I like watching Trifecta on PJTV. Scott Ott, Stephen Green, and Bill Whittle are fun to watch and usually construct some great arguments for their positions. But I don't know, they seem to be a little ambiguous when discussing the subject of "
income inequality."
OMG, I have never seen Stephen Green so steamed. Bill Whittle is priceless.
ReplyDeleteIncome inequality is not the pernicious thing. It's the convexity inequality which exists, and is un-American, which is genuinely a problem.
ReplyDeleteAnd it will take me some time to explain "convexity" here... but I'll try, over time.
Short take: it's not that the rich take home more money every year.
It's that they take home more second (and third and fourth) chances...
If it is because the rich have more second, third, and forth chances, isn't that because they keep trying? Doesn't that get back to what Bill Whittle said about character?
ReplyDeleteHow would this be solved by punishing those who do get up and keep trying just so they do not do any better than those who don't try?
If it is because the rich have more second, third, and forth chances, isn't that because they keep trying? Doesn't that get back to what Bill Whittle said about character?
DeleteCharacter is necessary, but it's not sufficient.
I've seen this play out.
It depends on who your friends are, where you went to school, where you come from. It really does. Whether your friends have another $75 to $100 thousand to loan you to start your next venture.
And that's just one kind of convexity; there are others.
There's rich people. Yep. Some is merit. Some is structural. I can't deny the structural aspect as I'm just too familiar with it.
Bill Whittle nails it as always. I haven't seen this site before that I can recall and was not familiar with Stephen Green. Thanks for posting it, Matt.
ReplyDeleteStephen Green does Vodka Pundit.
ReplyDeleteVodka Pundit, I love it!
DeleteWith all the BS talk going on about income redistribution, minimum wage hikes to $12, etc., I have been thinking of watching once again that great series you posted with Milton Friedman. I figure I can remember more of his wisdom on a second listen...
Yeah, too bad I could not find that much more that would have worked. I enjoyed those videos.
DeleteI expected this of 0bama, was amazed to hear it from the Pope (although he was part of the "Liberation Theology" movement a couple of decades ago, so perhaps I should not have been) and disgusted to hear it from Gingrich.
ReplyDeleteAll three of them buy into (or at least pay political lip service to) the zero-sum theory, that there is only a certain size of pie available for the public, and only the government can assure that pie is sliced in an equitable manner.
The fact that the upper income classes continue to get more does not reduce the amount available for the lower classes, because capitalism, especially in America, is NOT zero-sum, and the pie continues to get bigger, by the hard work and creativity of those who will work and strive and risk.
ALL this president is doing is to set the stage for redistribution, in a classically socialist/communist/progressive/democrat style, pandering to those who are on the bottom due to miserable policies by the government, causing a miserable, self-pitying, self-entitling society while it is the same policies he supports that have caused most of the inequality he will claim to try to resolve.
I expected this from our socialist president, who constantly makes pronouncements that further reduce my already-miniscule respect for him, I was sorry to hear it from the Pope, who has become the first one in my lifetime I now cannot respect.
Gingrich is jumping onto this bandwagon, probably in an attempt to be "the only Republican talking about 'this issue' " during his next failed presidential run, but he is now simply dead to me
The Memo's gone out, Dances. Income Inequality is the new political Shiny Object. Expect to hear about it for a while.
DeleteLabor Share of National Income is at a historic low. Why? Capital doesn't need Labor; Labor has no pricing power. Labor cannot make itself scarce; workers are abundant. No scarcity -> no raises.
Remember the "wage price spiral" under Nixon, Ford, Carter? Unions held sway then. Raises were built into contracts. "Cost of Living adjustments". Remember?
None of that now. Wages stagnate. The government would like to see them stagnate because then they can tune the level of consumption (via handouts) to keep corporate profits adequate and production (and hence taxes) humming, without causing excess demand (inflation).
The Market supplies the goods, the State supplies the demand. Welcome to the new normal.
The joke is on Capital because Raw Power doesn't need Capital much either. Capital exists in surplus; when the music stops there will not be chairs for all. When too much debt (which is, after all, a capital instrument) is backed by insufficient cash flows, the debt revalues and losses are assigned. Assigned. Debt losses are and always have been political issues.
All I mean to say here doesn't negate anything with respect to conservative values about work ethic, perseverance, etc. What I am saying is that poor people today are facing a headwind that they did not thirty years ago.
Oh, and expect to see Gingrich and the rest of the Rino's decide over the next year or so that some fairly massive new Federal spending is in order. And rebel Tea Partiers who don't go along are "whacko birds". No, really. It's the only way they can keep the economy going; so they'll do it. The US will get away with it, again, mostly because every other developed economy is doing the same thing.
The New Normal is global.
Obama is a bald-faced liar, and I'm glad to see so many people saying so. That was a great clip Matt.
ReplyDeleteI don't pretend to comprehend how our economy functions, but I know bandaids and bailing wire when I see them.