You’re comparing workers in two vastly different markets to workers in the same market. In the US, wages for one class of employee have exploded as wages for the rest have stagnated.
You're mistaking region for (labor) market.
The market for different kinds of jobs is different. Otherwise everyone would be paid the same.
You can absolutely refer to the US economic market or African market and the participants there in. If not I would love a reference to explain otherwise.
Of course different kinds of labor receive varying compensation and these things depend on the level of skill and demand. This isn’t a question of whether everyone should be paid equally. It’s a question of how to resolve growing income disparities between top earners and low earners, specifically asymmetric income growth. Top earner income is rising at amazing rates while low earners are seeing meager increases. This has been ongoing for decades. There is an entire discussion on it here so I don’t think there needs to be any more elaboration.
Consider that Americans waste more energy and generate more greenhouse gasses that citizens in other, lower emitting countries pay for - we are all on the same planet.
Ultimately these discussions devolve to people just being bitter others having more than them.
There’s simply no problem with people having more money, and once people realize this we can move on.
Housing issues are supply issues exacerbated by zoning and local nimby governments. It can be resolved without income ceilings.
Health care issues can be solved with single payer healthcare or other schemes. Again no income neutering required.
And sure you can fund these things and more with taxes, but no realistic taxation scheme will result in there not being extreme disparities.
Funny enough young Americans waste time complaining about rich people instead of just voting, which would solve most of their issues.
https://archive.nytimes.com/krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/1...
https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2019/
Even with more conservative approaches, wage growth of lower earners is far outpaced by top earners.
https://www.aei.org/articles/have-wages-stagnated-for-decade....
> to an unreasonable extent then that is a problem....fairly compensatory to those who contribute
There is a reason to expect reasonably equal growth, as all wage classes are contributing.
Also if you are going to say something like;
> There is absolutely no reason to expect equal wage growth to begin with.
Then what's your argument?
Taxing the rich is less about the money, and more about the power it buys.
This is hopelessly naive. Whoever you vote for, your vote only matters one day a year. The other 364.25 days are for the lobbyists.
[1]: https://effectivegov.uchicago.edu/news/power-begets-corrupti... [2]: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadian-health-care-system... [3]: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/crea-housing-data-1.6843592
I was directly replying to this accusation that I'm to blame for idly standing by whilst nimbys oppress the developers. I respond that none of that lines up with my local situation, and yet your boogeyman of rent increase is ever-present.
> ... [complaining] instead of just voting, which would solve most of their issues.
You presented "just voting" as a panacaea. You've retreated to the "[single] very particular class of issue" while sounding very triumphant that I'm the fool. Classic motte&bailey.
I don't know about where you live, but I've never had more than one to three opportunities to "just vote" per year. I spend the rest of the time "complaining."
It’s actually one person having more than literally a billion other people combined, and THATS a problem
Here's a dirty secret in case you say all the billionaires will run away with their wealth. They aren't worth much.
Bezos isn't Amazon and if he was never born those people would work somewhere and the online store market would be divided somehow.
Billionaires harness labor and capture demand they create little of it then most of the benefits accrue to people who buy things not build things.
The version of it's a wonderful life starring Bezos has him stumbling around Bedford falls marveling that virtually nothing has changed and terminates with him begging Clarence to put him back because he misses his yacht.
There is online shopping other than Amazon.
Are health care CEOs unusually paid compared to CEOs? (They are not). As I said ultimately your selection in criteria is arbitrary.
The matter at hand here is some believe the income inequality is a problem. What ratio is acceptable to you?
And also one that confers some sense of fairness. Tell me how this is at all fair to workers?
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/08/07/for-most-...
Home ownership in the US is higher than in:
- New Zealand
- Sweden
- France
- Japan
- Austria
- Germany
- Switzerland
Home ownership in the US is lower than in:
- Kosovo
- Russia
- Norway
- Spain
- Italy
https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/home-ownership-rat...
My point is that home ownership isn't something that workers in even some of the most enlightened countries have. In contrast, there's incredibly high home ownership in some places that have dubious quality of life.
And so it begs the question why home ownership is voiced as such an important need of workers? I would argue that the incentive structures should be more aligned around good shelter.
Home ownership has been advertised and indoctrinated in the psyche as The American Dream, but I would question that dream...
I’m not even about to begin to touch the notion that home ownership, which has been a staple of human history since time immemorial, is not important. That strikes me as a comment waayyy to deep in the kool aid
But let's follow the deflection. Instead of monetary disparity, lets look at energy waste disparity. It was recently shown that the top 10% wealthiest Americans contribute to 40% of the greenhouse gas emissions in the country. As you said, we are all on the same planet. just because they have managed to grab a bigger piece of the pie shouldn't mean that they get to pollute the planet more than anyone else. In both cases the mindset needs to change and those at the top maybe need to be a little less greedy overall.
source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/08/230817163849.h...
That's quite the arbitrary line to draw. Different roles have different labor markets. If you're a software engineer you are probably getting paid 10 times more than an EA.
> It was recently shown that the top 10% wealthiest Americans contribute to 40% of the greenhouse gas emissions in the country.
To be in the top 10% in America in terms of wealth, your net worth needs to be ~$850k. To be in the top 10% in America in terms of wages, your annual comp needs to be ~$175.
That means probably most senior software engineers are in that bracket - https://www.levels.fyi/
Your stance is fine and logical, but most people don't feel the same. The difference between your wealth vs a poor African, vs your lack vs a rich American, is that you have the ability to collectivize and reach that rich American physically (not advocating violence, but pointing out that revolutions are violent).
I agree that Americans should also keep this in mind, when we as a country deal with the global poor. We're richer, but they have numbers. Not wise for us to fly too high above them, without using that wealth to benefit them too.
It is also worth noting that the results of those revolutions are often worse for both the rich and the poor. There's a long list of countries that have destroyed productive but unequal economies and replace them with those that are worse, and usually unequal but on a different axis.
People like to talk about the French Revolution with Eat the Rich slogans, and forget that it left everyone worse off, led to dictatorship, and eventually everyone coming back around to realizing the old system wasn't so bad.
This is a good point. America and Africa are the same because they’re both on earth. Few people have the good sense to dilute a point to absolutely meaningless terms, all of that muckety-muck about “relevance” and “the topic at hand” distracts from the truly important work: handwaving in such a way to shut down discussion at light speed
I can't speak for everyone, but I"m pretty sure most people do care about those with less than them.
Plenty of desperate people willing to do whatever jobs they can right now.
Not a lot of time to train for more lucrative work, let alone find it.
No, just like complaining abou theft doesn't betray the secret wish to be the thief, but for there to be no theft. Same for wages not matching productivity, not even inflation, while inequality keeps rising. If you can't understand that, that says solely something about you.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3....
Yes, by definition. The question is, how much is too much money? And in what context?
Put another way, in a given economy, how much do the wages between the top and bottom earners need to differ in order for there to be not only a perceived inequity, but a genuine ethical imbalance?
This stats is relevant, if you vote based on data of how shared infrastructure is used.
Rich people having almost all the money means in practice they have almost all the power and our society consistently acts in a fashion so as to serve the interests in virtually all matters right up until something is so important that it solely makes or breaks elections.
Billionaires don't just hoard all the toys they are outright poison for democracy.
If you aren't a temporarily embarrassed millionaire you are yourself benefiting from inequality and value your own interests over the rest of us.
It's ok if you think greed is good just admit it and don't pretend more ethical people are just jealous.
I have considered it, and it’s why I support ending all immigration (legal or otherwise), even enforcing reverse-migration if necessary.
Every person we bring here 10/20/30x’es their lifetime carbon output. Pro-immigration leftists are some of the biggest polluters on the planet for this reason.