United States of Incompetence?

[drogulus]

     

     This chart is for households, not individuals, and reflect both increased hours people work but also the larger number of workers per household. If the earnings of individuals were represented the numbers would look worse. The sullen and resentful low-paid workers are indeed working longer and getting less for it.

[Todd]

This chart is for households, not individuals, and reflect both increased hours people work but also the larger number of workers per household. If the earnings of individuals were represented the numbers would look worse. The sullen and resentful low-paid workers are indeed working longer and getting less for it.

These are, or should be, familiar statistics, and the chart reinforces the growing income disparity between higher income households and lower income households, and the small increase in real income for the lowest income groups.  How does this evidence of less training, greater (or lesser) incompetence, etc?  It reflects, in anything, a fundamental shift in the economy where people with the best educations and greatest technical skills in narrow areas earn more money.

Also, armed with this chart, how does one formulate a policy or set of policies that raise the income of lower income workers?

[snyprrr]

Is it incompetence when you do it on purpose?

[eyeresist]

Re untrained staff,  there is a trendy management approach which involves encouraging (demanding) that workers constantly apply for internal promotion, and cycling them up through the system. The problem with this is that people are constantly learning their new job, and as soon as they have the hang of it, they get promoted again!

I saw this years ago when I worked for the public service (Australia), and again in the last couple of when applying for my first mortgage. At my bank, I dealt with three different loan officers, over one and a half years, none of whom had much idea of what they were doing. On the day of exchanging the contracts, there was a problem with the cheques, and I discovered that the branch manager was an overpromoted know-nothing too.

[AllegroVivace]

Income in service jobs in the US have been going down for the past thirty years.

That's why.

These people are working two or three jobs.

It's literally impossible to come up with a better answer than this.

Take a look at the facts:

[ibanezmonster]

There should be a limit to how rich people can get (unless they donate heavily to good causes). No one needs that much power.

[Todd]

There should be a limit to how rich people can get (unless they donate heavily to good causes). No one needs that much power.

Who determines the limit?  Who determines "good causes"?

[AllegroVivace]

Who determines the limit? 

Why does that matter? Let's just say a law is passed saying an individual may not accumulate a personal wealth of over 1 billion dollars, if he earns more, he should be required to contribute that to public education, sciences, and health research programs. You tell me right now, in what way would this cause suffering in the world?

[ibanezmonster]

Why does that matter? Let's just say a law is passed saying an individual may not accumulate a personal wealth of over 1 billion dollars, if he earns more, he should be required to contribute that to public education, sciences, and health research programs. You tell me right now, in what way would this cause suffering in this world?

This would sound reasonable. Anywhere between $500 million-1 billion would be a good limit.

[Todd]

Let's just say a law is passed saying an individual may not accumulate a personal wealth of over 1 billion dollars, if he earns more, he should be required to contribute that to public education, sciences, and health research programs. You tell me right now, in what way would this cause suffering in this world?

What world do you live on?  Laws don't just get passed by some omniscient, beneficent entity lacking a political agenda.  Your standard of causing suffering is not a meaningful test - after all, one could argue that suppressing certain types of speech wouldn't cause suffering.  Why not do that as well?  Why should a person donate money to those causes?  Why not the arts, or conservation, or whatever else makes other people feel good?  And what of property rights, the power of the state over individuals, and a host of other more nebulous things.  I suppose it's good to throw those out, because that wouldn't cause any suffering in this world.  Right?

[AllegroVivace]

What world do you live on?  Laws don't just get passed by some omniscient, beneficent entity lacking a political agenda.  Your standard of causing suffering is not a meaningful test - after all, one could argue that suppressing certain types of speech wouldn't cause suffering.  Why not do that as well?  Why should a person donate money to those causes?  Why not the arts, or conservation, or whatever else makes other people feel good?  And what of property rights, the power of the state over individuals, and a host of other more nebulous things.  I suppose it's good to throw those out, because that wouldn't cause any suffering in this world.  Right?

Create all the sophisticated algorithms you want to explain away injustice and misery.

The answer to your question is simple:

I'll tell you who decides the limit... that miserable blue line there - the people who are being f*cked by the greasy-mouth rich mother*ckers who can't get enough and are now going after their medicare, social security, the little money they've set aside for old age.

[ibanezmonster]

What world do you live on?  Laws don't just get passed by some omniscient, beneficent entity lacking a political agenda.  Your standard of causing suffering is not a meaningful test - after all, one could argue that suppressing certain types of speech wouldn't cause suffering.  Why not do that as well?  Why should a person donate money to those causes?  Why not the arts, or conservation, or whatever else makes other people feel good?  And what of property rights, the power of the state over individuals, and a host of other more nebulous things.  I suppose it's good to throw those out, because that wouldn't cause any suffering in this world.  Right?

I think you're making it unnecessarily complex.

Your standard of causing suffering is not a meaningful test - after all, one could argue that suppressing certain types of speech wouldn't cause suffering.  Why not do that as well?

I don't think he meant it that way, specifically. I think he just worded that sentence weirdly.

Why not the arts, or conservation, or whatever else makes other people feel good?

As much as I value the arts, you worry about basic necessities first. Then the arts.

I don't know if you know what living in poverty is like- I don't because my parents charge me cheaply to stay with them, but I can get a taste of it based on people I've known. These aren't lazy people- these are hard-working people.  And it's only getting worse for them, no matter how hard they work. It's like the adults aren't stealing candy from a baby- no, they're stealing food. So much food that the baby eventually will just starve to death. And the adults don't care. Stupid babies.

[Todd]

I'll tell you who decides the limit... that miserable blue line there - the people who are being f*cked by the greasy-mouth rich mother*ckers who can't get enough and are now going after their medicare, social security, the little money they've set aside for old age.

Ah, good to see some reasonable writing.  Good thing people like you don't get to make policy.

I think you're making it unnecessarily complex.

No, I'm not making it unnecessarily complex.  Reality is.  There are a lot of serious political and social considerations, and obviously economic ones, when contemplating wholesale income and wealth redistribution.  Your response indicates you've thought of none of them.

As much as I value the arts, you worry about basic necessities first. Then the arts.

Why should your opinions prevail here?  Why not someone who loves the arts?

[Daverz]

This thread has gotten very silly.  I wouldn't have thought that billionaires need any defenders, but I'm glad Todd is on the case.

[Todd]

I wouldn't have thought that billionaires need any defenders, but I'm glad Todd is on the case.

It's not so much about billionaires as it is about stupid ideas that people come up with that would supposedly solve a variety of social ills.  The ideas floated are of the same intellectual ilk as the chestnut of requiring people to obtain licenses to have children.  To some people, such ideas sound reasonable, but if one thinks about it for even two seconds, it's clear stupid isn't even a sufficient description.

[AllegroVivace]

OK, I'm willing to carry on this debate using the good old Socratic method of questions and answers.

Let's just say the red line on the image above continues forward, 5 to 10 times higher, leaving the blue line where it is. Would that be a desirable progression? At what point would you admit that there's a severe injustice?

By the way, I'm approaching this with an open mind. It's quite possible that I am deluded. I'd like to find out. Let's go ahead if anyone's willing.

[eyeresist]

Funny how libertarians are always eager to defend the rights of billionaires to keep their every cent, but not the rights of the working class to unionise. But as Morrissey sang, "The poor and the needy/Are selfish and greedy." Fuck 'em! I got mine!

[Todd]

Let's just say the r,ed line on the image above continues forward, 5 to 10 times higher, leaving the blue line where it is. Would that be a desirable progression? At what point would you admit that there's a severe injustice?

These are rather different questions with different implications than advocating the establishment of a purely arbitrary wealth or income limit that is used to punish specific people.  It could be argued that income inequality in the US is already so great that economic efficiency is compromised and even democracy itself is threatened.  I wouldn't agree with such an argument, but it can certainly get to that point.  To address such a situation, other, saner policies are available, including a variety of changes to the tax code and switching to progressive benefits in entitlement programs.

Funny how libertarians are always eager to defend the rights of billionaires to keep their every cent, but not the rights of the working class to unionise.

I suppose I'm not a good libertarian – well, I'm not a libertarian – because if people want to unionize, I say let them.  That's not to say companies should not try to prevent unionization.  They should if management and owners choose to do so.

[kishnevi]

Funny how libertarians are always eager to defend the rights of billionaires to keep their every cent, but not the rights of the working class to unionise. But as Morrissey sang, "The poor and the needy/Are selfish and greedy." Fuck 'em! I got mine!

Speaking as a libertarian--and it's often easy to confuse mainstream conservatives with libertarians because mainstream conservativsm adopts half of the libertarian agenda, and some conservatives pretend to be more libertarian than they really are--everyone has a right to join a union if they wish.  But everyone should have a right not to join a union if they wish, and that's not often the case.   In modern life, unions have often developed into cartels that are as bad for workers and consumers as any corporate monopoly.  The public sector unions are a good example.  the modern public employee unions have a lot more in common with K street lobbyists than with they do with Samuel Gomperz and the people who founded the AFL and the CIO.  The prime purpose of the public sector unions is to ensure that their members can feed off the public trough just like any other contestant in our modern corrupt politics.  (Consider this: Why is it almost impossible to get a bad cop off a police force if he's done anything less than commit an actual crime for which he will go to jail? and why can they easily find a job on another force if they are forced out?  Because the public sector unions protect them fiercely, no matter what the merits of the case.)

And also unlike conservatives, libertarians tend to recognize that at least some of those billionaires got their billions by rather unsavory means and by working hand in glove with the politically corrupt.  But there are a number who forget that little fact.

[eyeresist]

Far too reasonable to be a libertarian! Undoubtedly, union corruption is a bad thing - usually linked to institutionalisation rather than activism. Consider for instance the union leaders who earn much more than most of their members. But maybe corrupted power is better than no power at all....

The new conservative government in the Australian state where I live has just struck a deal with the public sector union: apart from raises linked to productivity gains, salary increases will be capped to the Reserve Bank's inflation target of 2.5%. Note, that is the target rate, not the actual rate. Actual inflation has been consistently higher over the past two years. So real value of salaries is going to decline.