5 ms·

Except that standard of living has been propped up by debt. Meanwhile productivity has skyrocketed during that time, and it's not like there aren't financial g

Except that standard of living has been propped up by debt. Meanwhile productivity has skyrocketed during that time, and it's not like there aren't financial gains coming along with that increase in productivity - there are. They're just being vacuumed up by the top 1% -- the executives and major share holders. So really, that's a bit of a strawman. The issue isn't that there isn't enough to go around and we should be thankful that we haven't become China. The issue is that a small proportion of the population has manipulated law and the markets to allow them to make off with the wealth, while the rest of us have been screwed over. ...and that's a dangerous thing to allow for many, many reasons.

pedrocr 8y ago
> a small proportion of the population has manipulated law and the markets to allow them to make off with the wealth I was with you up to that point. Do you have a reference for this? My reading was that centralization of wealth was a relatively natural consequence of our economic model and not something that was manipulated into being. Hence the discussions on UBI and other ways to fix it.
- memebox3f 8y ago
  Centralization of wealth occurs as part of an economic model because more money means more power.
- galieos_ghost 8y ago
  Globalization, free trade deals, and illegal immigration only benefit corporations and shareholders. Jobs are outsourced to the country willing to take the worst deal, immigrants with no federal labor protection flood in lowering wages and living standards. Corporations pocket the labor saving rather than passing it on to consumers. End result is increasing income inequality. If nothing is done we will return to the historical norm of peasants and wealthy nobles with nothing in between.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    Immigration also tends to benefit the immigrants themselves and their families, who should not be discounted in this.
    - echotango 8y ago
      There are 5 billion impoverished people who would move to a first world country and depress natives' wages to nil if given a chance. Those who haven't done so yet shouldn't be discounted either.
  - ryan_j_naughton 8y ago
    >Globalization, free trade deals, and illegal immigration only benefit corporations and shareholders I'm sorry, but that is obviously not true. In the case of illegal immigration, the illegal immigrant is definitely better off by finding a higher wage and safer life than in his/her home country. The average Central American working illegally in the US, while not afforded employment rights like a legal worker, is still unequivocally better off than his/her options in his/her home country. Similarly globalization has been a major benefit to the poor in many developing countries. If you compare the median per capita GDP in countries like China, Vietnam, or any African country, it is immediately obvious that economic development and globalization has been good for them. I think what you are referring to is the it has not been good for the average American while it has been good to elite/wealthy Americans. But please don't misrepresent that it has only been a benefit to the few simply bc it hasn't helped the majority of people in developed countries. People in developing countries have been benefitted immensely.
    - wool_gather 8y ago
      It also does not seem to be the case, in the U.S. at least, that immigration depresses wages: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/jobs/2012/05/04/what-immigration-means-for-u-s-employment-and-wages/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/jobs/2012/05/04/what-immigrat...
      - 8y ago
- smolder 8y ago
  Are you not familiar with the rampant regulatory capture in the US? Changing law and manipulating markets often go hand in hand. Corporations exist to benefit the wealthy mostly. Schools are absurdly expensive and result in something like indentured servitude. What about high frequency trading? Things work the way they do by the choice of those in power, not by some economic imperative. That's an excuse, IMO.
  - jeffreyrogers 8y ago
    This doesn't square with my experience. HFT reduces transaction costs for market participants. You can see this in the narrowing of bid/ask spreads from the early 2000s on. Corporations exist for many reasons, but I wouldn't say benefiting the wealthy is the primary reason. More important reasons seem to be: limiting liability for owners, formalizing ownership structures so that owners can benefit in proportion to their role in the business, and simplifying tax and accounting issues. I agree that the growth in regulation has negative consequences and that the education system is largely ineffective, but I think these are unintended consequences rather than the result of conscious manipulation by powerful people and organizations.
    - crdoconnor 8y ago
      >HFT reduces transaction costs for market participants. You can see this in the narrowing of bid/ask spreads If HFT were a net positive for market participants then those same participants wouldn't be fleeing to dark pools in an attempt to avoid them.
      - jeffreyrogers 8y ago
        They go to dark pools because they are less transparent and it's easier to sell large blocks of shares without making a large price impact (in theory at least).
        crdoconnor 8y ago
        Exactly. I believe the term HFT uses for exploiting that is "spearing whales".
- dTal 8y ago
  If you look at the economic graphs[1][2][3], something nasty and drastic happened virtually overnight, around 1973. None of the growth since then has "trickled down". Our history books don't say anything about a radical overhaul of the economic system in 1973, nor does America have a massively different system than other first world capitalist countries, which do have inequality problems but not on the scale the US does. There's something uniquely bad going on, and since a very small group of people is getting enormously wealthy off of it while the rest get nothing at all, it's reasonable to assume that it's on purpose. Incidentally another thing happened around 1973 - the incarceration rate began a meteroic rise[4] that did not abate until Obama's presidency. Connecting these facts is left as an exercise for the reader. [1]https://stephenpruis.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/chart-wages-vs-productivity-1024x5811.png https://stephenpruis.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/chart-wages... [2]http://www.mybudget360.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/us-debt-and-gdp.png http://www.mybudget360.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/us-deb... [3]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/2008_Top1percentUSA.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/2008_Top... [4]https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-01-03/5826.2015-03_2D00_12-Ballman.png https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/cfs-file.ashx/__key...
  - gazzar 8y ago
    Holy st. Unless these graphs are misleading somehow, it's indeed interesting.
  - trimbo 8y ago
    > Our history books don't say anything about a radical overhaul of the economic system in 1973 They don't? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock
    - dTal 8y ago
      I hadn't heard of that. While I don't see an obvious causal link, the timing is certainly somewhat suggestive.
- grasshopperpurp 8y ago
  >But there is a theme that threads through and ties together all the strands: many of the most talented, driven Americans used what makes America great–the First Amendment, due process, financial and legal ingenuity, free markets and free trade, meritocracy, even democracy itself–to chase the American Dream. And they won it, for themselves. Then, in a way unprecedented in history, they were able to consolidate their winnings, outsmart and co-opt the forces that might have reined them in, and pull up the ladder so more could not share in their success or challenge their primacy. It depends on what you mean by "our economic model." http://time.com/5280446/baby-boomer-generation-america-steve-brill/ http://time.com/5280446/baby-boomer-generation-america-steve...
- olefoo 8y ago
  > our economic model That you frame that as a "natural truth" and not a cultural artefact is part and parcel of the manipulation. Our "economic model" is something that has been arrived at by centuries of manipulation and is constantly being contested and changed in ways large and small.
- dbingham 8y ago
  I think it's a combination. It's a natural consequence of both our economic and political model. Markets that allow unregulated investment of private capital have a natural tendency to concentrate wealth through multiplier effects. Basically the more money you have, the easier it is to make money from your money, and the more money you get. But wealth is power. As you get more money, you have more money you can use to manipulate the political system in any of a myriad of ways. Everything from donating to campaigns, to hiring lobbyists, to funding ads, to the revolving door and regulatory capture, to just straight up bribes. So I do think there are natural concentrating tendencies that we can introduce policies, like UBI, to counter-act. But there is also pretty clear evidence of those with wealth manipulating the system to grant themselves more of both wealth and power. Just look at the lobbying the wealthy have done over the past few decades that have taken America's formerly very progressive taxation system down to where it is today. That didn't just happen. People with wealth pushed for it. The same can be said of any number of other changes to the regulatory and economic infrastructure that primarily benefited those with wealth and harmed those with out (weakening of unions and collective bargaining, the weakening of financial regulations, weakening of environment regulations, and so forth). That stuff didn't just happen. It wasn't a natural outgrowth of the system. People made it happen.

pedrocr 8y ago

> a small proportion of the population has manipulated law and the markets to allow them to make off with the wealth I was with you up to that point. Do you have a reference for this? My reading was that centralization of wealth was a relatively natural consequence of our economic model and not something that was manipulated into being. Hence the discussions on UBI and other ways to fix it.

memebox3f 8y ago
Centralization of wealth occurs as part of an economic model because more money means more power.
galieos_ghost 8y ago
Globalization, free trade deals, and illegal immigration only benefit corporations and shareholders. Jobs are outsourced to the country willing to take the worst deal, immigrants with no federal labor protection flood in lowering wages and living standards. Corporations pocket the labor saving rather than passing it on to consumers. End result is increasing income inequality. If nothing is done we will return to the historical norm of peasants and wealthy nobles with nothing in between.
- pjc50 8y ago
  Immigration also tends to benefit the immigrants themselves and their families, who should not be discounted in this.
  - echotango 8y ago
    There are 5 billion impoverished people who would move to a first world country and depress natives' wages to nil if given a chance. Those who haven't done so yet shouldn't be discounted either.
- ryan_j_naughton 8y ago
  >Globalization, free trade deals, and illegal immigration only benefit corporations and shareholders I'm sorry, but that is obviously not true. In the case of illegal immigration, the illegal immigrant is definitely better off by finding a higher wage and safer life than in his/her home country. The average Central American working illegally in the US, while not afforded employment rights like a legal worker, is still unequivocally better off than his/her options in his/her home country. Similarly globalization has been a major benefit to the poor in many developing countries. If you compare the median per capita GDP in countries like China, Vietnam, or any African country, it is immediately obvious that economic development and globalization has been good for them. I think what you are referring to is the it has not been good for the average American while it has been good to elite/wealthy Americans. But please don't misrepresent that it has only been a benefit to the few simply bc it hasn't helped the majority of people in developed countries. People in developing countries have been benefitted immensely.
  - wool_gather 8y ago
    It also does not seem to be the case, in the U.S. at least, that immigration depresses wages: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/jobs/2012/05/04/what-immigration-means-for-u-s-employment-and-wages/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/jobs/2012/05/04/what-immigrat...
    - 8y ago
smolder 8y ago
Are you not familiar with the rampant regulatory capture in the US? Changing law and manipulating markets often go hand in hand. Corporations exist to benefit the wealthy mostly. Schools are absurdly expensive and result in something like indentured servitude. What about high frequency trading? Things work the way they do by the choice of those in power, not by some economic imperative. That's an excuse, IMO.
- jeffreyrogers 8y ago
  This doesn't square with my experience. HFT reduces transaction costs for market participants. You can see this in the narrowing of bid/ask spreads from the early 2000s on. Corporations exist for many reasons, but I wouldn't say benefiting the wealthy is the primary reason. More important reasons seem to be: limiting liability for owners, formalizing ownership structures so that owners can benefit in proportion to their role in the business, and simplifying tax and accounting issues. I agree that the growth in regulation has negative consequences and that the education system is largely ineffective, but I think these are unintended consequences rather than the result of conscious manipulation by powerful people and organizations.
  - crdoconnor 8y ago
    >HFT reduces transaction costs for market participants. You can see this in the narrowing of bid/ask spreads If HFT were a net positive for market participants then those same participants wouldn't be fleeing to dark pools in an attempt to avoid them.
    - jeffreyrogers 8y ago
      They go to dark pools because they are less transparent and it's easier to sell large blocks of shares without making a large price impact (in theory at least).
      - crdoconnor 8y ago
        Exactly. I believe the term HFT uses for exploiting that is "spearing whales".
dTal 8y ago
If you look at the economic graphs[1][2][3], something nasty and drastic happened virtually overnight, around 1973. None of the growth since then has "trickled down". Our history books don't say anything about a radical overhaul of the economic system in 1973, nor does America have a massively different system than other first world capitalist countries, which do have inequality problems but not on the scale the US does. There's something uniquely bad going on, and since a very small group of people is getting enormously wealthy off of it while the rest get nothing at all, it's reasonable to assume that it's on purpose. Incidentally another thing happened around 1973 - the incarceration rate began a meteroic rise[4] that did not abate until Obama's presidency. Connecting these facts is left as an exercise for the reader. [1]https://stephenpruis.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/chart-wages-vs-productivity-1024x5811.png https://stephenpruis.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/chart-wages... [2]http://www.mybudget360.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/us-debt-and-gdp.png http://www.mybudget360.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/us-deb... [3]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/2008_Top1percentUSA.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/2008_Top... [4]https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-01-03/5826.2015-03_2D00_12-Ballman.png https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/cfs-file.ashx/__key...
- gazzar 8y ago
  Holy st. Unless these graphs are misleading somehow, it's indeed interesting.
- trimbo 8y ago
  > Our history books don't say anything about a radical overhaul of the economic system in 1973 They don't? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock
  - dTal 8y ago
    I hadn't heard of that. While I don't see an obvious causal link, the timing is certainly somewhat suggestive.
grasshopperpurp 8y ago
>But there is a theme that threads through and ties together all the strands: many of the most talented, driven Americans used what makes America great–the First Amendment, due process, financial and legal ingenuity, free markets and free trade, meritocracy, even democracy itself–to chase the American Dream. And they won it, for themselves. Then, in a way unprecedented in history, they were able to consolidate their winnings, outsmart and co-opt the forces that might have reined them in, and pull up the ladder so more could not share in their success or challenge their primacy. It depends on what you mean by "our economic model." http://time.com/5280446/baby-boomer-generation-america-steve-brill/ http://time.com/5280446/baby-boomer-generation-america-steve...
olefoo 8y ago
> our economic model That you frame that as a "natural truth" and not a cultural artefact is part and parcel of the manipulation. Our "economic model" is something that has been arrived at by centuries of manipulation and is constantly being contested and changed in ways large and small.
dbingham 8y ago
I think it's a combination. It's a natural consequence of both our economic and political model. Markets that allow unregulated investment of private capital have a natural tendency to concentrate wealth through multiplier effects. Basically the more money you have, the easier it is to make money from your money, and the more money you get. But wealth is power. As you get more money, you have more money you can use to manipulate the political system in any of a myriad of ways. Everything from donating to campaigns, to hiring lobbyists, to funding ads, to the revolving door and regulatory capture, to just straight up bribes. So I do think there are natural concentrating tendencies that we can introduce policies, like UBI, to counter-act. But there is also pretty clear evidence of those with wealth manipulating the system to grant themselves more of both wealth and power. Just look at the lobbying the wealthy have done over the past few decades that have taken America's formerly very progressive taxation system down to where it is today. That didn't just happen. People with wealth pushed for it. The same can be said of any number of other changes to the regulatory and economic infrastructure that primarily benefited those with wealth and harmed those with out (weakening of unions and collective bargaining, the weakening of financial regulations, weakening of environment regulations, and so forth). That stuff didn't just happen. It wasn't a natural outgrowth of the system. People made it happen.