Why "x% of people have y% of the wealth" is irrelevant.

[AlexM]

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To repeat what I said:

"Everyone in this one (that works) can afford a car and a home unless they choose to waste their money on other things."

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Oh I see, not letting your children starve is "wasting your money on other things".

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Let's say that I pull in $1 million dollars a year. This would make me wealthy by anyone's standards. Now, let's say I'm paying $300k a year in taxes cause I'm good with loopholes and so I only have $700k. Now, let's say I go out and irresponsibly father 150 kids. The courts rule that I have to pay out $5000 per year in child support per kid, leaving me making -$50,000 per year. Whose fault is it that I'm now poor? How much sympathy do you really have for me?

[Iplayboard]

Tom Collins,

I'm totally with you on this one. I'd easily trade places with a Roman emperor. Come on Alex, [censored] air condition over being the most powerful man in the world? Never having to work a day in your life over Internet access? Having sex with the most beautiful women in Rome (and beyond) over owning a television?

To each his own. Still almost everybody today is better off than almost everybody of yesteryear. That is the point.

[latefordinner]

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Still almost everybody today is better off than almost everybody of yesteryear. That is the point.

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Everyone should read The Original Affluent Society

[BPA234]

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Do you know anyone who builds cars that can't afford one? Or many homeless people in the construction industry?

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Actually I know both.

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You must live in another country then. Everyone in this one (that works) can afford a car and a home unless they choose to waste their money on other things.

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This to me sums up the absolute disconnect between most of the privileged wealthy posters on this forum and the reality in the US. I'm a social worker. I spend quite a bit of time in inner-city ultra-impoverished communities. To say that all you need to do is work and you can afford a car and house is completely ridiculous and is the same meriotcratic [censored] always bandied about by capitalists in justifying a tremendously unequal and unjust socioeconomic system.

Also, what if you can't work? What if you don't have the skills necessary for the jobs available to you? What if you are sick or old or developmentally challenged?

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First off, I salute you for your career choice. Social work is a noble endeavor and we are all fortunate that there are people who choose to work in that field.

In regards to your post, there is irony in your assertion about the disconnect that you accuse wealthy posters of suffering. Even though you may be right. IMO, you are equally disconnected. Your perspective is wildly skewed by the ultra-impoverished environment within which you work.

The impoverished, inner-city is not representative of US society as a whole. The extreme poverty that you are dealing with daily is not how most Americans live. Nor is it how anyone should have to live.

Finally, if you are able to work, no one in the US has to live that way; there are available avenues to escape poverty.

[Iplayboard]

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Still almost everybody today is better off than almost everybody of yesteryear. That is the point.

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Everyone should read The Original Affluent Society

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The problem with this kind of thinking is that it incorporates "wants" (not subjective or anything...) into its definition of standard of living.

As long as everyone has what he "wants" then everyone will be happy!!

Yay!!!!

[andyfox]

People who didn't know of air conditioning or the internet didn't miss it. Seems to me royalty lived pretty well.

[andyfox]

But she had the finest things available in the world. She didn't need stock quotes, she didn't need to buy low and sell high. Nor an ipod, whatever music she wanted to hear when she wanted to hear it was brought to her, live.

[Borodog]

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"the janitors of today [. . .] live better than the kings and queens of past centuries"

I find it hard to believe that the man I see sweeping up the office just now lives better than did, say, Queen Victoria.

But I suppose it depends on how we define "better" and I'm willing to listen.

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I don't know about you, but I'd be much happier living in some crappy apartment with air conditioning, TV and the Internet than being the richest person 2,000 years ago. Some people who care more about power than about comfort might disagree.

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The richest people back then didn't have to work a day. I think you are overvaluing things like TVs and AC and undervaluing free time.

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They also routinely died as babies, or had rotting teeth as adults.

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Again, this is such a corner case since there were SO FEW people of such great privilege. Even if a few people back then were better off than the janitors of today, clearly the 5th percentile of today is better off than the 95th percentile of 500 years ago. 99th and 1st percentiles are a bigger stretch.

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For you Tom, I will concede this argument and adopt your adjusted definition.

[Borodog]

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It doesn't matter if the "Gini" coefficient, a measure of "wealth concentration" continues to go up, because the standard of living of all individuals in society continues to go up. Anyone who doesn't believe this is invited to compare the standard of living of a modern janitor in the United States to kings and queens of prior centuries. The standard of living of the janitor is higher in practically every respect, with the exception of the ability to command servants.

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A few questions:

1) Why would we choose to use "standard of living" as a metric to compare the live of a modern American janitor, and royalty of prior centuries? Is this a fair comparison? If we were to use "quality of life" as our metric, instead -- we might find there are big differences, particularly with regards to such variables like leisure time.

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"Standard of living" is certianly fair, since that is what capitalism drastically improves the absolute level of. But if you want to use a metric like "leisure time", be my guest. Obviously I can't make the same comparison (janitors to royalty), but it is undeniable that it is capitalism, the division of labor, the accumulation of capital and the increased productivity that it allows that has allowed the increase in leisure time. Not to mention increases in the demand for labor, increases in workplace safety, reduction in the amount of child labor, increases in all manner of non-wage benefits, the rise of wages as a fraction of revenues at the expense of profits, etc.

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2) I don't doubt the pie is bigger, globally. I don't even doubt that capitalism has played a large role in making that pie bigger; but can we not agree that using an American janitors as our sample might lead us to some false conclusions about the empirical realities of the life of the poor -- particularly when we expand our view globally? If we were to instead compare the life of a modern Chinese rice farmer -- or the modern Bangladeshi squatter -- how much has their lot improved in the past five or six centuries? I'd suggest they're essentially no better than their ancestors were 500 years ago; I might be wrong on this count. But if you're willing to concede that I'm correct -- that the life of your average Chinese rice farmer, or southeast Asian squatter, is no better than it was 500 years or a millennium ago -- then your claim that the standard of living of all continues to go up appears to be awfully dubious.

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Obviously capitalism can't do too much to increase the standard of living for those who live where there is no capitalism.

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I suspect some of your ideological opponents would be willing to concede that your typical American -- even lower and middle class Americans, like janitors -- lives a life of relative luxury. But I suspect that your opponents would suggest that much of America's material wealth is attributable to the US government's ability to wield military force, which in turn gives Americans undue influence in international relations and the global economy.

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Couldn't agree more. I find it hilarious that people complain about the "trade deficit". The trade deficit, which is fuelled by our inflationary monetary policy and the monetary imperialism that our military supremacy allows (i.e., a large chunk of the world's states use our fiat currency as their reserve currency, on top of which they print their own fiat currencies; this means that they hold dollars, increasing the foreign demand for the dollar and exporting a good chunk of our inflation [about 1/3 of it]) really does exploit the rest of the world; we get real goods cheaper than we otherwise could (at the expense of short term losses of our own manufacturing jobs, but that isn't really a net loss for us; there's a reason we don't have 40% unemployment even though almost all of our farmers have lost their jobs), while their citizens get more expensive goods (because they have to bid against us) and more inflation that also makes them poorer. Our government's monetary imperialism is a double whammy on much of the world.

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So, again, I'm willing to concede that the pie is bigger. I'll happily concede capitalism has made that pie bigger. I'll go further and concede many of the technological advances, which have made the quality of life for many in the West so much better than their ancestors, are also the product of capitalism. I'll even concede that some measure of the increased global population (which, in turn, leads to increased production capabilities --> cheaper prices --> more widely available goods) is attributable to capitalism. But I don't think any of this addresses many of the moral and ethical concerns that people have concerning income and wealth disparity, so I'm going to admit that I don't really see where this thread gets us, exactly. And, lastly, as I note above, I'm not entirely sure the comparison you ask us to make is entirely appropriate.

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And I will only say again that a) capitalism can't help where there ain't capitalism, and b) state-sponsored monetary imperialism and other state interventions and incestuous relationships between states and businesses cannot be laid on the shoulders of capitalism, which is simply a system based on private property in all orders of goods based on principles of first acquisition and voluntary contractual exchange, facilitated by a commodity money. The extent to which these conditions are violated is the extent to which markets, economies, and societies are not capitalist.

[Shadowrun]

The problem i have is when that top 3% or whatever number due to their power affect policy in a negative manner for everyone besides themselves.