Slog
News & ArtsTuesday, March 5, 2013
Money What Do You Think Wealth Distribution Looks Like in America?
Posted by Eli Sanders on Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 6:00 AM
According to this video, a Harvard business professor asked more than 5,000 Americans the above question. Their answers weren't nearly pessimistic enough:
1
Combine this video of income inequality with the recent TIME article about obscenely expensive and inflated medical billing:
http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/20/bi…
http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/20/bi…
3
Really? Are people gonna be mo edumacated by a 6:24 video that can be boiled down to two plots? Also, gotta take the prof to task: Never ever ever trust a graph whose axes are not clearly labeled. Even if it's bleeding obvious and you have a narrative to go with it, not labeling is for cheats and amateurs.
4
I still think it's a pretty nifty graphic representation of the comprehension gap.
That said, if you're going to grade on a Tufte scale, it also would have been nice to cite the paper (which is short and worth checking out):
http://www.people.hbs.edu/mnorton/norton…
That said, if you're going to grade on a Tufte scale, it also would have been nice to cite the paper (which is short and worth checking out):
http://www.people.hbs.edu/mnorton/norton…
5
One of the weaknesses of this video is that it blurs the difference between income and wealth. Income is how much money you make. Wealth is the value of your assets, including cash, stock, real estate, etc. It's not like a similar video based on income data would tell a substantially different story, but it's a little shifty.
6
Point being: there are plenty of people (dumb as they are) with six-figure incomes but an underwater mortgage and no money in the bank.
7
Still, the video makes an important point which many people have likely not researched & does it in a fairly accurate way. Not great, but it gives a reasonably honest idea of the way things are. If I didn't have my parents helping me, my housemate and I, both severely disabled, would be living on roughly $1200/month INCLUDING food stamps.
8
I think economic inequality in the US is a bit of a problem, but redistribution of wealth is a tricky business. The super-rich are adept at sending their money overseas to avoid taxation. This means that efforts to redistribute wealth often result in less wealth as investment capital flees to greener pastures.
9
@4, THANK YOU for linking to the paper. I see the video maker flipped those bar charts so we of the bottom show up on the left rather than right, har har.
I still say the video is a great piece of work, but not in the same way as the study. The video's implicit goal is not to educate ("let me take those terrible blinders off") so much as persuade ("let me shift your blinders to match my view").
The study, on the other hand, is confident enough of its data that it doesn't need a music track. My favorite line is from the opener:
I still say the video is a great piece of work, but not in the same way as the study. The video's implicit goal is not to educate ("let me take those terrible blinders off") so much as persuade ("let me shift your blinders to match my view").
The study, on the other hand, is confident enough of its data that it doesn't need a music track. My favorite line is from the opener:
Most important from a policy perspective, we observed a surprising level of consensus: All demographic groups—even those not usually associated with wealth redistribution such as Republicans and the wealthy—desired a more equal distribution of wealth than the status quo.Now THAT's news we all can use.
10
@3. So the Harvard Professor is a "cheat and amateur"? Well, if the SLOG commenter says it, it must be true.
11
@10, as @4's link will show you, the professor DID label his axes. The charts in the video are not the professor's.
12
White youth, black youth
Better find another solution
Why not phone up Robin Hood
And ask him for some wealth distribution
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTnijX0TH…
Better find another solution
Why not phone up Robin Hood
And ask him for some wealth distribution
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTnijX0TH…
14
@12 This nation only survives because of wealth redistribution. It's called "taxation." Take that away and we got nothing but a pride of lions running the joint and the rest of us just gazelles/lunch.
Do you know what wealth is? It's the nation's means of exchange, the lubricant for commerce, REMOVED from circulation. As you pile up wealth, you diminish economic activity. Wealth is money that is no longer in use. Oh, it might earn some interest or dividends, or generate some teensy fractional income as brokerage and accounting fees, but a million dollars in passive investment generates less economic activity than buying a gallon of milk.
The estate tax serves the purpose of preventing the formation of a permanent class of royalty. As it gets weakened by anti-tax activists and their "oh, noes! death taxes!" campaigns, wealth gets more concentrated. Estate taxes come out of private hands and back into the public economy. That might bother your theoretical notion of freedom, but fuck you. We'll all end up as serfs living in the mud if that money doesn't get recirculated somehow.
The strongest middle class in the world was built in post-War America with simple but effective tools like the graduated income tax (in the '50s - '60s, the top marginal tax was over 90%). Look at the top marginal rate now, the surfeit of tax-avoidance loopholes, the extreme concentration of wealth, the declining condition of the middle class, and explain to me again why your philosophy is right.
Do you know what wealth is? It's the nation's means of exchange, the lubricant for commerce, REMOVED from circulation. As you pile up wealth, you diminish economic activity. Wealth is money that is no longer in use. Oh, it might earn some interest or dividends, or generate some teensy fractional income as brokerage and accounting fees, but a million dollars in passive investment generates less economic activity than buying a gallon of milk.
The estate tax serves the purpose of preventing the formation of a permanent class of royalty. As it gets weakened by anti-tax activists and their "oh, noes! death taxes!" campaigns, wealth gets more concentrated. Estate taxes come out of private hands and back into the public economy. That might bother your theoretical notion of freedom, but fuck you. We'll all end up as serfs living in the mud if that money doesn't get recirculated somehow.
The strongest middle class in the world was built in post-War America with simple but effective tools like the graduated income tax (in the '50s - '60s, the top marginal tax was over 90%). Look at the top marginal rate now, the surfeit of tax-avoidance loopholes, the extreme concentration of wealth, the declining condition of the middle class, and explain to me again why your philosophy is right.
15
The people at the top need to read their history. How long before the peasants grab their pitchforks?
17
@15 When that happens the 1% simply bribe half the working class to kill the other half. This strategy works particularly well in America because the underclass is about half black and half white and the two groups hate one another with a passion.
18
@15 and 17, I'm just going to repeat the takeaway by the actual report author:
Most important from a policy perspective, we observed a surprising level of consensus: All demographic groups—even those not usually associated with wealth redistribution such as Republicans and the wealthy—desired a more equal distribution of wealth than the status quo.If you can't see how to make something out of that, you may as well stay here in the comments threads with the likes of me rather than try to change anything.
19
Even the unregistered troll(s) is speechless. Ranting about "lazy shits who want other people's money" is probably not very effective in this context or has he at last found a sense of shame?
20
@15
You don't need to worry about that in America. Just keep feeding them the TeeVee and selling them a consumer-oriented lifestyle which gets them into credit card debt. So easy to control them.
You don't need to worry about that in America. Just keep feeding them the TeeVee and selling them a consumer-oriented lifestyle which gets them into credit card debt. So easy to control them.
21
Very interesting video. It can be juxtaposed with these tax facts, for example the top 10% pays 70% in income taxes or the top 50 pays 97% of the income taxes.
However, I think, the two are ultimately incomparable as they are orthogonal with each other.
However, I think, the two are ultimately incomparable as they are orthogonal with each other.
22
@21,
the top 10% pays 70% in income taxes or the top 50 pays 97% of the income taxes.Yeah, because they have all the fucking money.
23
@ 21, where were you when all that stuff was flying around during the POTUS campaign? Those numbers only prove how underpaid the bottom 50% are.
24
@21 - The bottom quintile in Washington effectively pays a higher tax rate than hedge funders like Romney so quit obfuscating by not accounting for regressive taxes like labor and state taxes and widespread tax evasion among the 1%.
Do you really believe that libertarians (your link) have anything sensible to say about taxes?
Do you really believe that libertarians (your link) have anything sensible to say about taxes?
25
@ 21, BTW, don't take my response to mean that I accept those numbers as factual. I don't.
Your point isn't really harmed by exaggerated data, because it is true that the wealthier pay a greater dollar total of income taxes, but no one should accept those numbers at face value, nor should it be accepted that comparing total dollars is a valid comparison anyway. First, it's income tax, which is only a portion of the tax burden shouldered by us all. Second, it's well proven that the poorer you are, the greater that burden is, even if you don't pay 1¢ in income tax.
Percentages are what matter. Not dollar figures.
Your point isn't really harmed by exaggerated data, because it is true that the wealthier pay a greater dollar total of income taxes, but no one should accept those numbers at face value, nor should it be accepted that comparing total dollars is a valid comparison anyway. First, it's income tax, which is only a portion of the tax burden shouldered by us all. Second, it's well proven that the poorer you are, the greater that burden is, even if you don't pay 1¢ in income tax.
Percentages are what matter. Not dollar figures.
27
Nobody is denying the poor from getting a larger share of the money. They just have to do what the successful people already did, use their knowledge/skills/abilities to EARN the money. The beauty of America is that you can do just that and not be burdened by a caste system (real or imagined).
It is not for some pinhead "Harvard Prof." to re-distribute legally attained money.
It is not for some pinhead "Harvard Prof." to re-distribute legally attained money.
28
@21, that would be a lot more telling if income tax was the only kind of tax. Once you count everything in, it is blindingly obvious that the rich get a sweet, sweet ride through our financial system.
29
@27 -
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2…
More...
The rhetoric is relentless: America is a place of unparalleled opportunity, where hard work and determination can propel a child out of humble beginnings into the White House, or at least a mansion on a hill.
But the reality is very different, according to a University of Michigan researcher who is studying inequality across generations around the world.
"Especially in the United States, people underestimate the extent to which your destiny is linked to your background. Research shows that it's really a myth that the U.S. is a land of exceptional social mobility," said Fabian Pfeffer, a sociologist at the U-M Institute for Social Research and the organizer of an international conference on inequality across multiple generations being held Sept. 13-14 in Ann Arbor.
Pfeffer's own research illustrates this point based on data on two generations of families in the U.S. and a comparison of his findings to similar data from Germany and Sweden. The U.S. data come from the ISR Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a survey of a nationally representative sample that started with 5,000 U.S. families in 1968.
He found that parental wealth plays an important role in whether children move up or down the socioeconomic ladder in adulthood. And that parental wealth has an influence above and beyond the three factors that sociologists and economists have traditionally considered in research on social mobility—parental education, income and occupation.
"Wealth not only fulfills a purchasing function, allowing families to buy homes in good neighborhoods and send their children to costly schools and colleges, for example, but it also has an insurance function, offering a sort of private safety net that gives children a very different set of choices as they enter the adult world," Pfeffer said.
"Despite the widespread belief that the U.S. provides exceptional opportunities for upward mobility, these data show that parental wealth has an important role in shielding offspring from downward mobility and sustaining their upward mobility in the U.S. no less than in countries like Germany and Sweden, where parental wealth also serves as a private safety net that not even the more generous European public programs and social services seem to provide."
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2…
30
Less see r GINI index is about 5 points better than Mexico and 15 point worse than Canada so our wealth distribution looks 3 times more like Mexico than Canada. So it looks about like a carnitas torta very lightly drizzled with maple syrup.
31
@15 They're trying to take the pitchforks too, and exploiting tragedies to do it.
And SOME people are falling for it. *cough* gun control *cough cough*
And SOME people are falling for it. *cough* gun control *cough cough*
32
@29 Well if THAT guy said it, it must be so. You TOTALLY got me there {rolleyes}
Don't believe the victim hype. It does nobody any good yo.
Don't believe the victim hype. It does nobody any good yo.
Advertisement
Most Commented on Slog
-
SL Letter of the Day: The Tell-Tale Handjob by Dan Savage
-
Foie Gras Tastes Like Cat Food by Callan Berry
-
Cap Hill Is Becoming a Little Like What? by Charles Mudede
-
Pizza Update: Breaking the 5-Minute Barrier by Goldy
-
President Obama Says NSA Spying Is "Transparent" by Paul Constant
-
Slog Bible Study: Leviticus 20:9 by Goldy
-
SL Letter of the Day: Let Me Think... by Dan Savage
-
In Which Peter Steinbrueck Peforms in Blackvoice by Goldy
-
The Daily Show on Poor, Bullied Christians by Paul Constant
-
Egyptian Theatre to Close at the End of This Month by Paul Constant
Stranger Personals
The Stranger
RSSSeattle Art & Performance Quarterly
A complete guide to Seattle's current art, film, dance, and theater season.
Facebook
Twitter
Comments (32) RSS