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The progressive left would solve this problem with increased taxation on the rich, which would ostensibly be used to fund more social programs for the poor. Ta

by bmelton 13y ago

The progressive left would solve this problem with increased taxation on the rich, which would ostensibly be used to fund more social programs for the poor. Take from the Belmonts, give to the Fishtowners. Raise the minimum wage, increase regulation, enforce stricter laws that encourage equity for all. Perhaps some form of guaranteed income. The libertarians would solve this problem by eliminating barriers to success. Lessen business owner regulatory burdens, eliminate federal income taxes, eliminate the minimum wage, and impose as few hurdles as possible to whomever wants to hang their own shingle and provide a service. I'm not sure what the Republicans would want, really, or at least not specifically enough to enunciate it here on their behalf, but let's say it's somewhere in the middle. If you're able to succeed as an entrepreneur enough to be able to have some degree of influence on the problem, then you'd be a spokesperson for either the democrats or the libertarians. By your success, you'll be advocating the possibility of one to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, hang their own shingle, and become financially stable in the process, but by having attained that success, you would similarly be the target of progressive taxation, and would now be a sympathetic Belmont, from whom riches will be collected and distributed to Fishtown.

devilshaircut 13y ago
I think your assessment is more or less accurate. I see it this way: What practices have resulted in things being the way they are now? These practices are largely attributable to businesses whose policies are endorsed and enacted through government. Government politics are a complete morass and you've done an excellent job of painting how various parties might try and solve the problem. So if government is a morass, how do you approach the problem? Certainly a career in politics is out of the question based on this presupposition. One might consider simply adapting how they act in their daily interactions with others. Personally I think this idea is too small-scale. In my opinion, one strategy would be through the business side. Create a business whose policies create the type of change necessary for closing the gap between the mega-rich and "middle" class. The argument has been made in this thread that in order to compete, it is impossible to instate these types of policies. However, I believe this to be a false assumption. Certainly companies, even large ones, fall into a spectrum of "good" and "bad" practices. There appears to be no bound to either side. I take the David Deutschian view that any problem can be solved with the right knowledge¹. So the question is, can we think creatively, critically, and intelligently enough to solve this problem in business? I believe the answer is yes. ¹ EDIT: Any problem whose solution is not explicitly prohibited by the nature of reality.
- bmelton 13y ago
  I don't know that it's a panacea, but at least pertaining to labor laws, Trader Joe's is fairly well regarded. A couple of simple rules that would take you a very long way towards being the "right" kind of company: - Pay better than minimum wage. Pay a lot better than minimum wage, in fact; even for the lowest employee. - Pay your highest paid executives less than we're used to seeing. I don't know why, but people just absolutely hate it when CEO of such and such is making $x million dollars a year, while the cashiers of so and so are absolutely starving on minimum wage. Cap executive wages to some multiple of the lowest wage. If the CEO wants to make a $10 million a year, then the janitor would have to make $1 million a year; as an example. - Don't cap employee position pay. Have starting wages, of course, and make them generous, but if a cashier has been with you for 172 years, she should have received raises (assuming they were merited) every year, or be let go, if she didn't merit them. - Don't lobby Congress for personal / business gain. I've argued it extensively elsewhere on HN recently, so I won't go into it again now, but I think that people's problems with capitalism aren't actually complaints with capitalism, but a complaint with the crony capitalism that we have in America. IBM lobbies for increased patent protections, makes a billion dollars, pays the guy who thought of it $10 million, and now everybody hates IBM, and especially that guy. If the system were both fair and fairly applied, sure, the Fishtowners might complain, but there would be more in the way of income mobility for the motivated, which should elevate the lower class to a true middle class for those willing to earn it, which would act as a bulwark against unruliness. When Warren Buffet complains that he's being taxed too little, the cynic in me thinks that he wants his less rich competitors to be taxed out of being able to truly compete, while he enjoys his largesse, knowing that no amount of taxation would really have any impact on his lifestyle. For as generous as progressive seems when taken away from the uber-rich, it actually is a penalty for those just on the cusp of wealthy, and keeps them stuck in middle class without an effective means of pushing past it.
  - devilshaircut 13y ago
    I absolutely agree with almost everything you've said here. You've essentially described the kind of company culture I want to build. In particular, you nailed it when you talked about the difference between "capitalism" and "crony capitalism". I personally do not have a problem with capitalism in its pure form (as I understand it). At the risk of sounding like I am parroting a platitude - perhaps I am - I think that capitalism is too often understood to be a zero-sum entity. I believe that the best way to do this is to set a standard of ethics by which you operate your company and then to be as successful as possible within that context. Be competitive; don't use competition as an excuse to contribute to the American economic divide. And now I really will parrot the Buckminster Fuller quote that many people are intimately familiar with: "We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest."
rosser 13y ago
Those are some incredibly broad brushes you're wielding there.
- bmelton 13y ago
  I took care not to misrepresent anyone, but if you feel I've been overly broad, I'm happy to be corrected.
  - judk 13y ago
    Ideas fly better if you don't slap emotionally loaded labels on them, like "liberal" and "Republican"
    - bmelton 13y ago
      I was presenting the schools of thought available, so I felt it fair to attribute the beliefs to their bearers as best I was able. There wasn't any malice presented, as there wasn't any intended, nor were there any attempts at backhandedness so often seen with those sorts of examples (E.g., party A wants to lower taxes, party B wants to raise taxes, and party C wants to make sport of killing the poor.) I'm not selling anything, nor trying to sell anybody on anything, so I didn't see the harm in being forthcoming.
      - rosser 13y ago
        You weren't "being forthcoming", you were stereotyping. Even a casual read of your comment leaves one with little question which group you think are the "good guys", and which ones you think are full of shit. Simplistic analyses like that are a big part of why politics in America are as fucked up as they are: because we've been conditioned to generalize about huge numbers of people on the basis of affiliation with one or the other of a more or less completely "forced choice" between political parties. But, yeah, go ahead and assert that everyone in the progressive left wants to siphon money from investment accounts in Belmont and deposit it into checking accounts in Fishtown. Go ahead and suggest that all libertarians (note, small-l, per original) want to abolish the minimum wage, or Federal income taxes. That's what I'm talking about when I observe the breadth of your brush. It's impossibly broad.
tikhonj 13y ago
Basic income or a negative income tax actually generally seem to be libertarian ideas, suggested as a way to radically simplify the welfare system and limit how much discretion the government had over whom and how much to pay. They are also usually coupled with eliminating the minimum wage since everyone is already guaranteed an income. My understanding is that liberals prefer welfare programs with significantly more oversight and targeting. They want fine control over who gets the money and how they can spend it, promoting specific causes like education or environmentalism.
- stefan_kendall 13y ago
  NIT and basic income are "libertarian" ideas only in that they could eliminate other welfare instruments. This would not happen in practice. Pure libertarianism not considered with pandering to socialists would not propose a nit or basic income.

by bmelton 13y ago

devilshaircut 13y ago

I think your assessment is more or less accurate. I see it this way: What practices have resulted in things being the way they are now? These practices are largely attributable to businesses whose policies are endorsed and enacted through government. Government politics are a complete morass and you've done an excellent job of painting how various parties might try and solve the problem. So if government is a morass, how do you approach the problem? Certainly a career in politics is out of the question based on this presupposition. One might consider simply adapting how they act in their daily interactions with others. Personally I think this idea is too small-scale. In my opinion, one strategy would be through the business side. Create a business whose policies create the type of change necessary for closing the gap between the mega-rich and "middle" class. The argument has been made in this thread that in order to compete, it is impossible to instate these types of policies. However, I believe this to be a false assumption. Certainly companies, even large ones, fall into a spectrum of "good" and "bad" practices. There appears to be no bound to either side. I take the David Deutschian view that any problem can be solved with the right knowledge¹. So the question is, can we think creatively, critically, and intelligently enough to solve this problem in business? I believe the answer is yes. ¹ EDIT: Any problem whose solution is not explicitly prohibited by the nature of reality.

bmelton 13y ago
I don't know that it's a panacea, but at least pertaining to labor laws, Trader Joe's is fairly well regarded. A couple of simple rules that would take you a very long way towards being the "right" kind of company: - Pay better than minimum wage. Pay a lot better than minimum wage, in fact; even for the lowest employee. - Pay your highest paid executives less than we're used to seeing. I don't know why, but people just absolutely hate it when CEO of such and such is making $x million dollars a year, while the cashiers of so and so are absolutely starving on minimum wage. Cap executive wages to some multiple of the lowest wage. If the CEO wants to make a $10 million a year, then the janitor would have to make $1 million a year; as an example. - Don't cap employee position pay. Have starting wages, of course, and make them generous, but if a cashier has been with you for 172 years, she should have received raises (assuming they were merited) every year, or be let go, if she didn't merit them. - Don't lobby Congress for personal / business gain. I've argued it extensively elsewhere on HN recently, so I won't go into it again now, but I think that people's problems with capitalism aren't actually complaints with capitalism, but a complaint with the crony capitalism that we have in America. IBM lobbies for increased patent protections, makes a billion dollars, pays the guy who thought of it $10 million, and now everybody hates IBM, and especially that guy. If the system were both fair and fairly applied, sure, the Fishtowners might complain, but there would be more in the way of income mobility for the motivated, which should elevate the lower class to a true middle class for those willing to earn it, which would act as a bulwark against unruliness. When Warren Buffet complains that he's being taxed too little, the cynic in me thinks that he wants his less rich competitors to be taxed out of being able to truly compete, while he enjoys his largesse, knowing that no amount of taxation would really have any impact on his lifestyle. For as generous as progressive seems when taken away from the uber-rich, it actually is a penalty for those just on the cusp of wealthy, and keeps them stuck in middle class without an effective means of pushing past it.
- devilshaircut 13y ago
  I absolutely agree with almost everything you've said here. You've essentially described the kind of company culture I want to build. In particular, you nailed it when you talked about the difference between "capitalism" and "crony capitalism". I personally do not have a problem with capitalism in its pure form (as I understand it). At the risk of sounding like I am parroting a platitude - perhaps I am - I think that capitalism is too often understood to be a zero-sum entity. I believe that the best way to do this is to set a standard of ethics by which you operate your company and then to be as successful as possible within that context. Be competitive; don't use competition as an excuse to contribute to the American economic divide. And now I really will parrot the Buckminster Fuller quote that many people are intimately familiar with: "We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest."

rosser 13y ago

Those are some incredibly broad brushes you're wielding there.

bmelton 13y ago
I took care not to misrepresent anyone, but if you feel I've been overly broad, I'm happy to be corrected.
- judk 13y ago
  Ideas fly better if you don't slap emotionally loaded labels on them, like "liberal" and "Republican"
  - bmelton 13y ago
    I was presenting the schools of thought available, so I felt it fair to attribute the beliefs to their bearers as best I was able. There wasn't any malice presented, as there wasn't any intended, nor were there any attempts at backhandedness so often seen with those sorts of examples (E.g., party A wants to lower taxes, party B wants to raise taxes, and party C wants to make sport of killing the poor.) I'm not selling anything, nor trying to sell anybody on anything, so I didn't see the harm in being forthcoming.
    - rosser 13y ago
      You weren't "being forthcoming", you were stereotyping. Even a casual read of your comment leaves one with little question which group you think are the "good guys", and which ones you think are full of shit. Simplistic analyses like that are a big part of why politics in America are as fucked up as they are: because we've been conditioned to generalize about huge numbers of people on the basis of affiliation with one or the other of a more or less completely "forced choice" between political parties. But, yeah, go ahead and assert that everyone in the progressive left wants to siphon money from investment accounts in Belmont and deposit it into checking accounts in Fishtown. Go ahead and suggest that all libertarians (note, small-l, per original) want to abolish the minimum wage, or Federal income taxes. That's what I'm talking about when I observe the breadth of your brush. It's impossibly broad.

tikhonj 13y ago

Basic income or a negative income tax actually generally seem to be libertarian ideas, suggested as a way to radically simplify the welfare system and limit how much discretion the government had over whom and how much to pay. They are also usually coupled with eliminating the minimum wage since everyone is already guaranteed an income. My understanding is that liberals prefer welfare programs with significantly more oversight and targeting. They want fine control over who gets the money and how they can spend it, promoting specific causes like education or environmentalism.

stefan_kendall 13y ago
NIT and basic income are "libertarian" ideas only in that they could eliminate other welfare instruments. This would not happen in practice. Pure libertarianism not considered with pandering to socialists would not propose a nit or basic income.