I've been a big fan of what I've been hearing from Bernie, but he's definitely losing my vote if he tries to take my Old Spice.

I think the deodorant thing is about meaningful v. meaningless choices. Capitalism gives us lots of deodorant to choose from, but it limits the kind of life choices we might make, particularly if you must spend every waking minute trying to figure out how you'll get enough money to afford a food, clothing, a place to live, education for your children, and health care.

Market based allocations are not really more liberating than other ways of allocating resources we might up with, and they certainly do not accord with any coherent theory of justice, unless "screw you I've got mine" counts as a theory of justice.

Finally, I know I'm not so much in the mainstream with all this, but I really don't see why we should get all bent out of shape if we end up using social welfare policies to support a guy who just wants to surf all the time, or make paintings, or whatever.

Pretty sure the Top 10 deodorant brands are all owned by either P&G or Unilever. So financially it really is a meaningless choice.

jerseyhoya wrote:

Labor leaders, who were among the strongest supporters of the citywide minimum wage increase approved last week by the Los Angeles City Council, are advocating last-minute changes to the law that could create an exemption for companies with unionized workforces.

The push to include an exception to the mandated wage increase for companies that let their employees collectively bargain was the latest unexpected detour as the city nears approval of its landmark legislation to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2020.

For much of the past eight months, labor activists have argued against special considerations for business owners, such as restaurateurs, who said they would have trouble complying with the mandated pay increase.

But Rusty Hicks, who heads the county Federation of Labor and helps lead the Raise the Wage coalition, said Tuesday night that companies with workers represented by unions should have leeway to negotiate a wage below that mandated by the law.

"With a collective bargaining agreement, a business owner and the employees negotiate an agreement that works for them both. The agreement allows each party to prioritize what is important to them," Hicks said in a statement. "This provision gives the parties the option, the freedom, to negotiate that agreement. And that is a good thing."

L.A. labor leaders seek minimum wage exemption for firms with union workers

Lmao

Wow, that is a fun story.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/243171-rand-paul-blames-republican-hawks-for-growth-of-isis

Bold statement from Rand.

jerseyhoya wrote:

If 99 percent of all the new income goes to the top 1 percent, you could triple it, it wouldn't matter much to the average middle class person. The whole size of the economy and the GDP doesn't matter if people continue to work longer hours for low wages and you have 45 million people living in poverty. You can't just continue growth for the sake of growth in a world in which we are struggling with climate change and all kinds of environmental problems. All right? You don't necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country.

Sorry Bernie Sanders, Deodorant Isn't Starving America's Children

Gotta love the progressive impulse to restrict choice on everything other than abortion as a solution to problems.

I've been looking for some studies on income mobility. I have a quiz:

1. What percentage of 1%-ers in 1987 (who were 35-38 years old then) were 1%-ers in 2007?
2. What percentage of top quintile earners in 1987 were in the top qunitile in 2007?
3. What percentage of bottom quintile earners in 1987 were in the bottom quintile in 2007?

I read a study with the answers, and I'm trying to digest whether the numbers are higher or lower than I expected.

1) income inequality is a thing, but it isn't much of a critical thing. Plus the statistics you're counting on supporting some kind of parable about how there's plenty of 'income mobility in the US' or whatever are rife with problems. I know you won't let income inequality distract you. You're smarter than that

Wealth concentration - wealth inequality isn't really it - is the thing. The thing that has social consequences, that's harder to address, and won't get addressed until houses start getting burned down, if then

Edited, because Werthless is apparently easily distracted by irrelevant phenomena

you can say that again

I'm actually not sure whether I think the numbers are high or low.

I blame windows 8 (today)

Werthless wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

If 99 percent of all the new income goes to the top 1 percent, you could triple it, it wouldn't matter much to the average middle class person. The whole size of the economy and the GDP doesn't matter if people continue to work longer hours for low wages and you have 45 million people living in poverty. You can't just continue growth for the sake of growth in a world in which we are struggling with climate change and all kinds of environmental problems. All right? You don't necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country.

Sorry Bernie Sanders, Deodorant Isn't Starving America's Children

Gotta love the progressive impulse to restrict choice on everything other than abortion as a solution to problems.

I've been looking for some studies on income mobility. I have a quiz:

1. What percentage of 1%-ers in 1987 (who were 35-38 years old then) were 1%-ers in 2007?
2. What percentage of top quintile earners in 1987 were in the top qunitile in 2007?
3. What percentage of bottom quintile earners in 1987 were in the bottom quintile in 2007?

I read a study with the answers, and I'm trying to digest whether the numbers are higher or lower than I expected.

Yea I'd like to see this too. The 80s is a tough cut off though since it excludes a lot of the "new money" folks that made their fortunes during the explosion of personal computing/the internet.

How relevant is social mobility really though? I mean, only 1% can be in the top 1%. That's axiomatic. If we have an economic system where almost everybody loses, does it really matter if the winners started out like everyone else? Or, think about your children--they are all of course above average, but are they all that much above average?

between this and the surfer guy comment if you ever run for city council down there your opponents will have some good flyer material, TV. :D

Add that to the way I talk about increasing the gas tax in class and we've really got some things going here.

TenuredVulture wrote:How relevant is social mobility really though? I mean, only 1% can be in the top 1%. That's axiomatic. If we have an economic system where almost everybody loses, does it really matter if the winners started out like everyone else? Or, think about your children--they are all of course above average, but are they all that much above average?

Interesting, I wasn't expected anyone to argue that social mobility doesn't matter.

Also, if you define winning/losing this way, being outside of the top 1%, then yes, it is axiomatic.

TenuredVulture wrote:How relevant is social mobility really though? I mean, only 1% can be in the top 1%. That's axiomatic. If we have an economic system where almost everybody loses, does it really matter if the winners started out like everyone else? Or, think about your children--they are all of course above average, but are they all that much above average?

I don't know, what do you think tenuredvulture?

TenuredVulture wrote:To my mind, income disparity by itself isn't as huge a problem as the decline in social mobility that goes along with it. That is, I'm not sure it matters if a handful of obscenely wealth people have 100 million dollar yachts, or 1 billion dollar yachts as long as most people feel relatively secure and comfortable and can have reasonable expectations about their children's future well being.

However, it may be the case that at some point, income disparity may be a cause of the decline of security and well being of everyone else. That is, the notion that "a rising tide lifts all boats" has little real empirical support.

Furthermore, and this ties to some of the stuff I posted in the politics thread, there seems to me to be some interesting reasons for the decline in social mobility. Elites have the ability to pass on critical information and habits to their children that increase their chances for maintaining or improving their children's economic success. While this may have always been the case, the stakes of making the right choices are higher than ever. This is a book I've been intending to read, but based on the review, it appears to mainly confirm what I already believe.
http://www.economist.com/node/17848419

I thought I remembered agreeing with you on this.

My feeling is "social mobility" is of a piece with "income inequality" - it's of the school of red herrings. Among other things, those concepts together suggest we might all agree that growth is essential, that 'materially more' is a natural aspiration that goes without saying, and that autonomous self-interest is the natural propellant for generating more and "better". A zillion deodorants, etc

Wealth concentration begets an assortment of socioeconomic toxins that may not kill you, but can make breathing the air heavy going for lots of people. It results from structural "flaws" - things that, mostly, people can decide to change - and malignantly distorts resource allocation even if you believe in 'materially more is naturally better' - maybe especially if you believe that.

A+ Quiet Riot reference

Werthless wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:How relevant is social mobility really though? I mean, only 1% can be in the top 1%. That's axiomatic. If we have an economic system where almost everybody loses, does it really matter if the winners started out like everyone else? Or, think about your children--they are all of course above average, but are they all that much above average?

I don't know, what do you think tenuredvulture?

TenuredVulture wrote:To my mind, income disparity by itself isn't as huge a problem as the decline in social mobility that goes along with it. That is, I'm not sure it matters if a handful of obscenely wealth people have 100 million dollar yachts, or 1 billion dollar yachts as long as most people feel relatively secure and comfortable and can have reasonable expectations about their children's future well being.

However, it may be the case that at some point, income disparity may be a cause of the decline of security and well being of everyone else. That is, the notion that "a rising tide lifts all boats" has little real empirical support.

Furthermore, and this ties to some of the stuff I posted in the politics thread, there seems to me to be some interesting reasons for the decline in social mobility. Elites have the ability to pass on critical information and habits to their children that increase their chances for maintaining or improving their children's economic success. While this may have always been the case, the stakes of making the right choices are higher than ever. This is a book I've been intending to read, but based on the review, it appears to mainly confirm what I already believe.
http://www.economist.com/node/17848419

I thought I remembered agreeing with you on this.

I didn't say social mobility didn't matter. I just wonder how relevant it is, if we find ourselves in a world where only a very few have a chance at a decent life.

Really, I don't think there's a huge contradiction in my posts. If we have an income distribution where almost everything goes to a tiny number of people, then all the social mobility in the world isn't going to make any difference. If we have an income distribution that's more forgiving, say one where the top 20 percent get say 50% of everything, the next 20% get 25%, then 13, 7, and 5, but it becomes impossible to move from one caste to another, you've also got problems.

Thus, I think the problems are distinct, yet related.

These days, it seems income disparity is getting a lot of attention, but there are few good politically feasible solutions here. Fat estate taxes are a political non-starter. And it's simply how the global economy works--if you have 3rd world skills, you are basically in the 3rd world, regardless of where you live. People may fret about globalization when Obama wants to negotiate a trade deal with Asia, but they are not willing to spend much more so they can "buy American".

Either way though, I think what really matters is the condition of people in the middle, and the perception here is one of decline, and the way in which people used to go from say working/middle class to upper middle class are under serious threat. Law, accounting, working as a stock broker are all once solidly upper middle class professions that are disappearing (there are other professions that are disappearing or under threat such as academia and dentistry that are probably too small to make much difference). I've read the same thing might be happening with pharmacists.

What I'm getting at here is that if a comfortable life is available to a relatively broad segment of people, then social mobility makes inequality tolerable, and even desirable. If, however, incomes and wealth become too concentrated at the top, than social mobility isn't going to help--indeed, there really won't be meaningful social mobility at all.

Now, I actually don't accept the doomsday stuff out there--other kinds of professions will open up. I do think emphasizing vocational education may be a mistake--the skills you learn today may be obsolete tomorrow. Instead, people need to learn how to learn, they need to know how to research, write, to speak in public, and so forth. Furthermore, I think it's essential to understand how the world works--a solid working knowledge of history, politics, and economics can be extremely valuable tools. (Obviously, my self-interest is working here.) I'd add some basic statistics to that as well.