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This strikes me as somewhat misguided. As a modern, wealthy society, we shouldn't have to content ourselves by just easing the pain of not being in the 1%. Furt

This strikes me as somewhat misguided. As a modern, wealthy society, we shouldn't have to content ourselves by just easing the pain of not being in the 1%. Furthermore, while it's certainly true that the tech revolution has brought about some changes that get rid of human labor, there's a lot more going on to this growth of inequality than that. If it was just about unique skills or education, you'd expect to see the top ~20% dramatically pulling away from the bottom 80% of the distribution, not the 99/1% that you see in reality (we can quibble about the numbers there a bit, but the point is that the inequality we're seeing isn't just a skills/education/technology revolution structural thing). I don't pretend to have a great answer for "how our community is equipped to address such an issue in any meaningful way," except perhaps to suggest that we try to find more tech solutions to "bigger" problems (energy, grid infrastructure, etc.) instead of inventing more social widgets. That, and trying to hold politicians more accountable to interests besides those of the super wealthy.

tankenmate 14y ago
I think you are completely missing the point the top 20% _are_ dramatically pulling away; in the last ten years _all_ the gains in income have gone to the top 20%!
- bencpeters 14y ago
  No, look at the data more closely. The top 20% numbers are skewed by the fact that the top 1% is included. The real story is the top ~1% pulling away from everyone else, NOT huge gains in the top 20% as a whole (another way to say that is that someone in, say, the 81st percentile of the income distribution has not seen large income gains) edited to add link to CBO inequality report: http://www.cbo.gov/publication/42729 http://www.cbo.gov/publication/42729 (shows that 1979-2007 top 1% income grew by 275%, the next 19% grew by 65%, next 60% grew by 40%). As I said before, there is certainly a structural component that means that education and skills can command even more of a premium than they always have, but that's not the majority of the story behind this inequality growth.
- ChristianMarks 14y ago
  Crucial question (this will become a meme): is the average weighted, or unweighted?

tankenmate 14y ago

I think you are completely missing the point the top 20% _are_ dramatically pulling away; in the last ten years _all_ the gains in income have gone to the top 20%!

bencpeters 14y ago
No, look at the data more closely. The top 20% numbers are skewed by the fact that the top 1% is included. The real story is the top ~1% pulling away from everyone else, NOT huge gains in the top 20% as a whole (another way to say that is that someone in, say, the 81st percentile of the income distribution has not seen large income gains) edited to add link to CBO inequality report: http://www.cbo.gov/publication/42729 http://www.cbo.gov/publication/42729 (shows that 1979-2007 top 1% income grew by 275%, the next 19% grew by 65%, next 60% grew by 40%). As I said before, there is certainly a structural component that means that education and skills can command even more of a premium than they always have, but that's not the majority of the story behind this inequality growth.
ChristianMarks 14y ago
Crucial question (this will become a meme): is the average weighted, or unweighted?