Re: how to compare living standards

On Tue, 2 May 2006 12:44:27 -0500, "Jim Blair" <jeb@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

"William F Hummel" <wfhummel@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:6aqc5213ipelllmgib1b7ask5u30c4gp7k@xxxxxxxxxx

I think the real concern is not with the wealth or income distribution at
a
given time, but with the degree that individuals change their location in
the distribution with time. If few young people own a house free and
clear,
or have a high income job, but if most of them do when they are 50+,
then I
don't see that as being a "problem".

Well, you have assumed away the problem with your premise.

Hi,

Does that mean you agree that mobility is more important than inequality?

First tell me how to compare apples and oranges.

And do you agree that wealth increases with age as a generalization?

Most people accumulate wealth with age, but that is pretty modest for
the immigrant worker supporting a family. I'm sure you wouldn't be
happy with their growth in wealth.

....There are
a great many poor elderly folks who have never had enough money to buy
a house.

Of course. Just as there are many heavy smokers who live to 100. But I am
looking at correlations and general patterns, not unusual exceptions.

A "great many" does not equate to "unusual exceptions". You are
looking at the scene from the wrong end of the telescope.

Note that consumption is distributed more evenly than wealth.

Agreed, if you are talking about calorie intake.

Calorie intake is probably inversely correlated with wealth or income, but I
was referring to the distribution of spending.

....But tamale pie isn't
quite the same as porterhouse steak.

Isn't that a matter of taste?

Hardly. When I was a college student at Berkeley long ago, I was
living on a shoestring and eating tamale pie almost every day, but not
as a matter of taste. Even ground round would have been preferable.

..And a 1988 Honda Civic hatchback
isn't quite the same as a 2006 Lexus RX 330.

Er, which gets the better milage? (I have never had a car that gets less
than 30 mpg and would not want one, especially today)

How did the issue of gas mileage slip in here? You were talking
individual about consumption. Anyhow, if you are a consumer and can
afford a Lexus, gas mileage is a non-issue.

....But how do you
explain the huge number of elderly people who don't own the average
$12,500,000 or even $62,000?

But the elderly are the richest age group in the US. The "wealth gap" is in
part a measure of how much wealth people do accumulate during their
lifetime.

Yes, but a minor part. The problem is in our system.

...What was it that Marie Antoinette said
about the poor?

In the France of her day, I think the problem was less the gap between rich
and poor than the lack of opportunity for the poor to move up.

Was the lack of opportunity for the poor to move up why the French
people deposed the royalty? I don't think so. France was basically a
feudal society before the revolution. You were either very rich and
drank the finest wine or very poor and made your own brew, and never
the twain did meet.

Speaking of France, isn't France supposed to be a lot more egalitarian than
the USA? So why do they have so many more riots and strikes than we do?

The current riots are mainly about securing their place in a welfare
state for those who have jobs. For the 10+% who don't have jobs, the
movement is precisely the wrong message to the government.


.....The inequality is no doubt worse in 2006.

Er, you mean in the USA? Because that is not the case world wide. The
world has been getting a lot "more equal", and I think that is good.
And the growing worldwide equality is related to the growing inequality
in
the USA.

Yes, I do mean the USA, and that is precisely what is worrisome. We
are headed toward greater social friction every year that the wealth
and income gap widens.

"Social Friction" You mean like they have in France?

No, social friction like we have growing in the USA.

And do we have more of that Social Friction now than we did during the 1960'
and 70's, when the wealth and income gaps were much smaller but major US
cities were being burned?

The 1960s were all about our revolution over civil rights and fairness
regarding the military draft for a bloody Vietnam War. It had very
little to do with the wealth gap.

...The (adult) immigrant worker, with little
wages and no wealth but playing a significant part of wealth creation
in the USA, is even today showing us what may be in store down the
road.

Looks like lots of people are eager to move here for those low wages and
that hard work.

Yes indeed. Life is a lot tougher in Latin America.

And one cause of the wage gap here is the large inflow of immigrants.

That doesn't explain the obscene increase in executive incomes
relative to average worker income that has been going on for the last
25 years. Let's face it, our free market capitalist system is
basically unstable. The only way to keep it from running amuck as it
did in the days of the robber barons is to apply firm regulation,
including real campaign finance reform.

Right now we have a positive feedback system with moneyed interests
buying whatever legislation they want via willing legislators who
benefit politically from the money. In Eisenhower's day, that would
have created a cause celebre. Remember the gift of a vicuna coat to
Sherman Adams, Eisenhower's chief of staff, that cost him his job?

Pass the word that lowering the taxes on the highest income sector
while hardly changing taxes on the middle and lower income sector is
not the way to run the system.
.

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