13 ms·

In 5 states, richest Americans live in a “new Gilded Age”

155 points by hellofunk 8y ago

xyhopguy 8y ago
interesting that Seattle isn't anywhere to be found. I've always "felt" that the PNW had less old money. Anyone wanna feed my confirmation bias some more?
- ForRealsies 8y ago
  Seattle isn't a retirement destination. The greatest 'income equality' being from Rich retirees in a low cost of living among a Service industry-based local populace.
- wgerard 8y ago
  Eh, I'm not sure I would read into this as "Seattle is super egalitarian". Microsoft has made a lot of people (relatively) extremely wealthy, as has Amazon. Seattle's probably catching up quickly to some of the cities on this list. Washington is just a much younger state.
  - xyhopguy 8y ago
    Not really what im getting at. The pnw was developed later so I'd expect it to have less old money -- look at Oregon. The tech industry has certainly done a lot for the upper middle class in Seattle but the article is talking about people making 400k+ a year..
metalliqaz 8y ago
History rhymes. Of course, this time the robber barons know what will happen if they delve too greedily and too deep. Unions, the New Deal... can't have that. This time they are making more clever investments in propaganda, government control, and distraction.
- rapnie 8y ago
  ..and supported by the latest tech to make that all much easier :)
  - metalliqaz 8y ago
    tech is just tech, used as a tool by both the forces of good and of evil
    - moorhosj 8y ago
      Not necessarily. If the owners of the tech and the robber barons are the same people, that is a concern.
    - tntn 8y ago
      This is a BS cop out to avoid having to think about ethics. Some tech is inherently good or bad. If you create platforms that spread misinformation and rage much more effectively than information and reason, you shouldn't be able to walk away saying "it's a neutral tool!"
      - malvosenior 8y ago
        > Some tech is inherently good or bad. Not true. You might see a platform "spreading rage" as bad but to the people on the platform it's giving them a way to fight injustice (hence the rage -- what are they angry about). Tech connects people. You may not agree with those people but they'll be glad to have the platform.
        deleted 8y ago
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        tntn 8y ago
        Yeah, and zyklon B chambers were great for some people too.
r_singh 8y ago
Not surprisingly, there's 5 places in California where the top 1% has more wealth than in 1928. Which means that the ratio of income of top 1% to income of bottom 99% is higher than it was in 1928. Which is a sign of rise in income inequality. I would be really interested in studying the breakdown of wealth within the top 1% in all the places listed. In my experience (here in India at least), most people in the top 1% are just as worried [about income inequality] as the rest of us. It's the people at the top 20% of the 1% that can live anywhere, but sure, journalists can still call them the 1%.
- ForRealsies 8y ago
  >the people at the top 20% of the 1% that can live anywhere You're telling me that the ultra-rich become out of touch with reality and trend towards Globalist beliefs? No way.
- sbjs 8y ago
  I’ve always wondered, where did California’s wealth originally come from? Was it the gold rush that started it all?
  - whalerider 8y ago
    ...It wasn't always wealthy. My family has been around Marin for generations, and my aunt bought a nice house in San Jose for like $14,000 years ago. What it's worth now that everyone wants it...yikes.
  - rm_-rf_slash 8y ago
    The initial burst of wealth began with the gold rush and was extended with the transcontinental railroad, but the basis for California’s modern wealth, all the way from San Diego to San Francisco, was the military industrial complex. Hollywood is a major industry in Southern California for sure, but Hollywood didn’t turn California into an economic juggernaut, the Pentagon did. That same defense contract money and influx of tech talent is largely responsible for the foundations of Silicon Valley as we know it today.
  - kimdotcom 8y ago
avar 8y ago
This article doesn't discuss the elephant in the room. If there's this discrepancy in the 1% between states, and that's seen as a problem, presumably some correlation can be found where the bottom N% are less fortunate in say West Virginia than New York. Is there any indication that that's the case?
- metalliqaz 8y ago
  What's the elephant in that metaphor? That the rich make the poor better off by proximity? If so, I think you're missing the point. It's not a particularly good thing to have lots of people in "tolerable poverty" rather than total squalor. The slight reduction in suffering isn't enough. The real elephant in the room is the long term result of massive inequality. Social unrest, violence, revolution. History is littered with these outcomes, and many of those examples end with public executions.
  - avar 8y ago
    No, the elephant in the room is what supposed issues income inequality creates. Surely if there's such a discrepancy in this number between different states that's going to be measurable in some way. My biases align with the sentiments of the article. I think that income inequality is bad, but that doesn't make me immune to recognizing lazy journalism. The article does nothing to question that assumption. If an increase in income inequality makes the difference between "tolerable poverty" and "total squalor", isn't there going to be more of the latter in New York than West Virgina? The map in this article is almost the exact opposite of the one in the article, showing an inverse correlation between income inequality and the poverty rate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_poverty_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ... So what exactly are the negative effects? I'm sure there's some, but the article isn't helping us talk about those.
  - taneq 8y ago
    > The real elephant in the room is the long term result of massive inequality. Is all that violence really the result of inequality? Or is it the result of poverty? If the absolute poorest people lived in middle-class comfort I can't see them plotting a revolution, no matter how large a boat their neighbour owned.
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
The pairing of places associated with business and leisure should come as no surprise. The super wealthy do their business in and primarily live in the former while maintaining vacation properties in the latter. Then when they just want to coast on the returns they primarily live in the latter and charter a flight or spend a few days a week in the former as needed to for business.
the_watcher 8y ago
I'm pretty sure the map at the bottom is wrong, at least in CA. The 5 CA metros listed are San Jose, San Francisco, Napa, LA, Santa Barbara, but the map shows 4 Southern CA dots (including one that looks like it's in the southern Central Valley of all places)
pmoriarty 8y ago
Money is power, and some people are much better at getting their hands on money/power than others. Regardless of whether such money/power is "deserved" (which can be argued endlessly either way), we as a society really have to question whether we want a society where the overwhelming majority of people are screwed, and a tiny minority gets to own everything/everyone, call the shots, make the laws, and order the rest of us around. We and our children are going to be shining these people's shoes for generations to come. Is that the future we want?
Kilonzus 8y ago
As someone living in one of those top places, I think the usual consensus is that cities like New York and San Francisco and Washington DC are the most expensive cities to live in yet I live in a relatively conservative state tax-wise and people out here are still getting killed by the house prices. Rent has doubled in almost 3 years as well as many low-income families being pushed out of areas that used to formally inhabit.
xamuel 8y ago
For those who just want the list (which is buried annoyingly deep): * New York * Florida * Connecticut * Nevada * Wyoming
emodendroket 8y ago
Wyoming is the surprise entry here.
- the_watcher 8y ago
  It's covered nearly immediately in the article - it's due to ski resorts such as Jackson Hole, which are havens for the ultra-wealthy.
  - emodendroket 8y ago
    Yes, I read that. But until this morning I'd never heard of Jackson Hole.
- megaman22 8y ago
  It doesn't take very many super-rich people to skew the distribution in a state with under 600k inhabitants.
- Infernal 8y ago
  Jackson Hole, I’m assuming.
  - metalliqaz 8y ago
    Exactly, but why? Sorry I don't know anything about Jackson Hole. Is it a resort town? A financial center?
    - thrav 8y ago
      Arguably the best ski resort in the lower 48. The most picturesque mountain range in the lower 48, seen on the cover of Kanye’s new album. Snake river for unlimited rafting and fly fishing in ridiculously beautiful settings. Spitting distance from Yellowstone. Loads of quality restaurants to support it all. What’s not to love? I’ve been a lot of places, and Jackson may always remain my favorite place in the world.
padobson 8y ago
Even as the gap between the rich and everyone else widens, the quality of life for the bottom 99 percent has vastly changed since 1928. This makes me wonder how much people care. In a global economy where the 1% are investing in markets that can reach billions of people, extreme poverty on a global scale was sliced in half in a 30 year period, and supply chains allow us to have super computers and unlimited entertainment for tiny fractions of the median wage, you can expect a lot of inequality, but life is way better for everyone in the world since 1928. Inequality is only a problem in so much that it leads to higher crime rates and (eventually) civil instability in places where its most apparent. We haven't seen much of that (yet), but don't stop looking for it.
- schmichael 8y ago
  > Inequality is only a problem in so much that it leads to higher crime rates and (eventually) civil instability in places where its most apparent. This is astoundingly incorrect. Ask the people of Flint, MI. Income inequality directly impacts the length and quality of a person's life. A quick glance at Wikipedia is all it takes to discover this. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality
  - nroach 8y ago
    Or, stated similarly: “Inequality is only a problem for the wealthy in so much that it leads to higher crime rates and (eventually) civil instability in places where its most inconvenient for the wealthy.
- travistravel 8y ago
  So many people I know personally, especially older ones, are very sad about the destruction of the environment, the extinction of animals, and they feel helpless, as if humanity was doomed. How rich do they have to be for this malaise to not count as a serious injury? How poor or starving would someone in... not 1928 because that's more a convenient than interesting year to compare with... maybe 1728, have to be, for them having a world to not count? By having a world I mean, we used to think of the world as a lasting thing, and human lifes as short. Now it's the oppposite, the world evaporated, and that's not just because we're less ignorant, but also because of the whole ideology of consumption, of instead of wealth being something you possess, it being the speed at which you gain and destroy newer and shinier things, the fatness of the pipe. This is and other losses simply do not exist for capitalism because they cannot be quantified. It's the wiping out of the "sapiens" part in one fell swoop, on the whole globe, forever, leaving a lot of "bodies" and "eyeballs". As for "unlimited entertainment", that's both a blessing and a curse when it swamps out the precious insights that thinkers previously had, and that were previously cherished. > Inequality is only a problem in so much that it leads to higher crime rates When strong countries wage wars of aggression, or a rich person runs someone over while drunk, rapes someone, what have you, and buys as much of the justice system that should apply the same laws to everyone (not make everyone the same, just apply rules equally), brazenly ripping the blindfold of Justititia, that is not a problem, only if it becomes "too apparent"? I doubt you mean that, you probably just didn't think of it that way. I agree that inequality in itself is not a problem. That is, that someone else is more beautiful or rich than me, or whatever, as long as they play fair in some basic sense, it is not a problem. As long as there is some recognition that everybody "could have been born as" everybody, some default solidarity and good will. You know, the kind we all had as kids, even if some don't have it anymore. Kids are selfish and cruel, but from my memories and experience they also have a great innate sense of justice, that gets subverted with rationalizations and pressure later on. My theory is that people either loose it early in youth or young adulthood, or become good at protecting it. And that's not only unfair, as I said above when it reaches too absurd proportions it undergoes a phase change and affects the thinking. The things we enjoy aren't just based on private enterprise since year X, but also more generally on the constant curiosity and ingeniuity of people everywhere, at all times, in all sorts of situations. The unchecked regression of thought into rationalizations and doublethink, the normalization of everyone by fitting them to the numbers and metrics and group relations, in one vast giant "social" "space", will pull out the rug under that, human will die before humanity. Just like when the pilot of a plane gets a heart attack, it takes a few seconds, or even minutes, before the plane actually crashes. Last, but not least: if ever increasing inequality isn't a problem, then by the same token there wouldn't be a problem with less of it, right?
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dagaci 8y ago
Just to give unspoken point of view, a scenario which i would like to pose: That Income inequality provides a kind of fiscal stability vs uncontrollable inflation. If you overlay a chart of inflation on top of the chart of inequality you will find that maximum equality appears to correspond closely to periods of maximum inflation. Governments from both sides of the argument have focused on reducing collective bargaining and on ensuring that efforts to rejuvenate economies, like quantitative easing via the financial sector and tax breaks are focused on the corporations and wealthy precisely because of the low impact this can have on inflation The effect of these measures tends to pump money into the already wealthy while bulk of the population experience no-change.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  Inflation isn't all bad. The lack of inflation is making it easy to concentrate and safely hoard cash, which is cutting off the oxygen for everyone else. We've had 30 years of an ultra-safe, guaranteed strategy to make money -- move all value-added services to places with cheap labor and cheap money and export cash, facilitated by tithing a good portion of GDP to the OPEC producers. It's destroying western society. The best thing that could happen to the west today would be a devaluation.
  - Pulcinella 8y ago
    Yeah inflation can be good if you have debt.
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  That sounds like a side effect of the wealthy holding more passive assets and spending less of their income than an inherent virtue. Of course the real question is why inflation? Real wealth creation should cause inflation. There are far more goods available today and just subdividing the old currency won't cut it as a medium. "Was there earlier and held onto value doing nothing granting disproportionate gains" isn't a very good basis for resource allocation even if it personally works out well for some people. Or is the inflation from heavy spending devaluing the currency to try to pay everyone without any corresponding value? Inflation is just a symptom and may be beneficial, neutral, or pathological depending on context and cause.
andrewla 8y ago
This article, at least, talks about income, rather than wealth. Income we have a concrete measure for, at least, rather than attempts at estimation with giant unknown error bars. But income isn't a stable metric either. The IRS has been continually changing rules over time. Most notably, there has been a consistent push to crack down on "fringe benefits" and make them taxable. "Company cars" and things like that are essentially dead. To some degree the changes in the income characteristics here reflect changes in the nature of compensation, from various tax dodges to just cash compensation. It was once easier to give executives a car for their exclusive use, rather than pay them the value of the car, since it was an allowable business expense. That is no longer the case (unless the car is intrinsic to their job) so rather than giving them a car and paying taxes on it, they just give them the money and let them buy their own car. To what degree does this inform the changing characteristics of income in the top percentiles? That's an unknown question, but the best answer we have is just to assume that nothing has changed in the actual income distribution except the switchover from fringe benefit based compensation to taxable compensation. But that, unfortunately, renders moot the entire point of articles like this, about "worsening disparity", which is a convenient bogeyman to point to about the dangers of unchecked capitalism. So instead, we just pretend that this doesn't exist, and we continue to use made-up numbers to try to make a social point.
- weberc2 8y ago
  "Wealth" isn't a very good metric for other reasons as well. Notably, lots of people who make median-ish income save every penny for retirement and accumulate a lot of wealth, but they are often categorized as "greedy top X%". In our zeal to find someone to lay blame on, we often pick the wrong targets.
  - zajd 8y ago
    > Notably, lots of people who make median-ish income save every penny for retirement and accumulate a lot of wealth Not even in the same ballpark. You're not getting to $100mm in wealth on a $50k salary. But you can be born in to it overnight. Or make that in one day in the market if you're Bezos.
Brass 8y ago
Actual study: https://www.epi.org/publication/the-new-gilded-age-income-inequality-in-the-u-s-by-state-metropolitan-area-and-county/ https://www.epi.org/publication/the-new-gilded-age-income-in...
stvswn 8y ago
The Gilded Age refers to the last several decades of the 19th century, and yet the article compares today's data to 1928. That would be "the Roaring Twenties."
- frockington 8y ago
  Misusing the term Gilded Age is becoming more prevalent recently within the inequality narrative. I'm guessing The Gilded Age was shown to produce more clicks and why let facts get in the way of clicks
  - jimbofisher1 8y ago
    Yeah bro Buzzfeed is totally doing AB tests on Article Headlines about Income Inequality.
    - the_watcher 8y ago
      They almost certainly are. Buzzfeed didn't become synonymous with clickbait by random chance. It literally spun out of a research lab studying the viral spread of online content.
      - jimbofisher1 8y ago
        Why don't you go find out how many articles they have written about inequality and tell me how the statistical power of their AB test looks. lol
kaycebasques 8y ago
This article’s chronology is off a bit. It compares current income inequality to 1928. But 1928 was not part of the Gilded Age. 1870-1900 is usually the period known as the Gilded Age. Aside from that anachronism, I used the exact same term to describe where we’re at just a few weeks ago.
- moate 8y ago
  Yes, and it's too bad because the irony of pointing out that the 20's were part of the so-called "Progressive Era" despite having robber barons and such horrible inequity is really too good IMO.
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foxhop 8y ago
We should have a billion dollar networth cap. If you pass it, it gets taxed extremely, like 95%.
- refurb 8y ago
  So Bezos has $150B in Amazon stock. You want him to give the gov't $149B of that? Am I hearing you correct?
  - zhoujianfu 8y ago
    $142.5B
    - david927 8y ago
      Absolutely. Remember: technology will make everything move to fewer and fewer sources. If you wanted a book 20 years ago, you went to your local bookstore; now you go to one company. And so the people that get to this place first put their flag on it and claim it as their own. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTduy7Qkvk8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTduy7Qkvk8) I'm glad Jeff was there first (essentially) but we can still decide the future we want.
- oblio 8y ago
  This in conjunction with: * if a business (or business conglomerate, no sneaking around this) is bigger than N billion, the state gets N% of the shares, with the percentage progressively bigger up to something like say 25%. At some point a company gets so big that it influences a country by its sheer size. In a democracy it's only fair that the state gets a say into what that company does. I think it would be fair that the state gets limited voting rights to prevent abuse. I'd say that it should get a vote regarding profit decisions. But probably no say in product decisions, for example.
  - deleted 8y ago
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- 8y ago
hnburnsy 8y ago
I was shocked when in an interview yesterday David Rubenstein, The Carlyle Group co-founder and co-executive chairman of the private equity firm that owns 275 companies, mentioned that he worries about 3 things: 1) National deficit and servicing entitlements 2) Tariffs 3) Income inequality and possible social disruption 1 and 2 were not a surprise, but to me 3 was. Here is the full interview. https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/07/18/carlyle-group-rubenstein-dont-see-recession-near-term.html https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/07/18/carlyle-group-rubenste...

155 points by hellofunk 8y ago

interesting that Seattle isn't anywhere to be found. I've always "felt" that the PNW had less old money. Anyone wanna feed my confirmation bias some more?

ForRealsies 8y ago
Seattle isn't a retirement destination. The greatest 'income equality' being from Rich retirees in a low cost of living among a Service industry-based local populace.
wgerard 8y ago
Eh, I'm not sure I would read into this as "Seattle is super egalitarian". Microsoft has made a lot of people (relatively) extremely wealthy, as has Amazon. Seattle's probably catching up quickly to some of the cities on this list. Washington is just a much younger state.
- xyhopguy 8y ago
  Not really what im getting at. The pnw was developed later so I'd expect it to have less old money -- look at Oregon. The tech industry has certainly done a lot for the upper middle class in Seattle but the article is talking about people making 400k+ a year..

metalliqaz 8y ago

History rhymes. Of course, this time the robber barons know what will happen if they delve too greedily and too deep. Unions, the New Deal... can't have that. This time they are making more clever investments in propaganda, government control, and distraction.

rapnie 8y ago
..and supported by the latest tech to make that all much easier :)
- metalliqaz 8y ago
  tech is just tech, used as a tool by both the forces of good and of evil
  - moorhosj 8y ago
    Not necessarily. If the owners of the tech and the robber barons are the same people, that is a concern.
  - tntn 8y ago
    This is a BS cop out to avoid having to think about ethics. Some tech is inherently good or bad. If you create platforms that spread misinformation and rage much more effectively than information and reason, you shouldn't be able to walk away saying "it's a neutral tool!"
    - malvosenior 8y ago
      > Some tech is inherently good or bad. Not true. You might see a platform "spreading rage" as bad but to the people on the platform it's giving them a way to fight injustice (hence the rage -- what are they angry about). Tech connects people. You may not agree with those people but they'll be glad to have the platform.
      - deleted 8y ago
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      - tntn 8y ago
        Yeah, and zyklon B chambers were great for some people too.

r_singh 8y ago

Not surprisingly, there's 5 places in California where the top 1% has more wealth than in 1928. Which means that the ratio of income of top 1% to income of bottom 99% is higher than it was in 1928. Which is a sign of rise in income inequality. I would be really interested in studying the breakdown of wealth within the top 1% in all the places listed. In my experience (here in India at least), most people in the top 1% are just as worried [about income inequality] as the rest of us. It's the people at the top 20% of the 1% that can live anywhere, but sure, journalists can still call them the 1%.

ForRealsies 8y ago
>the people at the top 20% of the 1% that can live anywhere You're telling me that the ultra-rich become out of touch with reality and trend towards Globalist beliefs? No way.
sbjs 8y ago
I’ve always wondered, where did California’s wealth originally come from? Was it the gold rush that started it all?
- whalerider 8y ago
  ...It wasn't always wealthy. My family has been around Marin for generations, and my aunt bought a nice house in San Jose for like $14,000 years ago. What it's worth now that everyone wants it...yikes.
- rm_-rf_slash 8y ago
  The initial burst of wealth began with the gold rush and was extended with the transcontinental railroad, but the basis for California’s modern wealth, all the way from San Diego to San Francisco, was the military industrial complex. Hollywood is a major industry in Southern California for sure, but Hollywood didn’t turn California into an economic juggernaut, the Pentagon did. That same defense contract money and influx of tech talent is largely responsible for the foundations of Silicon Valley as we know it today.
- kimdotcom 8y ago

avar 8y ago

This article doesn't discuss the elephant in the room. If there's this discrepancy in the 1% between states, and that's seen as a problem, presumably some correlation can be found where the bottom N% are less fortunate in say West Virginia than New York. Is there any indication that that's the case?

metalliqaz 8y ago
What's the elephant in that metaphor? That the rich make the poor better off by proximity? If so, I think you're missing the point. It's not a particularly good thing to have lots of people in "tolerable poverty" rather than total squalor. The slight reduction in suffering isn't enough. The real elephant in the room is the long term result of massive inequality. Social unrest, violence, revolution. History is littered with these outcomes, and many of those examples end with public executions.
- avar 8y ago
  No, the elephant in the room is what supposed issues income inequality creates. Surely if there's such a discrepancy in this number between different states that's going to be measurable in some way. My biases align with the sentiments of the article. I think that income inequality is bad, but that doesn't make me immune to recognizing lazy journalism. The article does nothing to question that assumption. If an increase in income inequality makes the difference between "tolerable poverty" and "total squalor", isn't there going to be more of the latter in New York than West Virgina? The map in this article is almost the exact opposite of the one in the article, showing an inverse correlation between income inequality and the poverty rate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_poverty_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ... So what exactly are the negative effects? I'm sure there's some, but the article isn't helping us talk about those.
- taneq 8y ago
  > The real elephant in the room is the long term result of massive inequality. Is all that violence really the result of inequality? Or is it the result of poverty? If the absolute poorest people lived in middle-class comfort I can't see them plotting a revolution, no matter how large a boat their neighbour owned.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago

The pairing of places associated with business and leisure should come as no surprise. The super wealthy do their business in and primarily live in the former while maintaining vacation properties in the latter. Then when they just want to coast on the returns they primarily live in the latter and charter a flight or spend a few days a week in the former as needed to for business.

the_watcher 8y ago

I'm pretty sure the map at the bottom is wrong, at least in CA. The 5 CA metros listed are San Jose, San Francisco, Napa, LA, Santa Barbara, but the map shows 4 Southern CA dots (including one that looks like it's in the southern Central Valley of all places)

pmoriarty 8y ago

Money is power, and some people are much better at getting their hands on money/power than others. Regardless of whether such money/power is "deserved" (which can be argued endlessly either way), we as a society really have to question whether we want a society where the overwhelming majority of people are screwed, and a tiny minority gets to own everything/everyone, call the shots, make the laws, and order the rest of us around. We and our children are going to be shining these people's shoes for generations to come. Is that the future we want?

Kilonzus 8y ago

As someone living in one of those top places, I think the usual consensus is that cities like New York and San Francisco and Washington DC are the most expensive cities to live in yet I live in a relatively conservative state tax-wise and people out here are still getting killed by the house prices. Rent has doubled in almost 3 years as well as many low-income families being pushed out of areas that used to formally inhabit.

xamuel 8y ago

For those who just want the list (which is buried annoyingly deep): * New York * Florida * Connecticut * Nevada * Wyoming

emodendroket 8y ago

Wyoming is the surprise entry here.

the_watcher 8y ago
It's covered nearly immediately in the article - it's due to ski resorts such as Jackson Hole, which are havens for the ultra-wealthy.
- emodendroket 8y ago
  Yes, I read that. But until this morning I'd never heard of Jackson Hole.
megaman22 8y ago
It doesn't take very many super-rich people to skew the distribution in a state with under 600k inhabitants.
Infernal 8y ago
Jackson Hole, I’m assuming.
- metalliqaz 8y ago
  Exactly, but why? Sorry I don't know anything about Jackson Hole. Is it a resort town? A financial center?
  - thrav 8y ago
    Arguably the best ski resort in the lower 48. The most picturesque mountain range in the lower 48, seen on the cover of Kanye’s new album. Snake river for unlimited rafting and fly fishing in ridiculously beautiful settings. Spitting distance from Yellowstone. Loads of quality restaurants to support it all. What’s not to love? I’ve been a lot of places, and Jackson may always remain my favorite place in the world.

padobson 8y ago

Even as the gap between the rich and everyone else widens, the quality of life for the bottom 99 percent has vastly changed since 1928. This makes me wonder how much people care. In a global economy where the 1% are investing in markets that can reach billions of people, extreme poverty on a global scale was sliced in half in a 30 year period, and supply chains allow us to have super computers and unlimited entertainment for tiny fractions of the median wage, you can expect a lot of inequality, but life is way better for everyone in the world since 1928. Inequality is only a problem in so much that it leads to higher crime rates and (eventually) civil instability in places where its most apparent. We haven't seen much of that (yet), but don't stop looking for it.

schmichael 8y ago
> Inequality is only a problem in so much that it leads to higher crime rates and (eventually) civil instability in places where its most apparent. This is astoundingly incorrect. Ask the people of Flint, MI. Income inequality directly impacts the length and quality of a person's life. A quick glance at Wikipedia is all it takes to discover this. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality
- nroach 8y ago
  Or, stated similarly: “Inequality is only a problem for the wealthy in so much that it leads to higher crime rates and (eventually) civil instability in places where its most inconvenient for the wealthy.
travistravel 8y ago
So many people I know personally, especially older ones, are very sad about the destruction of the environment, the extinction of animals, and they feel helpless, as if humanity was doomed. How rich do they have to be for this malaise to not count as a serious injury? How poor or starving would someone in... not 1928 because that's more a convenient than interesting year to compare with... maybe 1728, have to be, for them having a world to not count? By having a world I mean, we used to think of the world as a lasting thing, and human lifes as short. Now it's the oppposite, the world evaporated, and that's not just because we're less ignorant, but also because of the whole ideology of consumption, of instead of wealth being something you possess, it being the speed at which you gain and destroy newer and shinier things, the fatness of the pipe. This is and other losses simply do not exist for capitalism because they cannot be quantified. It's the wiping out of the "sapiens" part in one fell swoop, on the whole globe, forever, leaving a lot of "bodies" and "eyeballs". As for "unlimited entertainment", that's both a blessing and a curse when it swamps out the precious insights that thinkers previously had, and that were previously cherished. > Inequality is only a problem in so much that it leads to higher crime rates When strong countries wage wars of aggression, or a rich person runs someone over while drunk, rapes someone, what have you, and buys as much of the justice system that should apply the same laws to everyone (not make everyone the same, just apply rules equally), brazenly ripping the blindfold of Justititia, that is not a problem, only if it becomes "too apparent"? I doubt you mean that, you probably just didn't think of it that way. I agree that inequality in itself is not a problem. That is, that someone else is more beautiful or rich than me, or whatever, as long as they play fair in some basic sense, it is not a problem. As long as there is some recognition that everybody "could have been born as" everybody, some default solidarity and good will. You know, the kind we all had as kids, even if some don't have it anymore. Kids are selfish and cruel, but from my memories and experience they also have a great innate sense of justice, that gets subverted with rationalizations and pressure later on. My theory is that people either loose it early in youth or young adulthood, or become good at protecting it. And that's not only unfair, as I said above when it reaches too absurd proportions it undergoes a phase change and affects the thinking. The things we enjoy aren't just based on private enterprise since year X, but also more generally on the constant curiosity and ingeniuity of people everywhere, at all times, in all sorts of situations. The unchecked regression of thought into rationalizations and doublethink, the normalization of everyone by fitting them to the numbers and metrics and group relations, in one vast giant "social" "space", will pull out the rug under that, human will die before humanity. Just like when the pilot of a plane gets a heart attack, it takes a few seconds, or even minutes, before the plane actually crashes. Last, but not least: if ever increasing inequality isn't a problem, then by the same token there wouldn't be a problem with less of it, right?

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dagaci 8y ago

Just to give unspoken point of view, a scenario which i would like to pose: That Income inequality provides a kind of fiscal stability vs uncontrollable inflation. If you overlay a chart of inflation on top of the chart of inequality you will find that maximum equality appears to correspond closely to periods of maximum inflation. Governments from both sides of the argument have focused on reducing collective bargaining and on ensuring that efforts to rejuvenate economies, like quantitative easing via the financial sector and tax breaks are focused on the corporations and wealthy precisely because of the low impact this can have on inflation The effect of these measures tends to pump money into the already wealthy while bulk of the population experience no-change.

Spooky23 8y ago
Inflation isn't all bad. The lack of inflation is making it easy to concentrate and safely hoard cash, which is cutting off the oxygen for everyone else. We've had 30 years of an ultra-safe, guaranteed strategy to make money -- move all value-added services to places with cheap labor and cheap money and export cash, facilitated by tithing a good portion of GDP to the OPEC producers. It's destroying western society. The best thing that could happen to the west today would be a devaluation.
- Pulcinella 8y ago
  Yeah inflation can be good if you have debt.
Nasrudith 8y ago
That sounds like a side effect of the wealthy holding more passive assets and spending less of their income than an inherent virtue. Of course the real question is why inflation? Real wealth creation should cause inflation. There are far more goods available today and just subdividing the old currency won't cut it as a medium. "Was there earlier and held onto value doing nothing granting disproportionate gains" isn't a very good basis for resource allocation even if it personally works out well for some people. Or is the inflation from heavy spending devaluing the currency to try to pay everyone without any corresponding value? Inflation is just a symptom and may be beneficial, neutral, or pathological depending on context and cause.

andrewla 8y ago

This article, at least, talks about income, rather than wealth. Income we have a concrete measure for, at least, rather than attempts at estimation with giant unknown error bars. But income isn't a stable metric either. The IRS has been continually changing rules over time. Most notably, there has been a consistent push to crack down on "fringe benefits" and make them taxable. "Company cars" and things like that are essentially dead. To some degree the changes in the income characteristics here reflect changes in the nature of compensation, from various tax dodges to just cash compensation. It was once easier to give executives a car for their exclusive use, rather than pay them the value of the car, since it was an allowable business expense. That is no longer the case (unless the car is intrinsic to their job) so rather than giving them a car and paying taxes on it, they just give them the money and let them buy their own car. To what degree does this inform the changing characteristics of income in the top percentiles? That's an unknown question, but the best answer we have is just to assume that nothing has changed in the actual income distribution except the switchover from fringe benefit based compensation to taxable compensation. But that, unfortunately, renders moot the entire point of articles like this, about "worsening disparity", which is a convenient bogeyman to point to about the dangers of unchecked capitalism. So instead, we just pretend that this doesn't exist, and we continue to use made-up numbers to try to make a social point.

weberc2 8y ago
"Wealth" isn't a very good metric for other reasons as well. Notably, lots of people who make median-ish income save every penny for retirement and accumulate a lot of wealth, but they are often categorized as "greedy top X%". In our zeal to find someone to lay blame on, we often pick the wrong targets.
- zajd 8y ago
  > Notably, lots of people who make median-ish income save every penny for retirement and accumulate a lot of wealth Not even in the same ballpark. You're not getting to $100mm in wealth on a $50k salary. But you can be born in to it overnight. Or make that in one day in the market if you're Bezos.

Brass 8y ago

Actual study: https://www.epi.org/publication/the-new-gilded-age-income-inequality-in-the-u-s-by-state-metropolitan-area-and-county/ https://www.epi.org/publication/the-new-gilded-age-income-in...

stvswn 8y ago

The Gilded Age refers to the last several decades of the 19th century, and yet the article compares today's data to 1928. That would be "the Roaring Twenties."

frockington 8y ago
Misusing the term Gilded Age is becoming more prevalent recently within the inequality narrative. I'm guessing The Gilded Age was shown to produce more clicks and why let facts get in the way of clicks
- jimbofisher1 8y ago
  Yeah bro Buzzfeed is totally doing AB tests on Article Headlines about Income Inequality.
  - the_watcher 8y ago
    They almost certainly are. Buzzfeed didn't become synonymous with clickbait by random chance. It literally spun out of a research lab studying the viral spread of online content.
    - jimbofisher1 8y ago
      Why don't you go find out how many articles they have written about inequality and tell me how the statistical power of their AB test looks. lol

kaycebasques 8y ago

This article’s chronology is off a bit. It compares current income inequality to 1928. But 1928 was not part of the Gilded Age. 1870-1900 is usually the period known as the Gilded Age. Aside from that anachronism, I used the exact same term to describe where we’re at just a few weeks ago.

moate 8y ago
Yes, and it's too bad because the irony of pointing out that the 20's were part of the so-called "Progressive Era" despite having robber barons and such horrible inequity is really too good IMO.

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foxhop 8y ago

We should have a billion dollar networth cap. If you pass it, it gets taxed extremely, like 95%.

refurb 8y ago
So Bezos has $150B in Amazon stock. You want him to give the gov't $149B of that? Am I hearing you correct?
- zhoujianfu 8y ago
  $142.5B
  - david927 8y ago
    Absolutely. Remember: technology will make everything move to fewer and fewer sources. If you wanted a book 20 years ago, you went to your local bookstore; now you go to one company. And so the people that get to this place first put their flag on it and claim it as their own. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTduy7Qkvk8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTduy7Qkvk8) I'm glad Jeff was there first (essentially) but we can still decide the future we want.
oblio 8y ago
This in conjunction with: * if a business (or business conglomerate, no sneaking around this) is bigger than N billion, the state gets N% of the shares, with the percentage progressively bigger up to something like say 25%. At some point a company gets so big that it influences a country by its sheer size. In a democracy it's only fair that the state gets a say into what that company does. I think it would be fair that the state gets limited voting rights to prevent abuse. I'd say that it should get a vote regarding profit decisions. But probably no say in product decisions, for example.
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hnburnsy 8y ago

I was shocked when in an interview yesterday David Rubenstein, The Carlyle Group co-founder and co-executive chairman of the private equity firm that owns 275 companies, mentioned that he worries about 3 things: 1) National deficit and servicing entitlements 2) Tariffs 3) Income inequality and possible social disruption 1 and 2 were not a surprise, but to me 3 was. Here is the full interview. https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/07/18/carlyle-group-rubenstein-dont-see-recession-near-term.html https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/07/18/carlyle-group-rubenste...