"It’s Time for Major Wealth Redistribution — Yes, I Mean It."

[DBT]

A step in the right direction.

 

[Trausti]

New Zealand raises minimum wage to $20 an hour
Taxes on the richest New Zealanders are being raised

Changes to minimum wage and tax policy came into force in New Zealand today.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s had promised to raise the minimum wage to $20 per hour (£10.15) and to raise taxes on the wealthiest Kiwis.

The rise in wages means that the income of 175,500 New Zealanders will be increased by $44 (£22.30) each week.

“Today’s rise to $20 per hour is estimated to boost wages across the economy by $216 million, giving New Zealanders more money to spend at local businesses,” Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety Michael Wood said.

“There are many Kiwis who earn the minimum wage who have gone above and beyond in our fight against COVID. I think everyone agrees those who served us so well during lockdown – including supermarket workers, cleaners, and security guards – deserve a pay rise,” the minister added.

The new changes also impact the top two percent of earners in New Zealand, those on salaries of over $180,000 (£91,238.87), who will now be taxed by 39 per cent.

Always amusing when politicians are so generous with other people's money.

 

[bilby]

New Zealand raises minimum wage to $20 an hour
Taxes on the richest New Zealanders are being raised

Changes to minimum wage and tax policy came into force in New Zealand today.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s had promised to raise the minimum wage to $20 per hour (£10.15) and to raise taxes on the wealthiest Kiwis.

The rise in wages means that the income of 175,500 New Zealanders will be increased by $44 (£22.30) each week.

“Today’s rise to $20 per hour is estimated to boost wages across the economy by $216 million, giving New Zealanders more money to spend at local businesses,” Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety Michael Wood said.

“There are many Kiwis who earn the minimum wage who have gone above and beyond in our fight against COVID. I think everyone agrees those who served us so well during lockdown – including supermarket workers, cleaners, and security guards – deserve a pay rise,” the minister added.

The new changes also impact the top two percent of earners in New Zealand, those on salaries of over $180,000 (£91,238.87), who will now be taxed by 39 per cent.

Always amusing when politicians are so generous with other people's money.

Always amusing when seppos claim that money belongs to non currency issuing entities.

 

[Bomb#20]

It's a figure of speech. the remark ''It's outragous'' may be used in reference to something that is 'shockingly bad or excessive' scandalous, etc....as can 'disgusting.'

Well then, why do you think it's bad for rich shareholders to voluntarily give lots of their own money to rich CEOs, why does it shock you, what does it exceed, and why is it a scandal that it exceeds it? What's your issue with other people choosing that lifestyle? Who benefits if the CEO's salary is capped and those rich shareholders keep more of their money for themselves?

Like many words, the meaning of the word 'obscene' varies according to context. Obscene may simply mean: abominable; disgusting, ie, obscene wealth;

Merriam Webster.
d : so excessive as to be offensive obscene wealth obscene waste

So if you find it abominable and it offends and disgusts you, do you think that qualifies as a reason for us to suppress the practice? Is the offense you take at high wages and high wealth a different sort of offense from the offense the Westboro Baptist Church takes at gay sex?

 

[DBT]

It's a figure of speech. the remark ''It's outragous'' may be used in reference to something that is 'shockingly bad or excessive' scandalous, etc....as can 'disgusting.'

Well then, why do you think it's bad for rich shareholders to voluntarily give lots of their own money to rich CEOs, why does it shock you, what does it exceed, and why is it a scandal that it exceeds it? What's your issue with other people choosing that lifestyle? Who benefits if the CEO's salary is capped and those rich shareholders keep more of their money for themselves?

Shouldn't they be just as generous toward the people who help build their wealth, without whose work their wealth would not be possible....the people who work in their offices and factories, drive their delivery trucks, serve their customers, etc, etc -ie - their workers?

Why would they not? Well, basically for the same reason big corporations move to third world nation where they can pay their workers a dollar or two an hour: to maximize profits and line their own pockets.... we all need that new yacht by Xmas, eh?

Economic inequality in the US.
''Over the past 50 years, the highest-earning 20% of U.S. households have steadily brought in a larger share of the country’s total income. In 2018, households in the top fifth of earners (with incomes of $130,001 or more that year) brought in 52% of all U.S. income, more than the lower four-fifths combined, according to Census Bureau data.''

The wealth gap between America’s richest and poorer families more than doubled from 1989 to 2016, according to a recent analysis by the Center.

Middle-class incomes have grown at a slower rate than upper-tier incomes over the past five decades, the same analysis found. From 1970 to 2018, the median middle-class income increased from $58,100 to $86,600, a gain of 49%. By comparison, the median income for upper-tier households grew 64% over that time, from $126,100 to $207,400.

 

[Bomb#20]

... So some degree of inequality is both necessary and desirable.

But the problem being discussed in this thread is the dominance of the belief that if some inequality is good, more must be better (and for that matter, that if some is good, all is good).

Where the heck are you getting that? Who has expressed the belief that if some inequality is good, more must be better, or if some is good, all is good? That's a practically non-existent belief; claiming it has "dominance" is beyond absurd.

It isn't that more inequality is good; what's good is more wealth. More wealth for the poor is good, and more wealth for the rich is also good, provided they come by it honestly. When the rich come by wealth honestly, it means they're selling goods and services their customers value more than the money they pay. That's win-win. They're making themselves richer and they're making other people richer too. Any resulting inequality is incidental; you're making believe it's the goal.

When you attribute to people who think win-win is good "the belief that more inequality must be better", you are implying that the targets of your invective think more wealth for the poor is bad. That's a misrepresentation.

It's really not. They are the targets of my invective precisely because they do think that more wealth for the poor is bad.

That's not usually what they say, but their actions completely drown out their words on this subject.

I'm trying to figure out who "they" refers to. It evidently can't refer to the answer to my question, "Who has expressed the belief that if some inequality is good, more must be better, or if some is good, all is good?", since you say that's not usually what they say. So "they" aren't expressing it; you just know "they" believe it. And it evidently can't refer to the people I took you to mean: "people who think win-win is good", since you're accusing "them" of lying about their views; I was talking about people who actually do think win-win is good.

So help me out here. Who are you talking about? Who are these nefarious villains who believe more wealth for the poor is bad, what actions drown out their words and prove they believe this, and what is it that their belief on this subject dominates?

 

[Bomb#20]

Well then, why do you think it's bad for rich shareholders to voluntarily give lots of their own money to rich CEOs, why does it shock you, what does it exceed, and why is it a scandal that it exceeds it? What's your issue with other people choosing that lifestyle? Who benefits if the CEO's salary is capped and those rich shareholders keep more of their money for themselves?

Shouldn't they be just as generous toward the people who help build their wealth, without whose work their wealth would not be possible....the people who work in their offices and factories, drive their delivery trucks, serve their customers, etc, etc -ie - their workers?

But they are being just as generous toward those people. On some level you must understand this -- they are being exactly as generous: i.e. not generous in the least. Shareholders don't pay big bucks to CEOs because they're generous! They pay them those salaries because they think it will increase their own profits. The CEO, just like the truck drivers, is helping build their wealth. Without the CEO's work their wealth would not be possible. The shareholders and the CEO are normal human beings, not the alien life forms so many on the left like to imagine them as. "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest."

When you propose that the truck drivers et al. should be paid more, that's a perfectly reasonable thing for you to advocate -- you want to make them better off. So does every reasonable person.

But when you propose that the CEO should be paid less, you seem to be implicitly taking for granted it means the shareholders will have more money left over and will spend it on paying the truck drivers more. That's a nutty thing to believe. First, because if they had more money left over they'd keep it for themselves, because they're regular people just like truck drivers and the truck drivers don't generously donate their left-over money back to their employer. And second, because the shareholders wouldn't have more money left over. See above -- the shareholders don't pay CEOs millions out of generosity. They pay the rate they think will maximize their left-over money, the same way they decide what to pay the truck drivers. So if they paid the CEO less then they'd have less money left over to pay the truck drivers with.

So when you advocate that the CEO should be paid less, you're advocating something that will make the CEO worse off, and will make the shareholders worse off, and will make the truck drivers and office workers and factory workers worse off. It makes everybody worse off. That's not a reasonable thing to advocate. Making people worse off isn't a positive accomplishment; it's just destruction. It can only be motivated by hostility, or by lack of economic understanding, or by putting a higher priority on your feelings of disgust, offense, abomination and obscenity than you put on your rationality.

Why would they not? Well, basically for the same reason big corporations move to third world nation where they can pay their workers a dollar or two an hour: to maximize profits and line their own pockets.... we all need that new yacht by Xmas, eh?

I.e., basically for the same reason the truck drivers are buying Hyundais instead of Chryslers: to maximize profits (you probably call them something else, but profit is income minus expenses) and line their own pockets. You sympathizing with truck drivers while feeling offended by CEOs and shareholders doesn't mean their strategies and motivations are different.

 

[DBT]

But they are being just as generous toward those people. On some level you must understand this -- they are being exactly as generous: i.e. not generous in the least. Shareholders don't pay big bucks to CEOs because they're generous! They pay them those salaries because they think it will increase their own profits. The CEO, just like the truck drivers, is helping build their wealth. Without the CEO's work their wealth would not be possible. The shareholders and the CEO are normal human beings, not the alien life forms so many on the left like to imagine them as. "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest."

The shareholder, CEO relationship is nothing like the management to worker relationship, therefore cannot be compared. Your analogy is false and misleading.

Basically, it's a scam.

How CEO's and upper management secure their lucrative incomes and bonuses often has nothing to do with their performance, as history and research tells us.

The roots of 'price-driven salaries'

''The executive pay gap has its roots in the policies put forth in the 1980s by the Reagan administration in the US and the Thatcher government in the UK. Their political philosophies drove deregulation, privatisation of the public sector and free-market capitalism. Both also took a dim view on labour unions, which ultimately played a role in these organisations’ reduced capacity to advocate for workers.

"If you go back to the early part of that period, it was very common for executives' jobs to be part of a company's overall job-evaluation system. There was one system to evaluate everybody's pay," says Sandy Pepper, an expert in executive pay at the London School of Economics. This month, Pepper published a paper exploring why the pay gaps have opened up between CEOs and the wider workforce.''

''While top-brass pay keeps sailing on, employee rights seem to be on a downward trajectory – especially for front-line staff amid the pandemic. For many average workers, these huge numbers have become an increasingly bitter pill to swallow.''


"I can't understand the mindset that says, we have to pay you $5 million, or $10 million, or $20 million, so that you deliver value for the company," Dr Lowe told an audience in Armidale in New South Wales.

More to the point:

''Companies keep lavishing astronomical amounts of money on chief executives, despite repeated studies which show huge pay doesn't equal huge performance.

One of those studies, by Morgan Stanley Capital International, looked at hundreds of the biggest companies in the United States over more than a decade.

It found those with the lowest-paid bosses outperformed those with the highest pay by around 40 per cent.

Which raises the question: how did we get to this salary situation which is so out of touch with the real world? ''

 

[TV and credit cards]

But they are being just as generous toward those people. On some level you must understand this -- they are being exactly as generous: i.e. not generous in the least. Shareholders don't pay big bucks to CEOs because they're generous! They pay them those salaries because they think it will increase their own profits. The CEO, just like the truck drivers, is helping build their wealth. Without the CEO's work their wealth would not be possible. The shareholders and the CEO are normal human beings, not the alien life forms so many on the left like to imagine them as. "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest."

The shareholder, CEO relationship is nothing like the management to worker relationship, therefore cannot be compared. Your analogy is false and misleading.

Basically, it's a scam.

How CEO's and upper management secure their lucrative incomes and bonuses often has nothing to do with their performance, as history and research tells us.

The roots of 'price-driven salaries'

''The executive pay gap has its roots in the policies put forth in the 1980s by the Reagan administration in the US and the Thatcher government in the UK. Their political philosophies drove deregulation, privatisation of the public sector and free-market capitalism. Both also took a dim view on labour unions, which ultimately played a role in these organisations’ reduced capacity to advocate for workers.

"If you go back to the early part of that period, it was very common for executives' jobs to be part of a company's overall job-evaluation system. There was one system to evaluate everybody's pay," says Sandy Pepper, an expert in executive pay at the London School of Economics. This month, Pepper published a paper exploring why the pay gaps have opened up between CEOs and the wider workforce.''

''While top-brass pay keeps sailing on, employee rights seem to be on a downward trajectory – especially for front-line staff amid the pandemic. For many average workers, these huge numbers have become an increasingly bitter pill to swallow.''


"I can't understand the mindset that says, we have to pay you $5 million, or $10 million, or $20 million, so that you deliver value for the company," Dr Lowe told an audience in Armidale in New South Wales.

More to the point:

''Companies keep lavishing astronomical amounts of money on chief executives, despite repeated studies which show huge pay doesn't equal huge performance.

One of those studies, by Morgan Stanley Capital International, looked at hundreds of the biggest companies in the United States over more than a decade.

It found those with the lowest-paid bosses outperformed those with the highest pay by around 40 per cent.

Which raises the question: how did we get to this salary situation which is so out of touch with the real world? ''

When the worker has no voice and a culture that permits it to happen.





Even in areas with plenty of senior management to choose from, pay is still high. So the argument that an abundant supply of labor/job candidates drives down wages doesn't seem to apply at this end of the wage scale.

 

[Jayjay]

The gap between average worker salary and CEO compensation is to be expected in a competitive economy. To drive costs of production down, you need to reduce salaries of those whose input is predictable, low-risk and add up to largest totals. But at the same time, people in key positions, such as CEOs, can extort for higher pay because their performance is hard to predict (and sometimes even hard to critique after the fact), carries a high risk, but is at the same time peanuts compared to the company profits.

Sure, the incestuous relationship between board members and CEOs is probably a factor in some cases, but there is no reason to think that CEO pay should have a fixed rate relative to average worker or company productivity even in ideal conditions.

 

[DBT]

There is no reason why there shouldn't be a cap. Executive salaries where not always so high. Over the top pay rates are not a law of nature or a necessity in business. Past a certain point, performance is not bound to pay rate.

 

[Bomb#20]

... So some degree of inequality is both necessary and desirable. ...
There's no magical cutoff at which wealth transitions from beneficial to harmful, but that doesn't imply that disparity of wealth is never beneficial, nor that when taken too far, it is never harmful. ...

Bilby makes the key point here.

Right-wingers love to exaggerate on this topic. Propose a tax increase from 30% to 35% and their sarcastic answer is "Why not 99% or 100%?"

Um, you know that bilby actually advocated a 99% tax rate, don't you?

We also learn from right-wingers that the $200 million fiber-optic cable from NY to Chicago, with tunnels built through mountains so some investors could get their orders in a few microseconds before others, helped retail investors by reducing spreads! :whack:

Which right-wingers told you that? If you're referring to me and to what I wrote about bid-ask spreads back in post #50, then (a) that's not what I said, and (b) the fact that you think I'm a "right-winger" says a lot more about where you are on the political spectrum than where I am.

I try to help right-wingers think with analogies: "If a bit of chocolate is good, should you make it the only component of your diet?" But nothing gets through to them.

Teaching them slogans is supposed to help them think, is it? Right-wingers already think with slogans.

If you think your analogy is more than an empty slogan, can you point out which right-winger is making inequality the only component of his economics diet?

Wealth inequality was rather low in the U.S. (and throughout most of the world) during the 1930's, 40's, 50's and 60's. Yet there was great progress during this era, which culminated with the Apollo Moon Landing. The 50's and 60's are now looked back on fondly as the stereotypical era of American contentment, prosperity and progress.

You want to go back to that time? Um, how much were women paid then, relative to what men were paid?

But by now, wealth and income inequality have passed the high levels of the 1890's, and are still getting worse.

You keep saying it, I'll keep showing it.

Back in your glorious 50's and 60's, how much were Indian and Chinese workers paid, compared to what Americans were paid? If inequality between rich American employees and super-rich American employers is such a bad thing, then why isn't inequality between rich American employees and poor Bangladeshi employees an even worse thing? Why are you trying to majorly redistribute wealth between the 99th percentile and the 90th percentile when there are actually poor people in the 10th percentile who need redistribution a lot more? What, is Americanness more morally significant than need? Does the left have any justification for its unending focus on within-country inequality beyond naked tribalism? World inequality statistics are a measure of inequality. American inequality statistics are a measure of street-address.

 

[Swammerdami]

Eavesdropping on the debate between Bomb#20 and the quasi-Marxists. I'm emotionally on the side of the quasi-Marxists, but it is Bomb#20 whose views are often more correct and fact-based.

However, the following is not correct:

Shareholders don't pay big bucks to CEOs because they're generous! They pay them those salaries because they think it will increase their own profits. The CEO, just like the truck drivers, is helping build their wealth. Without the CEO's work their wealth would not be possible.

To understand why American CEO's are paid more than they are "worth" we must first take a closer look at American capitalism and see how it deviates from usual models.

Who are the big voting shareholders of big U.S. corporations? Fidelity Investments, Inc. and The Vanguard Group are two of the biggest shareholders of many companies; and they don't even hold their shares for their own direct benefit. Who sits on the boards of directors of big U.S. corporations? Often the directors are themselves CEOs or ex-CEOs of other corporations. Director X, voting to give a sweetheart pay hike to Mr. Y, may expect Mr. Y to reciprocate when X's salary in another corporation comes up for review. Top corporate insiders in the U.S. form a club and scratch each others' backs.

There's another aspect to present-day U.S. corporate capitalism that is often overlooked. Competition doesn't really work as expected. Big owners of Pepsi and Coca Cola include index funds, and those funds own BOTH companies. Even managed funds don't sidestep this issue: If one Fidelity manager bets that Pepsi will be the winner while another Fidelity manager is betting on Coke, Fidelity Investments, Inc. is betting on both companies, and voting in both companies' elections. When it exercises its shareholder power to influence Pepsi policy or choose Pepsi's Board, it's not eager to kill Coke, it just doesn't want to rock the boat that is enriching all the elites. Squeezing executive salaries wouldn't have a big effect on profits, but would have an effect when that board member goes looking for another cushy job in the elite scratch-our-backs circle.

Solution? Let the elites continue with their games, but adjust the tax code so that the public gets a bigger cut of the pie through taxes. One measure that helped was when corporations could not deduct big salaries beyond some threshold as expenses. Corporations got around that by replacing salaries with stock options. Has that loophole been plugged yet?

ETA:

You keep saying it, I'll keep showing it.

Start a new thread if you need to discuss World-wide GINI. That's not the topic anyone here is discussing.

 

[Swammerdami]

You keep saying it, I'll keep showing it.

Start a new thread if you need to discuss World-wide GINI. That's not the topic anyone here is discussing.

It IS a topic worth discussing. And one can claim with some justice that U.S. liberals are hypocrites when they try to enrich U.S. workers to the detriment of struggling Bangladeshis.

HOWEVER, it is inequality WITHIN one society that leads to economic and social problems in that society.

 

[Bomb#20]

And one can claim with some justice that U.S. liberals are hypocrites when they try to enrich U.S. workers to the detriment of struggling Bangladeshis.

We're doing nothing of the sort. That's the so-called "progressives". Liberals are for free trade.

 

[Swammerdami]

... What annoys me are people who become very rich without contributing much of value. I'm thinking especially of people who become rich by inventing or indulging in financial shenanigans. I think most of these shenanigans are counter to the public interest and should be forbidden or at least better regulated....

And when the losses are too huge for Wall St. to handle, the U.S. taxpayer stands up, under direction of the bankers who run Treasury and the Fed, and take the losses, letting Wall St. off the hook.

Tales of rogue traders losing billions of dollars may seem to have little to do with excessive wealth. But these are just the stories that make the headlines: there are many crazed traders who get lucky and make billions of profit and don't make headlines. The over-financialization of America's post-rational capitalism is a recipe for the rich to keep getting richer without contributing anything with redeeming social value.

Here's a fun look at the "ten craziest rogue traders":
[YOUTUBE]0v_bq1ih7pI[/YOUTUBE]

 

[Bomb#20]

There is no reason why there shouldn't be a cap. Executive salaries where not always so high. Over the top pay rates are not a law of nature or a necessity in business. Past a certain point, performance is not bound to pay rate.

Can you explain why you think that's a substantive argument? From the outside it looks like a blatant special-pleading fallacy. In general, would you accept arguments along those lines if we weren't talking about pay scale?

Some Christians go to church every week; others go on Christmas and Easter. Suppose an atheist-dominated government decides to cap the number of times a Christian can go to church per year at 26. The legislator who introduced the restriction argues thus:

"There is no reason why there shouldn't be a cap. Church attendance was not always so high -- before 1 AD nobody went to church at all. Over the top church attendance rates are not a law of nature or a necessity in religion. Past a certain point, measurable psychological benefit from going to church is not bound to pray rate."​

Do you think this argument shows there is no reason why there shouldn't be a cap on going to church? If you wouldn't accept this argument for church, why would you accept it for salaries?

 

[Bomb#20]

Eavesdropping on the debate between Bomb#20 and the quasi-Marxists. I'm emotionally on the side of the quasi-Marxists, but it is Bomb#20 whose views are often more correct and fact-based.

Well, the reason so many people are emotionally on the side of quasi-Marxists even though my views are more correct and fact-based is that human moral intuitions did most of their evolving when our ancestors were hunter-gatherers. It's intuitively obvious to an ordinary person who hasn't thought the matter through that a CEO making ten million a year when somebody else is scraping by on ten thousand is pretty much the same as a super-hunter who kills a deer every day even though he can't eat that much, and just eats the tastiest bits and leaves the rest to the hyenas, depleting the deer population and bringing on a year of hunger for the rest of the tribe. What that ordinary person is failing to take into account is that ten thousand years ago we as a species abandoned hunting and gathering and took up farming. A farmer who grows a lot more food than he needs isn't thereby making his neighbor's crop fail. This species-wide change from zero-sum economics to positive-sum economics changes everything: all the old familiar calculations are wrong now. But our moral instincts about economics haven't caught up yet. A million years of hunting and gathering has left much deeper ruts in our brains' economic reasoning pathways than ten thousand years of farming.

I don't know there's anything to be done about this other than to consciously discipline ourselves to remember we're farmers now, keep in mind that economic intuition is not to be trusted any more, and be careful to reason about economics scientifically instead of intuitively, just as we need to consciously remind ourselves that a rocket in space doesn't slow to a stop when we shut off the power -- intuition acquired from millions of years of watching horses notwithstanding.

However, the following is not correct:

Shouldn't they be just as generous toward the people who help build their wealth, without whose work their wealth would not be possible...

Shareholders don't pay big bucks to CEOs because they're generous! They pay them those salaries because they think it will increase their own profits. The CEO, just like the truck drivers, is helping build their wealth. Without the CEO's work their wealth would not be possible.

To understand why American CEO's are paid more than they are "worth" we must first take a closer look at American capitalism and see how it deviates from usual models.

Who are the big voting shareholders of big U.S. corporations? ...

How do you figure any of that means what I wrote is not correct? I made no claim about what CEOs are "worth"; that's a matter of subjective opinion without any right answer. I didn't even make a claim about whether paying CEOs well increases profits -- I said the shareholders think it will. Even if the shareholders are wrong and it doesn't increase profits, that's simply a strategic error on their part -- it in no way implies that the shareholders are being generous in paying the CEOs so much.

There's another aspect to present-day U.S. corporate capitalism that is often overlooked. Competition doesn't really work as expected. Big owners of Pepsi and Coca Cola include index funds, and those funds own BOTH companies. ...

Well, if this is a big enough effect to significantly reduce competition, then our antitrust laws may need to be updated; but I can't see how limiting CEO pay is supposed to help -- that will just reduce competition even more.

Solution? Let the elites continue with their games, but adjust the tax code so that the public gets a bigger cut of the pie through taxes. One measure that helped was when corporations could not deduct big salaries beyond some threshold as expenses. Corporations got around that by replacing salaries with stock options. Has that loophole been plugged yet?

That doesn't sound like a loophole. That sounds like the government doing its most basic job in regulating capitalism: reprogramming the incentive structure to deal with the eternal problem of executives of joint stock companies having conflicts of interest. Adam Smith was writing about this issue 250 years ago; a lot of progress has been made in managing it but it never goes away. This sounds like more of the same: replace salaries with stock options and the executives' interests become more closely aligned with the company's.

You keep saying it, I'll keep showing it.

Start a new thread if you need to discuss World-wide GINI. That's not the topic anyone here is discussing.

Well then, if you want to talk only about within country inequality, what is your moral case for major wealth redistribution from people in the 99th percentile to people in the 90th percentile?

If this were 1880, and you were denouncing the unfair unequal representation in Parliament between Manchester and London, and propounding the famous principle of "One man, one vote", you'd no doubt invite me to write my letters to the editor of a different periodical if I needed to talk about letting women vote. So then I'd just have to ask you what your moral case was for thinking the men of Manchester have unfairly little representation.

 

[Canard DuJour]

Well, the reason so many people are emotionally on the side of quasi-Marxists even though my views are more correct and fact-based is that human moral intuitions did most of their evolving when our ancestors were hunter-gatherers. It's intuitively obvious to an ordinary person who hasn't thought the matter through that a CEO making ten million a year when somebody else is scraping by on ten thousand is pretty much the same as a super-hunter who kills a deer every day even though he can't eat that much, and just eats the tastiest bits and leaves the rest to the hyenas, depleting the deer population and bringing on a year of hunger for the rest of the tribe. What that ordinary person is failing to take into account is that ten thousand years ago we as a species abandoned hunting and gathering and took up farming. A farmer who grows a lot more food than he needs isn't thereby making his neighbor's crop fail. This species-wide change from zero-sum economics to positive-sum economics changes everything: all the old familiar calculations are wrong now. But our moral instincts about economics haven't caught up yet. A million years of hunting and gathering has left much deeper ruts in our brains' economic reasoning pathways than ten thousand years of farming.

[..etc]

Yeah, I think most folks round here already get all that.

The proposition here is that current levels of inequality and the politics by which they have been brought about are bad for economic growth.

 

[ZiprHead]

Universal basic income: Plans drawn up for £1,600 a month trial in England

Thirty people would get a monthly lump sum for two years, under a think tank's scheme in England.

www.bbc.com

Thirty people could be paid £1,600 a month without any obligation under proposals for the first trial of a universal basic income in England.
Researchers from think tank Autonomy are seeking financial backing for a two-year pilot programme to see how it would change the lives of the group.
Supporters say schemes can simplify the welfare system and tackle poverty.
Participants will be drawn from central Jarrow, in north-east England, and East Finchley, in north London.
The concept of a universal basic income sees government pays all individuals a set salary regardless of their means.
Critics of universal basic income say it would be extremely costly, would divert funding away from public services, and not necessarily help to alleviate poverty.

Autonomy said it hopes its proposed pilot will "make the case for a national basic income and more comprehensive trials to fully understand the potential of a basic income in the UK".
"No one should ever be facing poverty, having to choose between heating and eating, in one of the wealthiest countries in the world," said Cleo Goodman, co-founder of Basic Income Conversation, a programme run by the work-focused think tank.