5 ms·

The Wrong Inequality

42 points by jackowayed 15y ago

rhino42 15y ago
Now if only we could have started working on the education problem 10 years ago (and encouraged STEM instead of casting star students as nerds)... Hindsight being 20/20 and all
dotcoma 15y ago
I disagree. It's impossible to have a nation of 100% college graduates. And it doesn't make any sense, either. Just like it doesn't make sense how much the 'top' 1% are making.
- michaelhoney 15y ago
  No-one is suggesting that everyone should graduate college. What Brooks is saying is that those who don't have a university degree have dramatically worse lives than they used to. There is a growing working-poor underclass, and Brooks correctly states that their plight is a more important problem than that of the 1%.
  - octover 15y ago
    I think they are two sides to the same coin. You can't tackle red inequality without looking at blue inequality. As someone else put it, purple inequality. What happens when a CEO screws up? Blue inequality they get some sort of parachute and bonus regardless of the company tanking, and red inequality people are laid off, fired, don't get raises, or sometimes receive pay cuts.
  - yummyfajitas 15y ago
    What Brooks is saying is that those who don't have a university degree have dramatically worse lives than they used to. No he didn't. He said that the gap between those with and without a university degree is rising. It's not the same thing. It is almost certainly wrong to claim that the non-college educate are worse off ("dramatically" or not) than some historical period.
jhancock 15y ago
"If your ultimate goal is to reduce inequality, then you should be furious at the doctors, bankers and C.E.O.’s. If your goal is to expand opportunity, then you have a much bigger and different agenda." hmm..What if I want to reduce inequality && expand opportunity? What if you can't fix red without tackling blue and vice versa? Should this combined perspective be called purple inequality?
Tsagadai 15y ago
This isn't really a new issue. Inequity between classes, races, genders, religions (and lack of), sexuality and upbringing has existed for at least as long as economic and cultural analysis has. There is a more fundamental question which society has avoided answering: how do you pay people by merit when some people's work is devoid of merit. Many comedian have responded with "soylent green" style answers which is appalling but more of an answer than most people can provide (the usual response is, "I don't know"). If you have a society of winners where winners take all, what happens to the losers? What do the hundred million or so people who aren't rockstars of their domain do?
- fourk 15y ago
  More concerning, what happens to the hundreds of millions of people who don't have a domain to even be (or not be) a rockstar in? When unskilled labor available outstrips demand for unskilled labor, we start to see college diplomas as a requirement for filling a position as a Starbucks Barista. My initial reaction to the article was dismissive, but the more I think about it, the bigger the problem seems like it will be by the time it is brought into the public eye. Is a 'bottom 50%er' version of Occupy WallStreet something we could end up seeing within our lifetimes?
- temphn 15y ago
  In seriousness, the only real solution appears to be cognitive enhancement: cybernetic, genetic, and/or pharmacological. The Singularity may or may not be near, but till we get AI we need to increase human intelligence.
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  Eventually, when we reach the stage where low end human labor is worthless, we'll need some flavor of socialism. Such socialism will be so cheap that no one will care, however. We aren't there yet, however. We are also not at the point where most people's work is devoid of merit. We are merely at the point where many people lost their old jobs and are unwilling to take new jobs in other sectors. For example, consider an unemployed construction worker. There is plenty of work waiting for him - cleaning houses, picking strawberries, etc. But he remains unemployed because he is unwilling to take other work.
pessimizer 15y ago
The solution is not to get ditch diggers to go to college, but to respect ditch diggers. Our society, and Brooks, has respect for a person that increases exponentially with the distance between that person and productive physical work. The world cannot function solely on the fruits of debates and negotiations between middlemen. Ditch diggers have to exist. What we have to determine is if we will continually have the debate between whether they will be guaranteed to be paid enough to live, or whether the market determines that we should reduce their living conditions and liberties in order to bring their cost to a rate that keeps certain products and businesses viable.
- drunkpotato 15y ago
  Well put. I would also argue that we need measures of human progress other than productivity per person. For one example, with each generation pay ditch diggers more to do less work, and by that standard we are woefully regressing. Someone posted this the other day, which I'd never read before but I thought was quite an eloquent argument for the same. Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness: http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html
  - rhino42 15y ago
    I propose that the need for this is almost inevitable (given that humanity survives the next few decades). Human productivity per capita has been rising for the last several centuries (longer?); eventually, there will become a point where certain individuals will not be able to contribute substantially to society, despite their best efforts. Of course, that time is not here today, or terribly soon.
  - dereg 15y ago
    You're getting it all mixed up. The extra cost of hiring a single ditch digger to do the job is the forgone cost of letting a dude with a giant earth-mover handle the job. You're implying that we're becoming less productive, that's totally untrue. The same argument has been made about the motor vehicle, cotton gin, etc.
- anamax 15y ago
synctext 15y ago
Thank you NYT for this insight. It is easy to put blame purely at The Banker Bonus. Fixing education and providing equal opportunity plus social mobility is a continous struggle. A lot of complex open issues.
danmaz74 15y ago
Problem is, non-graduates already feel an incredible competition from Asian workers, and this brings the market value of their work way down. Graduates not as much - at least for now.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
duncanj 15y ago
Dean Baker has a good response to this article with actual data. http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david-brooks-complains-that-he-cant-get-access-to-inequality-data http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david-bro...
paganel 15y ago
> These two forms of inequality exist in modern America. They are related but different. Over the past few months, attention has shifted almost exclusively to Blue Inequality. It's like we re-discover the conflict between the "small" bourgeoisie and the proletariat every 15-20 years since the July Revolution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_Revolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_Revolution) .
jonnathanson 15y ago
Even the focus on "the 1%" is misleading, because the group is far from homogenous. There's a mountain of difference between, say, a doctor earning $400,000 and a trader earning north of $10 million. The outsized gains in the past 30 years have been made by the folks in the latter category. Your typical doctor or lawyer has always done well for himself; this is no great surprise. But he's never been yachts-and-mansions wealthy, and he's no closer to that mark today than he was decades ago. Rockstar doctors and lawyers, occasionally. But doctors and lawyers on average, no. The real focus should be on the financial sector, where one needn't be a rockstar to earn more in a single year than most white collar professionals earn in ten. The finance industry has expanded rapidly in recent decades, occupying a larger and larger slice of the US economy, and baking more and more volatility into the pie. That many of its players are mega-rich is merely a symptom. The real issue is that finance is so powerful and so omnipresent. There is a place for a healthy financial sector in a modern economy. But an economy can't thrive on "services" alone -- a fact the US is learning the hard way, after decades of being told the contrary by banks and consultancies.
- _charles_ 15y ago
  it's not just financial sector. there are execs, directors, VPs and such in powerful organizations getting paid millions in many industries including: Network and Other Communications Equipment Internet Services and Retailing Pharmaceuticals Medical Products and Equipment Railroads Financial Data Services Mining, Crude-Oil production Securities Oil and Gas Equipment, Services Scientific, Photographic, and Control Equipment Household and Personal Products Utilities: Gas and Electric Aerospace and Defense Food Services Industrial Machinery Food Consumer Products Electronics, Electrical Equipment Commercial Banks Telecommunications Chemicals Construction and Farm Machinery Insurance: Life, Health (stock) Information Technology Services Computers, Office Equipment Metals
vannevar 15y ago
This article is a great example of misdirection, summed up neatly in this quote: That’s because the liberal arts majors like to express their disdain for the shallow business and finance majors who make all the money. Nonsense. The 1% aren't there because they are exceptionally savvy and went to business school, they're mostly there because they were born into wealthy social networks. The implication of the article is that the other 99% chose their lot, and that if only we all went to college and studied a lucrative craft, we'd all be wealthy. All the while he lauds college grads and their wealthier lifestyle, Brooks incredibly ignores the possibility that maybe wealthy people are more likely to go to college in the first place. Maybe his 'Red Inequality' is just more 'Blue Inequality' after all. 'Red Inequality?' More like red herring.
- stickfigure 15y ago
  Wow. You just expressed disdain for the 1% because their worth is due to the shallow reason that they were born into wealthy social networks. Are you a liberal arts major?
  - vannevar 15y ago
    Of course not---I'm a member of the 1%. Engineering and law. ;-)
specialist 15y ago
I'd appreciate named prefixes for these news/links, eg. "David Brooks: The Wrong Inequality".

42 points by jackowayed 15y ago

Now if only we could have started working on the education problem 10 years ago (and encouraged STEM instead of casting star students as nerds)... Hindsight being 20/20 and all

dotcoma 15y ago

I disagree. It's impossible to have a nation of 100% college graduates. And it doesn't make any sense, either. Just like it doesn't make sense how much the 'top' 1% are making.

michaelhoney 15y ago
No-one is suggesting that everyone should graduate college. What Brooks is saying is that those who don't have a university degree have dramatically worse lives than they used to. There is a growing working-poor underclass, and Brooks correctly states that their plight is a more important problem than that of the 1%.
- octover 15y ago
  I think they are two sides to the same coin. You can't tackle red inequality without looking at blue inequality. As someone else put it, purple inequality. What happens when a CEO screws up? Blue inequality they get some sort of parachute and bonus regardless of the company tanking, and red inequality people are laid off, fired, don't get raises, or sometimes receive pay cuts.
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  What Brooks is saying is that those who don't have a university degree have dramatically worse lives than they used to. No he didn't. He said that the gap between those with and without a university degree is rising. It's not the same thing. It is almost certainly wrong to claim that the non-college educate are worse off ("dramatically" or not) than some historical period.

jhancock 15y ago

"If your ultimate goal is to reduce inequality, then you should be furious at the doctors, bankers and C.E.O.’s. If your goal is to expand opportunity, then you have a much bigger and different agenda." hmm..What if I want to reduce inequality && expand opportunity? What if you can't fix red without tackling blue and vice versa? Should this combined perspective be called purple inequality?

Tsagadai 15y ago

This isn't really a new issue. Inequity between classes, races, genders, religions (and lack of), sexuality and upbringing has existed for at least as long as economic and cultural analysis has. There is a more fundamental question which society has avoided answering: how do you pay people by merit when some people's work is devoid of merit. Many comedian have responded with "soylent green" style answers which is appalling but more of an answer than most people can provide (the usual response is, "I don't know"). If you have a society of winners where winners take all, what happens to the losers? What do the hundred million or so people who aren't rockstars of their domain do?

fourk 15y ago
More concerning, what happens to the hundreds of millions of people who don't have a domain to even be (or not be) a rockstar in? When unskilled labor available outstrips demand for unskilled labor, we start to see college diplomas as a requirement for filling a position as a Starbucks Barista. My initial reaction to the article was dismissive, but the more I think about it, the bigger the problem seems like it will be by the time it is brought into the public eye. Is a 'bottom 50%er' version of Occupy WallStreet something we could end up seeing within our lifetimes?
temphn 15y ago
In seriousness, the only real solution appears to be cognitive enhancement: cybernetic, genetic, and/or pharmacological. The Singularity may or may not be near, but till we get AI we need to increase human intelligence.
yummyfajitas 15y ago
Eventually, when we reach the stage where low end human labor is worthless, we'll need some flavor of socialism. Such socialism will be so cheap that no one will care, however. We aren't there yet, however. We are also not at the point where most people's work is devoid of merit. We are merely at the point where many people lost their old jobs and are unwilling to take new jobs in other sectors. For example, consider an unemployed construction worker. There is plenty of work waiting for him - cleaning houses, picking strawberries, etc. But he remains unemployed because he is unwilling to take other work.

pessimizer 15y ago

The solution is not to get ditch diggers to go to college, but to respect ditch diggers. Our society, and Brooks, has respect for a person that increases exponentially with the distance between that person and productive physical work. The world cannot function solely on the fruits of debates and negotiations between middlemen. Ditch diggers have to exist. What we have to determine is if we will continually have the debate between whether they will be guaranteed to be paid enough to live, or whether the market determines that we should reduce their living conditions and liberties in order to bring their cost to a rate that keeps certain products and businesses viable.

drunkpotato 15y ago
Well put. I would also argue that we need measures of human progress other than productivity per person. For one example, with each generation pay ditch diggers more to do less work, and by that standard we are woefully regressing. Someone posted this the other day, which I'd never read before but I thought was quite an eloquent argument for the same. Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness: http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html
- rhino42 15y ago
  I propose that the need for this is almost inevitable (given that humanity survives the next few decades). Human productivity per capita has been rising for the last several centuries (longer?); eventually, there will become a point where certain individuals will not be able to contribute substantially to society, despite their best efforts. Of course, that time is not here today, or terribly soon.
- dereg 15y ago
  You're getting it all mixed up. The extra cost of hiring a single ditch digger to do the job is the forgone cost of letting a dude with a giant earth-mover handle the job. You're implying that we're becoming less productive, that's totally untrue. The same argument has been made about the motor vehicle, cotton gin, etc.
anamax 15y ago

synctext 15y ago

Thank you NYT for this insight. It is easy to put blame purely at The Banker Bonus. Fixing education and providing equal opportunity plus social mobility is a continous struggle. A lot of complex open issues.

danmaz74 15y ago

Problem is, non-graduates already feel an incredible competition from Asian workers, and this brings the market value of their work way down. Graduates not as much - at least for now.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

duncanj 15y ago

Dean Baker has a good response to this article with actual data. http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david-brooks-complains-that-he-cant-get-access-to-inequality-data http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david-bro...

paganel 15y ago

> These two forms of inequality exist in modern America. They are related but different. Over the past few months, attention has shifted almost exclusively to Blue Inequality. It's like we re-discover the conflict between the "small" bourgeoisie and the proletariat every 15-20 years since the July Revolution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_Revolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_Revolution) .

jonnathanson 15y ago

Even the focus on "the 1%" is misleading, because the group is far from homogenous. There's a mountain of difference between, say, a doctor earning $400,000 and a trader earning north of $10 million. The outsized gains in the past 30 years have been made by the folks in the latter category. Your typical doctor or lawyer has always done well for himself; this is no great surprise. But he's never been yachts-and-mansions wealthy, and he's no closer to that mark today than he was decades ago. Rockstar doctors and lawyers, occasionally. But doctors and lawyers on average, no. The real focus should be on the financial sector, where one needn't be a rockstar to earn more in a single year than most white collar professionals earn in ten. The finance industry has expanded rapidly in recent decades, occupying a larger and larger slice of the US economy, and baking more and more volatility into the pie. That many of its players are mega-rich is merely a symptom. The real issue is that finance is so powerful and so omnipresent. There is a place for a healthy financial sector in a modern economy. But an economy can't thrive on "services" alone -- a fact the US is learning the hard way, after decades of being told the contrary by banks and consultancies.

_charles_ 15y ago
it's not just financial sector. there are execs, directors, VPs and such in powerful organizations getting paid millions in many industries including: Network and Other Communications Equipment Internet Services and Retailing Pharmaceuticals Medical Products and Equipment Railroads Financial Data Services Mining, Crude-Oil production Securities Oil and Gas Equipment, Services Scientific, Photographic, and Control Equipment Household and Personal Products Utilities: Gas and Electric Aerospace and Defense Food Services Industrial Machinery Food Consumer Products Electronics, Electrical Equipment Commercial Banks Telecommunications Chemicals Construction and Farm Machinery Insurance: Life, Health (stock) Information Technology Services Computers, Office Equipment Metals

vannevar 15y ago

This article is a great example of misdirection, summed up neatly in this quote: That’s because the liberal arts majors like to express their disdain for the shallow business and finance majors who make all the money. Nonsense. The 1% aren't there because they are exceptionally savvy and went to business school, they're mostly there because they were born into wealthy social networks. The implication of the article is that the other 99% chose their lot, and that if only we all went to college and studied a lucrative craft, we'd all be wealthy. All the while he lauds college grads and their wealthier lifestyle, Brooks incredibly ignores the possibility that maybe wealthy people are more likely to go to college in the first place. Maybe his 'Red Inequality' is just more 'Blue Inequality' after all. 'Red Inequality?' More like red herring.

stickfigure 15y ago
Wow. You just expressed disdain for the 1% because their worth is due to the shallow reason that they were born into wealthy social networks. Are you a liberal arts major?
- vannevar 15y ago
  Of course not---I'm a member of the 1%. Engineering and law. ;-)

specialist 15y ago

I'd appreciate named prefixes for these news/links, eg. "David Brooks: The Wrong Inequality".