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[McTraveller]

Inequality marches on.

Jeff Bezos now world's richest person, and set to hit $100 billion net worth pretty soon.

Article talks about the Giving Pledge.  How all these billionaires have signed up to pledge to give away half their wealth.  But this was started in 2010, and the net worth of everyone who's signed on continues to skyrocket dramatically.  I have little faith in their ideas of charity.

Wealth inequality definitely feels awful - but I'm still trying to figure out just what makes it so, and what aspects of it make it painful.  Or put another way - how would wealth equality "fix" the things that are wrong with society?  It just feels like the wealth distribution side of it may be a necessary but not sufficient component of eliminating... whatever it is we are trying to eliminate.

[redwallzyl]

Inequality marches on.

Jeff Bezos now world's richest person, and set to hit $100 billion net worth pretty soon.

Article talks about the Giving Pledge.  How all these billionaires have signed up to pledge to give away half their wealth.  But this was started in 2010, and the net worth of everyone who's signed on continues to skyrocket dramatically.  I have little faith in their ideas of charity.

Wealth inequality definitely feels awful - but I'm still trying to figure out just what makes it so, and what aspects of it make it painful.  Or put another way - how would wealth equality "fix" the things that are wrong with society?  It just feels like the wealth distribution side of it may be a necessary but not sufficient component of eliminating... whatever it is we are trying to eliminate.

Several things. power for one, severally unequal wealth distribution makes a few people have much more power then others. second, it undermines society as it inevitably is run to the interests of the few. third, it makes the situation for the lower classes of society worse. fourth, it undermines the economic system as it is turned to the profit of a few with little care for long term consequences. fifth, this all undermines democracy

[Reelya]

Income inequality and crime are strongly linked. Think about it. If some people have very little and others have very much, then the economic incentives (risk vs reward) to commit interpersonal property crimes are much greater, leading to more violent crime.

If half your people are penniless hobos and the other half drive ferraris, then you can damn well bet there's going to be a lot of stolen ferraris, because a hobo has little to lose: they feed you, house you and pay to fix your teeth in prison. However, if you have paid pensions, then that homeless guy has an apartment somewhere with a TV and computer, basic comforts, and now he does have something to lose. "going to prison" has a higher negative value when you have something rather than nothing. So the risk of prison for stealing even the ferrari might not be as attractive to him then.

So asking what would change is a little naive. Economics is everything. If you change how the resources flow in a society, you fundamentally change how that society works on every level, in ways you can't really see when you're in the middle of it.

This is why I think giving everyone enough to have a small place to live and enough eat is just good economics. It actually has one of the highest fiscal multipliers of any action: poor people spend all the money you give them, and spend a higher proportion of it on necessary stuff compared to more affluent people (who can afford to be wasteful: affluent people spend more money on drugs than poor people do. The Mexican cartels aren't murdering each other to get money from poor American's food stamps, let's be realistic about that). Meanwhile, it gives them more stake in the status quo, as well as making them less desperate, which reduces the incentives for crime.

[wierd]

(sarcasm=on, mode=strong)

But then the affluent would not feel so affluent, only average! This isn't about actually fixing problems, it's totally about feeling superior to somebody, and without the absolutely destitute, there would be nobody to feel superior toward! Everyone wants to be one of the 1% who has everything, even if they have much more in common with the vastly larger demographic of the highly impoverished! This whole notion of uplifting the whole of society to more equal status-- It totally ignores the psychological motivations behind wealth accumulation!

(sarcasm=off)

EG, The rich perform actions that make themselves feel empowered.  When they perceive a threat to that power, they will play lip service (like the afore mentioned "Pledge"), but this ultimately still leaves them vastly disproportionate to the rest of the society, their inclination to accumulate wealth remains, the inequality continues roughshod, but now they have a talking point to say 'See! We totally care about your poor, poor people! (aren't I such a GOOD rich person!)"

The very existence of rich and poor exemplifies the problem, which is inequality.  People seek to become unequal, because they seek disproportionate power and status for a variety of reasons.  Some are ultimately more successful than others, and this results in winners and losers, which then evolve into populations of rich and poor.

This cycle will continue forever unless you can find a way to successfully reprogram humans to simply enjoy being alive, instead of having insatiable fixations on increasing status; or at least, find creative ways to redirect that fixation so that it benefits the whole of society instead of just the status fixated. (EG, I acknowledge that things like electricity, running water, the internet, and pals are all borne from wanting more, and finding ways to get it-- however, those are things that EVERYONE can have. The goal is to convert the notion of "I am better than these people..." to "There has to be a better way than this...", which is no small task.)

[Antioch]

Fortunately the situation is a lot better here in western Europe.

Must be because we aren't so keen on the "trickle down" thing.

It's called trickle down because the rich bath in luxury while the rest gets just a trickle.

[smjjames]

Probably the only way to make 'trickle-down' work (at least how Republicans probably envision it) is to force the cash to flow downwards via whatever method.

That said, I wonder if there are any Republicans that truly believe that it'll trickle down.

[scriver]

Would that be "paddle down" or "scoop down" economics?

[Egan_BW]

As opposed to the current "pump stack" economics?

[scriver]

No, current trickle down economics, but where the water is instead forced downwards, as smj said. I lack a good word for pushing water. Scooping is more a lifting action. Not enough forcing.

[Maximum Spin]

Hydraulic fracking.

[smjjames]

I meant that since trickle down does not actually trickle down, the only way for it to work the way the theory says would be to force it down via some mechanism.

Trickle down doesn't work if those at the top don't allow it to trickle down.

[Starver]

I meant that since trickle down does not actually trickle down, the only way for it to work the way the theory says would be to force it down via some mechanism.

Say, how about having the Federal government take a bigger chunk of the rich person's income and handing it back out by providing services to poor people...  Definitely something that every deep-red-blooded Republican ought to support, if they want to prime the trickle-down pumps!

(Seriously, though, wealth taxes with offsetting allowances solely based upon proven personal(/corporate, for corporate entities) funding of well-defined socially-aware schemes could be a thing. Hands-off government so long as you can prove you're a hands-on philanthropist. Weight the offset potential according to the under/over-serviced wealth-gap areas. Higher mortality rates among the underclass means more credit to healthcare charitability, etc. You can switch to the current latest poverty-bugbear scheme, each assessed cycle (annually?), but cannot cease funding a prior 'credit' scheme completely, perhaps a decade-long ramp-down, if you cannot bring a replacement funder in to make up your pre-understood commitment cycle. And there are other little loophole-closing principles I can think of (to deal with intentional/unintentional bankruptcy of such a registered donor, and more besides), but I'm not going to waste time detailing sometbing that'll never have a hope in hell of jumping from my keyboard over into fully-fledged legialation, anyway, in anything like the form I might describe...)

[Rolan7]

Man, talking to relatives about anything tangental to politics is great

Dad insists that the Time's Square celebration has never had security before this year.  Period - he insisted that anyone could just walk in without being checked at all, and it has always been like that.
"But...  even the local town Halloween celebration a couple years ago was at least checking bags..." 
"Well I heard it on the news"
"*sigh mumble* MSNBC..."
"ACTUALLY it was on my GOOGLE FEED".

The MSNBC crack was me being tired and unwise, but still DX
I went ahead and checked the news online, and sure enough he was vastly overstating an increase in security.  But hell if I'm showing him that, he'd ask me to leave :/

(Now...  Imagine the "discussion" we had this morning about police misconduct )

[Akura]

Pretty sure there was a lot of security last year too, about the same as this year.

[sluissa]

Security has been heavy at least since 2001