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

[Borodog]

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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.

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Me too. This can only happen when there exists "policy", which is a problem of government, not capitalism.

[GoodCallYouWin]

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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.

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Me too. This can only happen when there exists "policy", which is a problem of government, not capitalism.

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Policy is an extension of power, which is ultimately granted by guns, not 'governments'.

Edit : although of course, governments can and do wield 'guns', because they have policy (and power)

[pvn]

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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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That's true. But like I said, Victoria was pretty recent. I might trade places with her (but probably not). Constantine? No way.

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What about a Roman Emperor with loads of sex slaves, all the alcohol he wants (hookers and blow of the time?), all day to sit on his ass and crap in his gold toilet. I mean, come on, that had to be better than cleaning crap from McDonalds. You can't be serious. It's not like these guys have plasmas and ipods.

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I dunno. You still have a bunch of guys trying to stab you in the back, [censored] your kids, and dump them in the river. If all you do is crap in a gold toilet all day, you're going to be fish food in a week or two.

[pvn]

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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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That's true. But like I said, Victoria was pretty recent. I might trade places with her (but probably not). Constantine? No way.

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What about a Roman Emperor with loads of sex slaves, all the alcohol he wants (hookers and blow of the time?), all day to sit on his ass and crap in his gold toilet. I mean, come on, that had to be better than cleaning crap from McDonalds. You can't be serious. It's not like these guys have plasmas and ipods.

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I thought about the sex slave angle, but the only thing I'd want with them is to free them. Being drunk constantly wouldn't be fun at all. People who think that being drunk constantly is fun have a very warped perception of what "fun" is IMO.

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You are the emperor of $*&$ing ROME! You can free them and they'll still want to bang you constantly. I mean COME ON!

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It would be pretty sweet, but it's not as good as air conditioning. Also, easy sex isn't nearly as fun/rewarding as finding sex with someone you know's really into you.

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I dunno about this either. Hookers and blow go a long way.

It's a toss up.

[pvn]

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You can very easily empirically show that your statement is a falsehood (not about your personal circumstances which I don't know, the i apologize for the adhominem aside) but just calculate for example what you would make per year working full time at a minimum wage job, and then calculate expenses for say, a family with 3 children headed by a single mother.

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I know you're new around here, but this isn't first grade. People are going to notice when you move the goalposts like that. You were talking about auto workers and carpenters, none of which make anywhere close to minimum wage.

[latefordinner]

No I believe the statement was no one who builds cars or houses, which doesn't nec imply skilled unionized tradeworkers. Your average undocumented Mexican drywaller for example, might not even be making minimum wage, and is certainly not making much more than it. I personally know people that are working in both industries that are making the minimum wage. And later the statement became "anyone who is working in the US makes enough to have a house and car"

[andyfox]

But your post claims that the concern with wealth inequality is not merited because, among other reasons, standards of living keep rising. But just as surely as that, government will always be with us. And it will always be, in greater or lesser degree (mostly greater), of, by and for the top 3%.

[pvn]

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No I believe the statement was no one who builds cars or houses, which doesn't nec imply skilled unionized tradeworkers. Your average undocumented Mexican drywaller for example, might not even be making minimum wage, and is certainly not making much more than it.

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Cite? Three seconds of googling indicated that non-union drywallers make around $12/hour. As for what happens to "undocumented" workers, blame government intervention that forces them into disavantaged bargaining positions (despite which, they still flock to the US).

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I personally know people that are working in both industries that are making the minimum wage.

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Doing what? Cleaning toilets at an auto factory is not "building cars".

Again, three seconds of google:

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a UAW-represented assembler earns $25.63 per hour of straight time. A typical UAW-represented skilled-trades worker earns $29.75 per hour of straight time.

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[latefordinner]

You are being pedantic as clearly the statement was later made "anyone who works in the US can afford a house and a car" - so by your admission a janitor in a factory should not be considered in evaluating the veracity of this statement?

I just called my friend who worked for a year a few years ago at a windshield wiper assembly plant. He held up every wiper blade to make sure some palstic part was attached correctly. He made minimum wage, no benefits.

I assure you that the drywallers I have worked on construction sites with were not making $12/hour. I don't even make $12/hour with a masters degree for [censored]'s sake.

We can have a broader debate under what a liveable wage would look like, wages under capitalism, wage slavery, but I'm not going to have some nitty debate over the average wage of industry x in city y where the median home price is z just to refute a variation of the conservative assumption that poor people are poor because they don't work hard enough or they frivilously spend their money.

[xorbie]

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PS. Why isn't the boy next door entitled to *your* money, and why don't you just hand it over instead of using force to take someone else's? My opinion is that the "compassion" that underlies this flavor of socialism is a hollow, empty compassion. The socialist doesn't actually care enough about the poor and the downtrodden to get off his duff or reach into his own pocket; he would rather stay on his duff and have a man with a gun reach into someone else's.

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I think that is a prejudice towards socialists, you find a lot of socialists that are involved in charity etc.. The same prejudice you also often find towards rich people. I think most people have compassion and want good for people around, regardless of their political belief. If enough charity was in place to achieve the goals, I wouldn't ask you for a single dollar of tax, but unfortunately it isn't.

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That's because much of it is outlawed. It's a great trick. Make it illegal to provide charity, and then claim there is a market failure in charitable giving. For example, the state makes one jump through an incredible amount of extremely costly hoops to set up any charity of significant scale. Why? Because those in government don't want the competition. For example, where I come from, it is a crime to cook food for the homeless.

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You could almost say the government is a very nice economic "corporation" which is a leach on society for the most part. And then you'll turn around and argue that once government is gone, other corporations will all be much nicer.