Futurebot

For anyone confused about Medium's export feature, it's available under Settings->Export Content from the user menu. Worries about platforms not providing this are warranted, but I think Medium already has this covered, even if some of the export HTML is messier than some would like.

Until Medium, I hosted my own blogs on my own web servers (for ~17 years). I eventually got tired of dealing with updates, comment spam management (even with Akismet and friends), breakin attempts, and all the rest, so I moved there. I'd still like to see friendly URL and custom domain support, as well as some fixes to the editor (bulleted lists + blockquote indentation bugs are very frustrating), but overall, I've been fairly satisfied with it.

His concerns might be a tad overblown in this instance, even if I agree with many of his concerns about the open web (and I personally still think RSS should be everywhere by default. It's still incredibly useful, even if only used for API consumption.)

Medium already has an export feature. If you're arguing that they may take it away (which I think is vanishingly unlikely), then that's another thing entirely. The feature is there, though, so incentives about building one don't seem relevant to the discussion.

It's called "Last Place Aversion": http://www.npr.org/2011/09/04/140116142/avoiding-last-place-...

Hi Mike,

I wanted to respond to all your comments, but they're blog-post level and I'm in the middle of writing a book so I can't properly do them justice. A very short answer to just some of your questions on government size and the innovation/social support question:

1) The Scand. model shows that larger (and more importantly well-run, and smarter) government is completely compatible with innovation and business creation (as well as high social mobility.) Stronger social supports mean more risks, which means more innovation and businesses. Size is a red herring, as I'll discuss below, though.

2) The "Freedom indexes" aren't wrong per se, in that they show what they purport to show, but the way they've been interpreted / designed is to always support the ideas that less regulation always and everywhere equals growth, even "good" growth. The cultural environment they were created in doesn't allow for much else. That doesn't mean they're useless; it just means that they have to be interpreted contextually.

3) Culture matters. A lot. A society that has a baseline of good infrastructure (broadly construed, not just physical, but social and technological) plus a culture of entrepreneurialism is likely to produce more innovation even with 50% marginal tax rates.

I'd add for all of the above is that the environment for innovation can be thought of like the range of temperatures compatible with life; there's a margin where innovation will likely go down at either end of the spectrum:

- If your MTR is too high, people might actually move or decide its not worth it to start a business. The issue is that the actual level and the level pushed by the economic right are very far apart. Scand. / France / Germany shows that 50-60% MTR works just fine, but we could easily imagine that a 90% rate would have the opposite effect.

- If your MTR (and hence ability to fund the aforementioned infrastructure [in this case everything from university tuition to public transportation to government grants for businesses to social welfare to allow people more freedom / privation protection]) is too low, you can lose innovation potential because too many people spend heir time and energy just trying to survive or get to the "baseline" of innovation (like working survival jobs instead of studying.) Even small-scale cash handouts in many developing countries to would-be entrepreneurs can bolster innovation and growth, as a number of previous and extant experiments have shown.

- Regulation and government size are often explained in terms of "number" or "size", but these should be considered complete red herrings. What's more important are good design, responsiveness to changing circumstances, good administration, hard-to-corrupt regulators, and understandability. Many of the Scand. countries, NZ, and especially Singapore (for all its faults) show that regulation can be done in a way that protects people and does not squash business. The proper way to frame this is not to think about "too many" or "too big" but "bad" and "stupid." Bad/stupid regulation can kill business, but good/smart regulation can actually support it (one way is to allow certain kinds of businesses which lines to color inside AND to let them know that they are not being undermined when their competitors cheat - standard regulations means a level playing field for businesses in many cases, particularly ones in well-trodden industries.)

The other thing I'd say, which is very interesting, is that even though there's some disagreement on the causes and the extent of many of the inequality issues, the solutions are weirdly convergent. Left-wing intellectuals with a technological bent, realistic right-wing intellectuals who have given up on a complete dismantling of social welfare provision, and technologists of the techno-libertarian (both left and right) variety have spoken in favor of the GBI, which would kill several birds with one stone:

With a proper GBI, you wouldn't need TANF, SNAP, WIC, social security or any of those. You would still need a proper UHC, and would probably need top ups for those with disabilities, but we could get to the "post-Scandanavian" model of social democratic capitalism if it was done on a large scale. Politically unlikely for another half-century, in my estimation, but a far better solution than most of the others.

The "standard" list of suggestions (like not gutting SS) takes into account political likelihood, even though I consider many of them second-best solutions.

Hayes makes this exact argument in Twilight of the Elites (but for wealth, not income):

"At the broader social level it means we expect a high degree of social mobility. We hope that the talented children of the poor will ascend to positions of power and prestige while the mediocre sons of the wealthy will not be charged with life-and-death decisions. Over time, in other words, society will have mechanisms that act as a sort of pump, constantly ensuring that the talented and hardworking are propelled upward, while the mediocre trickle downward.

But this ideal, appealing as it may be, runs up against the reality of what I’ll call The Iron Law of Meritocracy. The Iron Law of Meritocracy states that eventually the inequality produced by a meritocratic system will grow large enough to subvert the mechanisms of mobility. Unequal outcomes make equal opportunity impossible.

The Principle of Difference will come to overwhelm the Principle of Mobility. Those who are able to climb up the ladder will find ways to pull it up after them, or to selectively lower it down to allow their friends, allies, and kin to scramble up. In other words: “Whoever says meritocracy says oligarchy.”"

I'm sorry, I don't follow. You cannot reduce social distance without reducing income inequality. If those other things include "reduce income inequality", then yes, we're in agreement. If those other things do not include that, then we're not in agreement - those things are ultimately eating around the edges (and we should do them. 100% we should do them because they matter, too) and not attacking the core problem. Income inequality is both a symptom (policy preferences that favor low taxes, loopholes, etc.) and a cause of the problem (inequality itself causes vertical social distance, causing unresponsive elites, causing people to get elected that favor the preferences of other elites, which causes..) It's self-reinforcing.

You can't fix "vertical social distance" without reducing inequality. Read my links to find out why.

Here's another: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_Unite...

No, it's not just that. CF is not the only mechanism through which the wealthy can exert their influence:

- think tank funding

- ad spending

- lobbying (CF will not fix that)

- the potential of future jobs / revolving door

Most importantly, cultural deference does not go away with CF reform; people respect the monied and the powerful for more than their campaign contributions. They also respect people "like them" (http://time.com/373/congress-is-now-mostly-a-millionaires-cl...), which means similar socio-economic backgrounds, elite schools, clubs, etc.

They buy influence indirectly by simply having wealth and power concentrated with them. You can only reduce that by reducing the distance between the bottom and the top. You have to reduce "vertical social distance."

Nothing is a silver bullet here, but reducing wealth inequality is the most direct route to equalizing political power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_theory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy

I especially recommend reading "The original problem of social distance" in "Twilight of the Elites."

No way. There is absolutely no symmetry in the positions; that's part of the false equivalence narrative. Is Krugman, Baker, DeLong, Thoma perfectly unbiased? Of course not. Do I trust their lack of bias more? I do.

If someone were to argue about the less biased nature of Cowen, Hanson, or Murray, or other RW intellectual, we might have a discussion. I don't agree with those people half or more of the time, but I definitely trust them to change their minds and look at the facts, rather than having an a priori position immune to facts. I don't expect the same from Cato, and certainly not from AEI or Heritage (whom I consider far more biased than Cato.)

This thread has gotten a bit muddled, but I don't think the thrust of the argument is that Jobs didn't want to get rich (did someone upthread actually argue that?); instead, its "if he had to get somewhat less rich, would he have done what he did?", to which I think it's far to ask "yes, but how much less would he have been OK with before he said 'no way'?"

The discussion is about marginal tax rates without stating it as such. He might not have been OK with a 95% MTR, but would he have done it with a 45? a 50? People could opine on what he would have or would not have done given that, but I think it's reasonable to say that many people would, and do (given that successful innovators and businesses exist in higher tax countries.) Higher marginal tax rates don't mean you don't get rich; they mean you don't get quite as rich, which is what much of the proposals are about.

Yup.

> largely

> the effects are muted

There's little irony. Krugman has publicly changed his opinion on several items over the years, and isn't an advocacy organization or a think tank. Cato's raison d'etre is the promotion of "negative liberty" to the exclusion of virtually everything else. I regularly read Cato, and I even agree with some of their work (things like replacing the welfare state with a GBI, free speech absolutism, etc.), but I still consider them a biased source even if their views sometimes dovetail with my own.

It'd be different if you cited credible right-wing (economic) sources, but there are few left since the intellectual foundations of much of what passes for economics on that side of the divide (a chaotic Reagan-Thatcherism, a right-of-center Neoliberalism (older FT/Economist-style), or a wild-eyed goldbuggery) have fallen apart in the modern world. It's not symmetric at this juncture.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-06-03/economics-t...

We can stop the discussion, sure. Let's do that.

Your first link is a known biased source.

Your second one doesn't undermine the case; it mainly discusses that tweaks are needed, not that the social democratic system doesn't work as you've implied. No one is arguing that the numbers never need to change; the entire discussion about the US is that the numbers need to change (in the other direction.)

As far as whether those people would accept the offers, it's possible at the margin, which are the minor effects I've mentioned. The numbers matter, though. France is a particularly bad example to use considering its job performance:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/21/cheese-eating-jo...

Welfare discouraging work has largely been refuted: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/21/business/the-myth-of-welfa...

Where it does discourage work, the effects are extremely minor. Your contention that their wealth was before the welfare state is completely incorrect and ahistorical. Even the crudest measures show that to be wrong. Examples:

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/denmark/gdp

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/sweden/gdp

For France, the numbers since 1960 have been fantastic overall. Look through the OECD measures:

https://data.oecd.org/france.htm

I'm sorry, but your statements don't hold up to any of the measured data, and this excludes things like perceptions of corruption or gross happiness. No country is perfect, but the ones I listed are doing better than the US on almost every internationally recognized measure.

Those aren't the only two choices. The west, and even many in the east, are made up of mixed economies. Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Germany, and many others are extremely successful mixed economies by most measures (see OECD stats to start.) In the US, the mix is currently wildly out of whack; it needs to move back towards broadly shared prosperity, rather than the oligarchy we have now. That means higher taxes on the wealthy, better social programs, redistribution, and all the rest.

Read "Twilight of the Elites." Few are arguing for zero inequality; even anti-inequality crusaders acknowledge there will always be some inequality. It depends on how much, and what that affords the society. The amount we have now is wildly out of balance. We have models that work better in the world, and even in America's past, and should look to those.

No one is arguing for communism anymore (the implications of the poster higher up notwithstanding), except those that are largely irrelevant to the debate.

Criticism, yes, I just think a more enlightening reply would do more for the conversation. The way I like to think of it is that you're refuting an argument for the benefit of other readers of the comment who may not be well informed / are persuadable, rather than to oppose the person you're replying to. Think of it as communicating a thoughtful missive to someone (who honestly doesn't know) that has asked you "what's wrong with that comment?"

I agree with your sentiment but I don't think sarcasm is going to get you anything but downvotes. The person you're responding might be underinformed and/or hasty generalizing, but probably deserves a more constructive reply.

"It is remarkable how under siege and victimized even the most powerful members of society feel, how much they tout their own up-by-their-bootstraps story.

In fact, a basic ritual associated with entrance into the circle of winners is constructing a personal story about how it was through grit, talent, and determination that you fought your way into it.

Mitt Romney, the multimillionaire son of a car company CEO and governor of Michigan, told an audience at a 2012 Republican debate that if you squinted hard enough, he looked like a figure right out of a Horatio Alger tale. “And I—I mean—you know, my dad, as you know—born in Mexico, poor, didn’t get a college degree—became head of a car company. I could have stayed in Detroit, like him, and gotten pulled up in the car company. I went off on my own. I didn’t inherit money from my parents. What I have, I earned. I worked hard, the American way.”

Twilight of the Elites, Chapter 5 "Winners"

That's not the argument. The "contribution" is through taxes to the society that enabled them to get rich in the first place. Sure, some people are upset about obscene displays of wealth (though in today's America, those people don't seem to have much of a voice), but by and large, no one begrudges rich people from enjoying themselves (this is America, after all. We love our rich people as a rule, even when some of them are terrible people individually.)

We do begrudge people avoiding taxes, buying legislation and legislators, funding think tanks that support only the interests of the wealthy, and blowing up the financial system and/or economy.

Even those in what remains of America's radical left don't make this argument (the few that do aren't taken seriously by their fellow leftists anymore); even in Europe, which is far more generous in terms of social welfare provision has some level of wealth inequality. So it's definitely a huge strawman. PG makes several statements which shows that he understands important parts of the problem (poverty, mobility), but it's incomplete (and credit to him for writing a thoughtful piece on the issue - more people in power should be doing the same.) Instead, the picture looks more like this:

1) Massive wealth inequality distorts policies towards the preferences of the rich (http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~jnd260/cab/CAB2012%20-..., http://www.demos.org/stacked-deck-how-dominance-politics-aff..., Affluence and Influence), so reducing inequality does more than just give people more mobility; it allows government to more accurately reflect the will of the people. It's democracy-enabling. Massive inequality in wealth breeds massive inequality in political power. No amount of mobility or opportunity can fix this one, only inequality reduction itself.

2) As Hayes discusses in "Twilight of the Elites", we've learned that basically everyone in the US has accepted the current notions of meritocracy, social mobility, and equality of opportunity. What is currently not well-accepted is that in order to achieve anything like equality of opportunity and social mobility, you need more equality of outcome in the first place. One can express this as "reducing poverty", but that's just a _reframing the same idea_. We are in fact talking about redistributing money from the very rich and giving it to the not-rich, one way or another, to improve EoOpp and SM. That reduces inequality by definition.

3) Massive inequality itself increases social distance, which is partially reflected in #1. When all one sees, knows, meets, etc. are other wealthy people, one may wind up becoming disconnected from the plight of the non-wealthy. They become an annoyance, invisible, or irrelevant, which is reflected not only in policy, but also in self-reinforcing cycles of disinterest and disconnection in the realm of social relations. Inequality has to be reduced somewhat to reduce that social distance.

4) When we speak of inequality reduction, it can be understood as "wealth range compression." The top go down, the bottom go up. Many analogize chopping off the top and putting it at the bottom, but the compression metaphor works better IMO.

5) Some worry (like Acemoglu) that US inequality subsidizes other nations in terms of innovation. I think Edsall and others have completely demolished the argument, and its was largely facile in the face of facts like Sweden having invented the ultrasound, the pacemaker, and AIS (an advancement of GPS) or Denmark having invented the loudspeaker, Bluetooth, and Insulin. You could even argue the opposite: a society that gives people a better safety net (Peltzman effect again) combined with an entrepreneurial culture will produce more, not less innovation.

The recommendations for remedying this are fairly tame in the European / Scand. context, mostly because fewer of them have internalized ideas like "taxation is theft" or "everything that happens to you is your own fault." We should regard the following as non-controversial (some a restatement of your list items):

- Marginal tax rates at the top of 50% (France is even higher and still has rich people) and policies to make sure the rates stay progressive.

- Closing tax loopholes, forcible repatriation of stashed offshore assets, fully funding the IRS, and eliminating (for real) tax havens and their usage.

- Debt-free higher ed (full rides, living stipends, the works)

- A real universal health system

- No games with inheritance taxes

- Non-punitive, non-humiliating policies to help the poor like a GBI or expanded automatic welfare provision

- Not gutting social security

If we were to implement the whole of Sanders' platform, for example (most of which I agree with, a few items I think are questionable), we'd still be to the right of a Denmark or Sweden(!) We'd be slightly to the right of what we had during the Great Society.

It's a return to sanity, basic living standards, and mobility. Hardly the stuff of Galtian nightmares.

Another oblique example of the Peltzman effect: make something less risky (purchase) and people will take more chances (in this case, purchases they might not otherwise have made due to worries about an untrustworthy vendor, questionable product quality, or just buyer's remorse.) Same goes for credit cards that have strong chargeback and false-charge protection policies. If you know there's virtually no risk, you'll make that purchase you otherwise wouldn't. Very important for enabling things like online commerce to happen initially (and probably allows it to continue as it does.)

I never said 10 or even 5. My examples are "a year" and an extended period. It's possible you assumed that latter statement meant 5 or 10, but I was personally thinking 3-5, which it would absolutely cover. Either way I don't think I've grossly overstated, or even mildly overstated anything.

Maybe it went back up? I still see it.

Not to mention how many professors are being replaced by adjuncts ("Overall, non-tenure- track faculty, often known as adjunct or contingent faculty, now account for three-quarters of the instructional faculty at non-profit colleges and universities across the country."): http://agb.org/trusteeship/2013/5/changing-academic-workforc...

Those adjuncts are often contingent, low-paid workers: http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/in-plain-sight/poverty-u-many...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/19/opinion/your-waitress-your...

http://www.thenation.com/article/why-is-college-so-expensive...

The numbers you present themselves are in the top 25% or 33% (depending on which measure you look at) of earners as professors, all inclusive. The idea that most professors are well-compensated on the whole is absurd. Wasn't the old deal supposed to be "decent compensation, but not great, made up for with great benefits and tenure?" Now it's "terrible compensation and no benefits, no tenure."

Of course, the person you're responding to seems to be making their comment sarcastically in any case.

“So I won’t even pretend to know that struggle.”

Let’s try some ideas about what that million can buy one (particularly in dog-eat-dog, every-man-for-himself America), beyond even just the basics like food (though depending on the environment you were raised in, one’s definition of “basics” may differ). Some come from my own experience or those I’ve known:

- The ability to stay in the place you were born without getting priced out, or the ability to move out of your crime-ridden neighborhood or dilapidated apartment that happens to be very cheap.

- The ability to attend university without worrying about debt or having to drop out due to living expenses. It also means you can focus on your studies — achieve immersion — rather than thinking about whether you’re going to be able to pay that electric bill this month.

- The ability to say “no” to bad jobs when you otherwise might not be able to. We call it “FU” money, but it could also be called “Ability to say no to a bad deal” money.

- The ability to stop working for an extended period of time so you can re-skill or upskill, rather than spending all your after-work time doing so, which slows down the process and may not always be possible if you’re working long hours. Web development boring? Drop out for a few months and learn Machine Learning. Hate working at Starbucks? Stop for a year and learn to code, learn marketing, or learn about whatever more lucrative thing you want to do.

- The ability to stop working and focus on what you really like to do full-time. Write open source software, make art, work at that risky startup that you believe in, or work at that low-pay animal shelter that means so much to you.

- The ability to stop worrying about aging out of your profession. You can re-skill or change careers altogether.

The most important, and perhaps unappreciated benefit is the ability to stop constantly worrying about money. To stop having to think about it all the time. To stop waking up in the middle of the night worrying about getting laid off, about your company shutting down, whether you’re getting too old for your profession, or about whether it’s a “good idea” to leave that miserable relationship where the other person happens to be helping by paying half the rent and bills.

The thing that million can buy you is something that’s worth more than the million itself, and it has nothing to do with any buzz, but it’s something only the money can get you: the simultaneous feelings of freedom and safety.

As he states, he never had to worry about the basics being taken care of, so that might reflect his equanimity about his wealth now. The article also shows what a country willing to truly support its poor can do right out of the gate; Denmark's #1 on OECD's social mobility index (as per the Economist, in Denmark, a poor child has twice as much chance of making it to the top quintile as in America.)

I knew about a lot of the numbers in this thread, but reading them here blows me away anyway. Mine went like this (all numbers inflation adjusted for 2015, and are base salary. Location is NYC):

Company 1 (~25 employees, entertainment industry. No benefits. No stock.)

1997-2000 $30,757.56 (entry level)

2001-2002 $98,944.97 (junior)

2003 $128,986.96 (senior)

Company 2 (post dot-com crash brought salaries way down, ~150 employees, software company. Ok benefits. No stock.)

2003-2005 $66,838.10 (mid-level)

2006 $77,699.29 (senior)

Company 3 (non-tech startup, 5 full-time employees. OK benefits. Small amount of stock.)

2007 $114,465.95 (senior)

2008-2012 $77,529.03 (senior, pay cut after investments were cut)

Company 4 (~120 employees, ad firm. Goodish benefits. No stock.)

2013 $100,000 (mid-level)

2014 $110,000 (senior)

Not only do company sizes, upward trajectories, educational background, company industry, etc. impact earnings, but where you are in relation to business cycles and booms/busts really matter.

High earning parents are able to pay for prep schools, tutoring, materials. Those children get into elite schools. Those graduates of elites schools go on to elite, well-paid jobs.

"On graduation, many members of America’s future elite will head for the law firms, banks and consultancies where starting salaries are highest."

Here are some more explicit articles on the phenomenon:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/rich-peo...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/11763836/Wealthy-pare...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/18/upshot/rich-children-and-p...

If you'd like to read a study on it ("Poor Little Rich Kids? The Determinants of the Intergenerational Transmission of Wealth"), you can do so here:

http://ftp.iza.org/dp9227.pdf

Here's another from Pew:

http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/assets/2015/07/fsm-irs-repo...

If you want more information, google "social mobility united states", "intergenerational mobility united states", and read "Twilight of the Elites" and "The Son also Rises."

Try http://www.economist.com/node/21640316

The most expensive is a proxy for job creation (see Atlantic article) and social mobility in the current economy: "the San Francisco-San Jose area has a better record of social mobility than just about any region in the country, according to Harvard economist Raj Chetty. In other words, a variety of factors make it the best place for young person to work his or her way into the middle class and beyond."

You can repeat the experiment on other job-creating cities like New York, Boston, or San Jose. Or scale back to "cheap" Oakland (median rent ~2100) and it still looks terrible.

Let's compare just unemployment insurance between the US and Germany. Similar cases can be made for health care, pensions, time off, public/social housing, and even college funding. This doesn't even include things the US doesn't have at all, like Kuzarbeit.

US: maximum 99 weeks during the crisis, now back down to 26 weeks in most places

Germany: "benefit recipients aged 50 to 54 now receive an unemployment benefit for 15 months, those 55 to 57 for 18 months and those 58 or older receive benefits for 24 months. For those under the age of 50 who have not been employed for more than 30 months in a job which paid into the social security scheme, full unemployment benefit can be received for a maximum period of 12 months" then "If a worker is not eligible for the full unemployment benefits or after receiving the full unemployment benefit for the maximum of 12 months, he is able to apply for benefits from the so-called Arbeitslosengeld II (Hartz IV) programme, an open-ended welfare programme which, unlike the US system, ensures people do not fall into penury. A person receiving Hartz IV benefits is paid 399 EUR (2015) a month for living expenses plus the cost of adequate housing (including heating) and health care."

Perform the same comparison between the US and Sweden (with multiple levels of UI, followed by the Job and development guarantee), Austria (unemployment assistance is payable for one year (52 weeks) and may be extended ‘indefinitely’ by application, provided that the qualifying conditions are fulfilled), Denmark (90% of their average earnings for up to four years), or the west/north European country of your choice and you come up with similarly large contrasts. When you start putting those together with their health care, housing, and more general welfare programs, the differences are not small at all.

You might be right about an attempt at misdirection (I wouldn't speculate one way or another, but obviously EPI agrees with you), but I don't think that invalidates the case about income inequality being partially (among many other sources) caused by AM. It seems fairly well-supported by the evidence from NBER, which Cowen wasn't involved in: http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21595972-how-sex...

The (also liberal) Brookings institution also seems to support it, so I don't think the opposition case is exactly ironclad: http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/social-mobility-memos/posts/2...

Another thing to consider is that income inequality is increasing via second-order AM effects, via propagation across generations, rather than directly due to the marriages (http://www.economist.com/node/21640316)

This is a correct and under-appreciated point, but it's going to be very tough to convince people of this when they continue to hear stories about how certain "top" companies only want people from certain schools(https://hbr.org/2015/10/firms-are-wasting-millions-recruitin...) and are actually looking at college / SAT / ACT grades(http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/31/jobs/31gpa.html?pagewanted...) in their hiring decisions.