The Strange Logic of the Overclass
Financial advisor Mike Donahue whines in the WSJ: “I have more than most only because I’ve worked harder than most and because I am a saver.”
I find it literally shocking that people say things like this. And I always go back to the case of the Salvadoran guys who moved all my furniture into my current apartment. I certainly make more money than those guys. But whether or not I work longer hours than they do (which is definitely possible, I work pretty long hours), you’d have to be clinically insane to think that writing my blog entails working harder than they do. In the real world, the reason I earn more than Salvadoran movers is the same as the reason I work less hard—I have more valuable skills, and people with valuable skills can demand both more money and cushier working conditions. But it’s not as if those guys were too lazy to become American political pundits, they were born in El Salvador in the middle of a civil war and never had a chance to obtain the relevant skills.
It’s great that America is the kind of country where a poor Salvadoran can come and, through hard work, obtain a higher standard of living than would have been possible in his home country. That’s an important part of what America is all about. But it’s almost the reverse of being a country where socioeconomic outcomes are determined entirely—or even mostly—by differentials in how hard people work. The reality, depicted above, is that there’s relatively little social mobility in the United States, since when the rungs on the ladder are so far apart it’s difficult to overtake the people who are closer to the top.
425 Responses to “The Strange Logic of the Overclass”
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April 15th, 2010 at 10:47 am
I used to tell my dad that I worked hard being a lawyer. He scoffed and said, “You can’t work hard, you work inside with air condition!”
April 15th, 2010 at 10:50 am
It goes with saying that Mike Donahue is an ass.
I think working hard and saving is quite important. Saying that, he may work hard but the reason he has “more than most” is not related to that, it is because he works at a job that rewards people with huge salaries and bonuses. Bonus money may be based on various things but it isn’t necessarily based on “hard work” so much as how much did you made for us – things that aren’t necessarily related.
April 15th, 2010 at 10:50 am
If you are just measuring earnings elasticity, does the amount of inequality really play a role? Anyhow, interesting to see Canada so low on the list given that it doesn’t seem like that much different of a place.
April 15th, 2010 at 10:53 am
Do you think the primary driver is financial or does it have to do with values.
Many here would argue that “being happy” is far more important than academic or financial success. If you grow up in a family that places a premium on leisure and fun and feels that academics and career success are of secondary importance, you are unlikey to go very far in this world.
Just look at Matt – I’m sure he would have gone into law or medicine or consulting if he had come from a family that placed a greater premium on financial success. Are his low wages a result of some vast plutocratic conspiracy or just the natural result of his prefernces?
April 15th, 2010 at 10:54 am
It is amazing how the very people who claim to defend capitalism the most have no idea how to defend it, and have no idea what in fact makes them successful. These idiots defend capitalism by making arguments in favor of Marxism and the value of labor.
April 15th, 2010 at 10:54 am
They’re the same people who want to raise the retirement age to 70, because I’m sure all 70-year-olds would to be moving heavy furniture for a living at that age.
April 15th, 2010 at 10:56 am
Everytime I hear this from some entitled rich bastard its a great reminder why I think this country oughta have estate taxes up to 100% on assets over $50M.
We’re starting to get to the point where the wealthy overclass believes their legacy admission to Ivy League schools, network of family friends to get elite starting jobs, and massive inheritances arent really the reason for their position in life, its because of hard work?! My ass.
Make the playing field more equal. Nobody in America should ever inherit more than $50M in today’s dollars(obviously you inflation-adjust going forward).
This way, we dont have a society of dynastic wealth and serfs in 100 years.
April 15th, 2010 at 10:58 am
While I agree with Matt’s argument in principle, I think using himself as an example almost capsizes the point.
Dude works some *insane* hours. I think he probably *does* work harder than his movers.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:00 am
Many here would argue that “being happy” is far more important than academic or financial success.
That statement doesn’t signify.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:00 am
You find it “literally shocking” that wealthy people take to the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal to defend their wealth as the product of hard work? What could be less shocking? And if you’re shocked by the willingness of wealthy people to purvey faulty arguments as to why they deserve their wealth, and for other wealthy people to believe such arguments, then welcome to the self-perpetuating kakistocracy that is reality.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:01 am
Financial advisor Mike Donahue whines in the WSJ: “I have more than most only because I’ve worked harder than most and because I am a saver.”
Personally, I have more than most because (a) I’m a saver and (b) I had the genetic good luck to be born extremely intelligent to upper-middle class parents who were able to give me a good education, an advantage which then allowed me to go to Ivy League undergrad and grad schools and then leverage that education and social network into a well-paying job.
While I work hard, I don’t work appreciably “harder” than, say, the woman who cleans my office at night, because while my work is stressful and the hours are long, it’s also intellectually enjoyable, I have a great deal of autonomy, I can generally organize when and how I work, and I’m richly rewarded. In no way do I work harder than tens of millions of Americans who perform back-breaking labor, day in and day out, and have to make do with far far less than I do. Try being a NYC shool teacher, a home health aid, an ironworker forty stories up on a construction site, a Marine in Afghanistan, as assembly line worker at a chicken farm, or a miner like those poor men who died last week — that’s hard work, but it’s not hard work that the bosses are willing to pay for.
What a whiny entitled wanker Mike Donahue is. He should hang his head in shame.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:04 am
Even amongst the overclass there is a disparity in pay versus work. People working in the hard sciences put in at least as many hours as business executives and make a fraction of the pay. And considering the ACTUAL contribution to society they give as opposed to the imaginary one assholes like Mike Donahue provide I consider that a moderate injustice.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:04 am
I have more than most Americans because I chose good parents. (What kind of idiot would choose to be born in El Salvador? Dallas, Texas in the 50’s was a much better choice, and I was barely conscious at the time!) Amazingly, most of the kids I knew chose good parents too. Therefore, even though it’s true that I have more than most Americans, that’s only because so many chose bad parents – among people whose parental choices were as good as mine, I’m just about in the middle.
I also chose to stay healthy, of course, though this was made much more difficult by my parents insistence on carrying health insurance and whisking me off to the doctor every time I had an asthma attack or weird spots on my skin. It would have been easier to get healthy if my parents had forced to do it on my own, the same way they taught me to make up my own bed instead of expecting someone else to do it. Even so, they did enough things right that I can forgive them for a little nannying.
Occasionally, I ask myself if it’s fair to punish people for their choice of parents. My friends and I were undoubtedly smart, but maybe there’s an element of luck there too. Maybe a good policy would be to allow people who choose bad parents to upgrade some time after birth. I bet Mike Donahue would make a great parent for someone who made a bad prenatal choice.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:05 am
In a perfect labor market, the downward force on middle-class/upper-class open education wages, (meaning excluding things like medical doctors that limit the number of people entering the profession over time) would be rather significant. Especially jobs that could very well be replaced by a data entry clerk or two (Reverse it. It’s that two jobs could be replaced by one minimum wage clerk)
Punditry is a “creative” type pursuit, meaning it would be more resilient to these effects than other jobs, but still. We do currently have about a 6-7% unemployment rate for college grads, which means that if desired there’s a lot of room to force down wages, assuming people would rather work in a nice office than flipping burgers or mopping floors.
The reason they’re not, is that the people who set the wages want to believe that their class is more valuable, so they set the wages apparently. But in a working labor market with near full employment, it’s not unthinkable to think that a furniture mover or a janitor would actually make more money than an office worker because the latter job is more desirable.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:06 am
Anyhow, interesting to see Canada so low on the list given that it doesn’t seem like that much different of a place.
How many of the rich sons ended up in New York and are therefore left out of the data?
April 15th, 2010 at 11:08 am
During summers in high school and college I worked at my family’s construction businesses, I’ve dug ditches, used a jack hammer, worked in metal air conditiooning units on hot tar roofs in July. I know what working hard entails. Now I’m a lawyer and work in a nice, air conditoned office and eat lunch at nice places (not out of a brown bag in the shade, and get paid just a bit more than I did back then. I do work longer hours, but to say I work harder is simply ridiculous. This job is a breeze.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:10 am
In the real world, the reason I earn more than Salvadoran movers is the same as the reason I work less hard—I have more valuable skills, and people with valuable skills can demand both more money and cushier working conditions.
It’s not even that your skills are more valuable per se, it’s rather that your skills — the ability to read, think and then write about it — are skills that can more easily be distributed across a wider platform and thus monetized than the mover’s physical skill at lifting a piano. While his skill creates value, it only creates value for one particular customer at one particular time and place — you when you move into your apartment. Your skill, meanwhile, creates a product that can be distributed to and enjoyed by millions of people around the world, and thus there’s more ability to extract value from it and to return that value to you in the form of higher pay.
Note also that this isn’t merely physical skill rather than intellectual skill: some physical skills, like the ability to hit a baseball with accuracy, are more valuable than your skill because, thanks to television, the viewing of that skill can be distributed around the world and thus create a demand to see it by millions of paying customers.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:13 am
There is also the concept of working smarter rather than harder. As I’ve mentioned before, in my business the only way to get a raise or promotion is to switch jobs. People who realize this switch every 2 to 5 years and can end up working half as hard for twice as much money as those who’ve been busting their ass for 15 years at the same place.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:14 am
Did you actually talk to this El Salvadoran guy and ask him how much he’s making? The assumption that you can’t make good money doing manual labor is itself an overclass conceit. I knew a guy, an immigrant from Mexico, worked three jobs and sent most of his money back home where he was having a house built. The guy worked his ass of for about eight years and then returned to Mexico where he married the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen and lives like a king. He makes Mike Donahue look like a wage slave sucker.
The point is, you can’t look at someone else’s life and make snap judgements based entirely on what they’re making right now. Life throws you a curveball and suddenly your ‘valuable skills’ as a professional blogger are worth less than a McDonalds fry cook. In life, there’s a thin line between living high on the hog and being in some alley somewhere sucking dick for a sandwich.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:14 am
What I find even more infuriating is when these types start cherry-picking examples to demonstrate their fallacy that hard work equals greater rewards. Find one striver, preferably a minority, who went from the slums to six figures and the theory is declared proven.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:15 am
Heresy, I say!
Everybody knows we live in a world of magical justice where economic “success” is completely coextensive and proportional with hard work. Poverty and wealth, as we ‘Murkens know, are not matters of structure and mobility, but are instead about individual ethics. Wealth is an indicator of right choices, responsible action and hard work. Poverty is nothing less than proof of poor choices, sloth and irrationality.
Ugh, I’m beginning to think Weber was right about Calvinism and Capitalism.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:16 am
It may be useful to further define what we mean by “overclass” — do we mean those who make, say, over $120/$200 K per year, or those who are worth more than ten times that (which would be to say that “work” is less of of a stressor for those people). In my experience, those who occupy the former category probably will work, and have worked, a lot harder than the guys moving your furniture. They are doctors, lawyers, and other high-paid professionals who have been obsessed with “success” and will regularly work 80 hours per week, for decades, in order to stay there. Vis-a-vis the day laborers who work no more than 40 hrs, max, and if you ignore the much lower standard of living may have more time to devote to personal issues in their lives. Compare that to the guys who reap significant annual income from their investments, and consider it a hardship if they don’t play golf every weekend. Those guys do not — I repeat, do NOT — work hard; even though they may be under the mis-impression that they do. It’s an interesting distinction/comparison
April 15th, 2010 at 11:17 am
[...] (via Big Media Matt) [...]
April 15th, 2010 at 11:18 am
Nobody in America should ever inherit more than $50M in today’s dollars
Why $50M?
That’s 20+ times more than what the average person earns in his/her lifetime.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:21 am
“I find it literally shocking that people say things like this.”
It send jolts of electricity through your body when you hear such things?
Please don’t use the word “literally” with a figure of speech. If people keep using the word “literally” figuratively, how will anyone be able to indicate that she is speaking literally?
April 15th, 2010 at 11:22 am
this whiner is a “financial advisor” but i wonder if his pay is indexed directly to the losses his clients took on his “advice” ?
I’m guessing he gets paid no matter how badly his clienst portfolios have tanked. just another fucking parasite.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:22 am
It’s great that America is the kind of country where a poor Salvadoran can come and, through hard work, obtain a higher standard of living than would have been possible in his home country.
What about a country where an AMERICAN can obtain a higher SOL?
By the way, talk to any tax preparer. They’ll tell you that income does not equal wealth.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:29 am
“I find it literally shocking that people say things like this.” It send jolts of electricity through your body when you hear such things? Please don’t use the word “literally” with a figure of speech.
Don’t be a stupid pedantic ass. Not because it’s annoying (it is), but because sometimes you’ll make a total fool of yourself, like just now. “I find it shocking” has nothing to do with a “figure of speech” relating to electricity. “Shocking” is a word unto itself. So when Matt says he is literally shocked, he means just that (as opposed to, like, “I’m shocked, shocked!!”). This is obvious to any speaker of English that doesn’t go around looking for ways to put people down.
In conclusion: don’t be a stupid pedantic ass.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:33 am
So far no refutation of the view that success in America is socially determined. It’ll be interesting to see what someone comes up with.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:35 am
To back up my claim: the OED dates the sense of “shock” meaning “scandalize, horrify; outrage, disgust; startle” from the mid-17th century, and the sense meaning “give (a person or animal) an electric shock” to the mid-18th century. Be embarrassed.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:35 am
I dont have a scientific reason for putting a 100% cap at $50M, that just strikes me as a reasonable high point beyond which nobody ever should, by the accident of their birth, be entitled to inherit.
I have no problem in the world with Steve Jobs, or James Cameron earning whatever they earn for producing movies, and creating gadgets we all love. As a society that aims to be meritocratic, we oughta get serious about doing way, way more to equalize life’s starting point (as much as is possible obviously).
The last 30 years has seen a wildly successful effort by the american right to create a millionaire-billionaire class, and the next 20 years or so its critical we capture these assets at the time of death and replenish the promise of America for everyone, not just the lucky.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:35 am
Donahue is a saver, of course, because his income far exceeds his consumption needs. Most people aren’t in that situation, especially nowadays. The savings trope looks like becoming the new “hard-working”: a nominally inoffensive, but really class-biased and ridiculous, way to rationalize the reproduction of wealth across generations.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:36 am
The assumption that you can’t make good money doing manual labor is itself an overclass conceit.
The whole post is pretty much dripping with condescension. I know a Salvadoran fellow with his own very successful landscaping business (etc.), and I don’t doubt that his business skills are just as valuable as those of any American. I don’t know if he was born in the middle of a civil war, but I don’t see why such an experience couldn’t also be an asset.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:39 am
Matt was in fact correct to write “I find it literally shocking”, as I’m sure he is, in fact, violently offended (an accepted natural meaning of “shock” for about 400 years). However, if you still want to have the fun image in your head of Matt in a Skinner Box, then pretend that he wrote “I find it physically shocking.”
April 15th, 2010 at 11:41 am
These are the same people who mocked firemen pre and post 9\11 (sotto voce) for risking their lives for what they consider “chump change”. The same people always preaching “moral clarity” and denigrating blacks and latinos. 99.2% of wealthy Americans had it handed to them on a silver platter. The Mob has more heart and soul.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:43 am
“I find it literally shocking that people say things like this.”
Says the guy literally paid to write words and stuff. ZZZZT! Shocker!
April 15th, 2010 at 11:46 am
The reality, depicted above, is that there’s relatively little social mobility in the United States, since when the rungs on the ladder are so far apart it’s difficult to overtake the people who are closer to the top.
And yet they keep coming and coming and coming…….there must be some reason that latinos from all over central and south America risk their lives to get here. Hey, I know, let’s disincentivize success here too.
Do furniture movers work harder than financial planners? If you’re looking at it strictly from a physical exertion standpoint, hell yeah. Supply and demand, partner. There are a buttload of people capable of moving furniture, not so many capable of making me money in the investment markets. Why is that so hard to figure out?
April 15th, 2010 at 11:47 am
“The whole post is pretty much dripping with condescension. I know a Salvadoran fellow with his own very successful landscaping business (etc.)”
Is it condescending to say that a laborer like a mover probably makes less than a small business owner, of any nationality? These movers obviously didn’t own landscaping businesses.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:55 am
The reality, depicted above, is that there’s relatively little social mobility in the United States, since when the rungs on the ladder are so far apart it’s difficult to overtake the people who are closer to the top.
I guess you really don’t know much about the majority of wealthy people in America. There are far more self made millionaires than inherited millionaires. There’s a saying in the financial industry. One generation to earn it, one generation to enjoy it, one generation to loose it.
And you completely missed Mr. Donahue’s second point. He SAVES money. That’s the real key to personal wealth.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:56 am
Why is that so hard to figure out?
But … but … that’s literally unfair!
April 15th, 2010 at 11:58 am
Just look at Matt – I’m sure he would have gone into law or medicine or consulting if he had come from a family that placed a greater premium on financial success. Are his low wages a result of some vast plutocratic conspiracy or just the natural result of his prefernces?
Matt’s wages aren’t low, the furniture movers’ wages are low. (Or not, as a few people speculate — but clearly *some* hardworking people’s wages are low.)
Do you really think the Salvadoran furniture movers have the jobs they have because they just enjoy moving furniture and don’t really value wealth? Or because they “aren’t savers”?
Even if Matt made a choice to forego greater wealth to enjoy blogging, the fact remains that the majority of people, even without counting the Salvadorans, didn’t have that choice to make in the first place.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:58 am
Grew up in a dysfunctional family that was economically bankrupt when I graduated from High School, worked in construction during High School, paid my own way through college. Now I own my own business and make more than most of you, guaranteed.
It’s doable.
It takes a lot of hard work but it’s doable. The American Dream still exists.
Do I work harder than a maid or a lawn care worker. Yup.
That work is easy compared to owning a business.
I know because I used to do that kind of work to pay my way in life.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:58 am
Do furniture movers work harder than financial planners? If you’re looking at it strictly from a physical exertion standpoint, hell yeah. Supply and demand, partner. There are a buttload of people capable of moving furniture, not so many capable of making me money in the investment markets. Why is that so hard to figure out?
That’s not the point; the point is that this financial planner douche thinks he got where he is because he worked hard, not because he was fortunate enough to be able to choose a field which remunerates him very well.
As to your latter suggestion, given the experience of the last few years, it’s unclear how true that really is. It seems more the case that the most successful players of the last rounds of the Big Money game have rigged the winning requirements in favor of them and theirs. Nice work if you can get it, but hardly the most efficient or egalitarian way to run a financial market.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:00 pm
I guess you really don’t know much about the majority of wealthy people in America. There are far more self made millionaires than inherited millionaires. There’s a saying in the financial industry. One generation to earn it, one generation to enjoy it, one generation to loose it.
Do you have a cite for this assertion?
April 15th, 2010 at 12:00 pm
@39: There are no self-made millionaires, only millionaires who think they are self-made. And, in any case, a million total net worth isn’t exactly overclass material.
Mike Donahue stands on the shoulders of multitudes yelling “Look how tall I am!”. It’s a disgusting spectacle.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:02 pm
Although I think it’s meant tongue in cheek, Geoff G is on to something with his #13 comment.
In general, I find, conservatives are very likely to attribute their own success (whatever it is) to good choices they or their parents made, and to believe or assume that people with less money, stuff or toys have this because they made poor decisions. The good are rewarded; the silly or shiftless are punished, which is what God intends.
In circumstances in which these conservatives are unsuccessful (laid off, losing elections) it is not because they made a poor choice; it is because someone acted malevolently towards them, perhaps in the service of a socialistic agenda, or because someone powerful wanted to give money to Fannie or Freddie to achieve social justice. This is not what God intends.
Progressives, in my view, are more inclined to accept that chance and circumstance play very big parts in people’s outcomes, so are more inclined to be sympathetic to safety nets and some redistribution. They are also, in my experience, less likely to believe fervently that you get what you deserve, whether God intends this or not.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:02 pm
There are a buttload of people capable of moving furniture, not so many capable of making me money in the investment markets. Why is that so hard to figure out?
If you can borrow from the Fed at essentially 0%, like all of the major investment banks, and do nothing but park that money in T-bills, theoretically the absolute safest investment in the world, you too can make money in the markets. A trained monkey could make money if he worked for one of the big guys right now.
And assuming your guy didn’t just do this, there’s plenty of evidence of how much luck/randomness has to do with making you money in the markets. Not to mention that *no one* has a 100% success rate.
But you don’t *get* to work in finance if you’re a Salvadoran who had the misfortune of being born into a socio-economic class in an impoverished country making it impossible for him to go to a top university and thus get a job at Morgan Stanley.
How the fucking hell do you know if your mover has the capability – as opposed to the opportunity – to make you money?
Finally, this guy Donohue – because he is not a trader – makes money whether or not his clients make money.
So why don’t you shut the fuck up with the faux market bullshit, kay?
April 15th, 2010 at 12:03 pm
A good book to read that touches on what Xbrad said is The Millionaire Next Door.
Interesting findings.
From the Library Journal:
In The Millionaire Next Door, read by Cotter Smith, Stanley (Marketing to the Affluent) and Danko (marketing, SUNY at Albany) summarize findings from their research into the key characteristics that explain how the elite club of millionaires have become “wealthy.” Focusing on those with a net worth of at least $1 million, their surprising results reveal fundamental qualities of this group that are diametrically opposed to today’s earn-and-consume culture, including living below their means, allocating funds efficiently in ways that build wealth, ignoring conspicuous consumption, being proficient in targeting marketing opportunities, and choosing the “right” occupation. It’s evident that anyone can accumulate wealth, if they are disciplined enough, determined to persevere, and have the merest of luck.
_____
Personally I disagree with the luck requirement, you make your own luck.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:03 pm
Is it just me, or does the name of the self-proclaimed self-made man at 42 sound like a type of lottery? I find that oddly appropriate. I wonder if he has even seen the stats on how many small businesses fail, or if he just convinced himself that he *totally* earned it, unlike all those other lazy/stupid business owners.
Economic Calvinism in action.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:03 pm
the fact remains that the majority of people, even without counting the Salvadorans, didn’t have that choice to make in the first place.
Really? The majority of American kids don’t have the choice to spend their evenings with Gods of War III, The Hills, Family Guy vs. their algebra homework? Some don’t have that choice, it maybe upwards of 30%… but, the majority?
April 15th, 2010 at 12:04 pm
@48, 49: Ha. Called it.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:04 pm
There are no self-made millionaires.
Paging Tiger Woods. Oh wait, he’s standing atop a heap of exploited cobblers.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:06 pm
As to your latter suggestion, given the experience of the last few years, it’s unclear how true that really is. It seems more the case that the most successful players of the last rounds of the Big Money game have rigged the winning requirements in favor of them and theirs. Nice work if you can get it, but hardly the most efficient or egalitarian way to run a financial market.
Yea, I should have added in my own response to this asshole that many of the large banks are engaging in practices that are wholly abusive of the fact that the SEC is an undermanned, underfunded, and completely compromised institution.
The investment banks right now are basically giant proprietary trading firms that have access to *massive* amounts of information regarding what their deluded clients are doing with their money. Furthermore, they know precisely *what* their clients are being advised to buy.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:06 pm
believe or assume that people with less money, stuff or toys have this because they made poor decisions.
No, it’s just that many (I’d say most) people don’t put much value in money, stuff or toys.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:07 pm
Grew up in a dysfunctional family that was economically bankrupt when I graduated from High School, worked in construction during High School, paid my own way through college. Now I own my own business and make more than most of you, guaranteed.
It’s doable.
It takes a lot of hard work but it’s doable. The American Dream still exists.
Do I work harder than a maid or a lawn care worker. Yup.
That work is easy compared to owning a business.
I know because I used to do that kind of work to pay my way in life.
Tax the workaholics. Lazy of the world unite!
The way to get ahead is to work really hard at brown nosing and ass-kissing. And be smart about it! Also work hard at knocking out the competition.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:09 pm
“In general, I find, conservatives are very likely to attribute their own success (whatever it is) to good choices they or their parents made, and to believe or assume that people with less money, stuff or toys have this because they made poor decisions. The good are rewarded; the silly or shiftless are punished, which is what God intends.”
Surely you can see there is some truth to that.
Take two neighbors, one saves money, and takes a risk in starting a business, the other spends his money on a boat and jet skis, perhaps a rubber fist, and never takes the risk of starting his own business.
Which has a greater chance of being financially rewarded?
As I said, I started with literally nothing, my bicycle was the most expensive thing I owned, now I make a shitload and have amassed wealth. Not to the level of 50 million but I am young yet.
The difference between me and the friends I have who haven’t achieved financial success is risk aversion and spending habits.
As far as what God intends, I am agnostic so I have no idea.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:10 pm
their surprising results reveal fundamental qualities of this group…[include]…choosing the “right” occupation.
Dude, did you even read Matt’s post?
April 15th, 2010 at 12:14 pm
I still own that bicycle, use it to get around town occasionally.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:14 pm
Inequality is one of the areas where progressives are generally on weak ground, but they don’t realize it due to the echo chamber. Salvadoran movers are not representative of the bottom quintile. The hours worked for people in the bottom quintile of households is only one-sixth the hours worked for people in the top quintile. I could dig up the reference for the curious.
The reason why it is hard to move up is because the non-immigrant poor lack the bourgeois values needed for middle class success. Even Christopher Jencks, a progressive luminary, made that point in regard to the need for better parenting practices by black parents in The Black-White Test Score Gap.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:20 pm
@39: There are no self-made millionaires, only millionaires who think they are self-made.
Millionaire = Serendipity?
Millionaire = Luck o’ the draw?
Millionaire = right place, right time?
I’d love to hear an elaboration on this concept.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:23 pm
As to social mobility, the question isn’t how well Salvadoran movers do, it is, “How do their kids do?”
April 15th, 2010 at 12:23 pm
Well, it’s better to be lucky than smart, but it’s pretty clear from this thread that it’s best to be smart enough to know when you’re lucky.
Serious idiot fest here.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:25 pm
Take two neighbors, one saves money, and takes a risk in starting a business, the other spends his money on a boat and jet skis, perhaps a rubber fist, and never takes the risk of starting his own business.
Or perhaps the other has a kid with some health issues, and can never quite justify the risk of starting his own business. But that would make your juxtaposition look facile, wouldn’t it?
April 15th, 2010 at 12:26 pm
“I have more valuable skills”
That’s not the whole story. Very few people “have” skills. They develop skills. Maybe going to Dalton and Harvard is not like working in a sweatshop, but it’s harder than loafing in school and training to become a greeter in a Big Box store. So while the work you do TODAY might not be al that hard, that doesn’t take into account some sacrifices you might have made earlier in life. These might have been sacrifices some people might have been willing to make if given the opportunity, sure. But again, the work you do on a given day does not offer a full reflection of what you “put into” your work.
I see a lot of people complain about how much money doctors make, or how they golf too much, or whatever. Look. I went to college with a lot of people who became doctors. I didn’t. One very real reason I did not was that the classes were too hard, and the med school thing seemed like way too much work. Similarly, I know a lot of evil I-bankers. I could have been one, probably. But I didn’t want to learn the math, and I didn’t want to live in a Manhattan shoebox for three years, working 100-hour weeks for $40,000, until it was my turn to get rich. They did. Good for them. Either way, hardly makes sense for me to complain about it now.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:26 pm
If we want to get deep here, no one deserves hardly anything. If, instead of being born in the context of our present social organization, one was born on a remote island, one would be very poor, whether one was Bill Gates or Albert Einstein or the El Salvadorian mover or whatever. We owe almost everything we have to the legacy left by previous generations, who taught us almost everything we know, and to the empowerment we get by resulting technology and social organization.
The point of wages is not to give a person his/her fair share — the point is to provide incentive to work hard and developing talent and making largest positive contribution to society. It’s not necessary to compensate Bill Gates and the El Salvadorian mover in proportion of the “actual value” of their contributions — however one would go about figuring that out — it’s necessary only to pay sufficiently to give them each the incentive to do what they do (or more).
That certainly requires income disparity (otherwise, why should more talented people work harder, if they can use their talent to be less productive for the same pay?). But I don’t think it requires the kind of income disparity we see today. After all, income disparity was less in the past, and wealthy people worked hard then too.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:27 pm
“I have more than most only because I’ve worked harder than most and because I am a saver.”
I fail to see how this is controversial in any way, as it describes my situation perfectly. I have more money than your average laborer because I work hard, and I’m a saver. The fact that both my wife and I make six figures is irrelevant.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:27 pm
“Or perhaps the other has a kid with some health issues, and can never quite justify the risk of starting his own business. But that would make your juxtaposition look facile, wouldn’t it?”
HA HA!
Yes, of course, throw in the kid with a health issue.
Do you live in a fucking Dickens novel?
Throw in a little boy with polio, THEN WHAT!?!??
April 15th, 2010 at 12:27 pm
Finally, this guy Donohue – because he is not a trader – makes money whether or not his clients make money.
Yep, except if his clients don’t make money, pretty soon, he won’t have any clients. The financial industry is one of the most cutthroat industries I’ve ever seen. Mr. Donahue may have had advantages getting in the door that our Salvadoran movers never had, but that in no way guarantees success. Clients will fire an advisor in a heartbeat, often for the most petty of reasons.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:28 pm
Enter the sick kid trump card. But … but … what if the dog really did eat their homework? That’s so unfair.
Checkmate, plutocrats!
April 15th, 2010 at 12:31 pm
Yesterday, as I watched my personal savings make several times as much money as I was making for actually working that day, I had the following thought:
It used to be fashionable to talk about how welfare and other socialized public spending was a disincentive to work. Well, what about capital gains?
I’ll grant, maybe there are some poor folks out there who don’t work harder because they’re satisfied with the pittance of social support they get from our government. These people, I presume, are largely untalented, because for talented people the payoffs for working hard are large… much larger than social welfare. Consider, on the other side, the huge potential for very talented people to choose not to work harder, because they are satisfied with the income they derive from capital gains on the huge salaries they received earlier in their lives, or that they inherited from their ancestors.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:37 pm
Re: But whether or not I work longer hours than they do (which is definitely possible, I work pretty long hours), you’d have to be clinically insane to think that writing my blog entails working harder than they do.
Good, I’m glad (and rather suprised) that Mr. Yglesias has the humility and decency to realise this.
Re: I have more valuable skills, and people with valuable skills can demand both more money and cushier working conditions
This is Yglesias’ fundamental error. His ’skills’, such as they are, are considered more valuable by most Americans nowadays, but not for the first time, most Americans are wrong. They are not more valuable in some kind of absolute Platonistic sense. Rather then encouraging Salvadoran labourers to become bloggers, I think we would do better to restructure our economy so that manual labourers are paid at least as well, enjoy at least as good medical care and work-related benefits, and enjoy at least as much societal respect and support as people who spend their days writing blog posts about Foucault and the NBA. We need people who move furniture for a living, I would say we need them quite a bit more then we need professional pundits.
As Mr. Noam Chomsky has said, the average automobile mechanic is probably a good deal smarter and more intellectually agile then the typical postmodernist English Literature professor.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:37 pm
You do understand that capital gains are the reward for taking a risk with your money, right? And there is a potential downside of capital losses?
April 15th, 2010 at 12:38 pm
Uniball writes: Take two neighbors, one saves money, and takes a risk in starting a business, the other spends his money on a boat and jet skis, perhaps a rubber fist, and never takes the risk of starting his own business. Which has a greater chance of being financially rewarded?
Well, given this:
it doesn’t seem unreasonable to suggest that the guy who spent his income from his steady, boring job on the toys stands more chance of coming out ahead.
this is the problem with anecdotes. i had net worth of close to US$2M by the time i was about 32 years old. did this have anything remotely to do with hard work, planning or skill? would an answer to that question provide any information that would be useful in formulating social and financial policy? we can find anecdotal examples (such as yours or mine) to support any particular point of view. this isn’t how you build a rational policy, which needs to be based on aggregate statistics and probabilities. no matter what the assumptions behind the policies, there will always be some outlying cases that appear to invalidate them. consequently, what matters are not the outliers, but the experience of a substantial majority. if there is no substantial majority, then things get a bit trickier, but the anecdotes about The American Dream don’t contribute much to that case either.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:39 pm
Re: As Mr. Noam Chomsky has said
For the record, I think Mr. Chomsky is in general a tiresome f*ckwit, but even a broken clock is right twice a day.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:42 pm
It’s literally shocking that someone who quotes Chomsky would also use “then” rather than “than” three separate times in one comment. Perhaps you should move furniture instead.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:43 pm
Rather then encouraging Salvadoran labourers to become bloggers, I think we would do better to restructure our economy so that manual labourers are paid at least as well, enjoy at least as good medical care and work-related benefits, and enjoy at least as much societal respect and support as people who spend their days writing blog posts about Foucault and the NBA.
So what you’re saying is, that instead of paying $500 to move my stuff, I should have to pay $2000. And since I’m not willing to pay $2000, I’ll just move it myself. And since I don’t need a mover, that means the Salvadoran movers are out of jobs. See how much better that works for them?
April 15th, 2010 at 12:43 pm
Shorter Uniball: My datum trumps your data.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:45 pm
In my experience, those who occupy the former category probably will work, and have worked, a lot harder than the guys moving your furniture. They are doctors, lawyers, and other high-paid professionals who have been obsessed with “success” and will regularly work 80 hours per week, for decades, in order to stay there. Vis-a-vis the day laborers who work no more than 40 hrs, max, and if you ignore the much lower standard of living may have more time to devote to personal issues in their lives.
I’ve done both. It ain’t so.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:48 pm
The number of people who seem utterly incapable of recognizing their own privilege makes me sick.
I like to think I’m a good person, and I don’t think I deserve to be demonized because I was born with a lot of privilege – however, you have to put where I am today in the context of how I was born into relative privilege. (Relatively wealthy, high-income parents; born in America; white; mentally and physically abled; etc.).
Peggy McIntosh’s “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack” comes to mind. Anyone reading this right now, if you haven’t read it, do.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:49 pm
Uniball is using his personal life as an example, not as a proof.
Yes, most personal business endeavors fail. That’s part of risk/reward. And I don’t think uni is saying that being a company man is evil.
The fact of the matter is, most millionaires in America are small business owners, and small business owners are the main engine of job creation in America. And when progressives talk about taxing the rich, they may be aiming for a corporate fat cat, but inevitably, they hit small business owners.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:50 pm
Re: And since I’m not willing to pay $2000, I’ll just move it myself.
Yup. Perhaps that would teach you a little bit more about how hard the Salvadorans’ job is. This is not supposed to be a country of effete aristocrats who get other people to do all their chores for them. (It IS to an extent, especially at the extremes, but it isn’t SUPPOSED to be.)
April 15th, 2010 at 12:50 pm
So, by extension, the reason banksters earn more than you is that they have more valuable skills?
The reason you earn more than Salvadorans is that you have better connections than they. The reason banksters earn more than you is that they have fantastic connections.
In a just world, the kind of shenanigans perpetrated by banksters would be a capital offense. Instead, hard-working people go hungry while failed CEOs try to run for governor of California.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:50 pm
What are you? Four-years old? Compensation stopped being based on amount of physical labor when the wheel was invented.
The guy that was smart enough to come up with the wheel then had something of value that was worth vastly more than the effort needed to create it.
Compensation is based on the value provided and what others are willing to pay for it. If that gets your panties in a bunch then I suggest you go commando when judging others livelihoods.
When a couple gives all of their retirement money to a financial advisor to invest and manage in the hopes that they don’t outlive it over the next 30 years, you tell me: is that harder than moving a couch?
You’re a moron for equating value with physical effort.
Go out in the world and get a real job.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:51 pm
@XBradTC:
I didn’t mean to imply capital gains have no value or that society would be better if they didn’t exist or anything like that — they serve an important function in a capitalist market. And I think, for all its flaws, the capitalist market is the best idea we have for organizing economies.
I only mean to suggest that the ability to make money too easily via capital gains — or via any other method for that matter — is just as much a disincentive to work as the ability to derive comfort from social welfare.
The policy I’m advocating is higher taxes on capital gains (I’d prefer they be taxed like regular income, though I think my argument can be used to push for even higher taxes, so long as losses can be deducted, to compensate for risk), not a vast restructuring of capitalist markets.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:52 pm
The number of people who seem utterly incapable of recognizing their own privilege makes me sick.
Not literally sick, I hope. Because then you’d totally screw up your parents’ chance for success.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:54 pm
The reason you earn more than Salvadorans is that you have better connections than they. The reason banksters earn more than you is that they have fantastic connections.
Connections will get you in the door. Production will get you money. What about the Salvadoran’s neighbors that are on welfare? Did they not have good enough connections to even get a job as a mover? Or as a gardener? There isn’t some giant conspiracy to keep people down, no matter how much you wish it so.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:55 pm
When I immigrated to this country in 1970, I was amazed at how meritocratic it was. I didn’t have to work very hard (graduate school in engineering is the easiest thing that anybody with half a brain can do), but the rewards have been quite astonishing for an immigrant from a third world country.
However, over the years I see a perceptible change in the ethos of the country. It has been run over by the people who neither have knowledge nor a basic level of competence.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:57 pm
Uniball: congratulations on your success.
Being prepared to work hard, and being good at making choices, are valuable life skills, and I don’t have any reluctance in congratulating you for being rewarded for them.
My point, though, is that the correlation coefficient between working hard and making good choices and being successful isn’t 1 – in my view, it’s much less than 1. A lot of people work very hard, and make very good choices, and get clobbered. And a lot of people ride on the back of their parents – see Matt’s chart above.
And a lot of people work in jobs where they’re compensated way above their social value – being a lucky and capable vampire squid pays quite well, I’m told. And many vampire squids (and others) appear to resent being asked to give some of that back in taxes, so here we are.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:58 pm
Donahue is apparently from the school of thought that thinks you have to pay the overclass obscene amounts, but also doesn’t believe in a minimum wage. The logic, of course, is that the only way to motivate the overclass is to pay them a lot, while the only way to motivate the poor is to pay them nothing…
April 15th, 2010 at 12:59 pm
Donahue gets paid what the market will bear. No more.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:59 pm
Uniball, dude, you do realize that kids with health issues live outside of Dickens novels?
Your point was that hard work, not luck or family background, determines success. You used the example of the good little mouse who invested in a business and the bad little mouse who spent on jet-skis. Another commentator suggested the alternate, be equally possible, example of a good little mouse who would like to invest, but his baby mouse has health issues – this was to point out one example of how luck often determines success (and how we don’t all make our own luck, as you suggest, because we cannot eliminate cancer or polio, to use your example, or traffic accidents by force of effort alone). He cherry-picked his example, but that was his point- there are lots of reasons why hard work and willingness to save might not determine success. And in any case, you also cherry-picked your example, and that was the other commentators point! Got it?
HA HA!
Yes, of course, throw in the kid with a health issue.
Do you live in a fucking Dickens novel?
Throw in a little boy with polio, THEN WHAT!?!??
April 15th, 2010 at 1:00 pm
Of course, raising taxes on capital gains is a loser proposition. You know it “feels good” to the anticapitalist, but if you’re really interested in maximizing the graft for the Fed government tax-wise, you need to LOWER Capital gains to 22%.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/04/laff_it_up_tax_lovers.html
And, raise the labor taxes to 65%.
April 15th, 2010 at 1:02 pm
Compare
to
This is certainly as close to inductive logic as one could find.
April 15th, 2010 at 1:02 pm
The ethnic compositions of these countries seems to predict the results. And yes, I mean because different racial groups have different average IQs among other biological and cultural tendencies passed down from father to son. What is the social mobility of Salvedorean Americans within the group of Salvedorean Americans, or Swedish Americans within their demographic?
April 15th, 2010 at 1:04 pm
Grew up in a dysfunctional family that was economically bankrupt when I graduated from High School, worked in construction during High School, paid my own way through college. Now I own my own business and make more than most of you, guaranteed…It’s doable.
Uniball: Nobody’s saying it’s not doable. It’s just that — contrary to American mythology — it’s less doable in the US than in most other developed countries.
April 15th, 2010 at 1:06 pm
@95: Uniball’s datum trumps your data.
April 15th, 2010 at 1:06 pm
Uniball: Nobody’s saying it’s not doable. It’s just that — contrary to American mythology — it’s less doable in the US than in most other developed countries.
Bah haaahhhaaa .
Bullshit.
Name one developed country where it’s “more” doable.
April 15th, 2010 at 1:06 pm
Donahue gets paid what the market will bear. No more.
And the market for comforting the comfortable will bear a lot. Same as it ever was.
Why is XBradTC doing it here for free, though? My faith in efficient markets is shaken.
April 15th, 2010 at 1:07 pm
People who think that millionaire is a rich person are funny; what a lack of imagination. A million dollars is nothing; I am probably a millionaire. Check this out: The L-Curve.
April 15th, 2010 at 1:09 pm
Name one developed country where it’s “more” doable.
See, there’s this thing called a “chart” at the top of the page here. You might want to look into it.
April 15th, 2010 at 1:11 pm
XBradTC writes:
When I (who would consider myself a progressive) talk about taxing the rich, I’m aiming at anyone who has a certain net worth and/or a certain income. I don’t care whether they are a fat cat, a skinny cat or or a cool cat. I say this as a small business owner and as someone who once wrote a single tax check to the IRS that was larger than my cumulative total pre-tax earnings for the previous 10 years.
April 15th, 2010 at 1:11 pm
The number of very hard workers that have time to read blogs on the job and then continually comment is rather shocking as well.
Apparently tax day has force all the talented achievers to go Galt.
April 15th, 2010 at 1:11 pm
I thought I would respond to this with the obvious, but I’m not sure how to respond to someone who puts quotes around the word more.
April 15th, 2010 at 1:13 pm
Consider it the weak form of the EMH. This guy’s no more uniformed than the ilk he represents.
April 15th, 2010 at 1:14 pm
From the article:
A higher level of intergenerational mobility is often interpreted as a sign of greater fairness, or equality of opportunity, in a society.
Unless, of course, you find fault with the premise.
April 15th, 2010 at 1:14 pm
If you have some connections, then yes, you get in the door. If your connections are not so great, then yes, you have to start producing something of value if you want to keep your job.
However, if your connections are good, you could get promoted to a job way over your skill level. What exactly qualified “Heckuva Job” Brownie to be head of FEMA? For that matter, would George W. Bush have been president if his name was Dan Quayle?
April 15th, 2010 at 1:14 pm
You do understand that capital gains are the reward for taking a risk with your money, right? And there is a potential downside of capital losses?
And you do understand that that has nothing to do with “hard work”, correct?
April 15th, 2010 at 1:15 pm
Further … I don’t know how many times it has to be repeated: the median income in the USA today is in the upper $40k’s. I’m tired of people discussing incomes of $200k as part of “the middle class” with the implication that this is the “bracket” where “most people” are. Even in Connecticut, the state with highest median income, the median 4-person family income for FY2009 was only $94k (in NM that same number was $52k).
It would really help discussions about who the “overclass” is and what to do about taxing (or not taxing) them if there was a more honest and shared description of what “middle class” actually means. People who feel that they are struggling on $X/yr are entitled to their own analysis of their situation, but once again: this not how you construct rational social policy.
April 15th, 2010 at 1:17 pm
I thought I would respond to this with the obvious, but I’m not sure how to respond to someone who puts quotes around the word more.
If you’re grammatically comfortable with the expression “more doable” then that’s your problem.
April 15th, 2010 at 1:18 pm
And you do understand that that has nothing to do with “hard work”, correct?
So, only “hard work” is worthy to be compensated?
I’m sure Marx would agree, but I don’t think he personally worked very hard either.
April 15th, 2010 at 1:19 pm
If you’re incapable of reading a graph, who’s problem is that?
April 15th, 2010 at 1:20 pm
Re: Apparently tax day has force all the talented achievers to go Galt.
LOL.
April 15th, 2010 at 1:21 pm
I’m capable of reading a graph. I’m also capable of reading the piece from which the graph was cribbed.
And, I disagree with the premise.
April 15th, 2010 at 1:21 pm
@111 Dartmouth’s, maybe
April 15th, 2010 at 1:22 pm
Why is XBradTC doing it here for free, though? My faith in efficient markets is shaken.
It’s a philanthropic endeavor.
April 15th, 2010 at 1:24 pm
Fortunately, this thread has nothing to do with your “premise.” Perhaps you ought to start at the beginning of the tread to understand its evolution. (Hint: Datum does not trump data.)
April 15th, 2010 at 1:26 pm
Name one developed country where it’s [social mobility] “more” doable.
Canada, France, Germany, Sweden, Holland, Finland, Norway, Denmark, for starters:
Children from low-income families have only a 1 percent chance of reaching the top 5 percent of the income distribution, versus children of the rich who have about a 22 percent chance.
….By international standards, the United States has an unusually low level of intergenerational mobility: our parents’ income is highly predictive of our incomes as adults. Intergenerational mobility in the United States is lower than in France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway and Denmark. Among high-income countries for which comparable estimates are available, only the United Kingdom had a lower rate of mobility than the United States.
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/04/b1579981.html
April 15th, 2010 at 1:26 pm
It’s not my premise. It is the premise presented by the linked piece. The premise that looks at the data and says this what what WE think it means. I quoted it for you and everything.
April 15th, 2010 at 1:26 pm
tread = thread. My ‘h’ key is sticky today. All that ingenerational mobility has swept it away.
April 15th, 2010 at 1:30 pm
Fortunately, this thread has nothing to do with your “premise.”
Says the guy pointing back to the chart in Matt’s post.
Carin (and many of us) do not accept the premise behind that chart, i.e. that some kind of invented “intergenerational elasticity of earnings” has any value whatsoever.
But … but … it’s a CHART!
April 15th, 2010 at 1:34 pm
Perhaps if they chart had used color I’d be more convinced? Or diamond points! Bar graphs are so unimaginative.
April 15th, 2010 at 1:35 pm
not just a CHART
but a CHART that burns
look away, look away I tell you
April 15th, 2010 at 1:37 pm
Happily, I understand the phrase “International Estimates of the Father-Son Earnings Elasticity” and can interpret, absolutely and relatively, the lengths of bars. Happily, I also know much of the other literature on intergenerational income mobility, which shows qualitatively similar things. I also don’t believe a datum trump data.
April 15th, 2010 at 1:41 pm
From The Chart’s background paper:
Expected.
In other words “bullshit numbers I pulled from my ass to fit my thesis.”
April 15th, 2010 at 1:41 pm
Shorter glibertarians:
Let’s talk about something else! Seriously, the thing that’s presented here for discussion undercuts our position…what’s up with that?
April 15th, 2010 at 1:44 pm
What DMonteith said.
For fuck’s sake, doesn’t McMegan have a comment section you assholes can inhabit?
April 15th, 2010 at 1:44 pm
Let’s talk about something else!
But I’m talking about the Sacred CHART.
April 15th, 2010 at 1:45 pm
Yes, it’s not just the Tea Partiers, but at least half of the population that believes: Why don’t those miserable slobs who work hard for barely enough to get by just avail themselves of the bounteous opportunities to lead a life like mine?
April 15th, 2010 at 1:45 pm
small business owners are the main engine of job creation in America.
This turns out not to be the case. Most small business “job creation” is either churn (failed small businesses being replaced by new small businesses) or outsourcing, both of which destroy a job for every job they create.
(Outsourcing, in turn, is driven to a significant extent by regulatory arbitrage around small-business exemptions: if you can’t treat your janitor like shit, fire him and contract with a small business that can rehire him and treat him like shit because it’s a small business and exempt. Congratulations, you just created a job!)
April 15th, 2010 at 1:46 pm
this chart seriously that convincing to you people?
Two east Asian immigrants with IQs around 125 arrive in a country with nothing. Do you really think their child is more likely to be successful if that country is Norway rather than the US? Possibly, but the chart has nothing to say on the issue.
April 15th, 2010 at 1:47 pm
[...] I’ve blogged about this before, but I need to pass on another piece of proof, courtesy of Matthew Yglesias. [...]
April 15th, 2010 at 1:49 pm
Btw, why have none of the glibs mentioned that this point about US social mobility having fallen greatly from its previous heights is something the fucking gospel of glibertarianism, the Economist, has talked about in several cover issues?
It’s not just the damn chart. There’s a pretty substantial record backing it up.
April 15th, 2010 at 1:52 pm
The real difference between Donahue and the movers is that Donahue pays considerably more toward the country’s expenses than they do. And is now being forced to pay even more. In his view he is paying his fair share and most of theirs too.
Considering that we have 47% of the country paying no income taxes, he has a point. I believe he used the word “mule” to describe how it feels.
April 15th, 2010 at 1:52 pm
But I’m talking about the Sacred CHART.
Ah. Claiming that something that undercuts your position is bullshit without actually providing any reason to believe that it is, indeed, bullshit constitutes addressing the question. Good to know.
You do realize that two can play this game?
In other words “bullshit numbers I pulled from my ass to fit my thesis.”
In other words “bullshit objection I pulled from my ass to fit my thesis.”
Fun for the whole family–even the 3 year olds!
April 15th, 2010 at 1:54 pm
MY,
“the reason I earn more than Salvadoran movers is the same as the reason I work less hard—I have more valuable skills”
“Valuable skills” are situational. If those Salvadorian movers were instead, armed revolutionaries and you were an elite in San Salvador, being able to handle a knife and use a gun would be a far more valuable skill wouldn’t it? The tipping point for violent revolotions throughout history comes when elites decide they’re more “valuable” then the rest of society.
April 15th, 2010 at 1:55 pm
Please tell me how “expected child earnings” can reasonably be calculated and — wait for it — charted.
April 15th, 2010 at 1:56 pm
Two east Asian immigrants with IQs around 125 arrive in a country with nothing. Do you really think their child is more likely to be successful if that country is Norway rather than the US? Possibly, but the chart has nothing to say on the issue.
Let’s look at this:
1. Said immigrants are far more likely to speak some English than they are Norwegian, because Norwegian is spoken by a few million people in a corner of Northern Europe, while English-language media has inundated the entire world. This isn’t even to mention the role of English as the international language of business and diplomacy.
2. Said immigrants are most likely to enter the US through New York City, Los Angeles, the SF Bay Area, Seattle, or a few other large coastal American cities. Which already have massive populations of immigrants of similar or even *identical* ethnic and linguistic heritage as the aforementioned newbies. Whereas Oslo does not have the world’s biggest Chinatown, for example.
3. A combination of better familiarity with the language and an extensive support network of similar immigrants, along with 1st generation American descendants of said immigrants, will substantially ease the aforementioned pair into American life.
They’ll probably do better in America.
For reasons that have *NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH HARD WORK*
April 15th, 2010 at 2:01 pm
, why have none of the glibs mentioned that this point about US social mobility having fallen greatly from its previous heights is something the fucking gospel of glibertarianism, the Economist, has talked about in several cover issues?
Isn’t that a different argument? At issue is social mobility or lack thereof – rich stay rich, poor stay poor. The new phenomena is that NO ONE is going to have as much wealth (whatever the level) as their parents.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:02 pm
Parental earnings = measurable, historic data
Expected child earnings = “my best guess of what might happen”
The Chart is bullshit. I’m sorry, Chart.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:05 pm
this chart seriously that convincing to you people?
Oh! My bad! I forgot that the hypotheticals that random blog commenters pull out of their ass are more reliable than the study linked to in the post!
There’s a reason why the most compelling arguments for libertarianism are works of science fiction.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:09 pm
I am speaking directly to The Study behind The Chart. “Expected child earnings” is not data, it’s a guess.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:13 pm
Portrait of a Millionaire from the Washington Post.
Mostly self-made people who started a business and worked hard.
The most successful ancestry groups are Russians, Scots, and Hungarians.
The general point of the article is that many people, including most or the fools on this thread, have no idea what millionaires are actually like or how they got there.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:13 pm
Cuffy Meigs: Expected child earnings = “my best guess of what might happen”
No. That’s not what it means at all. If you read the paper (!) you’ll find it means “given the statistics we have collected, what we would predict the child to earn given knowledge of the father’s earnings”.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:15 pm
I look forward to Cuffy Meigs’ links to peer reviewed articles that cast doubt on the methodology of the study in question.
Heh.
Seriously, “Cuffy Meigs doesn’t understand the econometrics here” is the most devastating criticism you can come up with? What else don’t you understand? Do tell.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:15 pm
Please tell me how “expected child earnings” can reasonably be calculated and — wait for it — charted.
This way. If you actually go to the study and read it, you can see exactly how this is done based on historical data over the past 40 years:
The dataset used in this paper consists of 4,004 children observed in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics in their parents’ households in the 1968 survey, at any age between 0 and 18. Their parents’ incomes and attributes are observed in the 1968-1972 surveys. The children are then observed again as adult heads of household, or spouses thereof, in the 1995, 1996, 1997, 1999 and 2001 surveys. (The survey has been biannual since 1997.) The (weighted) sample was initially
representative of the universe of American children in 1968; over time, however, non-random attrition has altered the composition of the sample. This was corrected by reweighting the sample to preserve its original demographic proportions.
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/04/Hertz_MobilityAnalysis.pdf
April 15th, 2010 at 2:17 pm
A “prediction” is a polysyllabic way of saying “guess.” Makes for a nice Chart, though.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:18 pm
“There are a buttload of people capable of moving furniture, not so many capable of making me money in the investment markets.”
This is kinda funny.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:19 pm
Re: “Valuable skills” are situational. If those Salvadorian movers were instead, armed revolutionaries and you were an elite in San Salvador, being able to handle a knife and use a gun would be a far more valuable skill wouldn’t it? The tipping point for violent revolotions throughout history comes when elites decide they’re more “valuable” then the rest of society.
Yeah. I find the notion of Mr. Yglesias stuck in a civil war in the Salvadoran mountains, and trying to quote Judith Butler to his captors, truly too amusing for words.
For that matter, I wonder how well Mr. Yglesias ‘valuable skills’ would serve him if he was trying to grow sweet potatoes in said Salvadoran mountains.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:20 pm
The “Hertz Mobility Analysis” is bullshit. Go read the entire PDF.
How varied is the income distribution in the US compared to these other countries? I’m sure that would have NOTHING to do with how the “CHART” looks.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:23 pm
You realize that the quote you just posted undercuts your argument, don’t you? That it is saying that there is low income mobility in the United States?
April 15th, 2010 at 2:25 pm
Ha. you guys are hopeless .
April 15th, 2010 at 2:25 pm
I just started a small business to take advantage of my advantaged birth.
Well, that and the fact that the Michigan economy entirely tanked and I had to create my own job.
It’s not hard work at all.
Nope.
And, I certainly don’t expect to benefit from my not hard work. I’m going to donate all of my earnings to Salvadoran mover’s sick kids.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:27 pm
peer reviewed articles
You mean like those awesome global warming peer reviewed articles?
April 15th, 2010 at 2:28 pm
A “prediction” is a polysyllabic way of saying “guess.”
Moron. The “prediction” was made back in the 1960s, it’s not being made now — they took kids back in 1968-1972, predicted what they would expect to earn based on their parent’s status, and then ran that against how it actually turned out in the real world over a period of 40 years.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:30 pm
peer reviewed articles
Worked sooo well in the field of climate science. Who knows what it will do for the field of Overclass Studies.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:31 pm
The “Hertz Mobility Analysis” is simply a correlation coefficient between generations’ earnings that’s been corrected for changes in income equality that have occurred over time. I don’t know if that last part is warranted, but it doesn’t sound like a very controversial statistic. At the very least I feel like people calling it “bullshit” should know what a correlation coefficient is, which doesn’t seem to be evidenced here.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:31 pm
They are comparing things that should not be compared. Comparing the riches v poorest in the US v the richest v poorist the Sweden . Then add in the mobility. Does not compute.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Moron.
No, you’re a towel!
April 15th, 2010 at 2:35 pm
I’m going to donate all of my earnings to Salvadoran mover’s sick kids.
And I will share my goat’s milk with those kids.
Get it? Kids? Oh man, I’m good.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:37 pm
humn …
April 15th, 2010 at 2:39 pm
This Donahue fellow isn’t making any sense; why should he be paid so much just because he “works hard”? That’s not what I normally hear from these guys. This is more like it:
Now, all joking aside, this is the idiocy that says Dicky Fuld, Rich Wagoner, Angelo Mozilo, et al are extremely talented and skillful, and not formed from common clay. Given that these people ran their respective organizations into the ground, just what were they being paid for?
See, this is where these pointy-headed conservative types cause people to laugh at loud: point out how hard someone works, or what kind of skill what they’re doing takes, and they’ll sneer that – by definition – they’re worth exactly what they’re being paid. But look at some of these bankster/CEO types, and they turn around and justify the high compensation by saying they are uncommon men with uncommon and valuable talents.
So which is it?
April 15th, 2010 at 2:39 pm
Cuffy Meigs pours on the scorn with “peer reviewed articles … Worked sooo well in the field of climate science. Who knows what it will do for the field of Overclass Studies.”
That’s right. Silly old us. We forgot that it just how badly it worked out for the fields of biochemistry, astronomy, cardiac medicine, amerindian history, egyptian archeology, shakesperian analysis, and in fact just about any field you might care to name. So you chose a field that you consider “controversial” to illustrate the “failure” of “getting several people who know quite a lot about something to review a paper in a related field before it gets published to make sure it contains no howlers and appears to cite relevant pre-existing work”.
I suppose that after conflating “prediction” with “wild guess” when it actually meant “using a correlation coefficient based on 40 years of data”, this is hardly suprising.
I’m curious – its clear what you don’t want to believe. So what do you believe? That there is a strong correlation between hard work and earnings/net worth?
April 15th, 2010 at 2:40 pm
Yeah. I find the notion of Mr. Yglesias stuck in a civil war in the Salvadoran mountains, and trying to quote Judith Butler to his captors, truly too amusing for words.
For that matter, I wonder how well Mr. Yglesias ‘valuable skills’ would serve him if he was trying to grow sweet potatoes in said Salvadoran mountains.
It’s not that difficult to imagine, Hec. And he doesn’t even need to go to Central America.
Just think about well Matt’s skills would serve him in the substantial sections of Southern California controlled by MS-13.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:40 pm
From the study on millionaires that I linked above:
April 15th, 2010 at 2:43 pm
Let me share my own special study with you. After that we’ll consider that it was peer reviewed:
I grew up on a farm. I was poor as shit. My dad never could make a living farming. We were always in debt.
I decided to go to college and forego the whole farming bit. I now make a pretty decent living, but by no means am I a millionaire. My brother…..now he’s a millionaire. We are both beneficiaries of luck. Puredee unadulterated luck. Oh…and being white. That certainly helped.
Why was he so much luckier than me? Why were we both so much luckier than our dad. He was white too. Dammmmmiiiitttttt.
All sarcasm aside, it bugs the shit out of my parents that they will probably die without much of an estate and not be able to leave their kids any kind of inheritence. Us kids all firmly believe that we inherited everything we needed from them by the time we were 18. I guess that makes us lucky. And undeserving of keeping what we earn. oooops there’s that sarcasm creeeping in again.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:44 pm
You mean like those awesome global warming peer reviewed articles?
There are peer reviewed articles that claim that it is impossible to accurately know both the velocity and position of a particle at the same time. Are these also bullshit? Or is it just the peer reviewed articles that challenge your political/social prejudices that are bullshit? What’s the standard we’re working with here?
Are you really going to run into the “it’s impossible to really know anything, so therefore you’re wrong” rabbit hole? Pass the bong, dude, I’m gonna need it.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:45 pm
Is it condescending to say that a laborer like a mover probably makes less than a small business owner, of any nationality? These movers obviously didn’t own landscaping businesses.
So what? The laborer is not forced to do what he applied to do. Eventually, he can earn enough to create his own business or move on to something else. Most successful people start at the bottom.
My in-laws came to this country not knowing English, were laborers. With hard work and saving, saving, saving, they made a comfortable life for themselves. And guess what? Their sons not only did not become laborers….or blue collar…their parent’s work ethic rubbed off and they worked themselves to white collar jobs. And now idjits like people I see here, think it is unfair and they should be punished for their ‘privilege’.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:46 pm
Carin, so, given the “equitable distribution of income” in Sweden, it would be somewhat natural to expect a rather low level of economic mobility (since even with maximal mobility between professions, locations etc. etc, the differences in incomes are not that great). By contrast, in the US with its vast difference in income distribution, you’d expect to see more economic mobility, if for no other reason than that chance migrations would result in substantive alterations in income.
Well now, isn’t that puzzling. Even with all that potential for wildly different income levels here, the correlation between father’s income and son’s income in the US is stronger than in a country where there isn’t so much variation in income levels at all!
April 15th, 2010 at 2:47 pm
Wow, I’ve never gotten to see the rabid anti-intellectualism of these fellows so close.
How atavistic do they get? This is ridiculous.
Btw, you know who believed in peer-reviewed papers, assholes?
Oppenheimer and the other people WHO BUILT THE FUCKING A-BOMB.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:49 pm
Wrong Paul. Given the equitable distribution of Sweden, you would realize that moving between the various income percentages isn’t that big of a move monetarily. To go from the bottom 20 to the top 5% is much less of a leap than doing the same HERE.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:49 pm
*passes bong*
*makes giant paper mache head of Paul Revere and forms hackysack/drum circle with a bunch of elderly Tea Partiers*
April 15th, 2010 at 2:50 pm
My in-laws came to this country not knowing English, were laborers. With hard work and saving, saving, saving, they made a comfortable life for themselves. And guess what? Their sons not only did not become laborers….or blue collar…their parent’s work ethic rubbed off and they worked themselves to white collar jobs. And now idjits like people I see here, think it is unfair and they should be punished for their ‘privilege’.
Awesome for them. So did my entire family. Did I mention we also narrowly avoided extermination at the hands of both the Reich and the USSR?
And guess what? In this thread, we’re not talking about punishing people for privilege at all
Go fuck yourself, asshole.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:51 pm
Annie writes: “My in-laws came to this country not knowing English, were laborers.”
And what were the marginal tax rates when they arrived, compared to the current levels?
And now idjits like people I see here, think it is unfair and they should be punished for their ‘privilege’.
Unless your in-laws or their children managed to boost themselves up into the “double or triple the median income or above” level, I have a hard time finding any suggestion in this thread that they should be punished for anything at all. And if they did succeed in doing that, the only suggestion in this particular thread would seem to be that they rightfully acknowledge whatever balance of hard work, skill, knowledge and luck led to their success. Nothing more than that.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:53 pm
This means that there are no extremes of wealth and poverty in the country.
No extremes of wealth? I’d certainly call Ingvar Kamprad, Stefan Persson, Sir Hans Rausing, Antonia Johnson, Fredrik Lundberg, Count Gustad Douglas and Thomas Sandell extremely wealthy. Unless perhapse they don’t consider billionaries to be extremely wealthy?
April 15th, 2010 at 2:53 pm
Go fuck yourself, asshole.
awww … don’t get angry.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:54 pm
Wow, I’ve never gotten to see the rabid anti-intellectualism of these fellows so close.
Pointing out that certain peer reviewed studies which have been used to beat the drum incessantly that “the science is settled” being exposed as fraudulent is not exactly the same as being rabidly anti-intellectual. Pointing out that scientists and statisticians have in the very recent past made the numbers fit what the politics dictated they fit as a means of questioning this particular study’s possible credibility doesn’t seem to me to be rabidly anti-intellectual. Questioning whether or not the emperor is wearing clothes is not the same as claiming that everyone is naked. Nice Strawman you had there.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:54 pm
I’m from New York, Carin.
I don’t swear when I’m *angry*
April 15th, 2010 at 2:55 pm
peer reviewed articles
Worked sooo well in the field of climate science. Who knows what it will do for the field of Overclass Studies.
Anyone who writes this sincerely is an ignorant fool with no understanding of the scientific method.
Fuck off, you little idiot.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:55 pm
vs.
okie dokie.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:55 pm
JMO – look I’m just quoting the article.
But, of course 7 people really throws that thesis out the window, doesn’t it? My bad.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:55 pm
So. Cuffy is saying that if I take a random sample of 4,004 people, I can’t use it to predict with any accuracy such variables as average height, income, etc in a population of 300 million?
Cuffy is a statistically illiterate moron who – worse – seems to revel in his ignorance.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:56 pm
On further review, I might have benefited from using a few commas here and there. That was mighty anti-intellectual of me. Or maybe not.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:56 pm
I think one of things one has to keep in mind is how much of it is social norms rather than formal policy. For example, public policy in the U.K. is much more “progressive” than the case in the U.S., but the outcomes in terms of social stratification are actually slightly more amplified (the U.K. is at the top of the chart for father-son elasticity). This is, as anyone familiar with the British public school knows, a function of social norms and informal social structures. The entire upper-middle and upper classes in Britain school their progeny in a very rigorous and exclusive manner, and as a result the average Oxford undergraduate who came from St Pauls is probably better prepared than the average Ivy League matriculant.
So, even if Matt’s contention is true, this does not necessarily call for a change in public policy, because public policy does very little in that regard in a society with severely entrenched norms.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:57 pm
Funny, pendejo, because I saw a reference to another set of peer-reviewed papers having absolutely *nothing* to do with the topic at hand, save that both topics elicit copious amounts of bullshit from bootstrapping glibertarians with serious entitlement problems.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:57 pm
Carin, in the interest of fairness, I am compelled to admit that I had my logic totally bassackwards there.
That said, I don’t think that most Americans who continue to believe in organizing social policy around the American Dream are talking about a 20% increase in earnings. They are talking about jumping to a particular quintile, and in this sense, the comparison does convey something of importance: if you live in the US, your chances of boosting yourself into the Nth quintile are lower than in Sweden, although accomplishing the same change in income level may be just as achieveable if not easier.
April 15th, 2010 at 2:59 pm
Cuffy is a statistically illiterate moron.
No, you’re a towel!
April 15th, 2010 at 3:00 pm
No, I think he is saying that the field of climate science, nonrandom samples and bogus statistical techniques have been the norm.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:01 pm
I think one of things one has to keep in mind is how much of it is social norms rather than formal policy. For example, public policy in the U.K. is much more “progressive” than the case in the U.S., but the outcomes in terms of social stratification are actually slightly more amplified (the U.K. is at the top of the chart for father-son elasticity). This is, as anyone familiar with the British public school knows, a function of social norms and informal social structures. The entire upper-middle and upper classes in Britain school their progeny in a very rigorous and exclusive manner, and as a result the average Oxford undergraduate who came from St Pauls is probably better prepared than the average Ivy League matriculant.
Myles, they also spend more time in school year round, and spend a greater number of years in school.
Moreover, Oxbridge, St. Andrews, etc. have you apply for a particular major, rather than in the US, where you can spend nearly all of your undergraduate career dicking around.
Thus, getting a degree in History from Oxford is closer to getting a Master’s in the US, because of the shameful decline of the rigor of an undergraduate degree in the US.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:01 pm
132# Greg Says:
April 15th, 2010 at 1:49 pm
Btw, why have none of the glibs mentioned that this point about US social mobility having fallen greatly from its previous heights is something the fucking gospel of glibertarianism, the Economist, has talked about in several cover issues?
It’s not just the damn chart. There’s a pretty substantial record backing it up.
Don’t forget, these are the same fucking idiots who think that obamacare, which was largely designed by libertarians at places like AEI and Cato, is socialist.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:04 pm
Cuffy Meigs quoted someone as saying “this country oughta have estate taxes up to 100% on assets over $50M” as evidence of a desire to “punish priviledge”.
I did forget that remark that was made earlier today. I think most of us would view an estate tax as something quite different. I guess you are welcome to view the children of a person with that kind of estate as “priviledged”, and thus an estate tax that removed assets over $50M as a “punishment for priviledge”. I’m not sure that many people would view inheriting $50M as much of a stepdown in priviledge levels. There have been strong arguments from many parts of the political landscape for centuries against excessive inherited wealth, most of which have nothing to do with particular views on how to run an economy but more on the effect of continually concentrating more and more wealth in the hands of very few people. There used be plenty of republicans in the US who opposed such things, but that particular combination of views seems hard to find nowadays.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:04 pm
Swedes enjoy a traditionally high and stable standard of living, although at a high cost to individual taxpayers. Sweden is among the most equitable societies in the world, with a 1995 Gini index (an index that measuring economic equality in which 0 stands for perfect equality and 100 for perfect inequality) of 25. By comparison, the United States had a Gini rating of 40.8, the United Kingdom had a 36.1, and Switzerland had a 33.1). This means that there are no extremes of wealth and poverty in the country.
Carin, when you post things like this, are you aware or not that they are undercutting your argument? Or is your point “the US must have social mobility because there’s so much inequality here”???
April 15th, 2010 at 3:05 pm
Statistics, though, merely represent the norms, not actual barriers. And, any “program” that has been attempted to reduce those barriers seem to do little but make them even more insurmountable. For example: affirmative action in college admittance that results in advancing minorities into more competitive colleges results in more minority kids not graduating.
Sweden is much more homogeneous society. It’s apples and oranges.
If you want to debate the difficulties of moving between the classes here in the US, fine.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:05 pm
Chuckle. Because you don’t know anything about statistics, you have no idea just how much you’ve discredited yourself, do you? Just for grins, let’s go ahead and do the math on an easy example: if I take a random sample of 4,004 adults out 300 million Americans, measure their heights, and derive an average figure, how far off do you think this will be from the actual average height of all 300 million Americans?
Should be a snap to answer for a clever fellow like yourself, right? So go ahead and give it your best shot.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:06 pm
Sweden is a small homogeneous nation of a few million people, virtually all of which bourgeois Middle Class Values. You would be better off comparing inequality and mobility of Minnesota to Sweden than the US to Sweden. Or compare all of Europe to the US. We have Alabama, Europe has Southern Italy.
Alternately, compare how immigrants do. I suspect that third generation Hispanic immigrants to the US are better off than third generation Muslim immigrants to Europe.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:07 pm
Or is your point “the US must have social mobility because there’s so much inequality here”???
Since I’m not a progressive, I don’t find income disparities to be “inequality.”
April 15th, 2010 at 3:07 pm
I think the chart displays a particularly confusing statistic. It would make more sense to show the simple correlation coefficient (is that the same as the “elasticity”?) between parents and childrens income (btw, possible to calculate and chart by doing longitudinal research … something your govt invests in).
I think we are really interested in a more precise statistic: the percent of those who grow up poor (say, in the lowest income quintile) who as adults are in higher income quintiles. I remember reading an early result from the National Longitudinal Surveys: 80% of kids who were poor in 1968 were not poor young adults in 1982.
Just because you can’t make it to the top of the income ladder (really, very few can, that’s why it is the top) doesn’t mean that a society lacks a good deal of equal opportunity. What we really care about is the opportunity faced by those who grow up in disadvantaged circumstances: do they have a good chance of a better life as adults?
I, for one, do not give a shit about the middle class (or more advantaged) kids who do not take advantage of their opportunities. Nor do I care that the very top of the income distribution is an exclusive club that’s hard to enter.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:07 pm
Did I mention we also narrowly avoided extermination at the hands of both the Reich and the USSR?
What were the marginal rates…..
Did I mention that my in-laws were held in Russian concentration camps? My father in law was a laborer until he retired 10 years ago. He is 83 now. And when he came over, he was not given any welfare that a lot of immigrants, especially illegals get, today.
And go fuck yourself you whiney little pussy.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:08 pm
Don’t forget, these are the same fucking idiots who think that obamacare, which was largely designed by libertarians at places like AEI and Cato, is socialist.
That is a lie and you are a liar.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:09 pm
But not about me being the “same fucking idiot” who thinks obamacare is socialist. Which it is.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:10 pm
Sweden is a small homogeneous nation of a few million people, virtually all of which bourgeois Middle Class Values.
It would be intersting to see studies of how much the values of the median Bostonian differ from the median citizen of Vicksburg or Little Rock. I’d have to think the US has a much higher degree of values diversity than does Sweden.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:10 pm
95% would be within 6 inches of the average, WikiFuck.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:17 pm
Michael Says:
April 15th, 2010 at 2:40 pm
From the study on millionaires that I linked above:
* Only 19 percent receive any income or wealth of any kind from a trust fund or an estate.
…
Michael, elaborate on this please and explain just one more thing to me (and another glibertarian here is welcome to as well if Michael doesn’t come back), because there are two huge problems with this list of factoids and the article it’s from that are so obvious, I’m amazed you didn’t feel embarrassed to comment on the issue without explaining them away first.
One such problem is, why “millionaires”? It’s an arbitrary big number, but it’s not the top wealth percentile or the top income percentile or the top income 10th-of-a-percentile. Do the same statements about the hyper-rich hold true as about the just-barely-rich or the practically plebeian upper middle class? Do you know? Can you even tell the difference?
And second, what do those figures look like for everyone else? “Only 19 percent receive any income or wealth of any kind from a trust fund or an estate” – what percent of non-millionaires do? 18 percent? 25 percent? 1 percent? Again, don’t you know, can’t you see how it’s relevant, and shouldn’t you be embarrassed using this stuff like this as evidence without at least mentioning it?
April 15th, 2010 at 3:18 pm
Did I mention that my in-laws were held in Russian concentration camps? My father in law was a laborer until he retired 10 years ago. He is 83 now. And when he came over, he was not given any welfare that a lot of immigrants, especially illegals get, today.
And go fuck yourself you whiney little pussy.
My greatgrandmother spent the decade between the reconquest of the Ukraine and the Thaw out in GULag.
My grandfather’s family had something like 10 kids including him. After the Holomodor and the Great Patriotic War and the NKVD’s return after the Great Patriotic War, there were 2 left.
One lived in the US.
My greatgrandmother ended up living into her 80s, and my grandfather died a few days shy of 90, with the knowledge that the pretty much the only people left with our name were his sons and his descendants, all of whom he put through college. Plus, he died a millionaire.
You seem to have completely missed the point of my fuck you.
The point was that this thread is absolutely not the place for you post about how awesome your in-laws are, or how we’re talking about crucifying privilege. They are what my family is – an anecdote, nothing more.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:20 pm
Sweden is a small homogeneous nation of a few million people, virtually all of which bourgeois Middle Class Values.
Let’s compare to Canada, then, which is a non-homogenous society of tens of millions of people with an even higher immigration rate than the US. And what do we find? Ta-da!
US — 0.47
Sweden — 0.27
Canada — 0.19
Or, in other words, Canada has even greater income mobility than Sweden and far more than the US, despite being less homogeneous than Sweden. So homogeneity doesn’t seem to be the determining factor.
You would be better off comparing inequality and mobility of Minnesota to Sweden than the US to Sweden. Or compare all of Europe to the US. We have Alabama, Europe has Southern Italy.
I’m intrigued by the shift in their argument, too, essentially, “America has more opportunity because we have more backwards toothless illiterate peasants and economic blight than those other countries do….”
April 15th, 2010 at 3:22 pm
I think there is some confusion here. The graph Matt posted isn’t based on data from the paper he linked to. The paper only looks at US income mobility, so Sweden’s income distribution is completely irrelevant.
If you want to criticize the methodology that led to the graph you have to read:
Corak, Miles, 2004: “Do poor children become poor adults Lessons for public policy from a crosscountry comparison of generational earnings mobility.” Paper presented at the Colloque sur Le Devenir Des Enfants De Familles Défavourisées En France. Paris, April
Though I don’t see it online unfortunately.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:23 pm
I think we are really interested in a more precise statistic: the percent of those who grow up poor (say, in the lowest income quintile) who as adults are in higher income quintiles.
Let’s go to the study!
We see that nearly 42 percent of children born
in the bottom quintile (with parental incomes below $29,900) remained in the bottom quintile as adults. Another 53 percent attained one of the middle three quintiles (incomes between $32,701 and $98,000), while just 6 percent made it into the top quintile (incomes above $98,000). For those born
in the top quintile, however, the situation is exactly reversed: 42 percent remain in the top quintile as
adults, and just 6 percent fall down to the lowest income bracket.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:24 pm
I’m intrigued by the shift in their argument, too, essentially, “America has more opportunity because we have more backwards toothless illiterate peasants and economic blight than those other countries do….”
Hey!
Don’t you forget, Stefan, that one day South’ll done gonna rise again, and, to quote from the source material:
So you be mindful now, y’hear?
April 15th, 2010 at 3:25 pm
Moreover, Oxbridge, St. Andrews, etc. have you apply for a particular major, rather than in the US, where you can spend nearly all of your undergraduate career dicking around.
I think you erred on St. Andrews; the system is much more American in the ancient Scottish universities (not the modern ones, but the medieval ones).
And I don’t think you understood at all what I meant by public school.
In any case, Canada’s position on the chart is another indicator that I can’t return to Canada. Lowest common denominator and all.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:27 pm
Also, regional variations. The father-son elasticity is probably much lower for an upper-middle class person in say, St. Louis, than in Manhattan or Beverly Hills.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:28 pm
Um, excuse me, Myles?
Pretty sure I do, seeing as my Dad read PPE at Oxford with classmates who were pretty much universally products of the Public Schools, and my Godfather – his roommate – went to one of them.
And my point was that the US high school experience is a shit ton – even at exclusive prep schools – less rigorous than your average experience at Eton or Harrow. Bbbbbbut part of that comes from the significantly longer school year, and the greater number of years spent there.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:29 pm
Or, in other words, Canada has even greater income mobility than Sweden and far more than the US, despite being less homogeneous than Sweden. So homogeneity doesn’t seem to be the determining factor.
Canada is also a bland, middle-class, country of secular dhimmitude (in the metaphorical sense), where good families sink into the undifferentiated ocean of middle-class, amnesiac humanity. A country which I no longer wish to call home.
So have at that.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:29 pm
From an abstract:
So, if we increase government transfers, we’ll have more mobility.
But, that’s not my idea of freedom.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:31 pm
Myles, you guys have got tons of Nat Gas and Oil.
So you’ve got that going for you, which is nice.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:31 pm
Bbbbbbut part of that comes from the significantly longer school year.
Thank you NEA — unions are awesome!
April 15th, 2010 at 3:35 pm
If you want to criticize the methodology that led to the graph you have to read:
Corak generated the graph by reviewing other studies, and picking his favorite results. You can find a later version of the 2004 paper here.
For the US, for example, he had this choice (p. 53):
He picked the larger of the two based on other studies in the literature.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:36 pm
Myles, you guys have got tons of Nat Gas and Oil.
So you’ve got that going for you, which is nice.
I am not sure this is even about money. What’s the point of all that money, if my descendants would not even be aware, psychologically, of their progenitors? Of that their ancestors had ever been great, and family history had at times been heroic? That their whole awareness would consist of kitsch Canadiana? Undifferentiated? Seeing themselves as merely another good trooper, a good middle-class taxpayer?
The very thought of it is painful enough. Just be thankful that the British upper-middle class has, not yet, been swamped in that sort of secular dhimmitude. Although it seems like, from what I hear from people in Britain, that the public schools will soon be dying.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:40 pm
We see that nearly 42 percent of children born
in the bottom quintile (with parental incomes below $29,900) remained in the bottom quintile as adults. Another 53 percent attained one of the middle three quintiles (incomes between $32,701 and $98,000), while just 6 percent made it into the top quintile (incomes above $98,000).
Hmmm. ~ 15% chance of someone rising from poverty to the top quintile? That might not be impressive for one of the other countries with a flatter income distribution, but it’s pretty amazing in this country. You basically have to quadruple your father’s income. Not too shabby.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:42 pm
When Brutus slew Caesar, he had in his mind the overthrow by his progenitor, Lucius Junius Brutus, of another tyrant 500 years before.
It is doubtful that family memory, as a distinct and personal awareness, would last even 50 years in today’s Canada. That’s the sort of country, disregarding the economics, Canada has become. Where greatness comes to die. That’s not the country of which I wish to be a part, or indeed, for any children.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:42 pm
I am not sure this is even about money. What’s the point of all that money, if my descendants would not even be aware, psychologically, of their progenitors? Of that their ancestors had ever been great, and family history had at times been heroic? That their whole awareness would consist of kitsch Canadiana? Undifferentiated? Seeing themselves as merely another good trooper, a good middle-class taxpayer?
You mean you’re worried about turning into Americans? ‘Cause no one does that shit better than us.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:44 pm
It’s an arbitrary number that references a commonly used threshold to define affluence. Why do you think that is a “problem”?
Beats me. The hyper-rich were not the subject of the paper. What’s your point?
Yeah, I can tell the difference. You can look up the hyper-rich in an annual list in Forbes if you are curious. Some, like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, come from modest backgrounds. Others, like the heirs of Sam Walton, just lucked out with a hugely successfully father. You’re still not making a point.
No, not embarrassed at all. You seem to confusing your vapid rhetorical questions with actually making a cogent argument. The point of the paper was not to compare incomes classes, but to illustrate substantial upward mobility into the millionaire class.
By the way, that article dates back to 1997, so it’s old data. By all accounts, the upward movement into the millionaire class has increased substantially since then — including me. My father was a Lutheran preacher. I put myself through college.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:46 pm
That’s not the country of which I wish to be a part, or indeed, for any children.
I’m not your buddy, guy!
April 15th, 2010 at 3:47 pm
Hmmm. ~ 15% chance of someone rising from poverty to the top quintile?
Six percent does not equal 15 percent. (”while just 6 percent made it into the top quintile (incomes above $98,000)”).
April 15th, 2010 at 3:52 pm
So, if we increase government transfers, we’ll have more mobility.
But, that’s not my idea of freedom.
Immobility=freedom. Roger that.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:53 pm
The other thing that you’re discounting in this post is that having things handed to you can often sap you of motivation and drive for creating your own success.
A case can be made that those who are naturally disadvantaged, economically or otherwise, have the benefit of motivating circumstances.
For instance, do you think it was easy for Dick Pole to become a successful major league ballplayer?
And speaking of balls, do you think it was easy for Ed Balls to become the British Schools Secretary?
I submit that it was not. They had a natural hardship to overcome in order to achieve their success. Unlike someone with an awesome kick ass name like “Matt Yglesias”.
So the next time you see someone who you think just lucked into their circumstances, think “Dick Pole. Ed Balls”.
You’re welcome.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:56 pm
Immobility=freedom. Roger that.
No, you asshat. Taking my money and giving it to someone with less in the name of “economic mobility” is not my idea of freedom.
Please don’t attempt to parse down my argument to a length of a bumpersticker. There’s a reason I don’t have any of ‘em on my car.
Government transfers = socialism.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:57 pm
The war on poverty has been raging for how long? It’s done so well. Let’s increase the government transfers. I’m sure that will help.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:57 pm
Yeah, I can tell the difference. You can look up the hyper-rich in an annual list in Forbes if you are curious. Some, like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, come from modest backgrounds. Others, like the heirs of Sam Walton, just lucked out with a hugely successfully father. You’re still not making a point.
Oh god dammit! Not that argument.
Look, Gates and Buffett are really, really successful, brilliant fellows.
But don’t peddle that “modest” bullshit here.
Gates’ mother’s father was one of the most important fellows in the Pacific Northwest. Gates’ father was also part of the elite out there. The day Gates was born, his maternal grandfather established a massive trust fund for Gates.
Gates might not have ended up the richest man in the world, but he was never in any danger of having anything less than 100 mil, and frankly, he probably would have been a single digit billionaire without Microsoft.
His own skill was the difference between being very, very, very rich, and being able to literally purchase countries. But in both scenarios, he’s set for life, and his great-grandchildren are.
Buffett meanwhile was very well connected, and more importantly, he was able to narrowly avoid being touched by the Salomon Brothers scandal about two decades ago. He’s still thanking his lucky stars he wasn’t tarnished for life, or ended up in prison like some of the other fellows, because Berkshire Hathaway is nothing without Warren Buffett.
April 15th, 2010 at 3:59 pm
Some, like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, come from modest backgrounds.
*sigh* These myths never die. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett did not come from modest backgrounds. Gates’ family was solidly upper middle class — his father was a prominent lawyer, while his mother served on the board of directors for the United Way and for a national bank, and he attended a private prep school and Harvard.
Buffett’s father, meanwhile, was a prominent local businessman who owned his own brokerage company, as well as a four-term US Congressman representing Omaha, Nebraska, and Buffett attended Wharton.
Neither man is exactly evidence of clawing your way up the social ladder.
April 15th, 2010 at 4:01 pm
*sigh* These myths never die
Yeah, I hear ya. It reminds of all the people who really think Obama climbed his way to the top.
April 15th, 2010 at 4:06 pm
Taking my money and giving it to someone with less in the name of “economic mobility” is not my idea of freedom.
Dude, “your money” is your money only to the extent that the social order says it is.
Being smart enough to know that you’re lucky is proving to be smarter than I thought it was. Or else this thread is seriously biased to the stupid end of the curve.
April 15th, 2010 at 4:07 pm
Yeah, I hear ya. It reminds of all the people who really think Obama climbed his way to the top.
And Gates and Buffet were huge Obama donors.
I relent — these plutocrats are evil.
April 15th, 2010 at 4:10 pm
Dude, “your money” is your money only to the extent that the social order says it is.
Oh my lord.
April 15th, 2010 at 4:11 pm
“Dude, “your money” is your money only to the extent that the social order says it is”.
Now, that’s what I call freedom!
April 15th, 2010 at 4:11 pm
Brain surgeons should make minimum wage and no tips.
They hardly move at all when they work.
LAZY!!!
And what about adult film stars? You think it’s easy being hung like an Argentine lake duck and have to do sex with many women at one time?
Well it’s not.
April 15th, 2010 at 4:11 pm
Dude, where’s my bong?
April 15th, 2010 at 4:12 pm
Or else this thread is seriously biased to the stupid end of the curve.
Whoa, slow down, you’re getting into the fourth standard deviation there. QUICK, someone call ScentofViolets!
April 15th, 2010 at 4:12 pm
I was not attempting to make an argument about the hyper-rich. My point was simply that the paper I linked plainly purports to study millionaires. It’s just childish to suggest the paper is somehow flawed because it does not address the situation of the hyper-rich, or the top ten percent, or any other group that the authors chose not to study.
April 15th, 2010 at 4:18 pm
Dude, “your money” is your money only to the extent that the social order says it is.
To the camps!
April 15th, 2010 at 4:18 pm
“Dude, “your money” is your money only to the extent that the social order says it is”.
Wow. Give this dude +25 Nobel Prizes.
April 15th, 2010 at 4:20 pm
Rosetta, would you please do my brain surgery? I can’t pay you what I pay my gardener from a third world country, but I know you won’t mind, he sweats more than you do while working. I refuse to ask you to do any “porn” work for me.
April 15th, 2010 at 4:25 pm
I’ll ask rosetta to do porn, but it has to be goatse porn. I think I’m obsessed.
April 15th, 2010 at 4:27 pm
@206 Thanks Stefan for pointing out the research (apologize for my laziness). A 42% chance of remaining poor does not look like a good result to me.
But also see @215 which points to a different result using NLS data instead of PSID data (much lower father-son correlation–comparable to Canada–than found in the PSID). And if my memory is not faulty, the 20% figure from early NLS study results (in my earlier post) seems more acceptable than ~40%. Although whether 20% or 40% poverty persistence, the US definitely has room to improve.
I am not sure if NLS or PSID is more relevant for studying intergenerational income mobility. But I think NLS actually follows the same individuals over decades, whereas the PSID is a rotating panel of individuals followed for just a few years at a time (or is that the Consumer Expenditure Survey). Anyway, I know the NLS would be an appropriate data set for studying intergenerational mobility. Not sure about the PSID.
April 15th, 2010 at 4:29 pm
But also see @215 which points to a different result using NLS data instead of PSID data (much lower father-son correlation–comparable to Canada–than found in the PSID). And if my memory is not faulty, the 20% figure from early NLS study results (in my earlier post) seems more acceptable than ~40%. Although whether 20% or 40% poverty persistence, the US definitely has room to improve.
No, you’re a towel!
April 15th, 2010 at 4:31 pm
How about me, Mare? According to a random sample of 4,004 adult American males, my schlong is in the top 5% of the American schlong population, usually referred to as the “hyper hung” category.
April 15th, 2010 at 4:35 pm
Well, Michael, if it will help improve America’s stats in “upwardly mobile” category, I’ll do what I can.
April 15th, 2010 at 4:36 pm
@243
Dude, enough with the “towel” shit. I don’t know if you are trying to insult me or just hopelessly stoned.
April 15th, 2010 at 4:36 pm
SHE BANG!! SHE BANG!!
April 15th, 2010 at 4:37 pm
Six percent does not equal 15 percent. (”while just 6 percent made it into the top quintile (incomes above $98,000)”).
True – brain glitch. I meant “1 in 15.” That’s pretty good odds.
April 15th, 2010 at 4:44 pm
Although whether 20% or 40% poverty persistence, the US definitely has room to improve.
Heredity should provide a lower threshold, one would think.
April 15th, 2010 at 4:44 pm
How much does Joe Biden make?
That guy doesn’t do shit.
April 15th, 2010 at 4:45 pm
Did McArdle link to this post, or something. We’ve been inundated by the stupid.
April 15th, 2010 at 4:49 pm
We’ve been inundated by the stupid.
I believe the appropriate spelling is “teh” stupid.
FYI.
Also, what color Che shirt are you wearing right now?
April 15th, 2010 at 4:49 pm
True – brain glitch. I meant “1 in 15.” That’s pretty good odds.
If you think 1 in 15 is pretty good odds, then I have some investment opportunities you might be interested in….
April 15th, 2010 at 4:53 pm
If you think 1 in 15 is pretty good odds, then I have some investment opportunities you might be interested in….
1 in 15 is good odds for winning the lottery. Not so much for getting out of Ted Kennedy’s car alive.
Just sayin’.
April 15th, 2010 at 4:55 pm
Government transfers = socialism.
Therefore, Reagan was a socialist!
April 15th, 2010 at 4:58 pm
Therefore, Reagan was a socialist!
Hmmmm…good point.
April 15th, 2010 at 5:08 pm
Reagan was my type of socialist.
April 15th, 2010 at 5:10 pm
What’s with all the nasty swear words from the tolerant intellectual lefties?
April 15th, 2010 at 5:11 pm
Foot check! Who’s wearing Birkenstocks?
April 15th, 2010 at 5:11 pm
Therefore, Reagan was a socialist!
That literally shocked me. Big, undeserved blog bucks coming my way aaaany minute now. Suck it, couch movers!
April 15th, 2010 at 5:11 pm
Did you know that if you graphed out federal income tax rates according to income, it’s shaped like a hockey stick?
*nominates Al Gore for Nobel Prize in economics*
April 15th, 2010 at 5:16 pm
I’m sorry for all the flip remarks, especially those concerning bath accessories and statistics.
Now, what are we going to do about the income inequality at “2 Guatemalans and a Truck”?
April 15th, 2010 at 5:19 pm
Where is the tubby little owner of this blog?
Does he not comment on his own posts.
April 15th, 2010 at 5:20 pm
How many Obama administration members does it take to screw in a light bulb?
BUSH LIED!! FILAMENTS DIED!!
April 15th, 2010 at 5:23 pm
Do either one of them have a hot sister?
April 15th, 2010 at 5:24 pm
Hey, where’s the towel?
April 15th, 2010 at 5:31 pm
Did Yglesias:
a) pay his Salvdoran servants the minimum wage
b) withhold taxes, Medicare, Social Security, etc.
c) pay them in cash dollars
d) pay them in Nicarauguan cordobas
d) No, you’re a towel!
April 15th, 2010 at 5:33 pm
Cuffy, might have to ask Greenwald about that one.
April 15th, 2010 at 5:36 pm
This blog is made with soft Cordoban leather.
April 15th, 2010 at 5:40 pm
Dat’s “Corinthian leather,” Boss!
April 15th, 2010 at 5:46 pm
Dat’s “Corinthian leather,” Boss!
Guatemalanist!!!
April 15th, 2010 at 5:48 pm
If a taxpayer takes a business deduction in the forest and MSNBC is not there to film it, is it still racist?
April 15th, 2010 at 5:49 pm
BREAKING NEWS: Socialists say Obama is not a socialist
Whew. That’s a relief.
Reagan on the other hand? Hero of the Soviet Union. (see above)
April 15th, 2010 at 5:54 pm
Guatemalanist!!!
Welcome to Fantasy Island!
April 15th, 2010 at 5:56 pm
YeeHaw! Up with us!
April 15th, 2010 at 5:57 pm
Guatemalanist!!!
You are afraid of my Guatamalaness!
April 15th, 2010 at 5:58 pm
Remember when JIMMY CARTER was president and we were all supposed to get puppies?
April 15th, 2010 at 5:59 pm
Mom, I like this blog.
Can we keep it.
April 15th, 2010 at 5:59 pm
Re: It is doubtful that family memory, as a distinct and personal awareness, would last even 50 years in today’s Canada.
Move to Greece- they still get very upset about the Sack of Byzantium in 1453.
Re: Thus, getting a degree in History from Oxford is closer to getting a Master’s in the US, because of the shameful decline of the rigor of an undergraduate degree in the US.
Excellent point- in large part, the undergraduate education in today’s Ivy League colleges has become an opportunity to alternate between bong hits, casual hookups, and vapid platitudes from Foucault and Judith Butler, rather then actually learning anything. (Of which the FOucaultian ideas probably do more long-term damage then the drugs and sex).
Re: Dude, “your money” is your money only to the extent that the social order says it is.
Excellent point, I’m glad someone has some passing acquaintance with the Scholastic natural-law tradition and its insights about the origins and purposes of property. The social order, of course, has obligations to ensure that property is divided and allocated in ways that are fair to each person, including to the person who produces the goods as well as those who seek to consume them. But we would do well to remember that property, like all other things, is directed towards a natural end, and when the existing property relations cease to serve that final end, then they need to be changed and/or abrogated. There is no more ‘right’ to make a lot of money then there is a ‘right’ to have a lot of casual sex.
As the good book says, ‘Radix malorum est cupiditas.’
Re: Government transfers = socialism.
Nope. You may want to, you know, read one of the actual socialist theoreticians about what socialism is.
Socialism is what, e.g., Venezuela has (or is heading to right now). Obama’s America is heading towards something very different.
April 15th, 2010 at 6:06 pm
more long-term damage then the drugs and sex
THAN
Jesus, you’ve got a real problem with that!
April 15th, 2010 at 6:07 pm
Jimmy Carter is history’s greatest monster.
April 15th, 2010 at 6:08 pm
Cuffy Meigs,
I’ll spell the word the way I damn well choose.
April 15th, 2010 at 6:10 pm
I am puzzled by the fact that Canada is so much lower than we are given that the cultures are so similar.
Is there any way to break this out by region in the US? I wonder if, like so much else that’s problematic in our nation, this is really all about the South.
April 15th, 2010 at 6:10 pm
Obama’s America is heading towards something very different.
Other than bankruptcy or double digit inflation, what do you mean? Does it have a name other than socialist?
April 15th, 2010 at 6:11 pm
Socialism is what, e.g., Venezuela has (or is heading to right now). Obama’s America is heading towards something very different.
Please essplain.
April 15th, 2010 at 6:13 pm
Excellent point, I’m glad someone has some passing acquaintance with the Scholastic natural-law tradition and its insights about the origins and purposes of property. The social order, of course, has obligations to ensure that property is divided and allocated in ways that are fair to each person, including to the person who produces the goods as well as those who seek to consume them. But we would do well to remember that property, like all other things, is directed towards a natural end, and when the existing property relations cease to serve that final end, then they need to be changed and/or abrogated. There is no more ‘right’ to make a lot of money then there is a ‘right’ to have a lot of casual sex.
Spoken like a true academician. How about we take your tenure away from you? Even if you earned it, and I doubt that you did, you have no right to it.
*goes and gets tweed jacket and pipe*
Class begins in an hour.
April 15th, 2010 at 6:13 pm
They are not the same words, Hector. One is temporal/conditional (THEN) and the other is comparative (THAN). Work on it.
April 15th, 2010 at 6:14 pm
I wonder if, like so much else that’s problematic in our nation, this is really all about the South.
No, Quebec.
April 15th, 2010 at 6:16 pm
Re: Work on it.
I have no intention of taking grammatical instruction from a dyed in the woold apologist for what Paul Sweezy referred to as monopolistic late capitalism.
I would suggest, on the contrary, that you ‘work on’ delving into the understanding of property developed by the Scholastics and by their successors in the Christian-democratic and Christian-socialist traditions.
April 15th, 2010 at 6:18 pm
Paul Sweezy? THE Paul Sweezy?
April 15th, 2010 at 6:18 pm
What the hell is going on with all these libertarian whackoes coming out of the woodwork?
Reminds me of when Rod Dreher wrote a post criticizing Miley Cyrus and her pole-dancing, the blog was deluged by a couple of hundred teenage illiterates outraged over the insult to their heroine.
April 15th, 2010 at 6:20 pm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Sweezy
April 15th, 2010 at 6:21 pm
Apparently, Hec, they saw the Civil War/Confederate Flag threads and said, “Well, shit, we can beat that.”
And here we are.
April 15th, 2010 at 6:21 pm
MATT DAMON!PAUL SWEEZY!April 15th, 2010 at 6:23 pm
What the hell is going on with all these libertarian whackoes coming out of the woodwork?
It’s a natural result of the incredible amount of dipwaddery that coalesces around socialist/collectivist message boards.
Nature abhors a vacuum, after all, and your heads were all here.
April 15th, 2010 at 6:23 pm
Hector – It’s because we libertarians are tired of listening to educated idiots like you you want to destroy a system of government and economics that created and sustained the finest Republic ever. You and your filk have no concept of honest labor and the joys of liberty. Frankly, you make me ill.
April 15th, 2010 at 6:24 pm
What’s the opposite of above me?
April 15th, 2010 at 6:24 pm
I would suggest, on the contrary, that you ‘work on’ delving into the understanding of property developed by the Scholastics and by their successors in the Christian-democratic and Christian-socialist traditions.
Hahahahahahaha.
Do you have a newsletter to which I can subscribe?
April 15th, 2010 at 6:25 pm
Well, I suppose we’re just a bunch of racists. Isn’t that the next step?
April 15th, 2010 at 6:26 pm
I would suggest, on the contrary, that you ‘work on’ delving into the understanding of property developed by the Scholastics and by their successors in the Christian-democratic and Christian-socialist traditions.
And I thought the Scientologists were the only ones with copy-written religious texts.
April 15th, 2010 at 6:28 pm
Paul Sweezy.
http://tinyurl.com/yk6kcnq
April 15th, 2010 at 6:33 pm
I want to follow Hector on Twitter. . .
April 15th, 2010 at 6:34 pm
I don’t think Hector can restrict his great thoughts to a mere 140 characters.
April 15th, 2010 at 6:36 pm
I just wanted to give me some insight into the evolution of the market economy in the southern colonies. My contention is that prior to the Revolutionary War, the economic modalities, especially in the southern colonies, could be most aptly described as agrarian precapitalist.
April 15th, 2010 at 6:48 pm
But, Count, do keep in mind that Wood drastically underestimates the impact of social distinctions predicated upon wealth, especially inherited wealthy.
April 15th, 2010 at 6:48 pm
This is what happens when your government looks to provide benefits to the many, funded by the few.
It’s all relative. I bet this guy would be happy to cut he tax check every year if he thought a) it was being used intelligently, and b) he felt that his taxes weren’t going to be increased just so a group of politicians could win more votes.
And granted, while your Salvadoran mover would gladly work 20 hours a day, your entitled, white, high-school drop out working as a laborer over at the local construction site can’t wait for “quittin’ time”.
April 15th, 2010 at 6:50 pm
Paul Sweezy as described in Wikipedia:
The main dilemma modern capitalism would face… would be how to sell the economic surpluses created by capital accumulation. Increases in marketing, defense spending and various forms of debt would tend to alleviate the falling rate of profit foreseen by Marx. However, …[he] believed that these remedies to capital’s difficulties were inherently limited and that monopoly capital would tend toward economic stagnation.
Glibertarians on this thread:
TAXATION IS THEFT!!!!11ONE!!1!
I’m no marxist, but so far it looks like Paul Sweezy 1, glibertarians 0.
Cato Internships: Learn to be even more wrong than marxists!
April 15th, 2010 at 6:53 pm
DMonteith – Just send your paycheck to me. Your obvious faith in government is misplaced. CUT OUT THE MIDDLEMAN!
Oh, and I haven’t forgotten your screaming over the BUSH DEFICITS!!!11!!eleventy!
April 15th, 2010 at 6:56 pm
Hector orders a pizza.
“I would like a large pizza pie, not because of any emotional or physical insufficiencies I may possess mind you, but rather because I am famished. If you will familiarize yourself with the “Gluten-Free Girl: How I Found the Food That Loves Me Back…And How You Can Too” you will be on the road to understanding my crust preference.
As far as cheese, although I am not currently lactose intolerant, I would prefer a hard cheese, the choice of which I will leave in your capable hands assuming you have an IQ of 150 or above. I further assume that you have familiarized yourself with the history of Raffaele Esposito sufficiently to not frown upon the inclusion of cheese in my order.
Please ring the bell several times as I will be spending the next 30 minutes completing my white paper on quantum economics as it pertains to black swan theory.”
April 15th, 2010 at 6:57 pm
your entitled, white, high-school drop out working as a laborer over at the local construction site can’t wait for “quittin’ time”.</i?
The condescension is strong with this one – and the racism.
April 15th, 2010 at 6:57 pm
I’m no marxist, but so far it looks like Paul Sweezy 1, glibertarians 0.
Precisely what was this man right about? You just quoted some Marxist gibberish and scored him a 1. Was this a participation prize like they hand out in the slow class or something?
April 15th, 2010 at 6:58 pm
And the html fail.
April 15th, 2010 at 7:02 pm
I love how the left loves to hate on the South, yet look how horrible things are in California and the rustbelt. The NE? Ha.
I’m a recent transplant from Michigan to Texas. One hundred times better here.
Keep hating and we’ll keep being happy.
April 15th, 2010 at 7:02 pm
Hector – Isn’t it time you brought up the “social justice” argument?
April 15th, 2010 at 7:07 pm
Jesus, you’ve got a real problem with that!
His name’s not Jesus, it’s HECTOR – as in “giving a hard time,” not a measure of area (that’s “hectare”)
April 15th, 2010 at 7:08 pm
Glibertarians
Pff, hardly. They’re just a bunch of intellectualist, pot-smoking, open-borders twats. The right-wing version of you, more-or-less.
We’re more the producerist sort. Anti on the bank bailouts as well as anti shiftless layabouts.
April 15th, 2010 at 7:11 pm
Oh, and I haven’t forgotten your screaming over the BUSH DEFICITS!!!11!!eleventy!
What are you talking about?
DMonteith – Just send your paycheck to me. Your obvious faith in government is misplaced. CUT OUT THE MIDDLEMAN!
Your desire to cut out the middle man is as quixotic as Hector’s desire to cut out the casual sex. Middle men are part of the human condition. Externalities exist. The definition of “your money” is subject to the opinions of other people. Gravity is heavy. etc.
Get over it.
April 15th, 2010 at 7:11 pm
I’ll spell the word the way I damn well choose.
Then (appropriately used) you run the very real risk of being misunderstood as a matter of willful ignorance. Way to be consistent with your leftist ideology, though
April 15th, 2010 at 7:13 pm
Paul Sweezy was pretty good in Road House.
April 15th, 2010 at 7:14 pm
Paul Sweezy was pretty good in Road House.
I thought that was Brian Dennehy?
April 15th, 2010 at 7:15 pm
Yeah. “Christian-socialist”. That whole “So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver.” was Paul being mistranslated, I’m sure. We all know what he meant to say was “Give generously to government, as your self-appointed intellectual betters propose is in your heart, or would be, if you were as smart as they were, whether you want to or not.”
Because we all know that Jesus was always preaching to give generously to government, so it could determine the best ways to help people of its choosing, and in its characteristically inefficient fashion, and how he always needed to act through government in order to do good works and miracles. The miracle of the loaves and fishes? Yeah, those rotten disciples left out the part where all those government workers distributed it to the masses. Healing all those people? Yeah, that faith thing was over rated. It was really accomplished by those government-paid for physicians who followed Jesus where ever he went. Oh, and all that emphasis on helping others yourself? Complete fabrication. Everyone knows that he meant “If you earn five coins for your labor, give four to the government so it may distribute them to those who did not labor.”
Oh, I’m sorry. Did I break your misnomer?
April 15th, 2010 at 7:15 pm
BRIAN DENNEHY!!!!!!!!
April 15th, 2010 at 7:17 pm
Paul Sweezy was pretty good in Road House.
Hahahahahahahahahahaha!
*holds lady parts*
Well there’s no way I can top that.
April 15th, 2010 at 7:19 pm
Bitter Clinger, well done.
April 15th, 2010 at 7:21 pm
In a conversation with a younger 20-something nephew a few years ago, he boasted to me how he had every dollar he ever earned. I started questioning him about this and he had indeed worked hard and was a saver. He also had family who paid for his college education without the expense of student loans. He lived with his family during breaks and after college without any charge or overhead. It’s really easy to save money when you don’t have to support yourself or pay any bills. A point for which his expensive college education had not prepared him to address. He was entitled like Mr. “wah, wah, poor me” Mike Donahue and deserved his bank balance. But, or course, the context eludes them both as does simple gratitude for their good luck in life.
April 15th, 2010 at 7:22 pm
Precisely what was this man right about?
Was my quote too long for you to read? I’ll shorten it up for you:
Increases in marketing, defense spending and various forms of debt…
…[he] believed that…monopoly capital would tend toward economic stagnation…
That’s 4 right there. This was in the 1960’s. Now, he’s likely right for the wrong reasons (I’ve never read him), but that’s 50% better than you goobers already…
April 15th, 2010 at 7:25 pm
That’s 4 right there. This was in the 1960’s. Now, he’s likely right for the wrong reasons (I’ve never read him), but that’s 50% better than you goobers already…
You quote a man you’ve never read and admit he might have been right for the wrong reasons, and I’m the one who’s wrong?
The sun will come up tomorrow because Apollo will pull it into the sky with his mighty chariot team. Wanna quote me as an authoritative source now?
April 15th, 2010 at 7:27 pm
Now, he’s likely right for the wrong reasons (I’ve never read him)
Well, that explains the stench in here – it’s you talking out of your ass.
April 15th, 2010 at 7:31 pm
I’ve never read him
It is exactly this kind of intellectual posturing that leads to my contempt for pompous, preening poseurs.
April 15th, 2010 at 7:51 pm
You guys are going to jump on me for presuming that a self-described marxist who predicted some trends accurately is right for the wrong reasons? I had no idea you guys were so solicitous towards Marx. Enlighten me. Since you guys know all about it, please explain exactly how he was right for the right reasons. This should be fun.
Experiment: The sky is blue! What say you?
April 15th, 2010 at 7:57 pm
DM, did you take the ACT? What was your Reading score?
Was the first digit a 3?
Was that the only digit?
(I’m alluding to the fact that you’re displaying poor reading comprehension now that you’ve been summarily pwned for your quotation. Since you probably actually have poor reading comprehension — rather than just feigning it as cover — I’m explaining it to you.)
April 15th, 2010 at 8:00 pm
ltp,
Brevity is the soul of wit.
Just saying.
April 15th, 2010 at 8:03 pm
Brevity is the soul of wit.
You say that as though you had something approaching a passing familiarity with wit. I know wit, and wit says it’s never heard of you.
April 15th, 2010 at 8:09 pm
Sorry if this has been covered, I don’t have time to read over 300 posts right now, but I think a little caution with the term “valuable” is well advised, especially for a blogger. If, as a hypothetical, we were given the choice of laying off all hospital cleaning staff, and laying off all bloggers, it would become apparent that the hospital cleaning staff is more valuable.
It used to be a truism among the working class that the less you worked the more you got payed. It’s astounding to me that working people are falling for this shit line about people who are breathtakingly wealthy working more and working harder than your average working class laborer and that explains why have they have more money than the gdp of some nations. It’s physically impossible to work that long or hard.
April 15th, 2010 at 8:10 pm
You say that as though you had something approaching a passing familiarity with wit.
It’s a quote, you poltroon.
April 15th, 2010 at 8:14 pm
It’s a quote, you poltroon.
No, you’re a towel!
April 15th, 2010 at 8:21 pm
Did someone say, “poltroon“??
April 15th, 2010 at 8:22 pm
Sigh. More innumeracy from the gang that can’t add straight. Quoting bullet points like “Fewer than 20 percent inherited 10 percent or more of their wealth.” doesn’t in the slightest refute the claim that intergenerational income mobility is very small in the U.S.
Say you have two groups, A and B. We know for fact that only one percent of the B’s ever make it into group A. Someone samples group A and finds that fully forty percent of them are from group B. Does this refute the original finding? Not at all. Can both statements be true at the same time? You betcha. But these lamebrains and rumdums don’t even pause for thought to see why this might be the case . . . or what the implications are if it is.
April 15th, 2010 at 8:29 pm
ScentOfViolets, I answered your standard deviation question in 5 minutes flat, douche — where’s my gold star?
April 15th, 2010 at 8:33 pm
Chuckle. You did? Six inches eh? Well, just how did you arrive at this figure? Show your work, with pictures.
April 15th, 2010 at 8:38 pm
ScentOfViolets – Never question Cuffy’s math. Trust me on this.
April 15th, 2010 at 8:45 pm
Again, 95% of a normal distribution would be within 6 inches of the average. Granted, you did not give me the average height, so I pulled that from the same lazy wiki article you used to construct your half-baked question, ScentedDouche.
April 15th, 2010 at 8:45 pm
Matt says:
“But it’s not as if those guys were too lazy to become American political pundits, they were born in El Salvador in the middle of a civil war and never had a chance to obtain the relevant skills. “
The interesting thing about this is that despite 50,000,000 Hispanics in the U.S., maybe 30,000,000 of them born here, Matt is perhaps the most prominent Spanish-surnamed political pundit in the U.S.
April 15th, 2010 at 8:49 pm
Well, seeing as how I teach everything from algebra to differential equations with things like undergrad stats in between, and seeing as how I’m doing research in algebraic geometry using tools like homology and cohomology, and seeing as how I have students who put down answers without showing their work because they’re doing something they’re not supposed to . . . well, I’m going to ask for some details on the derivation of that figure. If you don’t mind
April 15th, 2010 at 8:49 pm
“Everytime I hear this from some entitled rich bastard its a great reminder why I think this country oughta have estate taxes up to 100% on assets over $50M.”
Terry, have you given 1/2 of your earnings to someone who does not deserve it?
April 15th, 2010 at 8:53 pm
I don’t have the time or interest to read through 300 + posts most of which are nonsense from Glibertarian trolls, so this point might have been made already.
The right always does a huge bait an switch when raising taxes on high incomes comes out.
They instantly bring up stats about millionaires. Wealth means nothing, we aren’t talking about taxes on wealth, we’re talking about taxes on income, specifically raising taxes on people making $250K a year and very few millionaires are making $250K a year in income. A millionaire is often simply someone who bought a house in the right market 20 years ago or small business owner. The majority of them probably make $50-100K a year in income, just like the rest of the middle class, They aren’t the people whose taxes are going up. They aren’t the wealthy we are talking about when we talk about mobility.
April 15th, 2010 at 8:53 pm
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
You were saying, uh, ‘Master Chief’? The boy is a mathematical illiterate. Although it’s interesting to note that (assuming average height is >60 inches), even this specimen admits it’s within ten percent of the true figure. But nooooo, that table at the top of this depressingly long thread just has to be wrong.
When people laugh at idiots like Cuffy, you might consider the possibility that they’re laughing because he really is an idiot, and not because of he holds with an idiotic and incoherent ideology.
April 15th, 2010 at 8:56 pm
I teach
You’re not a very good teacher, leaving a key piece of data out of your question. It can’t be answered without the mean being given.
Apparently you ask shitty questions from wiki and get copy-pasted wiki crap back from your students as well. Awesome.
April 15th, 2010 at 9:03 pm
he holds with an idiotic and incoherent ideology
Right, because leftism is smart and coherent. Right up until the demands of disparate victim groups collide and you run out of other people’s money.
Oh, and you’re also an over-degreed innumerate regurgitating that which eludes your feeble comprehension. Par for the course among leftist academics.
April 15th, 2010 at 9:03 pm
ScentedDouche: What’s the capital of North?
Student: North what? Dakota? Korea?
ScentedDouche: F!
Are you in the NEA?
April 15th, 2010 at 9:04 pm
[...] Yglesias ponders aloud why it is that some people just don’t get it. [...]
April 15th, 2010 at 9:05 pm
Do you enjoy kicking your own teeth in? I didn’t ask what the population mean was, or for that matter any statistic on the sample or population. I merely asked what the biggest reasonable difference was between the mean of the sample and the mean of the population, ie, it’s not something you really need to know, given the proper assumptions.
But you just keep on swingin’ & pitchin’, little buckaroo. A bit more of this cleverly hitting your own head with a baseball bat and this conversation will be over
April 15th, 2010 at 9:06 pm
Excuse me now, I’m off to fuck the rotting corpse of Ayn Rand.
April 15th, 2010 at 9:10 pm
Another chump. Since you’re not from here, I’ll go ahead and say it: no, I’m not a “liberal” or “leftist”, and I firmly believe in the power of figures. But numbers are sharp things, and ineptly juggling them has left a good many nasty cuts.
You, for example, appear to be completely ignorant of the fact that even if there’s a less than one percent chance for a person to become a millionaire if they’re in the bottom four quintiles, it is nevertheless still quite possible to quite high percentages of these millionaires coming from the lower quintiles. Not a contradiction, dufus.
April 15th, 2010 at 9:11 pm
Worst. Teacher. EVER.
April 15th, 2010 at 9:12 pm
Wow, it’s hilarious to watch all these folks going slowly round the bend on the internet. I never bought into the Obama fan club, but I do enjoy the way he drives you folks up the wall.
For what it’s worth, while Paul Sweezy was a Marxist (he dedicated his master-work to Che Guevara, in fact), his basic thesis in “Monopoly Capital” doesn’t depend in any way on the labour theory of value, and is pretty much compatible with classical economics. I’m not, myself, a Marxist in any meaningful sense of the word, though I do borrow a lot of insights from the Marxist tradition (as well as from many other traditions). Sweezy uses the basic premises of classical economics to argue that late capitalism is inherently unsustainable because it leads to continual surplus production which the system can’t absorb. I think his prediction that the sales effort (marketing, advertising, etc.) would become an ever larger- and completely parasitic and irrational- sector of the economy was right on the money, and one that a lot of non-socialists would agree with. But I can’t really do justice to ‘Monopoly Capital’ in a short comment. Read my blog- I talk about it there.
Rosetta the Impaler,
Ah, it’s so nice to see the typical anti-intellectualism of the tea-bag right. You know, I am quite conservative about some things (anti-abortion, anti-drugs, anti-casual sex, pro-authority) and am not all that comfortable with the Democratic Party, but between them and you guys, it’s no contest. This is reason #1,004 why I don’t vote Republican.
Bitter Clinger,
Would you like to read anything by R.H. Tawney? Or by Simone Weil? Or E.F. Schumacher? Or going back a little further, any of the Scholastics’ writings about economics? Or St. Ambrose? Or Lactantius? Or Chrysostom?
Proof texting is supposed to be the icing on the cake of Christian moral reasoning (as Aquinas realised), not the bread and the butter.
April 15th, 2010 at 9:17 pm
Oh, and just so lil’ Cuffy can’t wiggle, here’s the original question, which anyone can check:
What? I didn’t ask for an actual average? Oh dear me, the buff Cuff needs some tuff luff for all those boo-boos he’s inflicting on himself. Note that – as usual – not a single one of these yutzes have the wit or the courage to cut Cuffy’s stinking corpse loose even as it threatens to drag them all under.
April 15th, 2010 at 9:18 pm
You, for example, appear to be completely ignorant of the fact that even if there’s a less than one percent chance for a person to become a millionaire if they’re in the bottom four quintiles, it is nevertheless still quite possible to quite high percentages of these millionaires coming from the lower quintiles.
Who really cares and why is it anyone’s business what anyone makes or passes on or mobilizes upward or downward?
April 15th, 2010 at 9:24 pm
Hector, you do realize that name-dropping obscure christian socialists (who are by default ignorant of both christian theology and macroeconomics) doesn’t actually make your points correct, right? That that’s actually an argumentation fallacy?
April 15th, 2010 at 9:25 pm
[...] a comment via Matthew Yglesias » The Strange Logic of the Overclass. Share and [...]
April 15th, 2010 at 9:35 pm
What impresses me most about ScentOfViolets and Hector is their complete misunderstanding of plain English of the American vernacular. But, I imagine that their cloistered existence among those who obtain tenure and stature through bloviating obfuscation leads them to this skill deficit.
April 15th, 2010 at 9:46 pm
Dumbass. We’re not libertarian, we’re racists.
Don’t you read the news? Don’t you watch Olbermann?
April 15th, 2010 at 9:49 pm
Floating off into a lala land of vague accusations, are we? Show me, specifically, with quotes where I have misunderstood this plain English. And uh, weren’t you defending buff boys math skills? Don’t you think a retraction is due at this point?
April 15th, 2010 at 9:52 pm
So, Michael, have you figured out yet how intergenerational income mobility can be quite small, and yet still have the top tiers containing a substantial fraction drawn from the lower ranks? This isn’t at all a hard puzzle. But it does render your little set of bullet points irrelevant.
April 15th, 2010 at 9:58 pm
Scent of Violets,
This is the libertarian’s way of saying that we use too many big words. Not surprisingly: I’ve always felt that libertarianism (in both its cultural/social/sexual forms and in its economic form) is quintessentially the ideology of the kindergarten schoolyard. ‘I wanna do X, and you can’t tell me not to’ is something we tend to hear a lot of from five year olds, when we tell them to eat their broccoli. Most of us outgrow this phase by the time we’re sophomores in college, realising that morality and the natural order require that we do many things we would prefer not to (pay taxes, work hard, give up property to the common good, stop at one drink instead of making a fool of yourself, refrain from sleeping with that hot girl at the bar making eyes at you). But apparently some people are stuck in it for life.
‘Non serviam’ is the libertarian’s war cry, but he tends to forget who was the first to say it.
April 15th, 2010 at 10:00 pm
And Master Chief,
I fail to see just why I am required to dumb down my vocabulary to suit _you_.
April 15th, 2010 at 10:01 pm
Jeebers, you are denser than I thought. You were doing fine until the last sentence. The “implication” (actually, just a fact) is that Group A at the apex of the hierarchy is very small and hard to get into. That’s why it’s an aspirational goal for so many who are striving, saving, taking risks, and hoping for a better future for their children. They key fact is that Group A (millionaires) is achievable by Groups B, C and D or their offspring, and not ordinarily just inherited.
April 15th, 2010 at 10:06 pm
What you really seem to be arguing, ScentOfViolents, is that inequality of outcome is, by itself, something wrong and we should be embarrassed by the sterling example of those enviable Swedes.
I’m not. Equality of opportunity is what matters to me.
April 15th, 2010 at 10:06 pm
Hector – You might not know this, but in professions far more worthy, and dangerous, than yours, clarity of communication can mean the difference between life and death. Oh, and the Jesuits that taught me would be very disappointed in your assessment of my linguistic abilities.
April 15th, 2010 at 10:23 pm
The offspring of millionaires, by they way, tend to be disadvantaged with respect to maintaining that status for themselves and their children. They are less likely to be strivers, savers and risk takers, and they are more likely to seek an affluent lifestyle they did not earn. In addition, the wealth of the parents tends to get diluted among multiple offspring, and the estate tax takes a significant toll.
I am not, by the way, philosophically opposed to the estate tax. It serves a role in preventing families like the Mellons, Carnegies, Rockefellers and so forth from accumulating dynastic concentrations of wealth that would retard inter-class mobility.
April 15th, 2010 at 10:40 pm
Would you like to read anything by R.H. Tawney? Or by Simone Weil? Or E.F. Schumacher? Or going back a little further, any of the Scholastics’ writings about economics? Or St. Ambrose? Or Lactantius? Or Chrysostom?
Proof texting is supposed to be the icing on the cake of Christian moral reasoning (as Aquinas realised), not the bread and the butter.
You know, while I can admit that Aquinas was smart, he also used a faulty frame for the world, as his view of the fall of man was rooted in a belief that man’s intellect was not affected, and therefore men were free to rely on their own wisdom, and could therefore mix the teachings of the Bible with non-Christian philosophers. That was the opening for the corruption of the church and the rise of the humanist views that were dominant in the Renaissance. That being the case, I tend to take him with a grain of salt.
April 15th, 2010 at 10:46 pm
Sigh.
Saying that group A (in this instance) is precisely equivalent to saying that income mobility is low. Quoting other statistics doesn’t change that fact in slightest. The other part I’ve emphasized is just wierd: There’s a famous example of a homeless street prostitute who rose to become queen of a rather nasty brutal civilization that kept slaves as a matter of course. But because this one person could better herself, ie, it’s not just inherited wealth and status, that makes this setup hunky dory. Uh-huh.
Do you realize how inconsistent this is? Income mobility is low and you don’t care, yet you maintain that equality of opportunity is what matters to you? Hello?
Nor have I said anything that would indicate in the slightest that I think inequality of outcomes by itself is automatically a bad thing. If you can’t quote where I’ve said anything remotely like that, well, I’m putting you down as just another pathetic little boy who mouths phrases without really knowing what they mean.
April 15th, 2010 at 10:58 pm
So, let’s just talk about income distribution in different systems.
In America, the gap between the bottom and top quintiles is huge, and has grown in the last 20 years. So, moving up between quintiles is hard, just because the income range is huge. It’s just arithmetic. The underlying fact is that, in America, all quintiles have been getting richer. Poor people today live better than middle class people a generation ago.
In European welfare states, the quintiles are compressed by state intervention to equalize outcomes. Moving up is numerically easy compared to America, but actually rather hard due to rigid class systems and their failure to assimilate large and rapidly growing Muslim populations. Meanwhile, Europe is committing demographic suicide. Greece is bankrupt, Italy and Spain are next, and the Germans will not be able to keep bailing everyone else out. Europe is going to get poorer. It is already baked into the numbers.
Most of the rest of the world does not have quintiles. It’s the 90/10 system. There is a 10% elite that controls 90% of the wealth, and the other 90% of the population that controls 10% of the wealth. Look at Russia, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, any Latin American banana republic, all of Africa, etc.
Which system do you prefer?
I vote for the awful income inequality of the U.S.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:09 pm
I should probably mention that Brazil and India have potential.
The entire Middle East (other than Israel) appears to be hopeless. They fall into the same category as Africa.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:12 pm
What a looney-tunes:
Did you even look at the chart or read the paper? Here’s what it said:
Nothing to do with quintiles at all. This is just bizarre.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:28 pm
Indeed so, but you are the bizzaro. You’re responding to my argument with a quote making an assertion that is not actually responsive to what I was saying.
In other words, you’re being a typical liberal. You all do that. If you don’t know what to say, you change the subject.
I get the point that there are differences between nations regarding intergenerational elasticity of earnings.
You are failing to get my points, which are:
1. Why?
2. Is that bad?
April 15th, 2010 at 11:38 pm
You are a blogger, probably the most failed market ever. You got lucky. Skill has nothing to do with it. Dont be so arrogant.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:39 pm
Well, seeing as how I teach everything from algebra to differential equations with things like undergrad stats in between, and seeing as how I’m doing research in algebraic geometry using tools like homology and cohomology, and seeing as how I have students who put down answers without showing their work because they’re doing something they’re not supposed to . . . well, I’m going to ask for some details on the derivation of that figure. If you don’t mind
Oh, poor dear. The individual that you are trying to argue math with is in fact — an actual rocket scientist. Gets paid for it. There is some maths* involved with that, I believe.
Sorry if I outed you Cuffy.
*just like the English “maths”.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:40 pm
Insert end italics tag.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:40 pm
You were saying that income mobility was limited in the U.S. in part because the width of the quintiles were different. That’s not just wrong, that’s bizarrely wrong. And since you’ve gone back to calling me a “liberal” (I’m not) You’ve got to make a choice: you can admit you were wrong, and apologize for your offensive behaviour. Or you can stand there, ridiculously, stomping your widdle feet and whimpering it is so true and I’m just a meany liberal. At which point I will ignore you as someone whose opinion on this subject (or any other, for that matter) is of negligible value.
And no, I’m not going to give you an easy or face saving way out: you screwed up badly and you better own up to it and take the consequences if you’re going with the former option. Frankly, I hope you don’t.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:43 pm
One more time:
America’s success is precisely because we tolerate inequality of outcome, and cherish equality of opportunity. We also do a damn fine job of assimilating immigrants and giving them hope for a better life for their children. This is why our fertility rate is generally OK, meaning, near the replacement rate (with help from Hispanic immigrants). Russia, China, Europe, Japan — they are all doomed by miserable fertility rates (in some cases exacerbated by female infanticide) and the growing overhead of an aging population.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:45 pm
Oh, poor dear. You missed the part where “rocket scientist” (good moniker for the guy actually) couldn’t answer a question about basic statistics. In fact, he went to wikipedia to look up an “answer” and seems to have some trouble with basic reading comprehension, whining that I was demanding something without giving him enough information.
What’s with the retards crawling around here, anyway? They had to have come from somewhere.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:46 pm
Hah! I knew you were a homo. It’s they way you walk, and your haircut is too perfect.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:46 pm
Michael, you made the call. So be it.
PLONK!!!!
April 15th, 2010 at 11:51 pm
And Master Chief,
I fail to see just why I am required to dumb down my vocabulary to suit _you_.
And herein lies the basic problem here.
It is not your vocabulary. It’s what you’ve chosen to do with it.
Like Godwin’s Law, ad hominem voids your argument.
We came here in fun because of a ridiculous premise supported by a ridiculous graph supposedly supported by “research” and “peer review”. Yet, if you take just two minutes to dig a little deeper you find that it’s just more regurgitated opinion based on more opinion — reverse science. Trying to support your method before you actually do the experiment.
Finding your own peers.
Yeah.
Btw, Master Chief is probably one of the smartest and most competent people you will ever meet in your life. He’s being VERY self effacing in his moniker. If you are ever lucky enough to spend a few hours with him — listen.
April 16th, 2010 at 12:00 am
They had to have come from somewhere.
Yes, we did.
And, if you have the nerve, you are welcome there. We are all refugees from blogs that you would probably not agree with, but back in the old days of the Intertubes — good discussion actually did happen. It seems that over the years that no one really wants to discuss an opposing viewpoint. Quicker and easier to just throw mud.
We got tired of the echo chambers on both sides and created our own goofball paradise.
Good people, many who have met in person and who if you were to sit down with would probably agree on many points.
We are The Hostages.
Be warned — very irreverent humor. Towards both sides.
April 16th, 2010 at 12:05 am
What’s with the retards
Again — why the hate?
That would get you tossed from any school district just for uttering the word.
Cheese dicks. I could live with that. And, it doesn’t offend an entire class of people.
Though, we do call ourselves morons. Proudly.
April 16th, 2010 at 12:06 am
Like most ignoramuses, Master Chief et al. will simply attack peer-reviewed research with the “feelings” because they don’t “like” it. It’s the attribute of most right-wing loons to freak out in crazed anger when they are told that there are facts that conflict with their world view which there is nothing they can do about outside of their “vigorous assertions.” It’s the way the Republican party and other right-winger perpetuate themselves, by remaining in their intellectual ghetto and praising and rewarding ignorance. It’s primarily a movement which thrives on resentment of thought and learning. In person, it works by being the guy who yells the loudest and engages in the most amount of physical intimidation until everyone else learns to quiet down. Online and in actual intellectual communities, it doesn’t work at all because their lack of facts and knowledge is obvious without the loud voices to cover that up.
But a lunatic, loudmouthed right-wing libertarian who’s a mid-level engineer somewhere? Color me f’ing shocked. Another “free market libertarian” who’s just another salaryman in the military industrial complex.
April 16th, 2010 at 12:08 am
To be precise, I said the range was different. That’s true, I said that. A quintile is a quintile. They are all the same. It’s the numbers underneath that matter.
Um, I’m not following you. Everyone seems to agree that the top quintile in America is way further away from the bottom than, say, Sweden.
Whoa. First of all, a point of order. I did not “go back” to calling you a liberal. That was my first salvo calling you a liberal. Secondly, if you are not actually a liberal, then I admit that I really screwed up. I will not only apologize, I will kiss you smack dab on your lips. But, you won’t get tongue. I’m not that easy.
FYI, I wear size 12 shoes. I’m 6′4″ and I weigh about 210 lbs. On a good day.
OK with me, but maybe you should try to make an intelligible argument first.
April 16th, 2010 at 12:20 am
Like most ignoramuses
But a lunatic, loudmouthed right-wing libertarian
No reason to read past those words.
The tolerant, compassionate, loving left.
Until very recently, I lived in a very liberal area. I never met more spittle streaming, hate filled, blame everyone else for their problems, blame the government (until now)people that barely made it through school on daddy’s allowance and couldn’t find a job because that would cut into their drum circle and pot smoking time — but, that was the fault of the military-industrial complex.
I am sooo happy to be away from that. Normal people. Doing normal things. Working to build a life. Being good to their kids. Life.
April 16th, 2010 at 12:23 am
“Some, like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, come from modest backgrounds.”
Stop lying. Gates and Buffet both had upper 10000 parents.
April 16th, 2010 at 12:24 am
Let me try to put it another way:
You can superimpose five quintiles on the income distribution in Belize. It’s meaningless. The middle three quintiles don’t really exist as economic classes. Belize is a 90/10 kind of place. You have the elite class that controls everything, a tiny middle class of professionals, and everyone else.
April 16th, 2010 at 12:26 am
Riiiiiight. Then you should have no point making specific criticisms. You haven’t. Not one word about how the method could be wrong, or how the actual protocols were faulty. All you’ve got is emotion.
Tuds, your tribe ain’t “rocket scientists”. I looked. “Cuffy” himself demures with this description and says he’s “nontechnical”.
But hey, I’m willing to admit that I’m wrong – show me the posts where you all critiqued specific aspects of the methodology and found it wanting. Not hard to do.
Oh – and making very stupid, elementary math mistakes? That makes you retards, said not in hate, but in sorrow. You’re certainly not planning on correcting this deficiency any time soon, are you?
April 16th, 2010 at 12:26 am
mesablue, I’m not here to be your friend. I never said I was going to be tolerant or loving to destructive bullshitters and ignoramuses. It’s funny how right-wingers think it’s their right to take advantage of liberal hospitality and then freak out when people tire of their crap.
April 16th, 2010 at 12:48 am
Wow, that didn’t take long.
A straight forward comment was deleted.
Free speech for me, but not for thee.
April 16th, 2010 at 12:57 am
If memory serves, Carin early in the day made the same point I am making.
Nobody says the graph was not calculated right. We just say it is misleading. It calculates income inelasticity between generations in economic systems which are vastly different. It’s the typical apples-to-oranges comparison. It falsely suggest that upward economic mobility in America is lacking. Thus, I pointed out the actual profile of America’s millionaires. They are not rich kids.
April 16th, 2010 at 12:57 am
tyro, you’ll never know if you’ll have the opportunity to be my friend because you’ve already closed your mind to anything that doesn’t fit into your tiny world view.
All I can take away from my time here today is that I am very happy to have not grown up so twisted that I have to find a way that makes me carry so much hatred. My life wasn’t the greatest growing up — but, holy crap you folks are out there.
1-800-DON’T KILL YOURSELF TONIGHT
April 16th, 2010 at 1:05 am
Latest Rasmussen poll — twenty per cent of Tea Party members consider themselves as conservative Democrats. “Their party has left them.”
A total of thirty five per cent of Tea Party members are registered Democrats.
Oh, the horror.
April 16th, 2010 at 1:06 am
By the way, I’ve met Mesablue in person. He’s an ex-Marine and, having personally been to a gun range with him, I know that he knows how to shoot.
Just sayin’. A word to the wise. You don’t want to piss him off any more. He can hunt you down and kill you.
April 16th, 2010 at 1:10 am
Michael, no such thing as an ex-Marine.
And,I would never do that — shaddup.
I was recon, I’d just find them and call in an air strike.
April 16th, 2010 at 1:15 am
Actually, I really did meet Mesa, and he really is an ex-Marine. He’s also a big ole sentimental pussy.
Unless a bar fight breaks out involving Navy guys.
April 16th, 2010 at 1:23 am
FORMER Marine.
In a bar fight with squiddies? All are fair game, except for corpsman. Or as Dear Leader describes them, “Corpse men.”
Seriously, you can’t make this crap up — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlKIfzoC8D0
In one year, this guy has made more mistakes and said more crazy things than Bush fit into eight years. Yet, the true believers cover their ears and eyes.
Can I thank you in advance for the next two Novembers?
On that cold lonely night can I remind you once again?
1-800-DON’T KILL YOURSELF
April 16th, 2010 at 1:26 am
The Marines are curiously like Texas A&M University. They both have the culture that if you have been there, you are in for a lifetime. I have heard Aggies make that comment with the same fervor.
It’s all nonsense. The only lifetime affiliations that make a difference are (1) The Lutheran Church, and (2) The University of Michigan Fighting Wolverines football team.
April 16th, 2010 at 1:26 am
Oops, three years, two Novembers.
April 16th, 2010 at 1:27 am
The myth that people get where they are mostly because of hard work/good choices is the myth that fuels conservatism. It’s also, I think, a useful sort of myth to believe in. It’s just a shame that it has the effect of justifying inequality by presupposing that people get as much as they’ve worked for.
April 16th, 2010 at 1:28 am
The University of Michigan Fighting Wolverines football team.
Add the USMC to that and I’m with you.
And — screw the Aggies. Little whiners from College Station. They don’t even tailgate.
April 16th, 2010 at 1:29 am
Nice little chat room we have here.
April 16th, 2010 at 1:33 am
A&M has the history and wants to instill the respect of that history — yet fewer and fewer students are following that road.
I respect it.
There is however, a comradery in the Corps from top to bottom that is life changing. More than I expected. Beautiful. How else do you think I put up with pinto? Heh.
April 16th, 2010 at 1:35 am
The myth that people get where they are mostly because of hard work/good choices is the myth that fuels conservatism.
And the myth that the government can swoop in, repeal the laws of economics and make everyone all equal ‘n’ stuff is the childish myth that fuels liberalism.
April 16th, 2010 at 2:00 am
Meaning, you are a dipshit who knows nothing about conservatism.
Overcoming the dead hand of class advantage is fundamental to conservatives. It’s why Obama has fired up millions of tea-partiers in opposition to his vision of a D.C.-based kleptocracy that will impoverish our children.
Now you are really getting stupid.
First of all, we don’t have any need to “justify” inequality. Every culture in the history of humankind has been stratified.
Secondly, we don’t think the people just “get as much as they’ve worked for.” Success in a free-market capitalist economy is a lottery, the result of random risk-taking by entrepreneurs. Some win, most lose. The net effect is movement towards Pareto-efficiency for everyone. Everyone benefits.
April 16th, 2010 at 2:05 am
Cathy was actually a part of the Army for awhile, and I got a taste of military culture through her. Army culture is nowhere near as intense as the Marines, but they have their own thing going.
And then, there is my own rigorous service as a clarinet player in a Boy Scout Marching Band.
You can’t go through something like that without it changing your life.
April 16th, 2010 at 2:18 am
Anywhere in the world, I could meet another member of a Boy Scout Marching Band, and if I were in need, they would give me the shirt off their back. We are a band of brothers. We have been through hell together, marching in the heat of the July 4th parade.
This has not actually happened yet for me. As an adult, I have never met another member of a Boy Scout Marching Band. But I’m pretty sure they would give me the shirt off their back.
April 16th, 2010 at 2:40 am
Nice little chat room we have here.
Well, I suppose that’s true for anonymous dipshits jerking off to fantasies of barfight machismo. It probably also helps to have a compulsive aversion to self examination.
By the way, I’ve met Mesablue in person. He’s an ex-Marine and, having personally been to a gun range with him, I know that he knows how to shoot.
Just sayin’. A word to the wise. You don’t want to piss him off any more. He can hunt you down and kill you.
Yeah. And I’m a fucking ninja. You won’t even know you’re dead. Just [all of a sudden!] pointy things sticking in your eyes! And don’t forget, I get +5 on saving throws versus bullets!
Seriously, there’s comedy gold here. How ’bout this: “I’m a delta force commando, so your argument is wrong!” “Oh yeah? Well I’m an NSA cat burglar/assasin, y’know…way deadlier than Matt Damon, so stick that in your faulty premise and smoke it!” “Can’t you see that your reliance on logical fallacies reveals the fact that you don’t have a CIA designed hunter/killer robot like mine?” “Dude, I’ve been building up immunity to deadly poisons and misconceptions for years…Bring it on!”
April 16th, 2010 at 2:46 am
And I have not even started to talk about dynamic models of market efficiency, which account for innovation and invention.
Guess which country accounts for the most patents filed worldwide?
Here’s a hint: It is a country largely run by rich white guys, and there is a huge gap between the top and bottom quintiles of the income distribution, and it is located somewhere between Mexico and Canada.
April 16th, 2010 at 2:52 am
Um, no. You sound like you are 27 years old and you live in your mom’s basement. You have a degree in Art History and work at Burger King. You might be really good at World of Warcraft. Kudos to you for that.
April 16th, 2010 at 2:54 am
Guess which country accounts for the most patents filed worldwide?
You do realize that my CIA designed hunter/killer robots aren’t patented right? Neither are my catlike reflexes. So try again you ignoramus. Before I get mad.
April 16th, 2010 at 2:58 am
Dang, I have heard rumors about that.
Sir, I will henceforth address you with the respect you deserve. Please do not kill me.
April 16th, 2010 at 3:16 am
You might be really good at World of Warcraft.
HEY!!! You didn’t need to go there! I like that game.
April 16th, 2010 at 3:31 am
Please do not kill me.
Far from it. You are a precious snowflake, uniquely contributing to the death-by-stupidity of the GOP. I sincerely hope that you encourage your friends like this
meat cleaver wielding doofusgentleman (stay classy with those sidebar links!) to become ever more visible and prominent standard bearers for the conservative cause. I truly wish nothing but the success for you and yours.April 16th, 2010 at 4:19 am
Wow, we’ve had a regular right-wing nutter jamboree goin’ on in heehah. Now y’all come on back now, ya hear. But seriously, thanks for the entertainment, I mean it. Reading the long last stretch of comments I felt like I was shooting off on some acid-laced moon trip with a reconstituted Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin (and throw in some David Bowie/Ziggy Stardust for good measure).
All this heady talk of rocket scientists, and I was transporter-beamed to the big round table with LBJ and our top military brass consulting Wernher von Braun and company on the nitty gritty of our space race with the Soviets. Great stuff. Fucking mind blowing. Do come back, you people. I don’t know where you’re all from, but it’s been a blast. I just luuuvvvv social darwinist libertarians!! They’re so warm and cuddly (and their deep ethical core shines so brightly)…
April 16th, 2010 at 6:26 am
Re: . The reality, depicted above, is that there’s relatively little social mobility in the United States, since when the rungs on the ladder are so far apart it’s difficult to overtake the people who are closer to the top.
The rungs at the very top are far apart, but that’s not the case elsewhere in the income spectrum (where nearly all of us reside). What’s stopping someomne whose family made 40K from making 50K? That’s not a big jump.
April 16th, 2010 at 6:32 am
Re: Meanwhile, Europe is committing demographic suicide
Here we go again!
In reality, there are now far more (native) Europeans than at any time in history. Even at current fertility rates that will still be true at the end of this century absent utter catastrophe. And in 300 years there will still be more native Europeans (again, absent massive die off) than when Elizabeth I mounted the throne.
What is always missing from these demographic doom posts is any awareness of just how huge populations have grown over the last 150 years. Unless you posit nuclear war, killer asteroids or an epidemic that makes the Black Death look like a case of the sniffles, nothing is going to reduce that population bulge for a very long, long time.
April 16th, 2010 at 8:26 am
The simple reality is that Mathew Yglessias probably has a substantially higher IQ than those day laborers. It is not the mere lack of opportunity that holds those laborers back but also the same thing that holds back most other Americans from having MY’s job: they lack the talent (of course, it is not statistically impossible that those laborers are smarter than Matt, but most likely, they aren’t –just as the average person in the U.S isn’t as smart as an ivy league student).
Both the right wing (which insists that anyone can achieve success with the right values) and the leftwing (which insists anyone can achieve success given the opportunity) seem fundamentally non-cognizant of the fact that people — and classes of people — inherently differ in their talents. Please see op-ed by Gregory Cochran:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/07/AR2009080702043.html
Matt is wrong to say that the only thing holding back those laborers is mere lack of opportunity, and the guy who wrote the Op-Ed Matt linked is wrong to imply that *anyone* can achieve what he did.
April 16th, 2010 at 10:32 am
Nobody says the graph was not calculated right. We just say it is misleading. It calculates income inelasticity between generations in economic systems which are vastly different. It’s the typical apples-to-oranges comparison.
Yeah, like between Canada and America. Vastly different economic systems. Just contrast Canadas’s rigid state-controlled Marxist economy and our own libertarian free-market paradise.
April 16th, 2010 at 6:29 pm
Re: Both the right wing (which insists that anyone can achieve success with the right values) and the leftwing (which insists anyone can achieve success given the opportunity) seem fundamentally non-cognizant of the fact that people — and classes of people — inherently differ in their talents
Differences in talent are real, of course. But they exist in all large populations, and as such they are irrelevant to the main issue here: why is it that in nearly every other advanced economy those differences in talent do not translate into such enormous differences in wealth and income, nor impede social mobility as much as they do in the US?