No2statism:Some Inequality in wealth is due to genetics (but I don't think all of it is). Anyways, I saw what I believed to be a good refutation of an inequality graph by Mother Jones. It pretty much confirmed that equality has a negative correlation with interest rates. What Thomas Sowell has written is also good. http://www.rightcondition.com/2011/10/wealth-inequality-in-america.html
http://www.rightcondition.com/2011/10/wealth-inequality-in-america.html
That is actually a very interesting blog post, because it also shows that the rise of what many people refer to as "consumerism" correlates with the lowering of the federal funds rate. I.e. people are consuming more and living beyond their means only because it has been made easier for them to rack up more debt.
It has stolen everyone's money. Get in line. Btw, where's the government going to get the money to pay you (and everyone else) back?
Well yeah, we're talking about social inequality here. I'm not suggesting that the government is going to pay everyone back. But it seems to me that if we want to oppose government, we shouldn't be apologists for the inequality it creates.
Um, it's the other way around. Bondholders are the ones lending (giving) money to the government.
They're lending money in order to get money. Imagine a man lends $5000 to a bank robber who uses it to buy a getaway car. In return, the bank robber promises to pay the man $10,000 after he robs the bank. If the bank robber were caught, I don't think many would say that he should pay the man back.
I meant, how could inequality (a non entity) be trampling anybody?
That's the way Wheylous put the issue. I would put it differently. I'd say that inequality is evidence that the government is trampling the poor.
I think he meant that the government contributes towards making the wealth inequality larger. This doesn't mean that all wealth inequality is necessarily created through aggression and government intervention.
Well if the actions of government are problematic and contribute to inequality, then the current level of inequality is a problem--regardless of whether inequality in the abstract is a problem.
Fool on the Hill: Well if the actions of government are problematic and contribute to inequality, then the current level of inequality is a problem--regardless of whether inequality in the abstract is a problem.
The current level of inequality (among other things) is a symptom of government intervention. The latter ("legitimized" aggression, theft, special privilege, etc.) is the problem. Eliminate the problem, and its symptoms automatically go away. What else (or more) are you exactly proposing?
Absent government aggression and intervention, theft is already considered illegitimate and unfair by most people. Inequality could result both from (1) theft and (2) voluntary exchanges of property and labor. There are plenty of people who have acquired more property than other people and yet have never stollen anything from anybody. I see no reason to attack inequality, per se.
I think it's important to talk about the current level of inequality in discussing the problem--it helps to tell us that there is a problem. I'm not sure what you have in mind concerning how to eliminate the problem. After the problem is eliminated, would Bill Gates still have $50 billion? If property is legitimated based upon the past, then nearly all existing property is illegitimate.
I think most people (especially rich people) have stolen things by fact of being members of the system. Many companies have benefited from the states enforcement of intellectual property rights. The state provides many companies with stolen tax money in exchange for products that help it steal that money. Many people steal money by owning treasury bonds. Then there's bailouts, subsidies, tariffs, educational grants. And perhaps most important of all, the deprivation of the masses of the means of production, forcing them into wage slavery, rendering all of capital into a grand scheme of theft. So the claim that there are rich people who have never stolen anything is a rather dubious one in my view.
To play the devil's advocate, interpersonal utility comparisons are impossible. Perhaps the rich had more use from the money than the poor. Who knows?
"The total income of the top 1%—or those earning more than $343,000 in 2009—fell by more than 30% from 2007, according to the most recent Internal Revenue Service data. By contrast, the average income of the bottom 90% fell less than 3% during the same period.
A November Federal Reserve study, meanwhile, found that a third of the people in the top 1% in 2007, as measured by wealth, were no longer in the top 1% in 2009."
(Yahoo Finance)