4 ms·
I highly disagree about the conclusion that spending inequality is more important to look at than wealth inequality. Wealth indicates security and lack of econ
by jnbiche 11y ago
I highly disagree about the conclusion that spending inequality is more important to look at than wealth inequality. Wealth indicates security and lack of economic precariousness, spending does not. If you're middle income and in chronic debt because you have a disabled child and care for your aging parents, you might look just fine if you look at spending. However, your hardship will likely be clearly reflected in your lack of wealth.
The fact that they chose spending rather than wealth makes me wonder why it was chosen. The authors claim that spending inequality is the correct measure, but then provide zero research-based justification for this decision.
Reading the paper, they claim in regards to wealth and related forms of inequality, "none measures inequality in living standards, which should be the ultimate concern when assessing economic fairness". Well, that's a fine presumption, but perhaps we're more concerned by the increasingly capability of the top 0.1% of the wealth of this country (ie, the vast majority of it, as much as 80-90%) to buy our political process and start us down a feedback loop of no return.
Point being, these economists seem to bring in an awful lot of political and moral prejudgments into this study (as is their profession's frequent wont).
- wtbob 11y ago> The authors claim that spending inequality is the correct measure, but then provide zero research-based justification for this decision. I think it's self-evident, since they include bequests in total lifetime spending: spending is how much one actually gets to enjoy one's wealth. > Well, that's a fine presumption, but perhaps we're more concerned by the increasingly capability of the top 0.1% of the wealth of this country (ie, the vast majority of it, as much as 80-90%) to buy our political process and start us down a feedback loop of no return. When most of the top ten political spenders are unions, I don't think it's the wealthy who are buying the political process; if anything they are buying it back.
- a_thro_away 11y agoThe unions may spend more, no argument there, but in my mind it isn't the total amount spent, but the total amount spent per represented citizen.
- randomdata 11y agoOn the other hand, I always think of farmers when the subject of wealth comes up. Their infrastructure can make them very wealthy, but through many years their income may not even push them across the poverty line, making living a struggle. Wealth gives no indication of how you are doing day to day. There is definitely security there, but only if you are wiling to give up your livelihood, which comes with its own problems.
- mdorazio 11y agoI'm not sure that's the best example. Median farm family incomes are a good 30% higher than median non-farm family incomes in the US [1], and farming comes with benefits like really low cost of living. Farming is quite a lucrative profession. [1] http://www.usda.gov/documents/FARM_FAMILY_INCOME.pdf http://www.usda.gov/documents/FARM_FAMILY_INCOME.pdf
- randomdata 11y agoFrom your link: "85-95 percent of farm household income has come from off-farm sources" which only reiterates how small farm incomes can be, despite the huge amount of capital required to do it. If you have another job then you can possibly have both the income and wealth, but that is not exactly a guarantee for everyone. To add to that, while things may not be so bad right now, your link also shows periods where total farm household income was considerably less than the general population. 'Land rich, cash poor' is very much a thing.
- Gibbon1 11y ago>Point being, these economists seem to bring in an awful lot of political and moral prejudgments into this study (as is their profession's frequent wont). I was reading this recently. https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/general-theory/ch23.htm https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/... Protip: Want to read any historical stuff on economics? You'll be slumming with commies. Anyway what is amusing reading that it's apparent that the policies promoted by orthodox economists have not changed in 200-300 years. And actually predate economics as a field. It would be like going to the doctor circa 2016 and being told the results of your MRI indicate a vital need to apply leaches to your nether regions. So yeah does seem that for economics political and moral prejudgments trump theory 99% of the time.
- jacobolus 11y agoJohn Maynard Keynes is a “commie” now? Here’s what he had to say about the USSR: “How can I accept a doctrine, which sets up as its bible, above and beyond criticism, an obsolete economic textbook which I know to be not only scientifically erroneous but without interest or application to the modern world? How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeois and intelligentsia who, with whatever faults, are the quality of life and surely carry the seeds of all human advancement? Even if we need a religion, how can we find it in the turbid rubbish of the Red bookshops. It is hard for an educated, decent, intelligent son of Western Europe to find his ideals here, unless he has first suffered some strange and horrid process of conversion which has changed all his values.”
- deleted 11y ago