The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

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BRUTE
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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by BRUTE »

ThisDinosaur wrote:
Wed May 23, 2018 11:27 am
I'm saying that I value
(1) the right of individuals to have equal opportunity for economic advancement based only on their own accomplishments

above
(2)the right of parents to buy, as a gift for their kids, a head start in a footrace or
(3) the right of free people to buy or sell tutoring related services.
just to clarify, because brute is somewhat stumped by this: ThisDinosaur favors the legal expropriation of parents or banning them from buying services to help their children, all so that poor children will have the same grades?

this is pretty much communism. brute is absolutely against this. it will lead to bad education for all human children. if that's fairness, brute isn't for it.

but luckily, brute thinks, this isn't even the real problem.

the current education system is fucked up. rich humans are just able to buy more help, but they're not the villains. the villain is the system, and the system needs to be fixed. banning tutoring because poor children can't afford it is absurd. what about allowing the market to provide cheaper tutoring for poor children? what about removing the government quasi-monopoly on schools? what about removing the distorting effects of schools and colleges being subsidized by the government? in brute's opinion, these are the reasons education is so fucked up, so bad, and so expensive.

ThisDinosaur
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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by ThisDinosaur »

BRUTE wrote:
Wed May 23, 2018 8:14 pm
this is pretty much communism.
Disagree. Communism is class warfare and state ownership of property. I'm proposing a solution to class warfare via increased social mobility. And I don't consider something a bad idea because it is too much or too little like a particular ideology.

But, before I disagree with you too much, I should tell you I have the same concerns as you do with the "no private schools" idea. No idea is perfect and no solution is appropriate for all situations. Sometimes an impoverished socialist state needs more capitalism, and sometimes an anarcho-capitalist economy needs more state regulation. You push in the direction of improvement at low hanging leverage points.
BRUTE wrote:
Wed May 23, 2018 8:14 pm
the villain is the system, and the system needs to be fixed.
Agreed. But what specific fixes? I don't see how your suggestion to leave it up to the free market does anything but worsen the Aristocracy/class warfare problem.

BRUTE
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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by BRUTE »

brute believes that the current crisis in education is completely fabricated by government interventions - public schools, for example, or subsidizing useless college degrees. just removing these distortions would probably solve 75% of the problems. (former public) schools would have to improve or go out of business, and humans would only go to college if it actually made sense to them. the cost of education would drop drastically while the quality would improve.

ThisDinosaur
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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by ThisDinosaur »

@brute
I'm on board with most of that. Telling everyone they need to go to college, (on subsidized loans, at any cost) leads to a lot of wasted time and useless knowledge. However, the highest paid professions will still be specialists, requiring specialized education. There will be competition for these spots. And the problem I'm addressing is how to minimize the effect of parental wealth on the outcome of that competition.

Campitor
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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by Campitor »

ThisDinosaur wrote:
Wed May 23, 2018 11:27 am
I'm saying that I value (1) the right of individuals to have equal opportunity for economic advancement based only on their own accomplishments above(2)the right of parents to buy, as a gift for their kids, a head start in a footrace or (3) the right of free people to buy or sell tutoring related services.

I'm sympathetic to 2 and 3, but I still think 1 outranks them. Partly due to my personal opinion about fairness, but also because I think it's a better way to optimize the resource of human productivity. The best man for the job will build more widgets at a lower cost than the nepotism guy.

Major flaws in my argument include, what if state run schools are super awful, and private education is the only hope for the next generation? That's not impossible, but I don't think we're at that point currently. There would be a hypothetical balance between how bad schools could get before the inefficient allocation of good education to rich underachievers is the preferred option.
State schools segregate the smart students from the average/poor student. The best students get the best teachers and resources; the average students are destined to mediocrity because their classes are filled with aggressive and disruptive students. Good students get funneled to honor classes or state exam schools. And most school districts are looking for success stories. Its in their best interest to make sure the best students get the best grades to avoid being labeled as a underperforming school district; in public school their is no equal distribution of resources.

And how do you propose to stop (2) and (3)? Are government agents going to be snooping around everyone's home to see if any advanced tutors are lurking about? We can't even stop illegal immigrants from crossing into the USA and somehow we're going to police every home above an income threshold for tutors? That would require a Stasi like enforcement. And how about teachers and professors who tutor their own children? Will that be illegal too? If you're truly looking to promote (1), wouldn't the students who takes extra tutoring (paid for or not) be worthy of opportunity because they have put in the work? It's not like the tutor is uploading information a la The Matrix.

And isn't every student standing on the shoulders of their predecessors? Where do you draw the line? Should the student with 2 parent be punished because he/she competes with a student from a 1 parent home? How about the student who can't speak english, just arrived in the USA, and has no education because he/she came from a place with no schools? How do your propose to handicap students born here with none of those setbacks? Your solution is just a race to the bottom because to guarantee equal opportunity based only on the student's own accomplishments (zero in the case of the illiterate/uneducated) you would need to handicap everyone who has an advantage over the worst student. You would be leveling the field to the lowest denominator.

No system is immune from the incentives it creates nor is any system ever been designed that prevents a disparity of outcome - equality has never existed in any system or population nor will it ever exist. There will always be someone who is smarter or better at utilizing or aggregating resources regardless if its financial, social, or educational capital.

@ jacob

I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I've already mentioned in other threads how poor I was growing up in the USA as Latin American immigrant. Through my own hard work, frugality, and determination I've made it into upper echelons of compensation. So now that I've become successful, I can't turn around and help my children achieve success by tutoring them or sending them to better schools? Life, if you're a good parent, is assuring your descendants live as well or better than oneself; and to teach them frugality and the power of compounded interest ;) . The author of the article we're discussing seems to have issues with parents wanting to bestow the best opportunities to their progeny. Where would we be as a species if that had been the mindset since day 1 of homo sapiens?

BRUTE
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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by BRUTE »

maybe there could be camps to help all the students... concentrate?

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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by Kriegsspiel »

What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it his heaven.
- Hölderlin

ThisDinosaur
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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by ThisDinosaur »

BRUTE wrote:
Thu May 24, 2018 1:31 am
maybe there could be camps to help all the students... concentrate?
Yeah. You know who ELSE liked to educate children? THE N@2!s !
ThisDinosaur wrote:
Wed May 23, 2018 9:38 pm
I don't consider something a bad idea because it is too much or too little like a particular ideology.
@Campitor
All good points. If this actually came up as a bill, I'm not sure how strongly I'd support/oppose it because I'm ambivalent. I thought it was a good idea when I found out that's how they do it in Finland. (It's illegal to open a school and charge tuition. Result : poor and rich children go to school together and rich parents are incentivized to advocate for public school quality.) And Finland is said to have better education and more social mobility than the U.S.

Every action has costs and benefits. Including Inaction. You're describing a slippery slope toward more authoritarianism. But we are *already on* a slippery slope to more authoritarianism. We are at a point at the top of the hill where we can stop the slide from Aristocracy to de facto oligarchy. The idea to ban private schools is just one shitty idea that, I happen to think, is better than the shittier idea *actual communism* in the form of wealth redistribution.

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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by jacob »

Campitor wrote:
Wed May 23, 2018 10:40 pm
The author of the article we're discussing seems to have issues with parents wanting to bestow the best opportunities to their progeny. Where would we be as a species if that had been the mindset since day 1 of homo sapiens?
Extinct perhaps?

Imagine a team of hunters coming back and the best hunter declaring that he will only share or reserve the best part of the meat with his own offspring because he's the best hunter and he worked hard for that kill. He'd be booted out of the tribe in short order along with his family. Then they'd die because no one survives long in the wilderness alone. The "social/tribal instinct" (I don't know what the technical term is) is therefore genetic.

This whole discussion basically comes down to where responsibility for educating (which I mean in the broadest sense and not just hiring a tutor for advanced algebra) the next generation stops.

Does it stop at the family level or does it stop at the tribal level? (Or the county as is the case in the US or the national level?)

The US is very individualistic---note how often the phrase "you and your family" enter everyday language---and this is why we're having this discussion in the first place. The issue is not in preventing rich parents from helping their rich children (going around and looking for "illegal tutors"). The issue is that poor children don't get help. Since culture and education (ditto health) does transfer (which the social mobility index is a finite number between 0 and 1), this mathematically creates socioeconomic strata.

If you only look at "you and your family", then it's understandable that you want to be as high in the strata as possible. However, this ignores the effect that the existence of those strata will have on you. It also ignores the effect that those strata are created as an emergent behavior from millions of other families who are looking out for number one. I'm not sure people realize that's what they're doing when they want the best for their own child (as opposed to the neighbor's child) and that they have thought through the consequences.

If we create a chronic poverty class, we will probably have to increase the number of gated communities as a consequence. You see more of those in Brazil et. al. where Gini indexes are higher. The rich people essentially live within those gates and the corridors that connect them. Chicago has a bit of it too. There are no gates, but there are certainly places people don't go. Freedom is given up for safety. This consequence does not appear in countries where the tendency to look out for other children in the tribe than one's own.

A similar dynamic is observed in the health care system. Like with education, the US system is not exactly leading the world here. Up until the 1910s-20s, epidemics still ran through New York city. Before it was realized how epidemics work, it was believed that each person was responsible for paying for their own health. However, it was eventually realized that vira and bacteria didn't care if they infected a rich person or a poor person and that therefore it might actually be in the best interest of the rich class to "invest" in a functional sewerage system along with clean water, lest they catch something from people who nearby but couldn't afford a sufficient level of sanitary services.

So that's why sewerage is essentially a public service now. It can't be a private service because infectious diseases, which are public, don't care about who they infect.

The question here is to which degree a country wants a permanent professional class as a thing in the sense that most people enter it by birth although there are openings for the [rare] talented/hardworking individual from the working class. (Similar to how commoners could in principle be knighted if they displayed rare valor.) That is the question because that is the outcome resulting from how the system is currently organized. I dunno if it can be changed. We certainly don't seem to be able to change the health care system. Obviously there's also the issue of whether there's a desire to change it. It seems that the majority opinion in this thread is that there's no desire. I would therefore predict that the stratification will continue to increase.

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jennypenny
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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by jennypenny »

I haven't really thought this out, so bear with me ...

If IQ distribution is a bell curve, then one could assume that in an ideal situation, available and appropriate occupations would also follow that same curve as would income levels for those occupations. The bulk in the middle of the curve would have satisfying work that paid enough to support families. The higher end would make more and therefore some form of government instituted redistribution would be needed to move enough from the high end to the low end to keep those at the bottom afloat. (I'm not talking 70% tax rates, but things like eliminating the cap on FICA and moderately higher income taxes.)

The problem I see is that we used to have that kind of distribution ... service jobs at the near end, executives and professionals at the far end, and most jobs falling in the middle. That middle section -- including manufacturing jobs, Dilbert level middle management, trades-based jobs, 'mom and pop' type local businesses -- is disappearing pushing most jobs downward into the lower-paying service sector and pushing a few jobs upward that employ some members of the 9.9% who may be benefiting from circumstance more than capability.

I don't think evening the playing field wrt circumstance changes the bell curve I referenced (it mostly helps people fall where they should on the bell curve). What's needed is a place for everyone ... if most people fall in the middle somewhere then so should most occupations. Right now they don't, so you end up with a few people over-employed, if you will, and too many people under-employed. I'm not arguing that we shouldn't educate people or provide social services where needed. I'm only suggesting that the loss of jobs in the middle of the curve combined with the push to get as many people to attend college as possible is only making the situation worse, leaving more people under-employed and, sadly, heavily in debt.

That's why I wonder if the new entrepreneur movement will help to fill in the middle of the curve again and why I think changing how we educate kids -- more entrepreneurial/less factory-like -- will help younger people create their own situations that are appropriate and fulfilling for them instead of relying on others to create suitable jobs for them. I don't think there's any point in fixing the current educational system by aggressive desegregation or changing how schools are funded; the structure itself is antiquated and in desperate need of overhaul.

One caveat to all of this is the declining health of people in general (HQ?). Some people are moving to the left of the curve because of physical limitations, not intellectual ones. I'm not sure how to factor that in, except that (in the US) the cost of healthcare provides another barrier to entry to the 9.9% like real estate taxes.

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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by jacob »

@jp - http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/occupations.aspx ...

If you plotted the mean (the 50% percentile), there's certainly a notable difference between occupations. An MD is around 120 and a truck driver is around 93. However, the ranges are rather large. MDs go from 105 and all the way up. Lawyers from 98 and all the way up. FIRE (as in finance, insurance, real estate) goes below 90 but up 125. Thus, for example, the smarter truckers are smarter than the dumber accountants.

There's thus plenty of room in the occupational space for donating a few million bucks to get one's idiot child into Harvard et al. for an MBA and then employ the child in the family business. There are very few occupations that has a "must be this smart to play" cut-off.

On top of this, the world's IQ is slowly drifting down. The Flynn effect ("education") is no longer able to compensate for the genetic decay (the Idiocracy effect). A few points may not seem like a lot, however, what's important is that it significantly decreases the probability of outliers or the number of people who can do difficult stuff like calculus or thinking in systems (kinda like how a few degrees of global warming doesn't seem like a lot until one realizes what a slight shift of the curve does to the frequency of heat waves, etc.).

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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by prognastat »

Though I agree some things is education are a distortion such as the push for everyone to get a degree leading to many people taking on massive debt and ending up with no degree because they weren't able to complete their degree and having nothing to show for it or ending up going for something that doesn't have the high cognitive requirement required by careers that would historically have required a degree and ending up with a near useless degree and massive debt instead and working in a low wage job without being able to pay of the debt they took on. I don't think there is much of a question as to what happens when government doesn't involve itself with education at all though.

When we take a look at what happened before government started involving itself. The rich/aristocracy sent their kids to school and the poor's kids were sent to work at low wages. Due to this I doubt taking government out of the equation completely will resolve the issues and will just cause completely different issues down the line.

It also depends a lot on what you value. One may say it's fair for parents to be able to spend money to help their children. However one might also say a child getting a leg up not due to their own skill/ability while other children with better abilities don't is unfair. I personally feel that the money should be spent efficiently and as such I don't believe every student should get exactly the same as not every student will be able to take full advantage of everything offered, nor do I believe this should be decided by the wealth of the parents.

I would say the first step in this would be not having school funding based on the local taxes. I would say this would be a much better step in reducing this than trying to make sure no one can tutor their children.

In my opinion the government should also be doing more to financially support those with the proven ability to complete degrees in fields that we have a high need for that aren't able to afford it and less in supporting those wanting to pursue degrees with little to no use for society. If taxes are going to be spent on something it should be something that helps improve society.

I would prefer more spent on equaling opportunities for children and less spending on equalising the outcomes in adults.

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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by Campitor »

jacob wrote:
Thu May 24, 2018 8:27 am
Imagine a team of hunters coming back and the best hunter declaring that he will only share or reserve the best part of the meat with his own offspring because he's the best hunter and he worked hard for that kill. He'd be booted out of the tribe in short order along with his family. Then they'd die because no one survives long in the wilderness alone. The "social/tribal instinct" (I don't know what the technical term is) is therefore genetic.
I want to pass my skills on to my son so he can be a better hunter. Being a better hunter allows him to not only feed himself but his tribe and potentially attract a mate; I subscribe to Enlightened Self Interest. My sons betterment, through my direct tutelage, will help the tribe which helps himself. The model that the author, and thisDinosaur, proposes would keep me from teaching my son how to be a better hunter which would deprive the tribe; you and tD assume that a better hunter will emerge from the crowd and step up - maybe or maybe not. My method increases the probability of a good hunter emerging to help the tribe - your's does not.

Me teaching my son to be a better hunter in no way stops someone else's child from being a better hunter. It's my love, concern, and caring that drives me to help my son and daughter to have the best and most diverse tools to help them make a better life for themselves which helps them make a better life for others. And we naively assume that the 9% isn't trying to help those in need. My wife and I tutored a young fellow immigrant boy (Latin American) who was failing. With our help he was able to better his grades. He later became a certified graduate. I've volunteered my carpentry skills to fix up homes for those without the means to do so. I personally know many in the 9% who have made similar donations of time and direct effort to help those who are disadvantaged. The problem is that we don't go around announcing what we do to make the world applaud us - we are just trying to make the world a better place.

The disparity arises from the freedom of choices. I recognize that there are many people who are poor through no fault of their own; these are the people I have and do help. But there are many lazy people out there who don't value hard work or education and act accordingly - I've encountered many of them.

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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by jacob »

@Campitor - I suppose the argument is about how enlightened the self-interest is. The point I'm failing to convey is that what looks enlightened at the first order becomes less enlightened when considering second-order effects.

If you only pass the skills to your own son, then you end up with a guild system. The tribe/village only benefits indirectly (that is, from the work of the guild) and the efficiency is directly reduced by withholding skills from other children who might become better hunters than your son because they're more talented or he is less interested or whatever.

So insofar you teach your hunting skills according to lineage rather than talent, your method decreases the probability of a good hunter. Instead of teaching the most qualified, you're teaching your son who may or may not be the most qualified.

Therein lies the cost to society and that's why it's frowned upon.

You can make the same argument with meat or money and it works the same way. You can argue that you reserve all the meat you hunt for yourself and your son thereby increasing the odds of his survival. Then you can argue that him growing up strong helps the tribe and that it's therefore a good idea. However, what's ignored is that food your son eats doesn't go to someone who might need it more and thus this choice results other tribe members dying of malnutrition.

(Of course we all do exactly that every time we spend $10 on ice cream dessert instead of sending it to Burundi where that amount could feed 10 people for a day. The reason we don't is they're far away and not part of our tribe. If they were and lived nearby, we'd better start building walls. So that's what we're doing. If this 9.9% becomes a real thing, then those walls will have to be built a lot closer, e.g. gated communities or gated cities).)

That's the reason why there are strong social sanctions on sharing in tribes or places like life boats. It's also why the guild system is broken up or why there are antitrust laws.

Of course there's also some respect for the individual which means that people don't take those arguments to the extreme collectivist conclusion. However, taking them to the extreme individualist conclusion also ignores problem causing dynamics (such as starvation or teaching the non-talented in the examples above). The reason why we have this 9.9% aristocracy problem is that we have ignored this dynamic (second order effects) because of the strong belief that the individual reigns supreme. Lets just hope that the 90% don't kick us out of the tribe, because historically this has been ugly.

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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by BRUTE »

jacob wrote:
Thu May 24, 2018 8:27 am
The US is very individualistic---note how often the phrase "you and your family" enter everyday language---and this is why we're having this discussion in the first place. The issue is not in preventing rich parents from helping their rich children (going around and looking for "illegal tutors"). The issue is that poor children don't get help. Since culture and education (ditto health) does transfer (which the social mobility index is a finite number between 0 and 1), this mathematically creates socioeconomic strata.
very good. brute has several thoughts on this.


1.the "tribe to cover" is much smaller in Finland or Denmark than it is in the US, and it's much more homogenous. that means it's much easier to solve these problems. just like apparently global warming, brute believes these network effects to grow exponentially: it's more than 2x as difficult to maintain a property among a tribe 2x the size. US, Brazil, India, China, Indonesia.. brute would say that out of all the "bigger countries", the US and China are the only ones to have solved this, and isn't convinced the Chinese solution (overt top-down totalitarianism) is better.

being a small, homogenous country is playing on easy mode: the solutions don't need to be good to work. Finland could probably elect a horse and still guarantee good education.

the flip side is, brute isn't convinced that there is a solution for the big countries - maybe the problem is just impossible to solve, and it's more a question of slowing the decline or collapse.

maybe some dividing and conquering is in order? according to brute's theory, it would be easier to manage the 50 states individually than to manage the whole US. this is why brute supports secession and federalism (and yes, states' rights).


2.the success of a solution (like supporting poor children/banning rich children from using tutors) depends a lot on what type of game is being played - zero sum or not? unfortunately, the rules of the game aren't stated clearly anywhere, so many participants can be playing different games while still interacting with each other, often assuming the other participants to be playing in the same game.

brute's simple heuristic is:

positive-sum game => help the poor (i.e. making a bigger pie). all humans get to be winners!
zero-sum game => attempt to convert to positive-sum game, because the alternative is a race to the bottom, class warfare, fracturing of society. to win, humans have to throw other humans off the ladder.

of course it's rarely a binary thing in reality, but brute is convinced that education in the US is way too zero-sum for its own good. this is where the whole 9.9%-guilt thing comes from, and the willingness of humans to suggest banning tutors (frankly, in brute's opinion, an absurdly totalitarian idea).

so how does one transform zero-sum games into positive-sum games? brute has actually been thinking about this for years, but isn't sure he knows a general formula.

here are some ideas for education specifically:

trades
- there are many unemployed/underemployed humans, yet there are millions of job openings e.g. in skilled trades
- the gap between these 2 circles consists mainly of trade skills and geography
- trade skills are skills and require investment of time and money, but are not innately impossible for most humans (not affected much by the IQ argument)
- the geographical gap is due to humans being emotionally attached to their place of living, because of imperfect knowledge ("the same job pays 2x as much in North Dakota"), and to a degree because humans don't value money over everything else.
- the reason for the trade skill gap, in brute's opinion, is mostly cultural and imperfect knowledge (which is part of the culture). blue collar jobs have a bad image, and many humans literally don't know that their plumber makes way more than they do.

college
- there is also a large negative gap (oversupply?) between college jobs and college grads. this has led to an extreme zero-sum game, the aforementioned "requires college degree and ability to lift 25lbs" situation, where human children now go tens of thousands of dollars into debt to work as a barista.
- brute thinks that government subsidy of college has done a lot of damage here, but so has the "college for all humans!" culture. it's not that not all humans deserve college, it's that college isn't a good investment for most jobs. trade schools would serve many humans much better.

so in brute's opinion, it's largely a cultural issue plus some deregulation. brute thinks it's pretty easy to deregulate in principle, but has no idea how to change culture.

in other news, brute just realized that he likes pareto improvements. he's very opposed to banning rich parents from tutoring, but is all for helping out poor parents or children - probably because that doesn't necessarily affect any humans negatively, thus being a pareto improvement. notably, brute would include raising taxes in "hurting others", so raising taxes to help the poor is not a pareto improvement.


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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by jennypenny »

Before I read that article I was reading about Amazon's opposition to Seattle's head tax. I kept thinking that Bezos is worth over $100 billion. Why doesn't he take a billion of that and fix Seattle's homeless problem? Would he miss it (the money)? It would solve a significant problem and also help other (smaller) Seattle businesses by eliminating the need for a head tax.

I don't understand how some people (inc. here) idolize people like Buffett and Bezos but then criticize the '9.9%' for trying to make sure their kids attain a similar standard of living. Isn't that a typical desire for a parent -- for their children to live as good a life as they did if not better? I don't think that feeling is confined to any culture or socioeconomic group. And what about those parents who worked hard to get themselves into that group? How are they part of any problem?

I'm usually not a tax-the-rich-to-death person, but IMO no one needs that much money. If the top twenty billionaires contributed a large percentage of their wealth to Social Security, it would be solvent again. That would help to protect the welfare of millions while still leaving them billions each to invest. Seems like a reasonable price to pay to avoid the march to the scaffold.

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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by prognastat »

BRUTE wrote:
Thu May 24, 2018 2:47 pm
maybe some dividing and conquering is in order? according to brute's theory, it would be easier to manage the 50 states individually than to manage the whole US. this is why brute supports secession and federalism (and yes, states' rights).
I would agree with a decent bit of this. At least in the sense that there are problems with laws governing such a diverse population and topography. You run into the problem that one law doesn't work across the board. An example would be those advocating for a minimum wage being a living wage which I believe isn't unreasonable per se, however if you were to set a minimum wage for the whole of the US it is either not going to be a living wage in some cities or it is going to be way more than a living wage in some locations. There is no way to set one amount for everywhere in the US as the cost of living can very so much. Similar would go for allocating funds for schools in locations with vastly different cost of living.

To counter this shifting from a top down focus to a bottom up focus in politics would be necessary where the largest amount of government is actually the most local. So City > State > Country.

I also feel this could actually reduce the power of lobbying some too as lobbying a handful of politicians with a large amount of influence over all of the US is much easier than lobbying thousands of them each with mostly local influence.
BRUTE wrote:
Thu May 24, 2018 2:47 pm
trades
- there are many unemployed/underemployed humans, yet there are millions of job openings e.g. in skilled trades
- the gap between these 2 circles consists mainly of trade skills and geography
- trade skills are skills and require investment of time and money, but are not innately impossible for most humans (not affected much by the IQ argument)
- the geographical gap is due to humans being emotionally attached to their place of living, because of imperfect knowledge ("the same job pays 2x as much in North Dakota"), and to a degree because humans don't value money over everything else.
- the reason for the trade skill gap, in brute's opinion, is mostly cultural and imperfect knowledge (which is part of the culture). blue collar jobs have a bad image, and many humans literally don't know that their plumber makes way more than they do.

college
- there is also a large negative gap (oversupply?) between college jobs and college grads. this has led to an extreme zero-sum game, the aforementioned "requires college degree and ability to lift 25lbs" situation, where human children now go tens of thousands of dollars into debt to work as a barista.
- brute thinks that government subsidy of college has done a lot of damage here, but so has the "college for all humans!" culture. it's not that not all humans deserve college, it's that college isn't a good investment for most jobs. trade schools would serve many humans much better.

so in brute's opinion, it's largely a cultural issue plus some deregulation. brute thinks it's pretty easy to deregulate in principle, but has no idea how to change culture.
It's an unfortunate situation and one that I believe is going to be very hard to change. No parent likes to think their kid isn't smart/capable enough to pursue college and I'm sure the kids wouldn't be thrilled about being told this. No college wants a drop in enrolment. Businesses that hire college grads want there to be more competition not less as this will lower wages for those jobs which saves them money. Few politician want to piss off students, parents, colleges and business. Doing so leaves them without donations for their next election from business and without the votes from a large swath of the public.
BRUTE wrote:
Thu May 24, 2018 2:47 pm
in other news, brute just realized that he likes pareto improvements. he's very opposed to banning rich parents from tutoring, but is all for helping out poor parents or children - probably because that doesn't necessarily affect any humans negatively, thus being a pareto improvement. notably, brute would include raising taxes in "hurting others", so raising taxes to help the poor is not a pareto improvement.
I do disagree that we want aim for society to conform as much as possible with a Pareto distribution as that leaves the largest group of people at 0. People with nothing to lose do crazy things. In my opinion having too much inequality leads to revolt and having too little leads to stagnation. We need the right balance where there is enough for those at the bottom to be content enough while still having enough opportunity to motivate people that are willing and able to strive for the top.
Last edited by prognastat on Thu May 24, 2018 5:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

jacob
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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by jacob »

@brute - Here's another idea: (TD suggested it above.)

Allocate students randomly to school districts. This will ensure that all parents (rich and poor) have an equal stake in a given school. (This is essentially the ex-US solution. You have very little choice in which school you get to go to.) This should certainly increase the size of the pie that is the random school.

Of course this does not have a solution that goes from A to B. Rich people would bolt and pull their kids out and send them to private schools ASAP as public schools are still far below standard. You do have private schools in Scandinavian countries as well but the quality-gap between public and private is smaller.

What's missing from all this is people realizing that their innocent and well-intended decisions to focus mostly on what's best for their own children has unintended consequences such as increasing class-based risk in the society that their own children will eventually grow up in. It's almost "Upton Sinclair"-like in how deep it goes: It's difficult to get the people in a society to understand something when the values of society depends on not understanding it. That's essentially the cultural problem and I don't know how to fix that either.

The thing is, the biggest strength of the US---the freedom of the individual and the dream that one can raise a family and live the American Dream---is also its biggest weakness. It worked well when there was enough land, resources, and opportunities for everybody. However, now there are so many people trying to eat that pie, that people are beginning to compete against each other. That's the essence of the problem here. If you're spending money on SAT training from grade 7 onwards, you're not trying to make your child any smarter in any capacity whatsoever. You're spending money to get a leg up on the competition. Since we're approaching the limits the "exponential growth" values of freedom are beginning to run into boundary conditions... hence the biggest strength becomes the biggest weakness.

In other countries, you'll rarely hear "you and your family" as a construct for everything from buying a car, preparing for retirement, getting your vaccinations, ... the phrase you'll hear is "you and society". That's an entirely different framework. It's very hard to see both at the same time or even see the other if one is steeped in one's own.

In any case, the situation appears somewhat deadlocked with no solutions in sight. This makes the outcome somewhat more predictable.

prognastat
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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

Post by prognastat »

jacob wrote:
Thu May 24, 2018 5:16 pm
Of course this does not have a solution that goes from A to B. Rich people would bolt and pull their kids out and send them to private schools ASAP as public schools are still far below standard. You do have private schools in Scandinavian countries as well but the quality-gap between public and private is smaller.
There could be a middle ground in that if you set up such a system they would pull their kids out of public schools and send them to private schools, however as long as the government doesn't subsidise this, by financially supporting this the taxes they pay for the schools would still be going to the schools and since they pulled their kids out and are instead paying extra for a premium education that leaves a higher amount per student still in the public school. This way they are still purchasing a leg up for their kids, but the public school system also has more available for the remaining students whose parents can't afford to send them to private school.

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