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I know! (and BTW, in "The Myth of American Inequality", the authors conveniently talk about direct income inequality, but forget about expenses like loan repaym

by orwin 3y ago

I know! (and BTW, in "The Myth of American Inequality", the authors conveniently talk about direct income inequality, but forget about expenses like loan repayment and the effect of initial wealth like owning your home. Also focusing on direct income allows him to count retired people in his statistics, and if you translate a bit what that means, and it's obvious, the book said 'retired people who earn almost no money are in the last income quintile, and after taxes and wealth transfers earn more than people in the 3rd quintile! (no shit Sherlock). It's a bit worthless imho, and unlike Piketty who, at least in his last book, directly share on a website the raw data he used, data in that book is weirdly hard to find). But that's not the question. It's because if you cannot solve poverty with wealth transfers or public services, you can only solve it one way, it's by lowering taxes and baseline expenses (like minimum wage) on companies so they can put everyone to work and make the economy run smoothly. You remove job programs, make food stamp, public transit, or free school meals so bad and hard to get it's a 20 hours a week job to get those small benefits, so less people use it, so the overhead on those programs grow and it be unsustainable. They're doing the same in my country.

marcusverus 3y ago
> but forget about expenses like loan repayment and the effect of initial wealth like owning your home. It’s a ~300 page book with a very specific thesis. There’s a lot they don’t talk about. > Also focusing on direct income allows him to count retired people in his statistics, and if you translate a bit what that means, and it's obvious, the book said 'retired people who earn almost no money are in the last income quintile, and after taxes and wealth transfers earn more than people in the 3rd quintile! (no shit Sherlock). I don’t follow. Why does the distinction between retirement income and work income matter? > It's a bit worthless imho, and unlike Piketty who, at least in his last book, directly share on a website the raw data he used, data in that book is weirdly hard to find). This was a beef of mine as well. But then, we’re in a thread about about an article quoting a renowned economist who agrees with their thesis on income inequality, so it’s obviously a stretch to say it’s “worthless” for reasons that have nothing to do with their actual argument. > It's because if you cannot solve poverty with wealth transfers or public services… But you can. We already have. That’s the whole point! For the most part, poverty only exists on paper. All the left has to do is push for an honest reporting of poverty statistics—-one which takes their hard-earned transfer programs into account! They refuse to do this because they understand that the working class in America would revolt if they knew that their taxes were being used to gift the (largely idle) poor a standard of living that’s higher than the one they work for! There is no “war on the poor”. The poor have the highest ratio of dollars-spent:dollars-earned ratio of any class, second only to a tiny cadre of idle rich. If our poor are oppressed, they are surely the first people in history whose oppression has taken the form of a never-ending torrent of other people’s money.

by orwin 3y ago

marcusverus 3y ago

> but forget about expenses like loan repayment and the effect of initial wealth like owning your home. It’s a ~300 page book with a very specific thesis. There’s a lot they don’t talk about. > Also focusing on direct income allows him to count retired people in his statistics, and if you translate a bit what that means, and it's obvious, the book said 'retired people who earn almost no money are in the last income quintile, and after taxes and wealth transfers earn more than people in the 3rd quintile! (no shit Sherlock). I don’t follow. Why does the distinction between retirement income and work income matter? > It's a bit worthless imho, and unlike Piketty who, at least in his last book, directly share on a website the raw data he used, data in that book is weirdly hard to find). This was a beef of mine as well. But then, we’re in a thread about about an article quoting a renowned economist who agrees with their thesis on income inequality, so it’s obviously a stretch to say it’s “worthless” for reasons that have nothing to do with their actual argument. > It's because if you cannot solve poverty with wealth transfers or public services… But you can. We already have. That’s the whole point! For the most part, poverty only exists on paper. All the left has to do is push for an honest reporting of poverty statistics—-one which takes their hard-earned transfer programs into account! They refuse to do this because they understand that the working class in America would revolt if they knew that their taxes were being used to gift the (largely idle) poor a standard of living that’s higher than the one they work for! There is no “war on the poor”. The poor have the highest ratio of dollars-spent:dollars-earned ratio of any class, second only to a tiny cadre of idle rich. If our poor are oppressed, they are surely the first people in history whose oppression has taken the form of a never-ending torrent of other people’s money.