Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

There's an implicit assumption here that inequality is driven by globalization. It's possible, but it's also possible that absent globalization you would see inequality. On that question, it seems like Piketty is the place to start, and this is not adding a whole lot.

Relatedly, there's the question of what, if anything, counters inequality. I know that you've given up on politics, but that seems premature to me. It's not clear to me why conflict would reduce inequality. You can easily imagine the opposite to be true.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Totally! I think about him withdrawing from the Paris Accord and I am all like LOL, ROTFLMAO, STFU!!!!! And why did Kushner want a secret line of communication with Putin??? WE DON'T KNOW!!! *giggle* :D He won't tell and if compelled, he'll just lie!!! Joke's on us, it looks like! *snicker* :rolleyes:

Here is Matata from Kenya doing a pretty good JB imitation. The Daily Dose is "I Feel Funky":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbCuQwnbUpM

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Automation panic in 1958, via Tyler Cowen.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Inequality in the world in general is down (cf. Hans Rosling).

No one has still addressed my point that incomes across all quartiles have been either steady or rising, so how do we know the "new" jobs are worse than the "old" jobs? I understand they're different, but I don't think they're all at McDonalds, because they seem to pay about the same as before (not speaking here to nontaxable benefits).

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Listen, algorithm, as a replaceable factotem, you don't fucking need to know about what your betters might have had in mind. Paris accord? Paris is an ISIS hotbed. I don't d'accord anything about it. And why do you keep bad mouthing the only hebrew in a position of power in the admin?

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I mean, right? Sebby and I look at the same facts - development spreading across the world - and he sees doom while I see mostly positive change, with industrialization raising the world's poorest into the world's middle class. And joining the ranks of the world's consumers.

Sure, maybe that has a damping effect on further growing the prosperity of the middle of the world's richest groups (i.e., American and European middle classes) but the answers there seem like they should be primarily domestic - greater redistribution of the resources accumulated by the very top.

And in the global world, that may requires greater, not less, cross-border regulatory and tax convergence.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

It's a little too easy to say that this sort of thing gets you President Trump, but I'll just say it: This sort of thing gets you President Trump.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

That was so easy!

But no, it's not doing anything about it that gets your Trump.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Inequality in developed economies is driven in considerable part by globalization and tech. The superfluous are wedded out of the system and fall down the ladder. The young and able retrain; the old fade away. The wage costs eliminated funnel up to the very top and investors.

You're absolutely right that Piketty's entrenched wealth (that's a simplification, but unpacking his theories in their entirety would take fifty posts) concept is also a huge driver of inequality. I believe that it works hand in hand with globalization and tech and enables even more extreme inequality than either of those forces would unleash on their own. Those with wealth are the investors I described above. They soak up the savings corporations enjoy by cost-cutting labor via globalization and tech.

Even further increasing inequality is Fed policy and a tax code favoring investors over labor. The low rate environment simply propped up the market and real estate. People who already had assets and corporations saw a recovery. But instead of it trickling down to the little guy in reinvestment in operations and business expansion (read jobs), it turned into buybacks and speculation (abroad and here).*

Balkanization, and perhaps war, check inequality in developed nations while making it worse in non-developed ones. That is true. People who favor those policies are just a different variant of the people who insist everything is peachy and the status quo should be preserved at all cost. Trump, Putin, Erdogan, at al. merely want to freeze everything and hold their power. And yes, this would lead to extreme inequality within their countries/spheres of influence, as we can see from Russia.

We're facing extreme inequality in any circumstance. And you are correct -- policy will have to be implemented to fix it. But what policies can be put in place when corporations and other multinational actors have more power than the states? Universal Basic Income is probably a necessity, but this is politically near impossible.

This is a long way of saying, you're right -- the forces Piketty cites are a big part of it. But they're not alternative to the forces noted in the article I cited. They're all working in concert to accelerate inequality.
_______
*John Stewart still had the best fix for the 2008 crisis: Give the bailout money to Joe Sixpack and let him use it to pay off his debts. That would free up dollars for consumption and act as real pump priming. See Nick Hanauer on the very true argument that all growth starts with consumption at the bottom, rather than saving the asses of the already affluent at the top.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I'm going to stop you right there for a moment. I said, "There's an implicit assumption here that inequality is driven by globalization. It's possible, but it's also possible that absent globalization you would see inequality." You're not adding anything -- you're just making explicit what was previously implicit, an assumption that globalization drives inequality. (Does it? It certainly creates winners and losers, but absent globalization maybe you would just see different winners and losers. Does globalization drive more inequality than the alternative?)

Ah, and you added "tech" as a cause of inequality. Doesn't that undercut the whole argument? "Tech" is short for "technology," which is short for "the fact that technology is constantly getting better, just as it did five years ago, fifteen years ago, fifty years ago, and almost all of human history and pre-history, except for a few isolated instances like when Japan gave up firearms, the Dark Ages fell and we forgot some Roman stuff, and that time when the glaciers advanced over Northern Europe and everybody ran to the south of France." If "tech" is the cause of inequality, then that article adds nothing, because inequality would be increasing no matter what we did, unless glaciers, but the globe is warming, not cooling.

I believe Marx noticed this. Or Shakespeare. Anyway, prior thinkers, dead now.

OK, so we now have many, many causes of inequality on the table, so many in fat that it's a little hard to tell what the argument is. Maybe there isn't one anymore?

1) Balkanization happens in south Central Europe, not in developed nations.
2) Why do you think "Balkanization" checks inequality in developed nations, whatever that means?
3) Why do you think "Balkanization" makes inequality worse in non-developed nations?
4) People who preserve the status quo make inequality extreme, which sounds like a change. Do they understand this? The Law of Unintended Consequences?
5) Do you think about what you're typing as you type it, or do you just let your fingers do the walking?

The word "extreme" doesn't really add much if we see it all the time. But now I think your argument is, things are fucked pretty much no matter what happens. Which is grim, although it could be worse (glaciers).

This is rather far afield of that article you linked, isn't it?

All of this reminds me of a Superfund site, both in that we're talking about a toxic mess, and in that when every party that ever had anything to do with the site is jointly and severally liable for the whole thing, it's impossible to clean up. Maybe what we need to do is to be a little more focused and critical about the problem we want to solve.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Citizens of nations do not live in The World. They live in their countries. Try the argument, "But your loss, Joe Sixpack, is at tremendous gain to a laborer in Bangladesh!" See how far that gets you.

And when they take your job and mine - and they will, as neither of us is doing anything that cannot be replaced by tech - will you be a citizen of the world?

Tax the top at 100% and two things will occur:

1. They will leave;
2. You'll pay for one yer of debt service.

Additionally, we are talking about politics. Politics is national.

Finally, I do not see doom and gloom. I see what I see. Personally, I think volatility is a great thing. If doubt of official narratives creates more of it, good. People should be more skeptical. Look to all the problems of the world and you'll find one common theme: Herding.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

What does this even mean? Like, how is labor helped by higher rates? Or harmed by lower rates?

Which is why employment is returning to normalish levels.

Pick any corporation. Ask it's leadership whether it thinks it's more powerful than any of the various states that regulate it. Even do it under the cover of attorney-client privilege. You won't get a "yes."*

*Okay, there's probably a megalomaniac or two (looking at you, Mr. Ellison) who would say that but be wrong.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Actually, there's a significant long-term positive effect on the development of the world economy in this way. It has become harder and harder to offshore to low wage jurisdictions because -- surprise! -- wages rise after this happens and the local population gets the skill set to compete globally. The walmart commodification folks are now finding labor costs in core Chinese cities, India, Mexico, and even places like Vietnam to be too high for them, in many cases higher than they have in Alabama or Tennessee (though they can often access a more educated workforce in China). They're driving toward the Philippines and Indonesia, with the next stop being Africa.

The underlying mistake of the US and European labor movement was to embrace protectionism rather than internationalism - if the process of raising these standards had started happening 15 years earlier, in a period when American based multinationals were wildly exploiting labor in those countries, we'd be in much better shape today.

At some point, we'll become globally competitive again, and we will see manufacturing growth. The key is to be in the treaties like TPP that establish floors for labor standards internationally so that we move the whole process along.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

And here I thought we were trying to discuss the actual effects of globalization. But no, you just want lower-common-demoninator political analysis. Carry on on your own then.

Who is proposing that?

Oh, so you mean like greater global harmonization might be important, which is the exact opposite of what the article you cited said? Huh.