4 ms·

That's not what's happening though. First off, social mobility is declining, so let's get that out of the way: http://www.businessinsider.com/social-mobility-i

by mtgx 9y ago

That's not what's happening though. First off, social mobility is declining, so let's get that out of the way: http://www.businessinsider.com/social-mobility-is-on-the-decline-and-with-it-american-dream-2017-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/social-mobility-is-on-the-dec... Second, I think it's still a problem if the income of 90-98% of the country stagnates for decades, while the top earners get higher and higher income. Of course that affects inequality. I'm also not sure it matters that much if the players at the top switch around if they have increasingly larger leverage on society. For instance, we're seeing CEOs get rewarded larger and larger amounts of money every year, even if the companies lose money, like in this absurd case: https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/22/snap-ceo-evan-spiegel-got-a-637-million-bonus-last-year/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/22/snap-ceo-evan-spiegel-got-... Where's that money coming from? The employees' potential salary increases? The retail investors' money? It seems to me that the rich keep siphoning off money from everyone else, and that's not sustainable. They also get larger and larger amounts of money even when they get kicked out of the company for failing. This doesn't make sense to me at all. And I think the excuse that they need such amounts of money or otherwise they wouldn't take the job or something is utter BS. I'd more likely believe the board is giving them the money so the CEO doesn't sue the company, or better yet because the CEO was the one writing their checks before that, or something along those lines. And this is just the corporate world. The US Congress seems to get crazier every year and listening more and more to corporations and their interests, and less and less to the people and solving real problems in the country (healthcare, infrastructure, etc). It's like the whole American society is on the brink of collapse, and everyone just doesn't know it yet. Eventually, people will "suddenly" start to violently riot because of all this stuff added together, and it won't be pretty.

praha14 9y ago
One thing I've never understood- in a fair society in which people are not artificially limited, wouldn't we expect social mobility to decrease over time as successive generations "sort" themselves into the spots allowed by their genetics? Let's say we've got a feudal society with dumb nobility that rules over a smart peasantry by force. If that society becomes free, we'll expect smart peasants to move up and dumb noblemen to move down across the first few generations... but once they've moved, they've moved. Ergo, declining social mobility.
- gowld 9y ago
  > "sort" themselves into the spots allowed by their genetics There's an extreme amount of assumption baked into that. 1. Genetics is the only factor that determines merit for wealth? 2. Genetics merits extreme differences in income/wealth?
  - praha14 9y ago
    1. No of course not, but if it's a factor at all we'd expect to see the pattern I described. 2. We're talking about social mobility, not the level of inequality.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- marnett 9y ago
  I tried multiple times to try to refute all of the assumptions made in this post, but I gave up. 1) One does not have to be intelligent to be wealthy. 2) Those born wealthy do not have to be intelligent to remain wealthy - they just need not be a consumeristic imbecile. 3) Genetics has such a small impact, if any, on social mobility - quite the opposite. If I am born a Kennedy I am more likely to never fall below my birthright social class because of my family lineage. 4) You contradict yourself. You say the nobility rules by force, then immediately follow that with "If that society becomes free" - how exactly would that society magically free?
  - praha14 9y ago
    1. Of course not, I referenced unintelligent wealthy people ("dumb nobility") in my post. 2. 70% of rich families lose their wealth by the second generation, 90% by the third. [A] 3. IQ is a greater predictor of income than parental SES. Someone in the 95th percentile for IQ has a higher EV for earnings than someone born into the 95th percentile for wealth. 4. A number of revolutions have happened. If you don't believe that modern France or Japan are freer than their feudal predecessors then I agree that we are probably not on the same page. A. http://time.com/money/3925308/rich-families-lose-wealth/ http://time.com/money/3925308/rich-families-lose-wealth/
Consultant32452 9y ago
I think it's easy to explain why wages have stagnated. The time wages started to stagnate coincides with women's lib, immigration policy changes, and free trade changes. Women's lib dropped an extra 40% more people into the labor pool. Of course that's going to put downward pressure on wages. We changed our legal immigration policy to favor more poor people while simultaneously changing our illegal immigration enforcement policy to keep tons of illegal aliens in the country pushing wages down for the American poor. Trade policy has gutted a huge portion of the country in favor of the already wealthy elites on the coast. The big economic question of the day should be asking how we've managed to keep wages at only the "stagnation" level rather than precipitously falling in the face of so much downward pressure.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Under that theory, by 1960s there shouldn't be almost any jobs left, since the population grew 25x since the foundation of the country.
  - Consultant32452 9y ago
    You're arguing against a straw man. It's possible to support social and economic policies while recognizing that they have both positive and negative aspects to them.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      What I'm saying is that having more workers is not by itself sufficient explanation. The US always had more workers YoY.
      - Consultant32452 9y ago
        Do you believe that illegal immigrants have the same income distribution as the general population in the US?
        9y ago

by mtgx 9y ago

praha14 9y ago

One thing I've never understood- in a fair society in which people are not artificially limited, wouldn't we expect social mobility to decrease over time as successive generations "sort" themselves into the spots allowed by their genetics? Let's say we've got a feudal society with dumb nobility that rules over a smart peasantry by force. If that society becomes free, we'll expect smart peasants to move up and dumb noblemen to move down across the first few generations... but once they've moved, they've moved. Ergo, declining social mobility.

gowld 9y ago
> "sort" themselves into the spots allowed by their genetics There's an extreme amount of assumption baked into that. 1. Genetics is the only factor that determines merit for wealth? 2. Genetics merits extreme differences in income/wealth?
- praha14 9y ago
  1. No of course not, but if it's a factor at all we'd expect to see the pattern I described. 2. We're talking about social mobility, not the level of inequality.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
marnett 9y ago
I tried multiple times to try to refute all of the assumptions made in this post, but I gave up. 1) One does not have to be intelligent to be wealthy. 2) Those born wealthy do not have to be intelligent to remain wealthy - they just need not be a consumeristic imbecile. 3) Genetics has such a small impact, if any, on social mobility - quite the opposite. If I am born a Kennedy I am more likely to never fall below my birthright social class because of my family lineage. 4) You contradict yourself. You say the nobility rules by force, then immediately follow that with "If that society becomes free" - how exactly would that society magically free?
- praha14 9y ago
  1. Of course not, I referenced unintelligent wealthy people ("dumb nobility") in my post. 2. 70% of rich families lose their wealth by the second generation, 90% by the third. [A] 3. IQ is a greater predictor of income than parental SES. Someone in the 95th percentile for IQ has a higher EV for earnings than someone born into the 95th percentile for wealth. 4. A number of revolutions have happened. If you don't believe that modern France or Japan are freer than their feudal predecessors then I agree that we are probably not on the same page. A. http://time.com/money/3925308/rich-families-lose-wealth/ http://time.com/money/3925308/rich-families-lose-wealth/

Consultant32452 9y ago

I think it's easy to explain why wages have stagnated. The time wages started to stagnate coincides with women's lib, immigration policy changes, and free trade changes. Women's lib dropped an extra 40% more people into the labor pool. Of course that's going to put downward pressure on wages. We changed our legal immigration policy to favor more poor people while simultaneously changing our illegal immigration enforcement policy to keep tons of illegal aliens in the country pushing wages down for the American poor. Trade policy has gutted a huge portion of the country in favor of the already wealthy elites on the coast. The big economic question of the day should be asking how we've managed to keep wages at only the "stagnation" level rather than precipitously falling in the face of so much downward pressure.

icebraining 9y ago
Under that theory, by 1960s there shouldn't be almost any jobs left, since the population grew 25x since the foundation of the country.
- Consultant32452 9y ago
  You're arguing against a straw man. It's possible to support social and economic policies while recognizing that they have both positive and negative aspects to them.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    What I'm saying is that having more workers is not by itself sufficient explanation. The US always had more workers YoY.
    - Consultant32452 9y ago
      Do you believe that illegal immigrants have the same income distribution as the general population in the US?
      - 9y ago