An Idiot's Guide to Inequality

71 点作者 lvevjo将近 11 年前

11 条评论

eamsen将近 11 年前

"Oxfam estimates that the richest 85 people in the world own half of all wealth." This is not what Oxfam's estimates say, it contradicts them. Here is the original quote: "The bottom half of the world’s population owns the same as the richest 85 people in the world."

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Daishiman将近 11 年前

It's amazing to me just how well some political factions in the US have indoctrinated the public to believe that the defense of the common good is some sort of threat to American values, which include, in theory the support and participation in your community.It's gotten to the point where not even poor people are willing to listen or support many of the policies that promote their well being while not being a significant burden to anyone.

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refurb将近 11 年前

"Likewise, if you’re a pharmaceutical executive, one way to create profits is to generate new products. Another is to lobby Congress to bar the government’s Medicare program from bargaining for drug prices. That amounts to a $50 billion annual gift to pharmaceutical companies."This "fact" always annoys me. Yes, Medicare can't directly negotiate with drug companies. However, there are two mechanisms that provide substantial discounts for drugs that Medicare buys.1. All drug manufacturers must report the price they sell their drugs for to the government every quarter. That data is used to create the ASP (average selling price). This is the price Medicare pays. If a drug company starts offering discounts on their sales to private insurers, that get added to the ASP.2. For drugs covered under Medicare Part D (pharmacy benefits), there is something called the "donut hole" where a patient has to pay the full costs of the drug. That is being phased out by 2020. Drug companies will have to pay for the donut hole themselves. The discount varies with the drug price, but for example, if a drug costs $5000 in a year, drug companies will have to pay $1300 of that back to the government.So yes, Medicare doesn't directly negotiate with drug companies, rather they legislate big discounts.

autokad将近 11 年前

i grew up in a poor family around a lot of poor people. i'm not rich, but definitely out of the poor category. even as a child, i was amazed at the plethora of bad decisions (or simple refusal to give important things a second thought) of the poor people around me, family included. an example was a couple years ago when i mentioned how wonderful it is that we can take free online classes from institutions like harvard, stanford, wharton, etc, and its absolutely free! how wonderful!! their response 'what do i get out of it'.its not just anecdotal either, numbers have shown that those that already have educations are the ones that are mostly uses these resources. for a very large amount of the poor, i feel its them, not 'us'. the opportunities are there, and america may have disadvantages for those not well off, but we certainly have more poor people than whats justified by those disadvantages.we created a system where people who are smart and ambitious can thrive. we also created many opportunities in that system, and those same people are the ones that take advantage of them. I think thats a huge part of this 'gap'.the 2nd part happens to be with the time that we are in. most of this 'wealth' has been either inflated up by the fed's massive additions to the money supply (which does only help the rich but it is fully implemented and endorsed by democrats) and annother reason for the gap is the internet barons of the present age.back in the late 1990s, bill gates was worth more than the bottom 50% of the country. if figures like that are still withstanding, how do you think its distorted now that we have brin/page, zuckerberg, bezos, etc etc?

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CapitalistCartr将近 11 年前

In discussions like this the numbers matter. To quote Heinlein, “What are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!"(1) Piketty's book suffers from poor numbers and bad maths, making his conclusions useless. If he is right, he needs to support it with sound numbers.Chris Giles in The Financial Times found his numbers wanting. (2) In Piketty's response(3), he downplays the importance of the questions, focusing on the European numbers. FOr5 the US numbers, he recommends substituting the numbers of Emmanuel Saez (Berkeley) and Gabriel Zucman.(4) But those numbers are based on reported capital gains taxes without adjusting for major changes in the law and changes in the definition of capital gains.I don't know if Piketty is right or wrong, but I know his Excel spreadsheets are not adequate evidence. I'd like him to be right; I think wealth disparity in the USA since 1980 is more due to legal maneuvering than merit. I also know my thinking it isn't evidence.1) <a href="http://www.timeenoughforlove.org/Heinlein.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.timeenoughforlove.org/Heinlein.htm</a>2) <a href="http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capital21c/en/media/FT23052014c.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capital21c/en/media/FT230520...</a>3) <a href="http://www.voxeu.org/article/factual-response-ft-s-fact-checking" rel="nofollow">http://www.voxeu.org/article/factual-response-ft-s-fact-chec...</a>4) <a href="http://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/SaezZucman2014Slides.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/SaezZucman2014Slides.pdf</a>

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onetimeusename将近 11 年前

One thing I have wondered is if income inequality is demonstrably bad. If you read closely the author says that our economy grew quicker post WW2 when income was more evenly distributed but that is not conclusive. The author also says income inequality is bad but the only evidence given for this is that the gini coefficient of US is approaching some banana republics and S. American countries. I personally don't believe income inequality in those countries is the cause of adverse conditions but an effect of it, particularly corruption. The author says that at a certain point the money is used to buy luxury goods in some sort of "arms race" of the rich but I really don't care what the rich do with their money.I do agree that using the word inequality is worse than using opportunity. I also firmly believe corruption should be ended but I still have not seen a strong argument for why income inequality is bad and I think from a probabilistic perspective, net worth of the wealthy would increase over time so who is to say it isn't a natural process?

saticmotion将近 11 年前

Another fact, that recently struck me, also seems to make inequality larger. I'm not quite sure how to put it into words, but I'll try.If we take an average middle class family and a rich family. Both want to build or buy a house. Let's suppose the houses they want cost the same, e.g. $200.000. The rich family pays $200.000 and is done. The middle class family however, will have to take a loan of, let's say, 20 years at 4%. This family will eventually pay almost $300.000 for that same house.So because the rich family can buy things without loaning, they actually pay less. This might seem obvious to some, or most of you, but it still strikes me as "unfair" (though it's perfectly fair that you pay interest on a loan).

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msoad将近 11 年前

I didn't know income inequality harms the top 0.1% too. This is giving me hope that this issue will be fixed in the United States.

Dewie将近 11 年前

> Unfortunately, equal opportunity is now a mirage. Indeed, researchers find that there is less economic mobility in America than in class-conscious Europe.Class conscious Europe? Oh sure, broad stroke it up. Meanwhile, when it comes to superficial signs of class consciousness and the social norms related to that, I see American doctors introducing themselves as "Dr. <Name>", in both medical and civilian situations. People emphasizing or hinting at having gone to prestigious universities like the Ivy League kind. People referring to their bosses by sir/ma'am. Casually denigrating certain professions, especially janitors. All of these practices are kind of foreign to my part of Europe.

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oldmanjay将近 11 年前

There are always a lot of confident assertions (on all sides) when it comes to this issue, but not a lot of hard facts. It's really difficult to know what to believe, and it's almost impossible to have a reasonable discussion because people get so emotional about it.

RA_Fisher将近 11 年前

All you need to need to know is that Piketty did his voluminous analysis in Excel.