What do people think about income inequality?

[Protagoras]

Does one really need to make that much more than everyone else in order to be motivated?

The question is moot. It assumes a false premise.

The purpose of people who are in business is to make money, not motivate anyone else.

[Tempest]

"What do people think about income inequality?"

I believe you need to earn what you have. I'm not rich but I work hard to try to get there. I wouldn't appreciate it if someone feels entitled to my degree of properity if they are unwilling to put in the effort to earn it. Besides incentive inspires innovation and perserverance. Wealth is not an entitlement.

[oldcomputerguy]

"There is nothing more injurious to you as a person than to covet what another has"

Give it a rest, that is hardly the question that was posed!

[Teacher317]

Another quick point: unrelenting income gap growth is desirable. If I have $1,000,000 and you have $1,000, and we both invest it at 10%, then I'll have $1,100,000 and you'll have $1,100 at the end of the year.

The "disparity" grew by $99,900, even though we both invested in exactly the same way. (Of course, greater wealth affords greater opportunities, explaining even an greater rate of "disparity growth".)

If that gap DIDN'T grow, that would mean the entire economy was stagnant, and that leads to HUGE problems in every sector. Growing populations, and the resultant unemployment rate increase, hit first. The importance of maintaining a slow inflation rate hits second. Now "real wealth" is in decline... for all.

(This is what liberals will bring us if they get what they want. That's why I frequently say that liberals love death and decay. Every one of their policies stimulates both. I'd love to chat with you about that some time.)

[headsonpikes]

RE: income disparity

There's nothing particularly troubling about that at all, UNLESS political influence is utilized to unduly "rig the system" to benefit a[n]... interest...

Well, that's what modern, progressive government is all about, Mr. Green!

Someone has to ensure that the right sort of people get 'their fair share'.

But, please, don't call it "rigging" - that suggests something tawdry, and goodness knows, our legislators would never be party to anything tawdry!

[jwalsh07]

At what level of assets can I expect you to show up at my door with a gun and the redistribution police?

Forewarned is forearmed.

[Teacher317]

(I'm wondering if PSS isn't getting half of his graduate thesis research done for him here today, LOL)

[wayoverontheright]

Check out what John Kekes says about egalitarianism in todays www.frontpagemag.com interview.

Frontpage Magazine:

Mr. Kekes, welcome to Frontpage Interview. Let me begin with your argument that the absurdity of egalitarianism is, among many other things, its flawed premise that justice requires overlooking whether individuals deserve what they have and whether they are responsible for what they do not have. Could you talk a bit about this?

Kekes: Egalitarians believe that the obligation of the government is to treat citizens with equal consideration and they interpret that primarily in economic terms. They think that a government that allows substantial differences in wealth is immoral and their policy is to change the existing differences in wealth by taxation. The money collected by taxation is then used to benefit those who have less.

The fundamental objection to this is that the egalitarian policy ignores the crucial question of how people have come to differ in wealth. If they earned their money by legitimate means, hard work, intelligence, in tough competition, and not being afraid to take risks, then they deserve what they have. To take their money from them in order to benefit those who have made wrong choices, were afraid of taking risks, or lost in a fair competition is unjust because it takes from people what they deserve and use it to benefit those who do not deserve it. To say that a government that does not adopt this unjust policy is immoral is absurd. It is the precise opposite of the truth. and it is this falsehood that egalitarian rhetoric endlessly repeats.

The problem for me is that it's not so absurd to want things to be more equal, it's that each attempt to take from and give to, causes the engine of the system to sputter out of kilter, and overall wealth is harmed in a geometricly greater magnitude than the amount of the transfer, not to mention the never harmless increase in government power and equal decrease in freedom for its citizens.

[ForOurFuture]

Does this sort of thing not bother conservatives?

It does not bother me. Discounting fraud, the extremely wealthy and their progeny become extremely wealthy by offering services and products which are extremely valuable to society, evidenced by the amount of money people are willing to exchange for them.

At the same time, human resources staff for Wal-Mart, when they hire a new employee, will routinely complete paperwork for new hires to receive foodstamps, as the wages they pay their workers are so low that, even as full-time employees, they are assured of falling below the poverty level and qualifying for foodstamps, without which they wouldn't even be able to afford to feed their families.

If a person can't afford to feed a family with the low wages offered in exchange for his low-wage skill and low-wage talent, why did he have a family?

[af_vet_1981]

Does this sort of thing not bother conservatives?

It bothers me a great deal.

I'll be happy to take 10% of your money for the rest of your life. I win because I can do something useful with that money (I did not major in political science in college). You win because you get to put your money where your mouth is.

[Anitius Severinus Boethius]

Minimum wage: $5.15 an hour

40 hours at $5.15 = $206 a week

Now how much does a minimum wage person lose to the government on that $206 a week? Well, a minumum of $15.45 just to Social Security. Figure another $12 to other payroll taxes. So a person is left with about $175 take home each week.

In my town, you can get a decent, not nice but decent, 2 bedroom apartment for $600 or less a month. If you make minumum wage, you should probably have a roommate. At $300 a month on rent, you are spending less than two weeks take home on rent. The rest should be to pay any other bills and then maybe $30 a week for food.

Does this stink? Yes. But it's minimum wage. You should be able to get raises and promotions from this stage pretty quickly.

I started off like this, so did all of my friends. Now most of us make around $30k a year, with a couple breaking the $40k mark. We are all around 30 to 35 years old, and we will continue getting "richer" as we go.

I think it was Walter Williams who recently laid out the best way to keep from being poor.

He said (and I paraphrase):

1. Graduate from High School
2. Get a job, any job
3. Don't have children outside of wedlock
4. Don't commit crimes

Of those people who follow those 4 simple rules, less than 1% are below the poverty level.

Poverty is not a "economic" issue, it's a lifestyle issue.

(BTW, the U.S. Federal Poverty Guidelines for 2003 had the poverty level for a single person in the lower 48 States and D.C. at $8980 per annum. A person making federal minimum wage would make $10,712 a year. So those who fall under poverty, as single people, aren't even holding down a full time minimum wage job.)

[Iron Eagle]

Well -- sounds like you do your work at Rutgers. (Since I received my polysci degree there I have no qualms saying that every professor I had was a communist, socialist, or atheist, or radical feminist.)

Don't get hung-up on all these stats. Wealth and the accrual thereof, is not bad or evil. Nor are today's ultra rich capitalists much richer than the wealthy kings and queens of yesteryear. Indeed, in real dollars, some of our industrial Giants had a much greater percentage of world wealth.

Where we would need to be concerned is if those numbers were stagnant. That is, the same people remained in every class, and the groups were widening. That is the fallacy of the numbers. Let me see if I can clarify this. It is often said that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Well, the problem is that sometimes the formerly poor get richer. That is, these are not the same people. The best writing on this is a special piece once done for National Review called, the real Reagan record. I will give an example.

In 1990, at age 24, my wife and I made less than 37K per year, combined. She had an entry-level job post college, and I had not even begun to go back to school at night. I worked a government, blue-collar job making peanuts. Now, we make close to 225K per year. (Actually, that was what we made before she stopped working this past year with the birth of our third child).

We were once in the bottom, in 13+ years we rose to the top 5%. How, hard work, additional education, etc. See, instead of sitting around reading statistics about how poor I was, I returned to school -- first community college, then a four year University, then law school. Now, we do much better. (And, I am the 7th child of a blue collar family, so I had no trust fund or college fund). In fact, my own siblings who failed to apply themselves, find themselves seduced by class warfare arguments. After all, it is easier to blame someone else.

This is not to say that the super-rich don't enjoy advantages that can almost never be overcome. Will my children ever have the wealth of Bill Gates' children, probably not. But, it is not impossible. After all, Bill gates is not the son of old money. The key is not the percentage of people holding the most wealth, the key is the ability of more and more people to move through and between the classes. I see no evidence that such progress is being impeded.

Indeed, equalization of salaries and incomes, would of course be false, since there is no equalization of skills. It would also destroy innovation and incentives to work and create. Most importantly, someone or some entity, the e state most likely, would still hold the wealth, and inequality will always exist.

Get your hands on the real Reagan record, head back to class, and open a can of whup-ass on your socialist professor. I always did.

[CyberCowboy777]

Many more reasoned and intelligent individuals will give you good debate on this issue. Instead I have a question:

Now that you have come into a safe haven of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy (or as we like to call it, normal people) what do you think? Are we the evil, greedy, war mongering fanatics the media would have you believe we are?

Welcome to FreeRepublic and thanks for coming in with a respectful attitude.

[CGVet58]

welcome PSS, and I'll try to answer some of your points as best I can.

to begin with, I do not believe in redistribution of wealth - and when I hear these numbers you quote, I listen to the context in which they are given. When it comes from the left (and, despite your initial and honest qualifier, I sense that you are not "proselytizing" - just looking for honest feedback), the underlying foundation and rationalization is that the numbers are so unequal that they must be adjusted in the name of social justice.

In a nutshell, income redistribution might have actually meant something simple and altruistic at some point in time, that actually meant an incremental improvement on a given condition - but in modern political thought, the reality is that such discussions invariably amount to only half of the discussion... the other half being, "...and if we redistribute income, we can then implement grand social experiments because our intent is benevolent...". Those usually (and historically...) turn out bad, creating more problems than solutions.

See our modern day welfare state (the great society) and see how much we've spent on this concept - something like a trillion dollars over the past 40 years. And then compare the money spent to the social fabric of the poor that program was created to help. All the indices; family stability, crime per population, % of two-parent families, education level... all have gone down both in absolute terms and in progress trends from what they were before the program implementation.

Having said that, I as a middle-class conservative experience a very mild concern with income disparity between the wealthy and the poor. Not enough of a concern to throw my support behind a progressive tax, because that is not the solution. Not enough support to ask the government to intervene to "protect" my interests, because I am completely against group rights, be it an ethnic, demographic or class group. Paraphrasing (Jefferson, iirc...): "any government big enough to give you everything you want is powerful enough to take everything you have".

That there possible dangers to such disparities? I think the answer is yes. I am more concerned with how expensive college education is and will be, and wonder if we are not in danger of creating a permanent elite that can afford education and a vast underclass of perfectly willing and capable Americans who cannot. Would income redistribution correct this problem? No. American ingenuity and individuality will.

Finally, to come back to something you wrote: ("Flip that around and that means that the remaining 98% of us have only 20% to go around amongst all the rest of us.") here's what this simple soul who falls in the remaining 98% has: A steady job
A nice roof over my family's head (not mine, but am happy
in it, and can get something in another area if we
worked at it)
A lovely wife and 6 month old son
Our own car
My health - and more importantly, that of my family
Potential for advancing in life to improve my lot

Looking above, I'd say i'm not doing to bad for "only" having 20% of whatever to share with 97 others. Which leads me to my final comment... Life, and the American Economy, are not Zero-Sum Games. Income redistribution presumes that a finite pie must be sliced according to some utopian concept of fairness. It does not allow for growth.

Ok, I've rambled enough... welcome to the Freep.

Juan
CGVet58

[truth_seeker]

"In Europe, CEOs typically earn between 10 and 15 times the average salary of their workers."

Why is Europe relevant?

What mechanism, following our constitution and laws, would be employed to deter Walmark, from expanding their business, and from competing?

Why are the small companies owed anything? Why should consumers pay higher prices, in order to prop up inefficient companies?

Remember buggy whips?

[Teacher317]

Of course life in the US is better than life in Afghanistan, that's not saying anything, they're two totally different countries.

And the reason for that difference is that one recognizes the right of the individual to keep that which he earns!

The question in my mind is how do we compare with other similarly prosperous countries? That is to say, let's compare apples and apples, not apples and oranges.

Well, if liberals change this country to one that practices rampant income redistribution (even more than it does now), then we will start becoming more and more like Afghanistan!

[Auntie Mame]

Give it a rest, that is hardly the question that was posed!

I don't understand your comment. If my response warrants your comment to "give it a rest," what do you mean by that and what was the question posed?

I really want to know if my comments were stupid. (I might need to go back into lurker mode.)

[Wiser now]

Neal Boortz: "The rich will continue to do that which makes them rich and the poor will continue to do that which makes them poor".
Never forget this, prosperity is generally a matter of behavior, not chance.
The only underprivileged in this country are those who think they are.

[Teacher317]

With respect, the numbers don't seem to bear that out. Studies done by state labor departments have typically found that when a Wal-Mart moves into a community, for every 1 job they create, they displace 3-5 local jobs, jobs which typically paid better and offered things like health care and other benefits. In other words, Wal-Mart destroys more jobs than it creates and the jobs it creates are less well compensated.

That, my friend, is called efficiency. It is a GOOD thing. When more cars can be built by fewer people in less time, then the wealth of the entire nation grows. Again, that is a GOOD thing! It frees up human capital to do other things (further diversifying and expaning the national economy), it brings prices down (greater supply = lower cost), and it even helps the environment (less energy generation required)!!!!

Liberals always whine about the individual who may be inconvenienced by the success of the national economy, yet they never bother to think that the individual can, like any freaking mammal, ADAPT to its circumstances! Humans even have the ability to CHANGE their circumastances!!

How is it that liberals (who think of humans as less able than mammals) are able to garner so many votes? Oh, that's right, plenty of Americans are happy to simply live as sheep.

[calenel]

"Now, if I were living in Europe, not only would I not be paying tuition, I would actually be receiving a modest stipend to cover my living costs while I was in school."

All paid for by someone else.

"In addition, I'd be covered by a public health plan, which admittedly would probably not provide quite as good a coverage as the private insurance I could opt for if I wanted to spend the extra money on it, but at least I would have something, which, compared to the nothing I have right now in our wealthy US, sounds kind of like a step up to me."

Also paid for by someone else.

Europe is different (and Canada). They don't have to pay for the defense of the West, the US does that for them. Thus, they can delude themselves about the affordability of Socialism. Consider, OTOH, the quality of life in the former Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, or the PRC today.

"As for appreciating the value of money, I can't help but feel that, if anything, the working poor in this country who often have to work multiple jobs just in order to make ends meet, would be more appreciative of the value of an earned dollar than some billionaire who rakes in millions simply by clicking a button and selling a bunch of stocks."

The goal is not to appreciate the value of a dollar, but to appreciate those things that the dollar can get you. More dollars means more things to appreciate and more flexibility in the selection of those things.

If all the money, and by extension, stuff in the world were evenly distributed, what would you have that I would want? What incentive would there be for me to work for you? I suppose I might want to have more of something, but what would make you want to have less? And even if I could work for you for some of your stuff, as soon as you paid me, I would be "Rich" and somebody would want to redistribute my "Wealth" back to the "Poor" thus leaving me where I started except that I did all the work and you did none.

And what about all the things that don't divide evenly? Who gets them? Nobody? Does everybody get 1/327th of a 60 inch Plasma TV? Or are they going to be reserved for the elite that insures that the rest of us all have the same stuff?

"I don't know, I hear what you're saying and partially agree with you, but I'm not sure it's fair to compare the quality of life in the US to that which prevails in the worldest poorest countries. Of course life in the US is better than life in Afghanistan, that's not saying anything, they're two totally different countries. The question in my mind is how do we compare with other similarly prosperous countries? That is to say, let's compare apples and apples, not apples and oranges."

The poorest of the poor in the West are wealthier than all but the wealthiest members of most societies on this planet. The disparities are far more extreme, however. How many of the rulers/wealthy class of countries like China, Columbia, Uganda and so on are millionaires while their citizens live on a dollar or two per day? An average American makes 100 times as much, yet our rulers and all but a handful of our wealthy class are still only millionaires. Seems like a far more equitable distribution of wealth.