What level of disparity should be allowed by the market?

[RiverDad]

Re: CEO vs Neurosurgeon

Honestly I think you're struggling to have your cake and eat it too. You seem to be avoiding the posts that point it out. You talk about day to day worth simply being what it is and then go off in another direction talking about corruption and self-dealing, implying that the market is NOT in control and/or not operating at equilibrium. You say the market is working great and the talk about society crumbling as if one doesn't affect the other. These are interconnected things, if not the same thing.

The market is not society. The market is a process which filters information. You intersect the market only when you make some kind of acquisition or allocation decision. You enter the market for cars when you seek to buy or sell a car. Once that task is completed, then you're no longer intersecting the auto market. All sorts of stuff can be happening outside of the auto market which will influence what happens when you buy or sell, but your buy/sell decision is influenced by the data available to you. For instance, some car manufacturer can decide to have a big sale. Why do that? Because they want to bump up their quarterly sales results. That's a gaming of the stock market. Why they did this doesn't matter to you, what matters to you is that you now have new price information on their models. You now compare their prices against other manufacturers prices. That is a very efficient market process. No one is deceiving anyone else. You're making a price/quality decision based on real prices. That's the market.

CEOs scratching each other's back is not the market.

 

[point1percent]

Re: CEO vs Neurosurgeon

I want to remove the "class warfare" element to the thread...

Wrong. It is class warfare, and it is stupid for the 99% to pretend there isn't class warfare. Face it, the game we play is Exploit or be Exploited. You can try to whitewash that all you want, but you are either exploiting the exploitable for gain at their expense or vice versa. The more you exploit, the the richer you become and strengthen your position within the exploiting class. That is the game we all wake up to every morning. My suggestion is stop wasting time trying to make the game more fair, when the basic premise of the game is anything but fair.

By the way, anybody who believes the gentle hand of the free market makes the game fair for all should just bend over and prepare to get fisted. There will never be a free market because those that exploit don't want a free market.

 

[pdog]

Re: CEO vs Neurosurgeon

The market is not society. The market is a process which filters information. You intersect the market only when you make some kind of acquisition or allocation decision. You enter the market for cars when you seek to buy or sell a car. Once that task is completed, then you're no longer intersecting the auto market. All sorts of stuff can be happening outside of the auto market which will influence what happens when you buy or sell, but your buy/sell decision is influenced by the data available to you. For instance, some car manufacturer can decide to have a big sale. Why do that? Because they want to bump up their quarterly sales results. That's a gaming of the stock market. Why they did this doesn't matter to you, what matters to you is that you now have new price information on their models. You now compare their prices against other manufacturers prices. That is a very efficient market process. No one is deceiving anyone else. You're making a price/quality decision based on real prices. That's the market.

CEOs scratching each other's back is not the market.

A market is people selling and people buying and the various states in between. It seems to me that a society influences or even defines those two roles. You're trying to further complicate it by sub dividing it into industries and even then your argument doesn't work. Buying a car doesn't start with the day I walk into a dealership. It starts the day I drive my new car off the lot. When will I want another car, when will I be able to afford it, what marketing will drive me to buy a car sooner? I understand when people chose to ignore the chaotic nature of the real world. I get that people take comfort in simplicity. But you strike me as an intelligent person so I’m perplexed. My only explanation is your logic is having difficulty dealing with the things you’ve choked down as faith.

 

[pdog]

Re: CEO vs Neurosurgeon

Face it, the game we play is Exploit or be Exploited. You can try to whitewash that all you want, but you are either exploiting the exploitable for gain at their expense or vice versa. The more you exploit, the the richer you become and strengthen your position within the exploiting class. That is the game we all wake up to every morning.

Wow I completely agree here.

My suggestion is stop wasting time trying to make the game more fair, when the basic premise of the game is anything but fair.
By the way, anybody who believes the gentle hand of the free market makes the game fair for all should just bend over and prepare to get fisted. There will never be a free market because those that exploit don't want a free market.

When you’re done beating that strawman maybe you could start over. My suggestion is to stop wasting time responding to assertions that nobody is making. Every single time I try to have this debate, people get stuck in the here and now and that's never part of my argument. I don't care about fairness. I care about the change that is occurring. People with responses like yours miss that EVERY SINGLE TIME. A CEO to neurosurgeon's pay is 10:1 today. That's fine if that doesn't concern you.
#1 -But what level, if any will? 100:1? 1000:1?
#2-If this is already a game of exploitation, what exactly are you so up and arms about? What exactly could go bad if the game is already every man for himself?

 

[imagep]

Re: CEO vs Neurosurgeon

...My suggestion is stop wasting time trying to make the game more fair, when the basic premise of the game is anything but fair...

Anyone ever notice that it's always someone on the far right who brings up "fair"?

Every single post in this thread where the word "fair" was used, was written by someone taking the far right point of view. Then those posters act as if "fair" was the argument against unreasonable income disparity, even though no one used it as an argument. I may be wrong, but I believe that's a strawman - slightly changing the topic of discussion or twisting the argument to make it something that it's not.

Rational people realize that there is no "fair", so they look at public policy from the viewpoint of viable, and economically advantageous for society (in terms of producing more new wealth), not "fair".

 

[DA60]

Allowed? Allowed in what way?

What are people proposing? That the government starts redistributing monies so that every one has the same amount? What is this, a playground?

This complete and utter nonsense about 'wealth redistribution' and 'economic disparity' is NOTHING more then the have-nots resenting all those haves.
And because the Fed is indirectly pumping up the stock market and making SO many more people rich while this pathetically inept Fed/government policy is stagnating the economy, there are far more have-nots then ever before (over 40 million on food stamps).

So, the most brilliant solution these have-nots can come up with (and haves that want to appear 'sensitive') seems to be just forcibly taking money from those that earned it and give it to those that did not.

Whereas if they actually had a clue about the economy, they would force the government to end the QE/record low interest rate policy and let the economy (after the inevitable recession) get back to a healthy, growing state built on fundamentals (which creates jobs) instead of Fed/gov't. money 'printing' (which creates virtually none).

But, few seem to have either the economic common sense or the courage to do so....and the house of debt cards that is the economy continues to grow and teeter - just waiting for the right gust of wind to blow it all down.

 

[point1percent]

Re: CEO vs Neurosurgeon

Every single time I try to have this debate, people get stuck in the here and now and that's never part of my argument. I don't care about fairness. I care about the change that is occurring. People with responses like yours miss that EVERY SINGLE TIME. A CEO to neurosurgeon's pay is 10:1 today. That's fine if that doesn't concern you.

Anyone ever notice that it's always someone on the far right who brings up "fair"?

Every single post in this thread where the word "fair" was used, was written by someone taking the far right point of view. Then those posters act as if "fair" was the argument against unreasonable income disparity, even though no one used it as an argument. I may be wrong, but I believe that's a strawman - slightly changing the topic of discussion or twisting the argument to make it something that it's not.

Rational people realize that there is no "fair", so they look at public policy from the viewpoint of viable, and economically advantageous for society (in terms of producing more new wealth), not "fair".

Well, color me blind. I always thought the 99% were complaining that the income and wealth gaps weren't fair, as in all the new wealth concentrated in the hands of the 1%. Hey, I was there looking down from of my office at the Occupy Wall St. demonstration. If I had known that what they wanted was just "economically advantageous for society in terms of producing new wealth", I would have told them that is exactly what Wall St. does.

Pdog, your question is skewed the wrong way. It isn't about a ratio. I didn't care what my ratio was to schoolteacher, all I cared about was my bottom line. Much the same as any schoolteacher would. I was just better at fattening the bottom line than the schoolteacher is. What you are really asking is "at what point will this no longer be tolerated?" My best guess is when great flocks of sheep no longer follow the few shepherds that lead them into the mess they are in.

 

[iliveonramen]

Re: CEO vs Neurosurgeon

Well, color me blind. I always thought the 99% were complaining that the income and wealth gaps weren't fair, as in all the new wealth concentrated in the hands of the 1%. Hey, I was there looking down from of my office at the Occupy Wall St. demonstration. If I had known that what they wanted was just "economically advantageous for society in terms of producing new wealth", I would have told them that is exactly what Wall St. does.

Well some of us actually do care about fairness or at least the perception of fairness because we don't want protests to be replaced by pitchforks and angry mobs.

 

[imagep]

Re: CEO vs Neurosurgeon

Well, color me blind. I always thought the 99% were complaining that the income and wealth gaps weren't fair, as in all the new wealth concentrated in the hands of the 1%

Some people probably do believe that. My issue with the staggering income and wealth disparity that we have today is economic, not moral.

When the top one or two or three percent acquire all the fruits of increased productivity, as they have done for the past 35 years or so, then demand can not be maximized without consumers worker's going deep in debt (which explains why there is so much consumer debt). We demand is not keeping pace with productivity, then job growth drops below population growth, and this results in a declining civilian workforce participation rate (started dropping around the year 2000). Without ample demand, businesses do not expand, and additional new wealth is not created (Dec 2007 to date).

Income disparity peaked in 1929 and 2007. Hmm, what do those two years have in common?

So what's more immoral than devising a system to have less income disparity? Having a system in which new wealth creation is below optimal due to that disparity.

 

[washunut]

Re: CEO vs Neurosurgeon

Some people probably do believe that. My issue with the staggering income and wealth disparity that we have today is economic, not moral.

When the top one or two or three percent acquire all the fruits of increased productivity, as they have done for the past 35 years or so, then demand can not be maximized without consumers worker's going deep in debt (which explains why there is so much consumer debt). We demand is not keeping pace with productivity, then job growth drops below population growth, and this results in a declining civilian workforce participation rate (started dropping around the year 2000). Without ample demand, businesses do not expand, and additional new wealth is not created (Dec 2007 to date).

Income disparity peaked in 1929 and 2007. Hmm, what do those two years have in common?

So what's more immoral than devising a system to have less income disparity? Having a system in which new wealth creation is below optimal due to that disparity.

I have not seen the 2013 vs 2007 data, would you please provide to support the comments above.

 

[RiverDad]

Re: CEO vs Neurosurgeon

My issue with the staggering income and wealth disparity that we have today is economic, not moral.

Income inequality drops by over 8%, in one fell swoop, if you restrict the category to white-alone. This makes for a better comparison to Europe and their income inequality statistics. We're still higher but the gap is now reduced.

If you want to analyze the issue, then you need to understand what is driving the issue. A large part of our problem is a very poor underclass of blacks and Hispanics that Europe doesn't have. Importing poor people from Mexico pushes down the bottom of the wage scale and income inequality, essentially, measures the distance between top and bottom.

 

[Mustachio]

Hi, everybody, I'm from the early 19th century. My question is, why should we pay slaves? They are more than willing to work for me - for free! They are more than happy to work for free, that is, as long as I whip them plenty to make sure they know that their lives have no value. Why is this acceptable? Because:
A) They do it
B) They can't make more money anywhere else
and C) It is evil for the government to tell me what I can and can't pay, or not pay, my employees

The market has determined that slaves will work for free. Thus, that is their value. If they don't like it, they can have an uprising. Otherwise, the fact that they are enslaved is their own fault.

 

[point1percent]

Re: CEO vs Neurosurgeon

Some people probably do believe that. My issue with the staggering income and wealth disparity that we have today is economic, not moral.

When the top one or two or three percent acquire all the fruits of increased productivity, as they have done for the past 35 years or so, then demand can not be maximized without consumers worker's going deep in debt (which explains why there is so much consumer debt). We demand is not keeping pace with productivity, then job growth drops below population growth, and this results in a declining civilian workforce participation rate (started dropping around the year 2000). Without ample demand, businesses do not expand, and additional new wealth is not created (Dec 2007 to date).

Income disparity peaked in 1929 and 2007. Hmm, what do those two years have in common?

So what's more immoral than devising a system to have less income disparity? Having a system in which new wealth creation is below optimal due to that disparity.

I understand very well the demand dilemma. I think you are too busy focusing on local demand in a global economy. Once the demand of the BRICs gets figured in, the local demand of the US is not just that important. I think I said it before, capital must seek its best return, and at the moment US capital is getting better return on the demand from the BRICs. In more simpler terms, a large part of wealth creation in the US gets invested/spent on the development of BRIC demand. What you may want to focus on is how to get better ROI out of the US economy, and only then will local demand increase.

It's funny how the wealth disparity discussion seems to have shifted from fair to moral. I still think "moral" is a dead end street as well, as the Exploit or Be Exploited game we play is nothing even close to moral either. As I get older, and now that I am out of the game, I am realizing just how ugly, unfair and immoral our socioeconomic game really is. What's more shocking is how blindly devoted to the game the vast majority of those who suffer from the game actually are. It almost morally justifies the game.

 

[point1percent]

Hi, everybody, I'm from the early 19th century. My question is, why should we pay slaves? They are more than willing to work for me - for free! They are more than happy to work for free, that is, as long as I whip them plenty to make sure they know that their lives have no value. Why is this acceptable? Because:
A) They do it
B) They can't make more money anywhere else
and C) It is evil for the government to tell me what I can and can't pay, or not pay, my employees

The market has determined that slaves will work for free. Thus, that is their value. If they don't like it, they can have an uprising. Otherwise, the fact that they are enslaved is their own fault.

Interesting thoughts. I don't think slavery was ever really abolished, it just changed form to economic slavery. It's just taking a very long time for the stupid, lazy and fat lower and middle classes to catch on. I bet if every time someone missed a bank loan payment they got whipped in front of a crowd they would catch on pretty quickly.