyhow, there's much more to say about it, but what it comes down to is, unless we stop the trend, nothing's going to get better, no matter how much we wish it.
  - Apocryphon 11y ago
    I'm glad to see some forward thinking proposals that aren't simply "basic income!" Though I assume you'd add basic income to your list?
    - Mikeb85 11y ago
      I think basic income would be a great idea. There's plenty of other things which I think need to come first. I'd hate for 'basic income' to become the new welfare, and for it to basically subsidize corporations who pay the lower classes minimum wage or less. There's so many structural issues which serve to increase inequality right now...
    - waterlesscloud 11y ago
      Most of his solutions are just basic income in disguise. Not that that makes them wrong.
  - frostmatthew 11y ago
    > Dynastic wealth doesn't always last, but the 1% generally stays the 1%, due to various dynamics. Seems more accurate that dynastic wealth doesn't usually last[1][2][3] [1] http://time.com/money/3925308/rich-families-lose-wealth/ http://time.com/money/3925308/rich-families-lose-wealth/ [2] http://www.fa-mag.com/news/why-wealth-disappears-8227.html http://www.fa-mag.com/news/why-wealth-disappears-8227.html [3] http://money.cnn.com/2014/06/25/luxury/family-wealth/ http://money.cnn.com/2014/06/25/luxury/family-wealth/
    - jfoutz 11y ago
      1% is a catchy metric, but i think it hides the scale of inequality. $32000/year or so puts you in the top 1%. It really ought to be more like 0.0001%, but it doesn't have quite the same ring. So, the 62 richest own as much as the poorest 3,652,500,000. Gates and Buffet are interesting, with the philosophy of, give your kids enough to make something of themselves, but not so much they make nothing of themselves. The waltons on the other hand, are definitely shooting for dynastic wealth. There's a (very) rare chance of getting super rich. There's a possibility of being the kind of person that wants dynastic wealth, so some percent of those super rich are going to have super rich families. Kennedy, Rockefeller, Mellon. But it tends to be dilluting after a while, there are thousands of DuPonts as far as i can tell. I guess the point i'm making, some superrich will be effective in creating dynastic wealth (they have so far anyway) That, in and of itself isn't a big deal. All the wealth in the world is around $240 trillion. How much of that are we ok with being locked up in a dynasty or 10? How tall can that spike be and have a working economy? In the US the dynasts only control 500 billion or so, so maybe not a big deal, it's not that big of a slice of the pie. I dunno. It'll be interesting.
dcole2929 11y ago
Except this has been the state of things even before WWII. Literally since the start of the US and possibly even before (haven't done enough research to say definitively) the overall earnings of each generation have been greater than the one before. Until now. Think about that. We've had 2 world wars and a civil war and millennials are the first generation in the life of the country to do worse than their parents.
- dragontamer 11y ago
  Wat? Are people like, forgetting the great Dust Bowl or something? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl An entire generation of Americans left the Farms and went for the cities, only to learn that the Cities have entered the Great Depression. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression And the cities had no help for the entire generation of farmers who lost everything. This time stands in contrast to the "Roaring Twenties", a time of plenty and a booming economy that the US has almost never seen before. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roaring_Twenties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roaring_Twenties Someone here has been drinking too much of that Rubio Kool-aid. Americans have had plenty of generation-defining tough times in our history. We are strong because of surviving through it, learning about the problems, and working to make the country better afterwards. But that "economical reset" button has been pushed several times in our history. --------- In "Game of Thrones" terms, the Baby Boomers were born in the "great long spring", and have only known prosperity their whole life. They were born in a great time, a world rebuilt by the Greatest Generation (who grew up through the Dust Bowl AND Great Depression, then left to fight WW2 and then set the economic conditions for the post-war economic miracle). But now fall is upon us, and the historians are remembering that yes, Winter is coming. And it is the millennials who have to now work through the winter that our parents don't remember ever existing... but our grandparents may remember the tougher times they had.
  - knz 11y ago
    The missing piece is "learning about the problems and working to make the country better". It's hard not to feel that a significant number of elected officials often have the opposite approach - ignore the facts/research and work to line the pockets of their benefactors.
elevenfist 11y ago
This reverse in inequality isn't some inevitable fact of economies, but a result of changing government policies, globalization, and the loss of power of labor, engineers, and professionals. Talking about means and normal distributions in this context is far too reductive.
- Mikeb85 11y ago
  > This reverse in inequality isn't some inevitable fact of economies Maybe an inevitable fact of human behaviour. > a result of changing government policies, globalization, and the loss of power of labor, engineers, and professionals. I completely agree that these are the reasons why we've regressed. There is a tendency for capital to be more valuable than the results of labour, which should theoretically be offset by diminished returns on capital. However the theoretical natural state of economies is disrupted by the fact that those with means will change the laws and tilt things in their favour. It's this fact (which we could accurately call corruption, which we've institutionalized as 'lobbying') that makes inequality inevitable.
  - elevenfist 11y ago
    > Maybe an inevitable fact of human behavior. In brief I disagree. More the product of determined coalitions and misinformation. Things we can change, regardless. > There is a tendency for capital to be more valuable than the results of labour, Ironically I think capital is far less valuable than labor at the moment, partly because valuable labor is far scarcer. I suspect capital's value is being artificially propped up, but I'm not sure of the cause. > ...those with means will change the laws.. The citizens of any republic must remain vigilant, but more people need to realize that getting a bigger slice isn't worth it when you're shrinking the pie.
yummyfajitas 11y ago
Would you give up every technology invented since 1970 (no cell phone or computer, no MRI, no chemotherapy) if it meant you could buy a tiny house with no amenities for cheap out in the boondocks, and get a job with no degree? (Note that with population growth, the boondocks have inevitably moved further out.)
- Mikeb85 11y ago
  > Would you give up every technology invented since 1970 (no cell phone or computer, no MRI, no chemotherapy) if it meant you could buy a tiny house with no amenities for cheap out in the boondocks, and get a job with no degree? Most of my ancestors had none of these. Most also lived relatively stress free lives, owned property, didn't work particularly long hours, and most lived into their 90's. For most of my 'career', I've worked 60-80 hour weeks. Been stressed out as hell. Own no property. My wife and I's 'dream' involves retiring to a stress free place and yes, doesn't really involve technology. Even that is looking like a pipe dream. Recent studies state that retirement may not be possible for millenials, period. Most of my ancestors were able to stop working in their 60's, and still maintain their quality of life (which, as I stated before, lasted into their 90's). Technological progress is not dependant on inequality. America and Europe were at one point more egalitarian. And society saw its fastest technological progress ever. Heck, most technology today is still built on the exact same foundations that were developed in the 1950s to 1970s. The problem of inequality isn't necessarily a market-based economy. But rather the current set of laws that enable incumbents to make higher returns on capital than the rest of society. The problem really is - how do we properly allocate resources while also distributing wealth in a way that is most beneficial to all. It's not a problem of capitalism vs. socialism vs. communism, or technological progress vs. no progress.
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    I'm disputing this: refuse to accept that millenials are 'worse off', citing technology advances or whatever. I was disputing the idea that we are worse off than some past period, not that we are worse than some hypothetical alternate reality where every single thing is better. So again, are you willing to give up technology and live in that past? Is your wife willing to accept a 1/1,000 risk of maternal mortality rather than a 2 or 3/100,000 risk? Also, I have no idea why you are bringing up inequality. None of the things mentioned in mcphage's comment have anything to do with inequality. Neither does your 60-80 hour weeks, your stress, or changing demographic ratios which will make retirement (at future higher standards of living) more difficult.

by Mikeb85 11y ago

theseatoms 11y ago

So you're sayin' we need a world war.

toomuchtodo 11y ago
That we send the Boomers to. /s Seriously though, during dinner last night my wife and I (and my parents in their late 50s/early 60s) watched the Fox News Town Hall with Sanders and Clinton. They could not fathom how worse off people our age (early 30s/late 20s) have it compared to them. Even after rattling off college costs, inability to secure a home, stagnant wages, poor job prospects, it was incredulous to them. "It can't possibly be that bad!" Is it an education issue? Perhaps. I think it'll get fixed the hard way though: one obituary at a time. Until then, we'll need a whole lot more social activism out there.
Mikeb85 11y ago
I upvoted you because I get the humour. We need to reverse the trend. Otherwise, eventually, it will lead to violence, as many observers have predicted over the years (and it did lead to revolutions in many countries years ago, and even the Arab spring more recently). Ways to do it: - Stop restricting competition through laws that limit entry into various sectors (there's an absurd amount of laws which serve no use other than protecting big business interests) - Heavy taxes on rent-seeking. There's an absurd amount of rent seeking in our economy, especially when it comes to commercial real estate in urban areas, patents, and many other behaviours (the tab above can be considered 'rent-seeking' since it introduces inefficiencies that favour incumbents) - Estate taxes. While we love antidotes of the middle-class entrepreneur becoming a billionaire, it's the exception to the rule. While there is a lot of churn and mobility amongst the billionaire class, when you take the top 1% as a whole, they, as a group, are increasing their lead over the rest of society. Yes someone who has $50 million in the family can turn it into a billion. And someone with a billion can lose enough to go back to being a multi-millionaire. But the upper classes in general, due to their large real estate holdings and ability to seek rents, generally stay rich. If one family falls, those assets are likely incorporated into another family. Dynastic wealth doesn't always last, but the 1% generally stays the 1%, due to various dynamics. - Real progressive taxation. While the lower classes pay lower percentages of income tax, it's stacked against them because their current rates still make up a larger percentage of their cost of living allowances. Not to mention, upper classes have more investment vehicles and tax avoidance vehicles at their disposal. Anyhow, there's much more to say about it, but what it comes down to is, unless we stop the trend, nothing's going to get better, no matter how much we wish it.
- Apocryphon 11y ago
  I'm glad to see some forward thinking proposals that aren't simply "basic income!" Though I assume you'd add basic income to your list?
  - Mikeb85 11y ago
    I think basic income would be a great idea. There's plenty of other things which I think need to come first. I'd hate for 'basic income' to become the new welfare, and for it to basically subsidize corporations who pay the lower classes minimum wage or less. There's so many structural issues which serve to increase inequality right now...
  - waterlesscloud 11y ago
    Most of his solutions are just basic income in disguise. Not that that makes them wrong.
- frostmatthew 11y ago
  > Dynastic wealth doesn't always last, but the 1% generally stays the 1%, due to various dynamics. Seems more accurate that dynastic wealth doesn't usually last[1][2][3] [1] http://time.com/money/3925308/rich-families-lose-wealth/ http://time.com/money/3925308/rich-families-lose-wealth/ [2] http://www.fa-mag.com/news/why-wealth-disappears-8227.html http://www.fa-mag.com/news/why-wealth-disappears-8227.html [3] http://money.cnn.com/2014/06/25/luxury/family-wealth/ http://money.cnn.com/2014/06/25/luxury/family-wealth/
  - jfoutz 11y ago
    1% is a catchy metric, but i think it hides the scale of inequality. $32000/year or so puts you in the top 1%. It really ought to be more like 0.0001%, but it doesn't have quite the same ring. So, the 62 richest own as much as the poorest 3,652,500,000. Gates and Buffet are interesting, with the philosophy of, give your kids enough to make something of themselves, but not so much they make nothing of themselves. The waltons on the other hand, are definitely shooting for dynastic wealth. There's a (very) rare chance of getting super rich. There's a possibility of being the kind of person that wants dynastic wealth, so some percent of those super rich are going to have super rich families. Kennedy, Rockefeller, Mellon. But it tends to be dilluting after a while, there are thousands of DuPonts as far as i can tell. I guess the point i'm making, some superrich will be effective in creating dynastic wealth (they have so far anyway) That, in and of itself isn't a big deal. All the wealth in the world is around $240 trillion. How much of that are we ok with being locked up in a dynasty or 10? How tall can that spike be and have a working economy? In the US the dynasts only control 500 billion or so, so maybe not a big deal, it's not that big of a slice of the pie. I dunno. It'll be interesting.

dcole2929 11y ago

Except this has been the state of things even before WWII. Literally since the start of the US and possibly even before (haven't done enough research to say definitively) the overall earnings of each generation have been greater than the one before. Until now. Think about that. We've had 2 world wars and a civil war and millennials are the first generation in the life of the country to do worse than their parents.

dragontamer 11y ago
Wat? Are people like, forgetting the great Dust Bowl or something? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl An entire generation of Americans left the Farms and went for the cities, only to learn that the Cities have entered the Great Depression. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression And the cities had no help for the entire generation of farmers who lost everything. This time stands in contrast to the "Roaring Twenties", a time of plenty and a booming economy that the US has almost never seen before. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roaring_Twenties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roaring_Twenties Someone here has been drinking too much of that Rubio Kool-aid. Americans have had plenty of generation-defining tough times in our history. We are strong because of surviving through it, learning about the problems, and working to make the country better afterwards. But that "economical reset" button has been pushed several times in our history. --------- In "Game of Thrones" terms, the Baby Boomers were born in the "great long spring", and have only known prosperity their whole life. They were born in a great time, a world rebuilt by the Greatest Generation (who grew up through the Dust Bowl AND Great Depression, then left to fight WW2 and then set the economic conditions for the post-war economic miracle). But now fall is upon us, and the historians are remembering that yes, Winter is coming. And it is the millennials who have to now work through the winter that our parents don't remember ever existing... but our grandparents may remember the tougher times they had.
- knz 11y ago
  The missing piece is "learning about the problems and working to make the country better". It's hard not to feel that a significant number of elected officials often have the opposite approach - ignore the facts/research and work to line the pockets of their benefactors.

elevenfist 11y ago

This reverse in inequality isn't some inevitable fact of economies, but a result of changing government policies, globalization, and the loss of power of labor, engineers, and professionals. Talking about means and normal distributions in this context is far too reductive.

Mikeb85 11y ago
> This reverse in inequality isn't some inevitable fact of economies Maybe an inevitable fact of human behaviour. > a result of changing government policies, globalization, and the loss of power of labor, engineers, and professionals. I completely agree that these are the reasons why we've regressed. There is a tendency for capital to be more valuable than the results of labour, which should theoretically be offset by diminished returns on capital. However the theoretical natural state of economies is disrupted by the fact that those with means will change the laws and tilt things in their favour. It's this fact (which we could accurately call corruption, which we've institutionalized as 'lobbying') that makes inequality inevitable.
- elevenfist 11y ago
  > Maybe an inevitable fact of human behavior. In brief I disagree. More the product of determined coalitions and misinformation. Things we can change, regardless. > There is a tendency for capital to be more valuable than the results of labour, Ironically I think capital is far less valuable than labor at the moment, partly because valuable labor is far scarcer. I suspect capital's value is being artificially propped up, but I'm not sure of the cause. > ...those with means will change the laws.. The citizens of any republic must remain vigilant, but more people need to realize that getting a bigger slice isn't worth it when you're shrinking the pie.

yummyfajitas 11y ago

Would you give up every technology invented since 1970 (no cell phone or computer, no MRI, no chemotherapy) if it meant you could buy a tiny house with no amenities for cheap out in the boondocks, and get a job with no degree? (Note that with population growth, the boondocks have inevitably moved further out.)

Mikeb85 11y ago
> Would you give up every technology invented since 1970 (no cell phone or computer, no MRI, no chemotherapy) if it meant you could buy a tiny house with no amenities for cheap out in the boondocks, and get a job with no degree? Most of my ancestors had none of these. Most also lived relatively stress free lives, owned property, didn't work particularly long hours, and most lived into their 90's. For most of my 'career', I've worked 60-80 hour weeks. Been stressed out as hell. Own no property. My wife and I's 'dream' involves retiring to a stress free place and yes, doesn't really involve technology. Even that is looking like a pipe dream. Recent studies state that retirement may not be possible for millenials, period. Most of my ancestors were able to stop working in their 60's, and still maintain their quality of life (which, as I stated before, lasted into their 90's). Technological progress is not dependant on inequality. America and Europe were at one point more egalitarian. And society saw its fastest technological progress ever. Heck, most technology today is still built on the exact same foundations that were developed in the 1950s to 1970s. The problem of inequality isn't necessarily a market-based economy. But rather the current set of laws that enable incumbents to make higher returns on capital than the rest of society. The problem really is - how do we properly allocate resources while also distributing wealth in a way that is most beneficial to all. It's not a problem of capitalism vs. socialism vs. communism, or technological progress vs. no progress.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  I'm disputing this: refuse to accept that millenials are 'worse off', citing technology advances or whatever. I was disputing the idea that we are worse off than some past period, not that we are worse than some hypothetical alternate reality where every single thing is better. So again, are you willing to give up technology and live in that past? Is your wife willing to accept a 1/1,000 risk of maternal mortality rather than a 2 or 3/100,000 risk? Also, I have no idea why you are bringing up inequality. None of the things mentioned in mcphage's comment have anything to do with inequality. Neither does your 60-80 hour weeks, your stress, or changing demographic ratios which will make retirement (at future higher standards of living) more difficult.