[RD] Daily Graphs and Charts

[Cutlass]

To follow on, there's really no reason for the assumption that everyone other than the 0.01% would be doing even better if the incomes were more equitable. And there are many reasons for that. The huge increase in wealth concentration has not been matched with an increase in business investment. It has not been matched with new productivity enhancing innovations. It is instead existing technology being spread to more of the world population. And that is not sustainable.

But think how much better the very poor would be doing if consumption spending was higher. Consumption is the engine which drives market economies. By acting to keep consumption suppressed, poverty is even worse than it would be otherwise.

 

[Whomp]

The top 1% of US taxpayers received 18.7% of all adjusted gross income in 2011. The bottom 50% of all taxpayers received 11.6% in 2011. That said I feel as if governments, US specifically, tends to be more "Kaldor improving" instead of "Pareto improving". That is really where the debate begins.

 

[luiz]

What do you mean it doesn't mean anything. It means some people have extreme levels of agency that effect the lives of others, those others who have virtually no agency who have little choice but to follow market-logic dictated by variables from which the richest people have set.

The entire point though, is that wealth is actually a better measure than income for this thing, and the nil net worth of the bottom is a big part of the story. And when your top income (not wealth) data bracket is far too big that it obscures the important parts, but when it nevertheless shows income gains that increase wealth stock (vs the income gains for lower income folks that do not increase the wealth stocks) the result is that the graph above, useful as it is to make points about people between the 20th and 80th percentiles, absolutely does not prove the point you said it did in your original response to the graph about how there aren't these out-of-proportion gains made by the richest.

It doesn't mean anything because it's not only the super rich who have a bigger net worth than millions of people combined; you and I do as well (I'm assuming you have a positive net worth). If 10 million people have zero or negative net worth, and a street bum has a $25 net worth than technically said street bum has more wealth than those 10 million people combined. Does that mean anything? Nope.

And as I said even in the most equitable societies a relatively large section of the population will have a zero or negative net worth, so any individual with a positive net worth will have more wealth than lots and lots of people combined. One could easily use that to make a video claiming that Norway is a super unequal society, but that's just misinforming.

(we all understand the concept of percentages, luiz )

Well Traitorfish apparently doesn't

I'm a pretty centrist guy these days, I believe in free markets, I believe in globalisation, and I believe in these things because I believe they can help empower the poorest with agency of their own, and make the world better place. What I don't believe in is this nonsense argument that in order for markets to be free and globalised, the top 1% must take such a massive proportion of the world's total wealth or income. Whether it's the biggest share or just a really f-ing big share, I don't care -- I reject the premise entirely. That doesn't make any god damn sense to me, yet it seems to be the premise of every single debate on this subject. Both left and right seem to accept the premise that free markets and globalisation are inextricably linked to the top 1% taking the lion's share of the wealth. It's utter hogwash.


Anyway since this is a graph thread and I was going to post a graph, here it is:

Source: http://www.economist.com/node/21564414

Those graphs essentially prove my point that the world is becoming more equitable in the last decades. The fact that the super rich are also increasing their share does not change the fact that the "global poor" are getting rich faster. Now you may think it's not fast enough, but clearly our era of relative free trade and liberal capitalism has increased global welfare and even, paradoxically for a lot people, equality.

The people who argue for protectionism and state-capitalism (which is not you, I know) are actually arguing for returning to a model where the poor (the global poor, not the so-called poor of the super rich nations) are kept in abject poverty and inequality on a global scale keep increasing. There is no more reactionary force on this planet than the anti-globalization movement, specially those clowns like José Bové of the Via Campesina and co.

 

[Monsterzuma]

one thing that I rarely see discussed in talks like these is that there is much less consumption inequality than "income" inequality.

it's a complex topic but I think that in a modern monetary system it is not possible for the rich at large to turn their full monetary wealth into consumptive wealth, since if they did, the economy would collapse* as would the principle value of assets, so most of that monetary wealth is a meaningless abstraction.

* in a less dramatic form you would see the central bank raising interest rates, which causes falling asset values...

 

[luiz]

That's another point worth making. The great majority of the wealth of the uber-rich is in stocks, which makes it kind of a "virtual" wealth that can't even be redistributed because if they dumped those stocks on the market their value would collapse. It's also a very volatile form of wealth. I mean, in 2012 Brazil's then richest man, Eike Batista, was the world's 6th or 7th richest person and worth over $30 billion USD. Some analysts believed he was on track to become the world's richest in a decade. Today he has a negative net worth, so technically I'm richer than him (though he lives in mansion and owns all sort of expensive stuff that I will never be able to buy). If Brazil was a serious country he'd be penniless. The moral here is that his huge fortune was never really concrete, it never really existed, it was based on the speculation that his oil fields were good. There is no point in saying, back in 2012, that Eike had more wealth than the combined 30 million poorest brazilians or whatever that number was. He actually didn't.

 

[peter grimes]

Doesn't your example of Batiste pretty much undermine your whole point? That some like him - who is/was valued in the billions, is now worth less than millions of favelões - BUT STILL LIVES IN A MANSION!! - yet you're still using him as an anchor on the other side of the ledger... I don't buy it.

 

[luiz]

Doesn't your example of Batiste pretty much undermine your whole point? That some like him - who is/was valued in the billions, is now worth less than millions of favelões - BUT STILL LIVES IN A MANSION!! - yet you're still using him as an anchor on the other side of the ledger... I don't buy it.

As I said, if Brazil was a serious country he'd penniless or even in jail. The only reason he isn't is he is very good friends with the government (lead by the left-wing Workers' Party which claims to be a socialist party), so he is essentially above justice.

Eike was, and is, a product of state-capitalism. He is not a symbol of the free markets. The state-owned banks lent him billions of dollars on heavily subsidized rates to invest on projects of very questionable technical foundations. He never paid back those loans but the banks did not go after his assets (would a private bank quietly accept billions in unpaid loans without trying to take the guy for everything he owns?). He was a always a huge contributor to politicians, donating millions of dollars in every campaign; Lula used to fly on his private jet all the time (he was forced to sell the jet, at least).

Without the backing of of the state, financial and political, Eike would never had amassed that gigantic virtual fortune, and countless investors would not have lost as much as they did by betting on his empire. And at the very least, without his friends in high places he would be forced to deal with the consequence of his actions to a far greater extent than he did.

But my important point is none of the above. It's about the rather "ethereal" nature of a huge part of the wealth of the super-rich. How could you redistribute Batista's 2012 fortune? You couldn't; it was the product of speculation. Of course he had plenty of concrete wealth that could and was taxed and redistributed, but to simply assume that he was actually wealthier than the 30 million (or whatever number, I don't remember it anymore) poorest Brazilians and suggest an "ideal distribution of wealth" is simply nonsense.

 

[Monsterzuma]

 

[Tycho Brahe]

'
That's very helpful. Thank you..

 

[Borachio]

Personally, I find "very" to be a very useful intensifier.

Yet according to Strunk and White, in (The Elements of Style p63):

Very. Use this word sparingly. Where emphasis is necessary, use words strong in themselves.

And on page 73:

8. Avoid the use of qualifiers.
Rather, very, little, pretty - these are the leeches that infest the pond of prose, sucking the blood of words. The constant use of the adjective little (except to indicate size) is particularly debilitating; we should all try to do a little better, we should all be very watchful of this rule, for it is a rather important one, and we are pretty sure to violate it now and then.

 

[classical_hero]

Very is a very,very useful word to use.

 

[Arwon]

We're number one!

 

[classical_hero]

Thankfully WA doesn't contribute to the pokie madness that happens over east, where most of the losses are. They are almost half of all gambling losses here.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

West Coast is best coast.

 

[strijder20]

Ignoring Florida, the East Coast isn't doing too shabby either.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

But Maryland though.

 

[Takhisis]

It's probably those Amish.

 

[peter grimes]

But Maryland though.

Isn't that D.C.? Besides, I think Florida is more "south" than East Coast.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Isn't that D.C.?

That's even worse.

 

[Cutlass]

Spoiler :

http://qz.com/174700/how-many-hours-of-minimum-wage-work-it-takes-to-earn-a-beer/