Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: A Weblog

What seems to me to be missing in the separation between private acquisition compared to public services is the recognition that it is our government model that provides the foundation upon which private acquisition occurs.

I believe that for those who through the luck of the draw, hard work or family fortune have been able to gather a generous amount of personal wealth and therefore tremendous personal consumption should recognize that our government model is their insurance policy and they should be willing to pay the premium.

I believe therefore that those who have received much should be willing to pay much to improve the lot of those who have not received the same opportunities.

I don't think inequality is a serious problem.

Ahhhh...spoken by someone who likely has never wanted for anything in their life.

I've lived both sides, and it's a problem, lil' rosy-cheeked boy with no calluses on your hands.

Smart guy, but naïve. Or sheltered.

D

If you accept that the distribution of wealth (or income) is not going to be GDP/Pop, then you have to expect folks with more $ to be able to spend it on things they like.

The second sphere is the baseline level of existance we agree is needed to give all a fighting chance of making their way in the first sphere.

Ah, but what do we do for the folks who genuinely like living in a low govt-services area? Do they get taxed at a high service area rate?

rbb

It's the "principle" of equality, not the "principal."

If you accept that the distribution of wealth (or income) is not going to be GDP/Pop, then you have to expect folks with more $ to be able to spend it on things they like.

The second sphere is the baseline level of existance we agree is needed to give all a fighting chance of making their way in the first sphere.

Ah, but what do we do for the folks who genuinely like living in a low govt-services area? Do they get taxed at a high service area rate?

rbb

If you accept that the distribution of wealth (or income) is not going to be GDP/Pop, then you have to expect folks with more $ to be able to spend it on things they like.

The second sphere is the baseline level of existance we agree is needed to give all a fighting chance of making their way in the first sphere.

Ah, but what do we do for the folks who genuinely like living in a low govt-services area? Do they get taxed at a high service area rate?

rbb

I think what he's saying is that government doesn't have a role in redistributing wealth, but in the spheres where government does have a role - building roads, keeping people safe - the government has a responibility to mete out its obligations in a consistent way. He's saying its not government's job to make people equal in society, but to treat them as though they were. I thought it was a given that government should mete out its responsibilities consistently to all people, but apparently that isn't the case.

Someone point me to a stable, affluent society that got there without government.

I really felt that Matt posted in blithe ignorance of what the actual equality issues are, either in the context of today or a historical context. I think that he constructed a hypothetical argument based on a unsophisticated commonsense reading the term "equality", and probably concluded from that that the advocates of inequality are simple-minded levellers.

And also, as Dano said, from an unawareness of what poverty, including working poverty, is actually like.

I haven't read Walzer's book, so I can't commnnet on that. But maybe we are looking at the problem in the wrong way.

Don't a lot of people believe that it doesn't matter if some are getting richer and richer, much more so than others, if everyone is moving up? In other words, does it matter if, at the end of 2006, Bill Gates has another ten billion to his name, if those at the bottom have more to their name, enough that they can say they are living better than before? That seems reasonable to me. After all, we need some inequality so that people have an incentive to get ahead and/or stay ahead. The difference in inequality, I think, cannot be too great.

I think it might make some sense to apply that frame of mind here, at least to food. Why does it matter if someone can eat a five-star restaurant while someone else can't, if they both have access to a decent meal when they need it? Or take colleges. Of course it would be nice if everyone who had the opporunity to go to Princeton could do so, but as long as the person who can't because of money can get an education through a state school, I don't think there is a reason to be unreasonably upset.

Corrections: "However, the difference..." and "eat at a..."

Damn me and my inability to check what I say before I click "post."

I tend to side with Zizka here, but I do think Jared Bailey has a point. A generous reading of Matt's post might be that he is primarily thinking in terms of what sorts of things require clear and direct government action. Inequality in the provision of public goods -- education, roads, etc. -- is intolerable because it (1) violates the basic equality implied by citizenship and (2) because it seriously impacts equality of opportunity. Fair enough.

At the same time, for Matt to say that inequality "doesn't bother" him is a very foolish statement. High levels of inequality are dangerous for liberal democracies, dangerous for political stability, dangerous for the emergence and persistence of regulated market capitalism, and generally tend to work against both the first and second points I mentioned above. In short, he needs to read, at a minimum, some European social and economic history as well as both of Alexis de Tocqueville's major books.

I'm with jared bailey on this; "in the spheres where government does have a role - building roads, keeping people safe - the government has a responibility to mete out its obligations in a consistent way."

Perhaps I am missing something, but is the insinutation that if one supports the idea of equality in allocating basic government service, one is required to support redistribution of wealth? I fail to see how the inference works.

While we sit around and ponder whether the poor should have all the same public goodies as the rich, countries with governments that supply their citizens with next to nothing and allow them to work for $0.50/hour are making the decision for us. We will all have next-to-nothing if the countries of the world don't hold their trade partners to a higher standard.

"Advocates of equality".

"Advocates of equality".

"Advocates of equality".

Well, there's always going to be inequality in the provision of both public and private goods. I'm much more comfortable with inequalities in the private sector (although I do think that the wealth in this country needs some serious redistribution.)

As far as public goods go, if there's inequality in spending between areas in the same jurisdiction, there's a problem. I grew up in New York City, and my working class Brooklyn neighborhood had clean residential streets, but the business districts were truly filthy. When I moved to a nicer neighborhood in Northeast Queens, I noted that the shopping street was pretty clean so I asked one of the shopkeepers about it. It turns out that they created a business improvement district and paid for more sanitation. So, the wealthier neighborhood got cleaner streets within the City of New York by paying for them. In an ideal world, the city would have been able to sweep all the shopping districts on a regular basis.

Now, when I moved to Great Neck, they quite literally vacuumed the sidewalks several times a week. Of course, the property taxes were outrageous, but oh boy, did you get services for your tax dollar!

IMHO, there's nothing wrong with buying more of a public good if your community wants it and can afford it, as long as the baseline services are sufficient.

If Matt is an autocratic utiltarian as he sometimes says, shouldn't the ineqaulity really bother him since there clearly could be a greater degree of hapiness with a bit of redistribution?

In a visit to Sedona, Arizona I learned that it had become popular as a "third home" location for the have mores. When so many Americans are living in poverty I find it hard to rationalize this kind of inequality by any criteria. It means we have abrogated humaneness in favor of unabashed greed.

America is unusual, in that it is a modern democracy in which public services are provided very unequally because of very localized funding for such basic govt services as education and policing. Hey, it's your country, you can go to hell your own way if you want.

But in other modern democracies an argument like this is often made:

It is essential to a well-functioning society that people have some sort of equality of opportunity. So the public provide certain things as rights that permit, if not a level playing field, at least a playing field which is not so steep that you fall over.

If poor areas lack good public services, then it is hard for an even rough equality of opportunity to exist. In particular, services like police protection and basic education opportunities should be at least as good in poor areas as in rich areas if you wish this rough equality of opportunity.

meno

What's missing is what most people believe. The history of the United States shows that most people ACCEPT the price of inequality as their payment into an extraordinarily advanced society... You will always need a generational adjustment for people left out of the complex system, unpredictable beforehand, but so what. America will have to show that it is a DEMOCRACY above all else, ....in order to defeat terror.

Jared bailey wrote:

****”I think what he's saying is that government doesn't have a role in redistributing wealth, but in the spheres where government does have a role - building roads, keeping people safe - the government has a responibility to mete out its obligations in a consistent way. He's saying its not government's job to make people equal in society, but to treat them as though they were. I thought it was a given that government should mete out its responsibilities consistently to all people, but apparently that isn't the case. “****

This is conservative philosophy. Matt thinks of himself as a liberal and he can’t call himself a liberal if he doesn’t think that it is governments job to forcibly redistribute income and/or wealth.

I think Matt is a bit of a spoiled brat who wants to be a liberal because of his family heritage, perhaps, but isn’t willing to bare the burdens that liberal government policies would put on his lifestyle. I could be wrong.

Robert Brown:

Could it be that Matt thinks that we must impose strict equality in the allocation of basic government services, but that government intervention into the market economy should perhaps be limited to regulating the excesses of industry to protect investors, labor and the environment, and then to provide basic redistributive measures as Social Security and Medicare?

I would think that this position is more consistent with basic American liberalism than your demands. Please correct me if I am wrong.

If we knew how to redistribute income without creating gross inefficiencies in the market we might be willing to do it. AFDC, minimum wages, and a graduated income tax don't work very well. Wages subsidies and a progressive consumption tax (ie a graduate income tax with savings tax exempt) would in theory work, if we can solved the practical problems of implimentation. The revolution in information technology removes the biggest obstacle -- besides the political one, of course.

Tell him to read some material by Robert Wade.

If I were a " conservative" I would make the point that the people in the better serviced areas pay for it in the form of high home prices and property taxes, which the people in the less well serviced areas pay only in a nominal way .
But I think that we do owe better services all around.
I also think that no one shuld be hungry in a place with store shelves brimming with food 24 hours a day and that
people should be able to get a job without competeing with
illegal aliens.
I would say to Meno that in those other modern democracies poeple overstaying their visas are prosecuted and deported. And that many of those countries are far smaller and have grown slower and have more homogenous societies where people can identify with the other side of the tracks.
You can ban me now

The problem is, the "gross inefficiencies in the market" are mostly chimeras, theoretical findings. If you cost-benefit the complex-systems effects, winding through the system, you will almost always find cause for amelioration of the market. Balancing this against the clear gains from creative self-interest, is the policy problem.

Abhishiktananda:

There is certainly a range of liberal philosophy in the U.S. I have not read Matt enough to judge where he fits on the spectrum.

I don’t think that there is serious disagreement between left and right that government should set and enforce the “rules of engagement” for capitalism, provide equally distributed government services that cannot be effectively provided by private markets, and provide a basic safety net for those who cannot support themselves.

I don’t think one can call oneself a “liberal”, even in America, if one does not advocate the use of government to minimize income disparities by redistributing income. I don’t think settling for SS and medicare is enough since these programs still allow more income disparity in the US than the liberals I know like to see.

Matt Yglesias is a bright young man with an engaging personality and no particular experience or depth of knowledge. He's from a background -- wealthy parents, prep school, Harvard -- that could mean New York Republican, except that Matt is Jewish, which even today means that his family background is liberal. At the same time his personal instincts are not liberal at all, without much empathy for people with life experiences different from his own. I don't see Matt as likely to move into the Republican party as he grows up, but that's only because the Republicans have moved so far right, leaving plenty of room in the Democratic Party for elitist centrists. Matt is fine when he's skewering the hypocrisies of the administration but when he starts in on how we all should live he sounds very, very young.

Robert Brown:
>>I don’t think one can call oneself a “liberal”, even in America, if one does not advocate the use of government to minimize income disparities by redistributing income. I don’t think settling for SS and medicare is enough since these programs still allow more income disparity in the US than the liberals I know like to see.
>>
Robert, thanks for the response. Perhaps we might be in disagreement on the effects of free markets on the overall well-being of the populace, and if so, then I apologize.

However, I gave SS and Medicare as mere examples of the kind of moderate regulations that the government can provide. I would throw in the EITC, Medicaise the work (slack as it is under this administration) of the SEC to protect investments of the middle class, protecting pensions, and unemployment insurance into the mix, as well as other reasonable interventions.

However, my concern is that your objections might suggest a preference for a completely centrally planned economic system. This I wouldn't find preferable.

Besides, while inequality in the provision of public goods is less justified than in the private sector, is also a fact that with economic power comes political power, the kind of political power that enables you to get better public services. After a certain degree of inequality is reached, these kinds of unfairness becomes unavoidable.

Abhishiktananda:

****”However, my concern is that your objections might suggest a preference for a completely centrally planned economic system. This I wouldn't find preferable.”***

I certainly do not think you have to advocate central planning to call yourself a liberal. Most liberals have abandoned that philosophy, I think. Simply advocating strict enforcement of laws protecting investments is not enough, though. There is squabbling between left and right as to how much is too much, but no major disagreement.

To call yourself a liberal, I think you need to believe that income should be distributed as much according to need as it is according to productivity, and that government should be used to insure that highly productive people do not receive very much more than less productive people.

Actually, Walzer's main argument is that in different spheres of social life, different principles of distribution of resources will exist and be considered, more or less, legitimate. He thinks it is immoral that one's relative success in one sphere, let's say in the private market, influences one's potential success in another sphere, such as in the allocation of public services. Thus, the extent to which one is successful in one sphere should ideally be independent of success in any other sphere.
Hence, children living in a rich neighborhood should not by virtue of this only, also have safer streets than children living in a poor neighborhood.

"What seems to me to be missing in the separation between private acquisition compared to public services is the recognition that it is our government model that provides the foundation upon which private acquisition occurs."

Lets try inverting that thought. The public sector exists because it takes money from the private sector. That 2 trillion the federal government spends is only possibly because of the increadable job those people in the private sector do. Those in the public sector should be very thankfull for the private sector folk.

We know how the experiment goes when the public sector takes over everything. But the modern world has not yet tried the reverse, letting private forces take over the law and defense.

For my own part I dislike riots. If a certain amount of income redistribution can make things a little more mellow all around, by all means, bring it on. I can afford it.

I also dislike the sclerotic, brainless, and unoriginal elite that is sure to evolve after but a few generations of hardened social stratification.

I also also think that we are so far away from solving the basic problem of unequal public services that arguing about what happens after we achieve it -- well, it seems even mooter than sports-talk radio.

It doesn't stop at road repairs and public transit routes & schedules. Airplane traffic routes, refineries or other polluting facilities, traffic-inviting mega stores, etc. are located according to who lives where.

There is obviously a correlation with poverty, but also one with voter turnout and participation in grass-roots politics (e.g. filing petitions and grievances at city hall). Much of this happens at the local or county level. That is not to say it's people's own fault if they don't vote, before somebody points this out. Given US immigration statistics, there are also communities with fewer eligible voters (i.e. many non-citizens) that are at a further disadvantage.

Any discussion of inequality and political economy is blind without reference to the fact that government continually stuffs the pockets of landowners with Ricardian rents, to the tune of 10 to 20% of GDP.

Robert Brown wrote, "I don’t think one can call oneself a 'liberal', even in America, if one does not advocate the use of government to minimize income disparities by redistributing income."

Utter nonsense.

First, many conservatives, indeed most so-called "libertarians," advocate redistributing income to landowners. Government as now constituted in the US clearly redistributes income *up* a scale of wealth, not *downward*, on average.

Second, most liberals (or at least ones who've thought things out---you can always find examples of people of any political persuasion who haven't) don't think the state should redistribute away income disparities, but rather believe in Rawls' maximin criterion, or some similar criterion.

Rob Sperry wrote, "Lets try inverting that thought. The public sector exists because it takes money from the private sector."

And the private sector exists because of the public sector---without which there'd be a state of anarchy.

"We know how the experiment goes when the public sector takes over everything. But the modern world has not yet tried the reverse, letting private forces take over the law and defense."

And thank God for that. That experiment was tried hundreds of years ago and resulted in feudalism.

Robert Brown wrote, "Most liberals have abandoned that philosophy, I think. Simply advocating strict enforcement of laws protecting investments is not enough, though."

But the "libertarian" conceit you allude to---that a system of laws protecting wealth, enforcing contracts, etc is sufficient for a just order---is morally incoherent, because most so-called libertarians on the right advocate a kind of aristocracy whereby those holding titles to scarce natural resources have the right to charge others for access to them. For more details, see
http://geolib.pair.com/essays/sullivan.dan/royallib.html
(or click on the URL in "liberal" below).

Rob Sperry wrote, "Lets try inverting that thought. The public sector exists because it takes money from the private sector."

And the private sector exists because of the public sector---without which there'd be a state of anarchy.

"We know how the experiment goes when the public sector takes over everything. But the modern world has not yet tried the reverse, letting private forces take over the law and defense."

And thank God for that. That experiment was tried hundreds of years ago and resulted in feudalism.

Posted by liberal at October 25, 2004 03:58 AM

I was wondering what we might call the neo-cons "plan" and implimentation in Iraq (other than a clusterfuck). Feudalism. It fits.

The comments about Matthew being a young man with a lot to learn seem most appropriate. But I would like to look at another side of the public services and inequality question. Life is very unfair in that someone like Bush or Matthew can pick well off parents and as a consequence receive many, many advantages over someone that picks poor parents. I hear many people talk about equality of opportunity and a level playing field when most people that have wealth were born into a family that gave them very large advantages on the so call level playing field. I believe the proper role of government is to provide some of us that were not born into
prosperity a good education and training that at least makes the level playing field a first approximation of a level playing field. But this is something matthew, and many conservative views do not seem to consider.

If one major role of government is to make it a level playing field, than government should provide more services to those that can not afford the best.

Liberal,

I am referring to people who can themselves “liberal” or “progressive” in today’s political context, not academic liberals (if that’s a correct designation). People I know, read, or listen to who call themselves “liberal” seem to me to have a common notion that simply allowing free market competition results in too much income disparity, which they consider market failure. Their solutions all seem to me to be various schemes to use government to take income away from those they deem too successful and give to those who are less so.

Is private ownership of land or natural resources a problem in the economy? Or are you using a metaphor for capital? It seems to me that many of the extremely wealthy in this country are athletes, entertainers, overpaid CEO’s, trial lawyers, currency speculators, ect.; which have nothing to do with “land ownership”. I am confused.

The current conservative mindset in my area is what I like to call "Neo-Fuedalism". Basically, blend one part social/religious conservatism, one part libertarianism, and one part fear (of jihadist terrorism, gays, liberals, communists, China, etc.) and you have the idea. These people have taken the mantle of power from the (now-defunct) traditional conservatives, but share little in common with them: neo-feudalists have little grasp of economics, love to wage war (as opposed to merely subsidising a defense industry), and seek to have strictly enforced social class segregation. Another couple of generations (of this) and we won't even have the luxury of having many of the discussions that take place on this forum.

Brian: "Don't a lot of people believe that it doesn't matter if some are getting richer and richer, much more so than others, if everyone is moving up? [...] If those at the bottom have more to their name, enough that they can say they are living better than before? That seems reasonable to me. After all, we need some inequality so that people have an incentive to get ahead and/or stay ahead. The difference in inequality, I think, cannot be too great."

I think I'd generally agree with that (if by "cannot be too great" you mean "should not be too great"), but I also think it's important to state *how* excessive inequality is a problem. If inequality does become too great, it can actually keep the people at the bottom from moving up in real terms, by jacking up the market prices of things that would otherwise be inexpensive, and by giving the people with all the financial power no direct stake in the lot of people in general.

As far as I know, no attempt to ensure absolute equality has ever worked, but nobody in the US political mainstream is trying to do that. I see a lot of strawman rhetoric from the right trying to tar American liberals with the brush of Pol Pot.

Spencer,

***“Life is very unfair in that someone like Bush or Matthew can pick well off parents and as a consequence receive many, many advantages over someone that picks poor parents”****

How much of the advantage of well off parents is due to their money, and how much is it they values they instill in their children: respect for education, books in the home, self discipline, help with home work, ect., ect.? Are children of poor parents really deprived of access to an adequately funded public school?

Yes, very prominent families such as Bush, Kennedy, Rockefeller, ect. can pull strings to give their children unfair advantages, but aren’t these outliers that should not drive public policy?

Being an old (relative to Matt) man with a lot to learn, I'm not at all uncomfortable with expensive restaurants being located in expensive areas (or business areas--well, a little there, because my tax dollars pay for a portion of my boss's lunch).

Being in the NYC area, though, it's difficult not to notice that government expenditures are disproportionate--and that leads to private sector expenses as well. (Brad, you need to re-read the parts of _Oath of Fealty_ that deal with the reporter's home area.)

For instance, NYC subway riders directly pay 61% (possibly more; pct from the time when the fare was $1.50) of the operating expense of the MTA. LIRR riders only pay 41% of the operating expense of their service--and then complain that =they= pay too much, even though they are more heavily subsidized.

One interesting thing that hasn't been addressed in this discussion is the fact that the character of neighborhoods is fungible.

Park Slope, Brooklyn, is today one of NYC's finest neighborhoods -- literally Wall Street's bedroom -- but few remember that in the 1970s, the celebrated brownstone housing stock had deteriorated badly, and the neighborhood was wracked with crime and drugs.

I share Matt's real concerns about government operating along the principle that the "squeaky wheel gets the grease," but I suspect that (even setting politics aside) it might be considerably more difficult to achieve the results he seeks simply by reallocating public resources.

And criticizing the Green Line is a particularly poor place to start. While you can criticize the priorities that make it a last-thought in the construction of the Metro, it's far too soon to discount the positive impact it will have on the neighborhoods it serves -- of course, then we'll have a debate on the merits of gentrification...

The fruits of inequality are seen in what we (laughingly) call "law enforcement". Every year, at great expense, hundreds of thousands of pot smokers are arrested. In that same year, about $100 billion in tax evasion WILL NOT be investigated, because the IRS is concentrating audits on the lower-income taxpayers.

This scam is not new, it probably vies with a few others for the title of "world's oldest profession".

It is quite striking that when the founders of the nation sought to build a political structure greater than themselves, they began with the concept of equality. When the nation was wracked by a war to determine if it should or should not endure, Lincoln reminded us of that premise of equality. To rally the peoples of the world against facism and naziism, Roosevelt and Churchill proclaimed the Four Freedoms.

The power of an idea whose time has come.

Robert Brown: I know several heirs who have succeeded in living reasonably comfortably without making any effort of any kind, either in school or in the job world. Inheritance is not a myth -- these aren't Rockefellers or Kennedies. I also know hard-working people (albeit with no particular skills and only average ability)who are near subsistence because they haven't found a toehold in the job market and haven't been able to go back to school.

The run-of-the-mill state schools are OK -- not great -- for students with some family support, but the better schools give a significant advantage even to those who don't work very hard there. And working your way through a state school school is painful, protracted, and chancy in a way that attending a top school for years is not.

Berkely, Michigan, Wisconsin, and a few others class with Harvard, of course, not with "state schools".

I think that a certain proportion of elite Democrats have no idea whatsoever what life is like for the bottom 50%. I don't just mean Matt.

This is really interesting. I remember a few months ago when Matt wrote against egalitarianism. Now he's saying the government can't help with inequality. So he wants to live in a non-egalitarian society where the government can't help with inequality. This system works out pretty well for spoiled rich kids. I guess I just don't know my place.

Robert Brown: "How much of the advantage of well off parents is due to their money, and how much is it they values they instill in their children ..."

This is an important aspect that I can confirm as a child of at best slightly-below-median-income, but intellectually able parents.

However, it misses the point at least in part. If a child has to take a long walk or bus ride, or ride by a parent, to and from school, or the school is underfunded (substandard bathrooms, teaching & sport equipment, second-rate teachers, ...) and in school or in the neighborhood they are exposed to crime and violence, and have to deal with attitudes that brand people willing to learn as would-be overachievers and want-to-be-betters, they are at a clear disadvantage, values or not.

While none of this has primarily to do with the parents' affluence (affluent kids would be affected the same in the absence of school choice), it correlates with it indirectly via neglect of neighborhoods and population groups, that affluent people can avoid by moving into better-served parts.

As a related side perspective (though a somewhat different topic), I recommend checking out the education-related articles on "http://www.viewfromsiliconvalley.com" where the author castigates the supposed ineffectiveness of some of the arguably most affluent SF Bay Area's school districts, based on his own observations.

The public/private equality split largely defines the defensible political rhetoric.

The rhetoric (but not the reality) of "no child left behind" is that of public sphere equality. Conservatives can not directly defend lower quality public schools for poor students.

In the private sphere, redistribution schemes are now largely work tested (tax credits, minimum wage). The liberal rhetoric is "a leg up for hard working americans". Bare redistribution schemes are frowned on by voters.

This can provide opportunities for Liberals. Rhetorically, "health care" belongs in the public sphere. Conservatives can't effectively argue that "Poor people don't deserve good health care" in the same way they can argue "Poor people don't deserve good cars", even if the poor people would prefer the car.

Of course, in very poor countries, private sphere redistribution is often needed to avoid famine.

America will have to show that it is a DEMOCRACY above all else, ....in order to defeat terror.
Posted by: Lee A. at October 24, 2004 07:19 PM

Forgive me if this is supposed to be sarcastic, but otherwise WTF does inequality of government services have to do with Democracy or terror? Government serving the wealthy is a Plutocracy, not a democracy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy

While I agree with Brad that the inequality of wealth is bad, taking away personal incentives (via collectivism) has been shown to be worse. The most sucessful response to this has been progressive taxation, which worked very sucessfully until anti-tax lunatics grabbed the reins of both govermnment and media.

I think we can all agree that inequality of services is downright criminal. Especially in the case of education, where a base level of funding should be supplied federally. Maybe it could be called "no child actually left behind".

The first distinction defines the frontier of the upper classes high willingness-to-pay for luxuries.

The second distinction defines the lower classes low ability-to-pay for the prequisites for full-fledged social integration.

Democracy isn't threatened because you like to zip around a spas and I'd prefer to send my kid to a better college.

Democracy is threatened because I barely stand a chance of getting my kid into college at all and without those skills he his marginally employable.

The inequality in provision of government services is a direct result of the inequality in income, and something in the way of a provision that it will stay that way.

Robert Brown wrote, "Is private ownership of land or natural resources a problem in the economy?"

Depends on how you define "problem" and "private ownership".

"Or are you using a metaphor for capital?"

No. The classical liberals/economists knew there were three factors of production: labor, capital, and land. Marxists and modern economists like to pretend land isn't a distinct factor, and often mix it in with capital. But it's not capital.

"It seems to me that many of the extremely wealthy in this country are athletes, entertainers, overpaid CEO’s, trial lawyers, currency speculators, ect.; which have nothing to do with 'land ownership'. I am confused."

Just because not all people gain wealth via land ownership doesn't mean that it's not true that much wealth has been gained by land ownership.

Fasteddie, first you wonder WTF democracy has to do with inequality, then you laud progressive taxation, noting that it worked well until lunatics grabbed the reins. So you have answered your own question... Some economic problems, insoluble themselves, are managed by politics, in our system. Reaffirming this next Tuesday before the world, of course, will demonstrate that our system is better than, oh, say, fundamentalist theocracy: because we also find the ways to take care of our poor. Or not: then we lose.

Mr Brown would do well to distinguish, as Chris Rock has, rich from wealthy. Chris Rock is rich, but Steve Forbes is wealthy. CR can smoke all his money away in crack in a year or so, but SF could snort blue flake Peruvian off the asscrack of a teenage Columbian girl until his nose fell off and still have money left. That's wealthy.
In the 1950s, the tax rate on the extremely wealthy was very high, and the money was invested in infrastructure and public health improvements that served all Americans. The wealthy got tired of funding those improvements and have worked to eliminate them even where it causes them harm to service a wealth theology better known as Mammon worship. The twisted interpretations of Adam Smith's writings are pretty indicative of a mindset that wishes to return to the glory days of the Gilded Age-which I believe we are well along in that pursuit. Enron? Halliburton? Try Union Pacific in the 1860s, Credit Mobilier, even the Teapot Dome.
When we as a nation should have been working to improve the world and looked to outer space and high technology, the forces of penury, greed and avarice have taken over. It is a hard road to the Golden Age and we are on a detour.

Mr Brown would do well to distinguish, as Chris Rock has, rich from wealthy. Chris Rock is rich, but Steve Forbes is wealthy. CR can smoke all his money away in crack in a year or so, but SF could snort blue flake Peruvian off the asscrack of a teenage Columbian girl until his nose fell off and still have money left. That's wealthy.
In the 1950s, the tax rate on the extremely wealthy was very high, and the money was invested in infrastructure and public health improvements that served all Americans. The wealthy got tired of funding those improvements and have worked to eliminate them even where it causes them harm to service a wealth theology better known as Mammon worship. The twisted interpretations of Adam Smith's writings are pretty indicative of a mindset that wishes to return to the glory days of the Gilded Age-which I believe we are well along in that pursuit. Enron? Halliburton? Try Union Pacific in the 1860s, Credit Mobilier, even the Teapot Dome.
When we as a nation should have been working to improve the world and looked to outer space and high technology, the forces of penury, greed and avarice have taken over. It is a hard road to the Golden Age and we are on a detour.

mortgage leads

One of the important issues of inequality not addressed is related to the first issue of having more than your neighbor. This is the question of mobility. One reason Americans tolerate, as a country, great inequality is because many believe in the possbility that they will one day rise to the higher income groups or the top.

However, studies indicate that America has shown signs of decreasing mobility, and that, in fact, one's income correlates strongly with one's parents. We are less mobile than many other industrialized societies, our mobility is looking more like the UK or South Africa than (gasp!), say, France. The question good liberals like Matt need to ask themselves is whether you think you want to live in an economically limiting society where you have what your parents have, no more or less, or not. Does it undermine the American impulse towards invention and entrepeneuralism when this reality sinks in?

refinance mortgage

You're alive. Do something. The directive in life, the moral imperative was so uncomplicated. It could be expressed in single words, not complete sentences. It sounded like this: Look. Listen. Choose. Act.

8546 Kona Coffee Starbucks Coffee Jamaica Blue Mountain
Coffee
coffee maker gourmet coffee green mountain coffee kenya coffee organic coffee specialty coffee folgers coffee coffee brewers costa rica coffee Tullys Coffee Millstone Coffee coffee grinder http://www.coffee-delivered.com

Gee, and I grew up an old school New York Jewish liberal who worshipped capitalism. Free enterprise was a fetish in our house. The moderating force was that I was taught that capitalism is like fire. There is nothing quite like it for cooking, but that doesn't mean you burn down your house when you get hungry.

Inequality and wealth weren't the problems. Maximizing overall societal well being was more important. It had to do with the integral under the power curve distribution of wealth. You are going to get the power curve no matter what, but if you work at creating thousands of millionaires rather than one or two billionaires, everyone comes out with more. You get a fatter curve, and you get a few billionaires as a bonus.

Of course, there had to be some minimum standards. Hunger, disease, homelessness, ignorance and other ills tend to spill over as crime, pestilence, noisome people urinating in the park, and stupid employees.

My experience is that what goes around comes around. If nothing is going around, it's hard to get something. Rich people are the wolves. They are smarter than the sheep, but no sheep means hungry wolves. Liberal capitalism flows from enlightened self interest.

4986
directv
direct tv directv satellite direct tv satellite directv dvr direct tv dvr direct tv tivo directv tivo directway
direcway
directway internet directway satellite direcway internet direcway internet free hbo free cinemax free dvd player satellite radio http://www.satellitetvboutique.com

directv
direct tv
directv satellite direct tv satellite directv dvr direct tv dvr direct tv tivo directv tivo directway
direcway
directway internet directway satellite direcway internet direcway internet free hbo free cinemax free dvd player satellite radio http://satellite-tv.cjb.net

To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.

There`s a lot to be said for self-delusionment when it comes to matters of the heart.

There`s a lot to be said for self-delusionment when it comes to matters of the heart.

6808 Kona Coffee Starbucks Coffee Jamaica Blue Mountain
Coffee
coffee maker gourmet coffee green mountain coffee kenya coffee organic coffee specialty coffee folgers coffee coffee brewers costa rica coffee Tullys Coffee Millstone Coffee coffee grinder
http://www.coffee-delivered.com

You only get one set of teeth. Take care of them with a good
dental plan.
Dental
insurance is
money well spent. I sleep better since I signed up for my new dental insurance
plan.
Get yours at: http://dental-insurance-plan.freeservers.com/

individual
dental
plans
You only get one set of teeth. Take care of them with a good
dental plan.
Dental
insurance is
money well spent. I sleep better since I signed up for my new
dental insurance
plan.
Get yours at:
http://www.dental-plan-source.com
individual dental
plans
You only get one set of teeth. Take care of them with a good
dental plan.
Dental
insurance is
money well spent. I sleep better since I signed up for my new
dental insurance
plan. Get yours at:
http://www.e-dental-insurance-plans.com/
individual dental
plans