Inequality

[jazzy_dave]

Fascinating radio programme on Radio 4 this morning.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05102t3

If the statistics can be believed, over the last 30 years the gap between rich and poor in the West has grown as cavernous as it was in the Nineteenth Century.

Income and wealth inequality - seen as almost a good thing back in the 1980s - now raises alarm across the UK political spectrum.
But who are the 1%? How have they made their wealth? And why have the rest of us seemingly been left behind?
Robert Peston speaks to leading policymakers and opinion shapers as he charts the new consensus that inequality is the biggest economic challenge we face.

Part one of a series on  the problem.

Comments

[matrixmann]

All just something of the panic game. Cause panic, spread panic - but changing nothing in the end.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

That's the reason why the Occupy Wall Street movement went so big a couple of years ago over here. Part of it is the Capitol Gains Tax: you pay less tax on money earned from investments than you do on money earned from labor, and that has unbalanced the system. There's a famous quote by Warren Buffet, one of the richest men in the world, that he has a lower effective tax rate than his secretary.

The problem is that they lower taxes on the wealthiest, claiming that "They're the job creators!" and no new jobs get created, at least in the country that you're living in. Meanwhile, the effective taxes on those who don't benefit from those cuts have to make up the difference. When new jobs get created, they predominately go to third world countries.

[nutmeg3.livejournal.com]

It's definitely true here in the US and only getting worse, thanks to the *&_(*&&^$%# Supreme Court and the equally &^%^*(*)(*^&%$# Republican Party.

[a-phoenixdragon.livejournal.com]

This has been a steady thing for the last forty years. Reagan's trickle-down economics is the biggest culprit and how the 1% got that way? Well, off of the rest of us of course! but the greed has gotten out of hand. They'd make more money by th economy distributing more evenly. No one seems to grasp that. The old adage 'it takes money to make money' actually is true. The less the rest of us have to spend, the less the richer class makes. But common sense seems to be less common nowadays. UGH.

[thespian15.livejournal.com]

It makes me sick and ANGRY every time another statistic comes out about the wealth gap in this world. ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hugs, Jon

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I've never been able to care about inequality of wealth as such, any more than I care about inequality of intelligence, or looks, or athletic ability, or height. What matters to me is not the amount of wealth but the means by which it was acquired.

If I willingly buy a product or service, it's because it's worth more to me than the money I pay for it is, and I've been made better off by giving up the money. If I've paid a large amount of money to someone, it's because they offered me a large benefit. If a large number of people have done that, it's because the person receiving the money has conferred a combined benefit that's even greater in value than their entire wealth. That's a basic concept of economics called "consumer surplus."

Now, if something took money or possessions from me by force, or threatened me, or defrauded me, that reasoning doesn't apply; in that case they've inflicted a loss on me. And the same is true if the government did ir for them, directly by taking what I own and transferring it to someone else (for example, seizing a house by eminent domain and selling it to a developer), or indirectly by creating biased laws that give them an unfair advantage over their competitors or that grant them an outright monopoly. But in that case it's not the amount of their wealth I object to; it's the unjust means by which they got it from me and from other people.

And really, it doesn't matter to me even then that the recipient of those ill-gotten gains is rich. I'm not any happier to be impoverished for the benefit of the poor. Whether the rich use their political influence, or the poor use their votes, I don't see any moral difference between the results, and I don't understand why other people do.

[kabuldur.livejournal.com]

Yep, just what I was thinking. Back to the Nineteenth century!