Middle Class: Innocent in Class Warfare

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
Irrelevant, a similar percentage lives in urban areas. Try again.

Hint: it's not gun ownership.

It sounds like you have an answer in mind. Let's see.

Less capitalist influence due to greater wealth distribution?

Even though there's lots of open space in CA, it's all "owned" so you can't use it without somebody kicking you out for trespassing.

From Wiki:

Canada has a diverse makeup of nationalities and cultures and constitutional protection for policies that promote multiculturalism rather than a single national myth.[206][207] In Quebec, cultural identity is strong, and many French-speaking commentators speak of a Quebec culture as distinguished from English Canadian culture,[208] however as a whole Canada is a cultural mosaic — collection of several regional, aboriginal, and ethnic subcultures.[209][210] It is often asserted that Canadian Government policies such as publicly-funded health care, higher taxation to distribute wealth, outlawing capital punishment, strong efforts to eliminate poverty, an emphasis on multiculturalism, imposing strict gun control, leniency in regard to drug use and most recently legalizing same-sex marriage are social indicators of how Canada's political and cultural evolution differ from that of the United States.[211]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
It sounds like you have an answer in mind. Let's see.

Less capitalist influence due to greater wealth distribution?

Even though there's lots of open space in CA, it's all "owned" so you can't use it without somebody kicking you out for trespassing.

Income redistribution. Social mobility.

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
Income redistribution. Social mobility.

OK, I'm with you on that one.

I don't hate capitalism in isolation; if grannies are financing their retirement by collecting rent from a house they bought themselves with their own hard work when they were young, I'm cool with it.

But like I wrote before; inheritance breaks the game. You and I see eye to eye on this more or less I think.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
OK, I'm with you on that one.

I don't hate capitalism in isolation; if grannies are financing their retirement by collecting rent from a house they bought themselves with their own hard work when they were young, I'm cool with it.

But like I wrote before; inheritance breaks the game. You and I see eye to eye on this more or less I think.

I think we do, but I probably take a more pragmatic approach; I'd like to see heavy taxes on inheritance, but there's only so much you can tax before people start mass evading. And in general the super wealthy can find several ways to avoid inheritance taxes (transfering the money through businesses), so you can really only target those you don't really need to target (the upper middle class with say ~100K inheritance).

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
I thought that research that (I think it was no1) was posted a while ago was quite interesting - most Americans think the poor should get a larger % of all wealth (though of course they don't think it should be spread equally), even though their own estimate of how much the poor currently own is several orders of magnitude off!

To recap:

So it might be surprising to learn that Americans are in broad agreement on the need for a more equal distribution of wealth. Yet that's what a forthcoming study by two psychologists, Dan Ariely of Duke University and Michael I. Norton of Harvard Business School, has concluded. First, Ariely and Norton asked thousands of Americans what they thought the nation's actual wealth distribution looks like: how much is owned by the wealthiest 20 percent of the population, the next-wealthiest 20 percent, and on down. The researchers then asked people what, in an ideal world, they would like the nation's wealth distribution to be.

Ariely and Norton found that Americans think they live in a far more equal country than they in fact do. On average, those surveyed estimated that the wealthiest 20percent of Americans own 59 percent of the nation's wealth; in reality the top quintile owns around 84 percent. The respondents further estimated that the poorest 20 percent own 3.7 percent, when in reality they own 0.1percent.

And when asked to give their ideal distribution, they described, on average, a nation where the wealth distribution looks not like the U.S. but like Sweden, only more so—the wealthiest quintile would control just 32 percent of the wealth, the poorest just over 10 percent. "People dramatically underestimated the extent of wealth inequality in the U.S.," says Ariely. "And they wanted it to be even more equal."

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_44/b4201008238184.htm

(Emphasis supplied)

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
I think we do, but I probably take a more pragmatic approach; I'd like to see heavy taxes on inheritance, but there's only so much you can tax before people start mass evading. And in general the super wealthy can find several ways to avoid inheritance taxes (transfering the money through businesses), so you can really only target those you don't really need to target (the upper middle class with say ~100K inheritance).

Tax inheritances as what they are: income. If the wealthy shift their assets into productive businesses than the profits and/or distributions of that business can be taxed.

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
I think we do, but I probably take a more pragmatic approach; I'd like to see heavy taxes on inheritance, but there's only so much you can tax before people start mass evading. And in general the super wealthy can find several ways to avoid inheritance taxes (transfering the money through businesses), so you can really only target those you don't really need to target (the upper middle class with say ~100K inheritance).

These super wealthy need to remember that they can only actually control a tiny fraction of their wealth, and that police may get tired of taking bullets and killing people to protect their interests.

If they want to "transfer their wealth" out of the country via computers, let them. They can't take the land with them. That's a quote from some medieval French knight I think that is wonderfully applicable to this topic.

EDIT

From Wiki, and highly ironic now that I see the context:

Fortifications were an excellent means of ensuring that the elite could not be easily dislodged from their lands - as Count Baldwin of Hainaut commented in 1184 on seeing enemy troops ravage his lands from the safety of his castle, "they can't take the land with them".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_warfare

Originally posted by no1marauder
To recap:

[b]So it might be surprising to learn that Americans are in broad agreement on the need for a more equal distribution of wealth. Yet that's what a forthcoming study by two psychologists, Dan Ariely of Duke University and Michael I. Norton of Harvard Business School, has concluded. First, Ariely and Norton asked thousands ...[text shortened]... ://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_44/b4201008238184.htm

(Emphasis supplied)[/b]

Hmmm, might these results not stem, at least partly, from people's general inability to understand the correlation of numbers with what they actually represent. How can anyone make a judgement of what is fair in "real" terms, when all (s)he's got to go on are a bunch neatly columned figures? Apparantly, even economists got it wrong.

Originally posted by no1marauder
Tax inheritances as what they are: income. If the wealthy shift their assets into productive businesses than the profits and/or distributions of that business can be taxed.

I would prefer they are taxed higher than income.

The problem is that the money of the super-wealthy gets funneled through corporations and not small businesses.

Originally posted by Yorobot
Hmmm, might these results not stem, at least partly, from people's general inability to understand the correlation of numbers with what they actually represent. How can anyone make a judgement of what is fair in "real" terms, when all (s)he's got to go on are a bunch neatly columned figures? Apparantly, even economists got it wrong.

I think these figures stem from man's innate sense of fairness - if you assign a small group of people, say 10 people, a task and give them a reward for doing so collectively, I doubt it will be acceptable to them that one person gets 80% of the reward, even if this person was the most productive of the group - though giving the most productive member 20%, while giving a slacker say 5% might seem fair to them.

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
I think these figures stem from man's innate sense of fairness - if you assign a small group of people, say 10 people, a task and give them a reward for doing so collectively, I doubt it will be acceptable to them that one person gets 80% of the reward, even if this person was the most productive of the group - though giving the most productive member 20%, while giving a slacker say 5% might seem fair to them.

Fairness of outcome depends how many times you do the experiment. If one person does all the work 12 years (an honor student) in a row and other does nothing (cuts school and skate boards all day) I'd guess people would think that the income distribution would be closer to 100% and 0%. To me this is far closer to a model of the real world we live in. People simply don't wake up one morning and develop an income and a skill level. It is based on making decision every single day and so should their rewards.

Originally posted by quackquack
Fairness of outcome depends how many times you do the experiment. If one person does all the work 12 years (an honor student) in a row and other does nothing (cuts school and skate boards all day) I'd guess people would think that the income distribution would be closer to 100% and 0%. To me this is far closer to a model of the real world we live in. ...[text shortened]... d a skill level. It is based on making decision every single day and so should their rewards.

Typical right wing BS; only the rich work hard, so they deserve almost all the benefits of society.

Originally posted by quackquack
Fairness of outcome depends how many times you do the experiment. If one person does all the work 12 years (an honor student) in a row and other does nothing (cuts school and skate boards all day) I'd guess people would think that the income distribution would be closer to 100% and 0%. To me this is far closer to a model of the real world we live in. ...[text shortened]... d a skill level. It is based on making decision every single day and so should their rewards.

People investing in their talents and productive capacity should certainly be rewarded, yes. Unfortunately this requires significant state intervention, as you need affordable education, health care, etc. in order to properly reward the talent and perseverence of those born with humble means, while significantly punishing those who are born in wealth but don't do anything productive. This implies that you can only take punishing the "skateboarders" to a limited degree, because you don't want to deny their children the chance to make something of their lives (that is, if a productive society rather than a vengeful one is your goal).

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
I think these figures stem from man's innate sense of fairness - if you assign a small group of people, say 10 people, a task and give them a reward for doing so collectively, I doubt it will be acceptable to them that one person gets 80% of the reward, even if this person was the most productive of the group - though giving the most productive member 20%, while giving a slacker say 5% might seem fair to them.

That seems right, although I'm not sure this would stem from an "innate sense of fairness." I think people want what's best for themselves, in terms of acquisition/reward, and in those terms more is better.

You present an experimental setup, while the testsubjects from the survey, I assume, would not first have been subjected to such an experiment.
All they had to go on were the numbers.