There are two solutions: Part one, a more educated populace. Education will help those that can work in the "good jobs" get the good jobs. Part two, tax policy. Wealth needs to be redistributed so that there are masses to buy the products that the wealthy are creating.
Edit: I just watched this post go up to 10 points, down to 3 and then back to 5. Clearly this is controversial. I find it interesting that wealth redistribution is this controversial. I'm curious as to why people would be against it. Is it really just "I worked hard for it why should I give it away" or something deeper?
I highly doubt that education reform will come by any time soon. Studying STEM is not natural to many kids, yet the reality is that people in the US have been living comfortably for so long that they would rather give up teaching tough subjects for so-called children's happiness, or shit like no kids left behind.
As a result, it is the ordinary kids, which is the majority middle, who will hurt -- they think they learn something in high school and college, but they really don't.
Unnatural in the sense of "Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them". Or in the general sense of science, you work hard to get intuition that is against what you get from your daily experience, such as feather and iron ball fall at the speed in vacuum, electrons interact with electronic field, there exist functions that are continuous everywhere but not derivative anywhere, light of spped is constant in all reference frames, or simply high school algebra is really simple (and has been watered down for years) and most of kids should have no excuse not to excel at it.
"For the past year, 18-year-old Zhang Hao has been studying for 12 hours a day. He spends a minimum of nine hours in class taking practice papers, then continues to study at home. His parents worry that he sometimes crams up to 17 hours work in to a single day. "
"LIN MING, a ten-year-old who has two years left at his primary school in Beijing, does not remember the last time he returned home before 6pm on a weekday during term. As soon as school is out, his mother, Yang Mei, shuttles him around the city, dropping him off at tutoring agencies where he studies advanced maths and English grammar. Ms Yang accepts that she is “maybe putting a bit too much stress” on her son. But she has no choice. “Around 90% of my son’s classmates attend after-school lessons. It’s a competition I can’t lose.” "
"Chinese officials worry that pupils’ achievements may exact too heavy a mental and physical price"
"As long as admission to senior-high schools is based on results from the gruelling zhongkao exam, parents are likely to exploit every loophole to give their children an edge."
So, if you think that pushing kids beyond their limits with something like 16h work days in ways that negatively impacts their mental and physical health is a demonstration of "naturalness", then I just have to concede the point that this is all natural.
But then you have to also claim that schoolchildren killing themselves is also somehow "natural"
"In the last few years, several studies have shown that adolescents and young people in China, Japan and other Asian countries have a large number of psychological problems that may lead them to commit to suicide."
"There are several causes for adolescent suicides. In many cases, suicides relate to fear of performing badly in exams."
"South Korea has the highest suicide rate in the world for children ages 10-19 and extremely high elderly (60+) suicide rates. For children, most suicides are caused by stress relating to education. Korean children have a school year of 11 months and often spend over 16 hours a day at school and at afterschool programs called hagwons."
India: India has an average income of $2134 per person. Not per month, per year. It has 872 million people living below the poverty line. One quarter of the population lives on less than 60¢ per day.
So I'd respectfully suggest that there might be good, ahem, motivation to try your best to get good at STEM even if you don't find it particularly natural.
Ya, all east asian countries, you're right. China is interesting especially to me though because, just anecdotally, there seem to be an unusually high number of Chinese female STEM graduates. Not sure what's going on there, but they seem to have solved the gender gap in STEM somehow. Could just be i've encountered an unusual sample too, though.
Easy, just tell everyone that anyone can study STEM as long as they work hard. Do you know Noether, Marie Curie, Grace Hopper, Chien-Shiung Wu, and many more female scientists and engineers are household names? They are featured in mass media, in text books, and in our bedtime stories.
Gender bias in STEM? That's a god damn first-world problem.
Yep. Reduce wealth and increase economic pressure enough so that survival is dependent on a finding a good job, and suddenly, magically, "bias" disappears.
"Most of the girls we talked to from other countries had a slightly playful approach to Stem, whereas in Russia, even the very youngest were extremely focused on the fact that their future employment opportunities were more likely to be rooted in Stem subjects."
Then, when wealth (and all other measures of gender equality) dramatically increase and people become free to choose to do whatever they want, largely free from economic survival pressure, suddenly, magically and inexplicably, "bias" pops up again.
> Not sure what's going on there, but they seem to have solved the gender gap in STEM somehow
That's because you're not familiar with the actual data. Iran also has gender parity in STEM. The nordic countries have equal or worse gender ratios than America. It's called the gender equality paradox: the more gender equal a country, the less women choose STEM paths.
I don't think there's any intrinsic reason that studying STEM isn't natural. It could be hard to some kids while totally enjoyable to some others. I've seen kids enjoying building stuff and really engaged in their preliminary lessons for coding.
Fortunately, there are lots and lots of "technology" jobs that do not fit people's preconceived notions of what it means to be working in "STEM".
Think, things like being a designer, product manager, analyst, ect, ect, ect.
Even the job I do today, working as a web developer, is something that the "hardcore" programmers of 40 years ago, would likely look down on, as I do not fit into their traditional opinion, from 40 years ago, of what it means to work in STEM.
There will likely be more jobs like that in the future
And to further expand this metaphor, I am sure that in another 40 years, there will be significantly more tools that will allow people to more easily develop things.
>> Is it really just "I worked hard for it why should I give it away"
No it's more "I worked hard for it why should it be taken from me by force or fiat". I've found most folks who are well off (not living hand to mouth) are willing, and do give to charity. It's when some other group of people start demanding this behavior through governmental force when attitudes change.
I give to charity too, so what? They live and got lucky in the country they are then refusing to assist proportionally with their means. Most of them are not Bill Gates, while they toss their pocket change to some charities, they lobby to Congress for favorable laws and live an insular existence that doesn't go near the common man.
If you study world history you’ll quickly realize that it’s ultimately the choice of the mob with the torches and pitchforks. You’d be amazed at how disinterested they are in moral relativism or a chat about Atlas Shrugged. Personally I’d prefer a more equitable redistribution based on planning, rather than a redistribution based on plutocrats being put up against a wall.
What if we start to create better technologies that augment the economic usefulness of the lowest IQ people?
They definitely won’t be amused at the cries of “But wait, I want my tech to add economic value to you, low IQ person! sound of a gun cocking Waaait! Haven’t you even heard of a meritocra- BANG”
I mean, you can solve that problem with robots and technology, too. Revolting mobs of socialists can be dealt with pretty easily.
(If you’re going to start threatening murder as the premise of your theory of justice, you’d best make sure your side would actually be the one doing the killing.)
I mean, you can solve that problem with robots and technology, too. Revolting mobs of socialists can be dealt with pretty easily.
(If you’re going to start threatening murder as the premise of your theory of justice, you’d best make sure your side would actually be the one doing the killing.)
Yeah, that that could never go wrong and backfire horribly. How about we win a war before we decide to design, mass produce, and deploy enough robots to pacify a few hundred million people with guns. Oh, and don’t forget to make it the first hack-proof device ever, or you might find yourself on the wrong end of the robot.
Besides, I’m not threatening murder, I’m literally just describing a repeating and predictable cycle throughout history. If it makes you feel any better, I’ll be up against the wall too.
Another repeating and predictable cycle throughout history is that improvements in technology do not take away jobs. If the revolting mob is suddenly incapable of doing productive work due to some sort of AI revolution, it's fallacious to assume that they would be capable of putting anyone against the wall, either.
They do though. Not all the people skilled in the old technology will find a job in the new one, especially if they're older. Some people will fall through the gaps, even if the total amount of jobs is not affected.
If you study history, you also quickly learn that there were orders of magnitude more poor people killed by the rich and powerful than the other way around.
Are mobs always morally in the right? Absolutely not. But neither the opposite is true.
If you study history, you also quickly learn that there were orders of magnitude more poor people killed by the rich and powerful than the other way around.
Yes, but considering that there have always been orders of magnitude more poor people than rich and powerful people, your statement is effectively empty. More telling is that the rich and powerful get away with it, until they don’t. In France during the Revolution, in England during the civil war, in Russia when the czar system was torn down.
Push people far enough and they don’t break, they lash out and take their society down with them. It can be hard to predict when that will happen, but if circumstances don’t change it seems that it always does. Ghaddafi could have been forgiven for believing that after decades, he wouldn’t be hunted and killed by his own people. Hosni Mubarak clearly thought he was untouchable, as did Ben Ali in Tunisia.
I’ll say it again, I’d prefer an orderly and plannned redistribution rather than it all being burned to the ground because a handful of elites can’t finish their goddamned history education and ascribe to the “this time it will be different,” school of what could charitably be called “thought.”
>Yes, but considering that there have always been orders of magnitude more poor people than rich and powerful people, your statement is effectively empty.
What are you even talking about? The vast majority of minorities don't hold any power (especially not the power to kill the majority) precisely because there are so few of them and that's exactly the reason why they are oppressed. Rich people are an extremely special minority where this situation is reversed and they have power over the majority.
I've had many a discussion about Atlas Shrugged, and in fact used to be an adherent to its philosophy. Until I realized something. For a pure Libertarian society to work, those who cannot work must die. If there is absolutely no social safety net, then if you are too sick to work, you can't make money and therefore can't get care and die. Sure, some will live through charity, but there would be far too many people who just can't make a net positive monetary contribution to society. What do those people do?
Or they riot and rebel. The surest way to see how violent people can be is to offer them no choice in the matter. This is a country with a lot of guns, tons of space, and a poorly paid police and military. It’s not hard to imagine how the prospect of a quiet, ignominious death would go over. There are already militias and preppers, and I for one want those movements to do something other than flourish and expand.
If they rebel, then either there is a use for some of them for guards, or those we can hire for guards are better (and will win).
The US indeed have a large amount of land and many guns, but that land is already termed "fly-over" country, do you think most people on the coasts care if somebody runs around up in the Apalachian mountains with a gun shouting down with the rich?
If (which I do not believe) those persons will have no value at all, we will deal with them when/if they riot.
If they rebel, then either there is a use for some of them for guards, or those we can hire for guards are better (and will win).
The US indeed have a large amount of land and many guns, but that land is already termed "fly-over" country, do you think most people on the coasts care if somebody runs around up in the Apalachian mountains with a gun shouting down with the rich?
If (which I do not believe) those persons will have no value at all, we will deal with them when/if they riot.
If only we had some proximal lesson from recent history to look to, as a way of explaining just how deveststing insurgencies can be in the modern world. You know, a lesson involving a bunch of mountain men with guns, fighting from their home turf. Oh well, I can’t think of anything, but if it comes up I’m sure that our record stamping them out quickly, effectively, and without catastrophic loss of life and treasure will speak for itself.
There's quite a few poor in the Bay Area, or in the LA Basin, or in the East Coast megapolis. Some of them are within a day's march of Silicon Valley, or Beverly Hills, or Downtown Manhattan (though it might be more defensible against those not already on the island).
Just being "not in flyover country" isn't going to save the elites if the poor seriously rise.
There are some indications that the bottom 15% of IQs will not become the STEM man's burden. Instead, AI will hit the fat underbelly of knowledge work, first, where people get paid more than the bottom 15%, to do the things that can be automated without interacting with real-world objects.
The problem won't be robot shopping cart fetchers or grocery baggers, but that knowledge work, which is the last refuge of human usefulness in the workforce will get hollowed out from the lower-middle. There is no "next thing" after knowledge work.
Optimistic characterizations like "post scarcity" don't seem like they will be applicable before mass disemployment hits. Instead of having to implement redistributive policies for the 15% outside the knowledge economy, we will be faced with a bigger, more educated cohort that can't be retrained to other knowledge work faster than AI will automate those categories.
Shorter work-weeks will help. Perhaps for long enough to figure out a solution. Better start soon, though.
The good news is that we know some adjustments to make to education that would reduce that number. For example:
> More children taking MVM [multivitamin with mineral] supplements (44) than placebo (25) showed increases in nonverbal IQ scores of 15 or more points (35% compared with 21%; P<.01). The authors speculate that this result may be attributable to the fact that one in 7 schoolchildren was undernourished.[0]
The bad news is we won't do it. Implementing effective policy is the hard part.[1]
AR and VR. So many people love to talk about an augmented world, well, this would be the perfect place for it. You would use AR/VR to help lower IQ people be more productive and still be able to earn themselves a decent wage.
I'm still not convinced that it's possible to successfully tax the rich enough to ensure that the poor isn't poor. The redistribution (and taxation) always comes up as "the solution" to inequality. I think that's overestimating how rich the rich are, and underestimating the number of poor people.
It's easier to make the rich poorer, and close the wealth cap that way, compared to making the poor richer. Sadly that's not going to help anyone.
Is this backed up by any stats? Last I saw the stats on America showed the top % is unimaginably rich and the inequality is massively worse than other countries like Australia where the average person is much better off.
No, and I might very well be completely wrong. My reasoning is that some one like Jeff Bezos is worth $150 billion, if we take all his money (which we can't do, because most of his wealth isn't exactly in cash), then each American could receive something like $500. That's not really helpful, and we can only do that once, if we take ALL his money.
Maybe I'm underestimating how many rich people the world has, and how much money they have. It just doesn't seem like did have enough to make much of a difference.
The $150 billion sitting in bezos bank account does very little for everyone. If it was distributed among the population of America, most of it would be spent very quickly and there would be huge benefits for everyone. Preventing hoarding would do a lot of good for society.
On the contrary. Most of that money is the capital that makes up Amazon and its subsidiaries, which has consistently grown faster (created more wealth/benefit) than almost any other entity in our society.
That's your neoliberal take. Personally, I'm a little dubious that wealth created is 1:1 with social benefit created. But to say that his bank account benefits nobody would be a misrepresentation.
For society, by making the distribution of goods/services more efficient. Amazon enriches our lives (compared to no Amazon) every time anyone uses it. The resources we all save, the delta, go partially to Mr. Bezos and owners of Amazon stock in the form of profit. They are rewarded for having allocated their capital efficiently. They can spend the money on whatever they want, but it is mostly allocated back into making Amazon more efficient -- not locked away as the gp suggests.
Bear in mind this is the extremely idealistic neoliberal take.
Fine, 30b in his bank account and 120b in his portfolio. All of that money was at one point in a consumers pocket and now sits removed from the wider economy in one of Jeff Bezos accounts for the sole purpose of furthering future growth of these accounts by further extraction of money out of the wider economy.
How would the accounts grow if they weren't doing something that created wealth, i.e. generated value for the economy? They're re-invested in other companies, to be put to good use.
Generated value for whom? The size of amazon? To be put to good use figuring out more ways to eavesdrop information for advertising? They aren't going to pay their workers who piss in bottles any more if they beat earnings, although the shareholders might have some big ticket purchases in mind. It is still money removed from consumers pockets and used to inflate the company, and only very few people in the company benefit from that ballooning.
I'm sure amazon does provide value to it's customers, but it was at the expense of consuming and destroying local small business economies where the profit would have stayed and been spent there, not in Seattle, not on exotic mansions and watercraft, not on the latest Echo endeavor that may or may not ever come to fruition. Just as Nestle bottles water from local aquifers and sells that water elsewhere outside of that watershed, eventually depleting the aquifer, Amazon takes local wages away from the economy and either sits on this pile of cash or on lavish compensation for the few at the top of the company.
If people choose to purchase through Amazon, it's generally because they provide a better experience (i.e. more value per dollar spent) than their competitors.
Sitting on cash is expensive, due to inflation and taxes. It's generally better to re-invest. People are generally compensated as a function of the value they add to the company. If someone else can do a better job for less money, it would be in the board's best interests to hire them.
I do agree, though, that unwise expenditure of resources (mansions and watercraft, et all) should be criticized, though not high net-worth per-say. The problem, though, is that the common man is also guilty of unwise expenditure of resources. E.g. taking a vacation instead of providing life saving vaccines.
If you think rich peoples wealth is in a form that can be redistributed to the poor (ie cash), then yiu are seriously deluded. The wealth of someone like jeff bezos is essentially the amount us poor people are willing to pay to be in charge of Amazon. It does not refer to any kind of cash which he can give away. Moreover, giving away his shares would simply lower the value of Amazon since the reason why those shares have any value is the business bezos runs
If the average IQ of a STEM graduate is a standard deviation or more above average [0][1], then how does a more educated populace result in something besides the stratification we see today? STEM education can help a person get on the right side of the tech split, but the STEM education itself is already prohibitively difficult.
You don't need to be special to do STEM work, but it's possible the attitude that you do is keeping us from learning how to better train the average person in it.
I'm a software developer who comes from a non-STEM (music) background, but before I went into tech I thought there was no way I would be "smart enough" to do what I do now for a living.
Turns out you don't need 4-years of heavy maths/physics/CS education to write React components, but most of my friends (and a surprising number of recruiters) still think you do.
Average person with less intelligence is capable of doing the same thinking, just slower. I believe that the problem is that STEM classes aren't separated by the speed of thinking. Also easier for a person to accept that he/she just doesn't get math, instead of the fact that he/she is thinking slower than other people.
I found myself thinking slower as I get older (and having more health problems), but so far I was able to counteract the disadvantages with better life decisions, so actually I have a happier life.
I'm pretty sure this whole intelligence is merely thinking faster idea is non sense. From my own personal experience, I think quite slowly, I'm bad at mental arithmetic, but I have a very high IQ. Look at IQ tests, our best measure for intelligence: getting the questions right is not about speed, it's about insight. The harder questions do not require more time, it is not simply a matter of enumerating through the different options. One has to "see" the patterns and then apply the rules.
> Average person with less intelligence is capable of doing the same thinking, just slower
Intelligence is not just about the speed of thought. It's also about the depth of memory, the number of associations one has in one's internal model, and numerous other factors.
Consider a computer's memory that's halved. Suddenly it can run significantly fewer programs despite the fact that it rjnd at exactly the same speed.
It sounds interesting, it' s more likely the number of associations than working memory, as I always had very bad working and long term memory compared to other people, still I was the best in elementary class in math without any studying (of course this changed after I went to a school specialized in math).
Because providing a better base eduction lets those who are in that 1 SD above category actually use it. There are probably a lot of people right now who are 1 SD above but can't get the education they need to make use of it.
Everything will be fine when everybody is above average...
Historically, the economic promise has been that everyone who CAN get a job will just get a Different job when new technologies make their current jobs obsolete. Plow-pushers will become welders, for example.
And the usual futurist's question is whether instead the low-skill workers are more like horses in the 1930's, soon to be completely useless. The interesting argument in the article is that, well, even if the low-skill workers aren't completely unemployed, they'll be pushed forever into low-productivity industries that are happy enough paying them serf's wages... Perhaps keeping them just busy enough to avoid open revolt. (perhaps.)
1) if you exclude everybody less than 1 standard deviation above the mean in a normally distributed population, you're left with approximately 16% of the population. The tech sector currently employs approximately 4% of the US population, so at most it's employing 1 in 4 people whose IQ is >1 std deviation above mean. Plenty of room to grow.
2) The idea that STEM education is simply beyond the capabilities of people who aren't in that lucky 16% needs support. The correlation of success in STEM to IQ does not mean causation runs from 'having a high IQ' leads to 'capable of being educated in STEM'. It seems equally possible that 'pursuing education in STEM' leads to 'having a high IQ', and that if we push more people through STEM-oriented education, more people will develop high IQs (of course, that would move the average, which isn't how IQ works, but... you get the idea).
Human minds are incredibly capable and flexible, and acting that the current state of practice of the STEM field and IQ is some sort of limiting factor in human capability seems, well, incredibly unimaginative. The standards of education changes over time. If you go back through the decades, the mix of "average" skills is different and arguably lesser in many ways. In other ways though, today we have a wealth of formal analytical thinking, but suffer a poverty of philosophical and creative exploration.
Perhaps the thing that AI may unleash is the power to access STEM techniques, without the same kind of need for formally thinking or operating in them so closely.
Where do you think causality lies here? Maybe being trained to think in ways that IQ tests prefer would raise peoples' scores? An IQ test isn't some sort of measure of inherent capacity, just a measure of how well someone takes an IQ test. People read too much into them.
> Maybe being trained to think in ways that IQ tests prefer would raise peoples' scores?
That question has been tested repeatedly by the scientific community, and the answer seems to be 'no'.
> An IQ test isn't some sort of measure of inherent capacity, just a measure of how well someone takes an IQ test.
That's just not the case. IQ correlates with many interesting phenomena.
Of course, IQ doesn't come close to explaining everything about life outcomes, but compared to virtually every other measure in psychology (or the social sciences more broadly) nothing else comes close to the empirical validity or explanatory power of IQ.
You don't need to be a STEM graduate to grok tech. There's a difference between the science of technology, the engineering of technology and the implementation of technology. You can be productive without being able to pass calculus.
When I started working for a .gov years ago, about 40% of the technical staff where former administrative people (clerks, typists, etc) who were trained and transitioned into technology related jobs ranging from programmers to sysadmins to project managers. They were great.
On another thread, I help with a school club at my son's school where 8-year olds are building Raspberry Pi based gadgetry. They are average kids, and they do very well.
What is your evidence? IQ tests undoubtedly measure something, and that something correlates with things like academic performance and certain types of job performance. What’s flawed about that?
The quickest Google search for "flaws of IQ tests" comes back with so many studies showing that IQ is not correlated to intelligence that at this point the burden of proof is on anyone who says IQ is relevant. Even if IQ does measure something, it's not an indicator of anything other than the ability to pass a standardized test. It certainly is not an indicator of intelligence.
In other words: what is your evidence that IQ measures anything actually relevant?
I never said anything about IQ tests measuring intelligence. No doubt the “something” that is measured is, at least in part, “intelligence,” at least as it applies in an academic setting. However, for you to dismiss them outright is simply not supported by the literature. For example:
> Kids who score higher on IQ tests will, on average, go on to do better in conventional measures of success in life: academic achievement, economic success, even greater health, and longevity.[0]
Yes, you can improve your performance on IQ tests with practice and motivation, but that does not make them “scientifically invalid” in any way. The fact is that so many things are correlated to IQ that it’s a useful theoretical construct, even if it’s misnamed and has little to do with what you’d call “intelligence.”
If IQ can be improved through education, then you cannot use it to argue that lower IQ people cannot be educated to be better at STEM jobs as the parent was arguing.
Sure, I'll give you that IQ measures something. The question is, is that something relevant to the argument that you can only be competitive in STEM with a higher IQ and therefore many people cannot be educated into STEM careers? Does IQ make you better suited for those jobs, or does the training for those jobs cause you to score higher on IQ tests?
It's no shock that richer and healthier people do better in school. If you want to call that "IQ" then fine, but saying the correlation goes the other way is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary proof. Without proof that a higher IQ makes you richer and healthier rather than the other way around, then yes, it is entirely scientifically invalid. Especially if you're not exactly sure what IQ is actually measuring.
If the parent wants to argue that some people can never be trained in STEM careers because STEM careers require too high of IQ, I demand proof that this psuedo-science malarky is defined and that it is proven to be inherent and cannot be trained during the course of STEM education.
If IQ isn't relevant to the parent's comment, then it shouldn't have been brought up. If it is relevant, then there should exist some proof that IQ actually matters.
The parent is making the claim that, because of IQ, certain segments of the population are at a fundamental disadvantage when it comes to STEM careers. For this to be anything more than pure poppycock, there needs to be proof that IQ measures anything actually relevant to the success of those jobs. And not only relevant, but measures something that cannot be trained, cannot be explained by differences in education of astronomy majors vs home economics majors, something that fundamentally bars elementary education majors from succeeding in electrical engineering.
Prove that IQ measures anything that says an accountant could not have been otherwise trained to practice chemistry because they're 10 IQ points short. If IQ measures anything relevant to the job you perform, there has to be some proof.
There doesn't have to be absolute proof, just decent evidence. While it's absolutely true that IQ tests aren't perfect (the very idea that intelligence can be measured on a single axis is suspect), there is plenty of evidence that shows correlation between IQ and success in certain fields.
If all good accountants or chemists have relatively high IQs, it doesn't prove that a good IQ is necessary, but it certainly provides some evidence. It's classic causation/correlation, but in this case, there are mountains of evidence of correlation.
The biggest argument against that is the question of "is that IQ score inherent or trained"? Yes, it seems some professions have higher IQ scores. But is that because they're actually smarter? Or is it that they're better educated in the things that score well on an IQ test? It's no coincidence that the professions where people have higher IQs are also professions that are monumentally harder than the ones further down the list. If IQ correlation means STEM causation, we could just as easily flip that around and say that STEM education means IQ increases.
If we are making the statement that certain sections of the population cannot be trained for STEM careers because they don't have the IQ to be competitive, then we'd better be damn sure that IQ isn't something that can be taught. And there is mounds of evidence showing that intelligence is not assigned at birth.
Does IQ measure intelligence, or education? And are either of those static throughout a person's life?
there is another solution, get government off the backs of the poor and middle class. from costs of simple government services to the the fees associated with occupational licensing it is not cheap being poor and trying to work.
then throw in the ever fun new ways cities try to make money by trumping up trivial issues like declaring someone's home needs repair, a stack of firewood done "wrong", or a crack in a drive way, and fining them hundreds if not thousands of dollars. all fines against people who cannot afford to dispute the charge and may not even be able to pay it. Traffic fines starting over two hundred dollars for even the most minor infraction.
or school systems where the number of non teaching positions are inflated all the while at the same time politicians are raising taxes to under the guise of improving education but its merely to pay for non teaching jobs.
The idea that the "wealthy" are not paying sufficient taxes ignores the reality of how much taxes everyone is already paying. People tend to just focus in on the "income tax" and ignore all the fees and embedded taxes in every day living. the US has one of the most progressive tax systems in the world and when you look at who pays the bulk of the taxes its not even close. As a percentage the "wealthy" already pay many times percentage wise than other classes. The US governments own figures on taxes at federal, city, and state, levels shows this- it is not even disputable.
Yet, when Congress recently passed a law to limit state and city deductions from the Federal taxes to TEN THOUSAND dollars who complained? The same supposed champions of the poor and why ? because their OWN wealthy people were having to pay more taxes.
Simple truth, you could confiscate every billionaires fortune and not pay for our government or the proposals in the offing. however where you will find that wealth is the investments backing pensions and 401ks. you think that once they "nip" the wealthy they will stop? After all its already been stated by many in one party about the unfairness of 401K programs you can damn well bet they will get their wish.
I support both of those ideas, but I'm not sure I see how those solve the underlying problems highlighted by the article.
We're going to continue to introduce technology to improve quality and enhance productivity. Will jobs continue to fall in industries that introduce technologies to enhance productivity? If so, education and wealth redistribution seem insufficient (albeit still necessary).
(I haven't checked the linked paper to see if this is answered.)
Isn't wealth redistribution via taxes treating the symptom and not the cause? We should look at the structures that allow massive wealth inequality to form in the first place. This could be a lot of things besides tax policy.
This would seem to lead to a Harrison Bergeron sort of outcome, no? I mean, basic variation in genetic factors, geographic and political circumstances of your birthplace, these things directly lead to variation of productivity, which in turn leads to variation of wealth.
I agree with you. I think we will see the Universal Basic Income appearing sooner rather than later. The economy needs a recycling mechanism and if it can't be through wages than it must take another form.
We won’t. Even for retirement schemes, there is not enough money; retirement age is rising, the future is bleak. UBI is basically a lifetime retirement scheme; it requires 10x more resources and completely unsustainable.
If more than half of the population makes at least double what they need to keep themselves from starvation, then you could argue there is enough money.
In short, your disagreement with the GP is probably due to a disagreement about the lifestyle that UBI is supposed to afford its recipients.
Those in power might determine that the bare minimum UBI to avoid violent revolution is something like $5000 per year.
It's absolutely enough for housing if you squeeze in.
Healthcare and education are problems, but I'm not sure they're enough to provoke a revolution when everyone is otherwise well-fed and sheltered from the elements.
What I don't honestly understand is source of money for UBI appearing sooner rather than later.
I mean, US is projected to have one trillion budget deficit for a second straight year - "US Deficit 2019: Treasury to Borrow $1 Trillion for 2nd Year - Bloomberg".
Slap UBI on top of it and this is Greece trajectory.
I've been preaching education to anyone who will listen. It's the skeleton key for every other issue, I dunno how else to put it.
You can trace a direct line from each of the top 10 problems in the world to ignorance. People don't actually suck nearly as much as it seems, people are just missing information. We're not econs, but we'd act a lot more closely to that model if we were, on average, more educated.
We already have wealth distribution: the rich get their lawyers to allow them to dodge taxes and jail time, just furthering their ability to gain more wealth, while the rest of us play by their trickle down rigged tax system.
Once you start redistributing wealth, it turns into a grand 300-million-person argument over who gets what.
Immigration arguments because each immigrant would be entitled to something, often more than they contribute for some period of time.
Childbearing arguments, for essentially the same reasons as immigration.
Arguments about drugs and other vice, becasue everyone would want to make sure you are contributing as much as you can, and many feel drugs prevent that.
Arguments about education and career choices.
There are no absolutes, but as long as people basically believe that they have what they create, then they will focus on creating and not worry about what other people create (or not). When they believe they have what they can get through the political process, they will focus on political fights.
Fundamentally, freedom and large-scale socialism don't mix. In a socialist system, there are just too many other people who have a vested interest in what you do (and don't do). It may work in small countries or on short time scales, but these arguments eventually result in authoritarian policies.
It is not a zero-sum game. It would be more productive to facilitate wealth creation rather than devise new ways to forcibly take-away private property that offends you.
Reducing the countless barriers to entry that stunt human ingenuity is where the real fight is. People can learn, and they are already (e.g Make/Lambda School) when provided with cost-effective training that delivers on investment.
Wanting more of the same (tax + regulations) is not going to cut it now. We are past ridiculous levels (1:3 avg OCDE tax:gdp) and diminishing returns kicked in.
Is basically my point. On one hand we can't expect journalists who I imagine are very Intelligent to get into programming but somehow we are just going to change our education system and everyone will just be coders?
I feel like you have to subscribe to tabula rasa to think this is going to go off without a hitch.
> Is basically my point. On one hand we can't expect journalists who I imagine are very Intelligent to get into programming
Nobody seriously expected this to happen, it was an exercise in turning their own solution "all these laid off coal miners can learn to code" against them when they were laid off. Twitter now considers pointing out this hypocrisy to be harassment. I can see their point, it's kicking a person while they're down, but they were fine with undesirables like coal miners being kicked while they're down.
“Redistribution” is inherently unfair; there is no “redistribution” except by force. Venezuela was the most recent in the vast row of examples of how redistribution works; probably not the last, as the idea keeps being pushed by some people for some reason, completely unimaginable to me.
It's unfair that you were born into a world of people who want your stuff. It's also unfair they were born into a world with no frontier they could homestead to make their own stuff.
The entire world is a frontier. I was born in Siberia; I wouldn’t want to stay there, so when I was old enough, I saved some money and bought one way tickets first to Moscow, then to Europe.
Much less. Wealth without force only provides more options, not takea it away. Wealth is a great force multiplier, though, and force can be used for evil.
This seems like a "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." kind of answer. At what point is circumstance not responsible? How much of our circumstances are we responsible for? Can we change other people's circumstances? By how much, and how does it affect outcome?
It is my wealth that is going to be “redistributed”. I am a relatively well off software engineer; I was born in a poor family on the outskirts of a Siberian town. I learned to program all on my own, by visiting my friends with computers and taking programming books from the local library. It wasn’t a “function of circumstance” — it was a function of my interest and targeted activity. What is unfair here?
Unless you are a multimillionaire, no it will not be your wealth being redistributed. The problem is not well-off people driving their Teslas around and taking two vacations a year, it is the relatively few people hoarding such obscene levels of wealth that their personal holdings dwarf those of entire lower economic classes of people. More than they could possibly need for 1000 lifetimes.
If you expropriate the entire wealth of the top 0.1% (6 trillion dollars), it will last around 2-3 years (social security/medicare/medicaid expenditure of the US is more than 2 trillion dollars per year). The "relatively few people" are of course rich, but they are, as you have said, relatively few. Most of the taxable money are made by the middle class.
Sounds like you landed in the lucky circumstance of having access to a computer and access to a library with programming books. You also got lucky with finding a job that let you save enough money to go somewhere else.
Should we not do our best to afford that "luck" to everyone?
With my own money, I am occasionally donating to libraries and other charities. Of course, you are free to do that and anything else with you own money, too.
It depends on what sort of redistribution you talk about.
Picketty argues that we tax income but not wealth and that's the root of our problems. I would imagine that your income is a way higher percentile than your wealth, income middle-class like you and me get smashed by income taxes (as someone from the working class in the UK it absolutely blew my mind when I learned how much wealth the people all around me had in their families, even just upper-middle class).
If you're hanging around with people whose families live in the nice parts of London/(a major city), assume they're the top 10% ~ 1 million, assume 4% returns above inflation, they make 50k a YEAR from their assets, totally passively.
So their wealth income is way more than some relatives of mine TOTAL household income.
In effect, the upper-middle-classes are born on basic income. If you're trying to make moeny yourself - just attend that university, take that MBA course, spend 5 years on a very risky career path with internships (journalism, media). There's no point you have to worry if you can afford it you can just play a very long low-probability high upside game.
Edit: I just watched this post go up to 10 points, down to 3 and then back to 5. Clearly this is controversial. I find it interesting that wealth redistribution is this controversial. I'm curious as to why people would be against it. Is it really just "I worked hard for it why should I give it away" or something deeper?