At UC, they're rolling in tall "equality":

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/diversity-505938-faculty-university.html

Just tell 'em you didn't build that and it's all good.

Besides, don't you need that much income in order to live a decent lifestyle in Berkeley with all the taxes and shit?

Also, the other ways people remain poor can be changed. They include learning English -- as my immigrant relatives did, which allows a person to truly join our economy. The other issue holding people back is having children as single mothers -- which means those children are likely to grow up in poverty.

Not having children at all is a dandy way to break the cycle of poverty.

Bad luck on that Lastango. Their search for a new university president resulted in Janet Napolitano.

300,000 does not seem bad to me.... at a previous employer we had major lay-offs and the salaries saved wasn't even half of the potential bonuses of the CEO. And all the CEO did for our wholly-own subsidiary was give this direction "grow revenue faster than expenses -- you need to figure out how to do that"

If the CEO dis-appeared the subsidiary would have still had the same revenue...the CEO added no value.

Whenever this topic comes up I am left to wonder what the correct salary range is for someone to come out in favor of decreasing income inequality.

It seems to me that the people who see no issue with increasing income inequality would have an argument to disqualify the opinions of individuals at ANY salary range... hence this is not a useful method of argument.

If someone is poor it will be seen as self serving... and if they are wealthy you cast them as a hypocrite.

In either case one has simply attacked the speaker and has not addressed the core of their argument.

The answer is obvious Artemis. The median. Or at least the average. But yes, they are hypocrites. Not just for their income but also for their solutions. What they advocate will only lead to a small wealthy class and a vast peasant class. Of which they hope to stay in the wealthy group.

"The reality is, income inequality isn't the demon it's made out to be."

Understatement.
Nobody has made intelligent noises about this yet. It's because they have no idea what income is, but commentary makes me wonder if any of these people even know what a dollar is other than that gray/green thing in their purse.

You want income inequality. It's how you can tell who is worth a damn AND if the market is operating properly.

You won't hear that from a government official.

In either case one has simply attacked the speaker and has not addressed the core of their argument. ~ Artemis/Orion at July 17, 2016 12:09 PM

That's because the "core of their argument" is hollow.

The income inequality alarmists ignore the variance of skills and education levels, differing work ethics, willingness to delay gratification, random luck, choice of skill set, differing levels of responsibility, changes in the nature of work, differences in work environment, automation, or anything but the fact that some people make more than others and that's "not fair" or the degree to which salaries differ is unfair.

That said, there is an increased balkanization of our society. Better educated people are living in enclaves, marrying amongst themselves, and socializing mainly with each other. Their children go to private schools and take private lessons in music, dance and arts. They hire and promote graduate from their old schools.

The mid- middle class family has difficulty breaking into the higher socio-economic orders. The lowers have no hope of doing so. They don't teach Latin, classics, grammar, poetry, or arts and music in most public schools any more. Even the private schools are abandoning education in favor of indoctrination.

How many presidents or candidates have come from state schools versus Ivy or elite schools? How many of those from non-elite schools were derided as ignorant?

How many CEOs of large corporations don't have a resume that includes an elite school and some time at McKinsey?

We are in some danger of recreating the old closed social order our forefathers escaped when they fled Europe.

And, in an age of widespread information and communication, that will breed resentment and social unrest. Violent unrest. Perhaps like what we're seeing now.

Ferguson was less about race than about cities balancing their budgets on the backs of the poor. We're robbing Peter to pay Paul, and Peter is getting pissed (and, thanks to Twitter et al, able to communicate that anger to a wider audience).

Ben Says:

"The answer is obvious Artemis. The median. Or at least the average. But yes, they are hypocrites."

Alright Ben, then I assume that since you and several other people here expressing your opinions on income inequality earn in the ball park of $25,000 per year as this is the median personal income in the United States:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States

Surely someone as sensitive to hypocrisy as you are wouldn't express an opinion on income inequality unless you were earning something around the median, right?

Can we just call what is going on here what it actually is... when people disagree with a position they often try to discredit the person putting forth the position instead of doing the actual work of defeating their arguments.

This is intellectually lazy and doesn't constitute the basis for a good argument.

Conan Says:

"That's because the "core of their argument" is hollow."

That is a lazy cop out Conan.

If an argument is hollow you demonstrate why it is hollow by taking the argument apart... you don't criticize someone for earning more than you do and assume that the argument has been defeated.

If you disagree with a position then take it apart on rational grounds... the earnings of the person making the argument have nothing to do with it.

Conan,

You are a very bizarre fellow... first you claim that arguments against income inequality are "hollow" and you then proceed to outline a case for how our society has become more and more isolated in terms of social class and that as a result we are losing the ability to move between socioeconomic strata.

That is essentially the "core argument" against income inequality.

The "core argument" is that while in any capitalist economy you are going to have a wide distribution of incomes... you also need to ensure a smooth gradient across that income spectrum lest you lock people perpetually into one group or another.

The problem with income inequality isn't that people are earning different amounts, it is that when the inequality becomes extreme enough people lose social mobility and are locked in a generational cycle of wealth or poverty.

In a healthy economy people can move between the socioeconomic strata with "relative ease" depending upon their talents and work ethic.

You have more or less made the argument that the experts have been making that people here want to stick their fingers in their ears and yell "la la la" about.

The core of their argument isn't "hollow" Conan... you apparently agree with them.

You need to work on your reading comprehension Artemis.

1. I don't claim to be for income equality. So no, I am not a hypocrite for saying if they want everyone to have the same income they should only accept the median income.

They should live by the values they express or they are hypocrites. Just as I live by the values I express. I don't have to live by their values to be able to criticize them.

2. Not to put words in his mouth, but Conan isn't talking about income inequality. He is talking about social mobility. As Rad points out these are two different things.

"The problem with income inequality isn't that people are earning different amounts, it is that when the inequality becomes extreme enough people lose social mobility and are locked in a generational cycle of wealth or poverty."

A nice theory, but false.

"The "core argument" is that while in any capitalist economy you are going to have a wide distribution of incomes... you also need to ensure a smooth gradient across that income spectrum lest you lock people perpetually into one group or another."

Also false. It isn't about a smooth gradient of income. It is about unequal income. The term 'income inequality' is correct.

"Income inequality refers to the extent to which income is distributed in an uneven manner among a population. In the United States, income inequality, or the gap between the rich and everyone else, has been growing markedly, by every major statistical measure, for some 30 years."

A definition from inequality.org, those brave fighters of income inequality. Note, no mention of smooth transitions. Only that income is unevenly distributed. Also no mention of social mobility.

The core of their argument isn't "hollow" Conan... you apparently agree with them. ~ Artemis at July 19, 2016 3:32 AM

Artie, apparently you're not familiar with that meme about being able to "hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time."

Ben and Rad covered the social mobility vs. income thing pretty well, so I won't spend a lot of time on that.

In talking about balkanization in society, I'm not agreeing in any way with the income inequality folks. I'm merely pointing out that there is a lot of nepotism and old boy networking going on in a society that prides itself on being a meritocracy.

As Michael Dunlop Young, author of The Rise of the Meritocracy put it, "It is good sense to appoint individual people to jobs on their merit. It is the opposite when those who are judged to have merit of a particular kind harden into a new social class without room in it for others."

I looked up a couple of famous actors last night to settle a bet and noticed that the children of both of them were in the movie industry in some way.

I had a VP of a company I worked for once tell me he wouldn't consider a former coworker of mine for an open position because he wanted a fellow Ivy grad. With the recession, he figured he could get one on the cheap. My coworker went to a state school but otherwise had all the published qualifications for the job, having done a similar job before, and was worthy of at least some consideration.

We're cementing this balkanization through a watered down public education system that is little more than a twelve-year indoctrination in political correctness. We don't teach Latin, classics, or any "dead white male" subjects anymore. Instead, we substitute pop culture or grievance studies. We separate society into groups and teach those groups as if they were separate from the societal whole. Black history is not taught as part of American history, but as a separate subject, the better to keep us separate and balkanized; and even slightly angry with each other.

Kids don't come out of an average public high school with the kind of education that drives them to a rigorous college major. Too many change their rigorous majors a few years in when they discover that their "honors" high school math in no way prepared them to take college Calculus.

I'm worried that this balkanization will lead to an irreparable fracturing of society.

The income inequality folks are nursing an anti-success grievance. They point out disparity of income without mentioning that many of those higher income folks got STEM degrees or delayed gratification to build wealth. Many of them produce things or provide services that are highly valued by society. The income inequality folks never concede differences in education, work skills, social skills, and/or work ethic play a major role in who gets the big bucks. Income is their point, their only point. That lack of understanding complicated issues is why I said their argument is hollow.

Ben Says:

"You need to work on your reading comprehension Artemis."

It is interesting that you say then when you spend the rest of your post addressing a point that you failed to understand.

"So no, I am not a hypocrite for saying if they want everyone to have the same income they should only accept the median income."

Let me be very clear about something.

You put forth the claim that only people who earn the median income should have the right to express an opinion on income inequality.

That was your claim.

You proceeded to express your opinion on income inequality.

Therefore my point was that if you earn am amount sufficiently far away from the median income of $25,000 per year then by your own position you have no right to express your opinion on this topic.

You are only a hypocrite if you earn a salary outside of the median +/- some reasonable margin.

Since you claim you are not a hypocrite I will assume from hear on out that you must earn somewhere between 20 and 30 thousand dollars a year.

Get it now?

Conan,

You are spending a great deal of energy trying to distinguish your position from that of the people who are referred to in the original post.

The issue is that the "balkanization in society" that you keep talking about isn't really different from the positions of those authors besides cosmetics.

That you decide to take their position and dress it up with a different coat of paint doesn't actually make it unique.

You agree with them... you just don't like them so you have to create some way to generate an artificial separation.

"The income inequality folks are nursing an anti-success grievance."

That is precisely where you go off the rails.

The "income inequality folks" we are talking about here are highly successful university professors earning 300K per year.

These folks don't have an "anti-success grievance", they are doing quite well for themselves.

You are mixing them up with the kind of argument you might use against someone earning minimum wage who was arguing against income inequality.

These folks are describing precisely the same kind of thing you are.

Conan,

Just to inject some facts into this discussion. Here is a recent publication by Professor Emmanuel Saez:

http://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/piketty-saezScience14.pdf

Please note that this is published in the journal Science... one of the two foremost forums for publishing academic research.

Your claim that this individual has some sort of success grievance doesn't hold water.

Furthermore, you will note that this review takes a sophisticated look at the dynamics of wealth and income changes over the last century.

None of this work has the hallmark of a "grievance industry" that you assert without proof.

What is at issue here is merely that someone decided that Professor Emmanuel Saez earns too much to research the topic of income and wealth disparity.

The claim is simply that if he was really interested in the topic he would donate his earnings to the teaching assistants.

If you are looking for a "hollow argument" that is what you are actually looking for.

There is no such thing as a "buy in" to research a topic.

For example, it would be just as silly to demand that someone donates their kidney if they are serious about performing research on improving organ donation.