Income Inequality!

Christ, who pissed in your cornflakes Desslock?

Soviet Commie-Pinko Russia had the highest percentage of literacy in the whole world (99% literate) and the highest rate of secondary school completion.

The Soviets weren’t Pinko! They were redder than blood, they were!

Say, anyone want to hear some theories on how true freedom only can be reached under a totalitarian government?

Soviet Commie-Pinko Russia had the highest percentage of literacy in the whole world (99% literate) and the highest rate of secondary school completion.[/quote]
Who measured that? Them? Did you know that Saddam Hussein won 100% of the votes cast in the last Iraqi election?

Sounds similar to something I thought up a couple of years ago. Basically, the freedom to not have to make your own decisions at all.

Soviet Commie-Pinko Russia had the highest percentage of literacy in the whole world (99% literate) and the highest rate of secondary school completion.[/quote]
Who measured that? Them? Did you know that Saddam Hussein won 100% of the votes cast in the last Iraqi election?[/quote]

Wasn’t it 99,6%? :)

The opportunites in America are amazing. Ask many of those who have moved here specifically due to those opportunities. Is it harder to make it if you come from a poor family? Sure. But I looked at those stats (I do a lot of stat analysis professionally) and I’m not sure the causal relationships are really there.

Anecdotally - I work with several folks who came from incredibily disadvantaged families and environments, welfare families, who took advantage of educational opportunities, worked their ass off, and are now company executives. In my own personal family, my father came from a VERY poor family of 11 kids, decided that the best opportunity was to join the Air Force, worked his way up, both of his kids ended up with advance degrees (through a lot of damned hard work) and as fairly high level folks in their companies. Of the 11 kids from this VERY poor family, 8 found a way to work their way up the ladders, in very different career choices, all of their kids making huge leaps (one of them ending up one of the top 50 folks in IBM) - all of this a leap in a single generation.

I’ve been to and lived in other countries - in spite of the tough situations a lot of kids face, there’s nowhere else IMO that offers the opportunites this country does to leap above your parent’s state. Whether you actually avail yourself of those opportunities is a different manner. And no, I’m not so naive as to think that every kid can easily make the jumps - no one ever said it was easy, and certainly no one ever said life was fair.

Oh, I’m sure the US has better mobility than other countries; in my quick spin of the papers they all agreed it does. It’s just not as huge as everyone thinks.

no one ever said it was easy, and certainly no one ever said life was fair.

Life isn’t fair. That’s why the ‘social engineers’ have a problem with it and have the luxury of spending their lives doing studies of income correlation. I’m not sure what’s worse, those that ‘find’ the correlations or those that spend too much time reading and analyzing them.

Income inequality is an inherently good thing. You can’t get poorer than zero. You CAN become richer than billg. Because inequality is always measured from zero, and growth tends to always occur, inequality as measured in realitive or absolute terms will always increase.

And that’s a good thing.

But, huger than any other country in the history of the world. We could all improve, however.

Uh, is that why inequality goes in cycles? We’re back to 1920s levels; the nadir was in the 1950s.

Edit: oops, forgot to quote. Not responding to Desslock.

Sure, right after Mars came for our women. Seriously, this is one of the goofiest arguments you’ve ever tried to make.

Soviet Commie-Pinko Russia had the highest percentage of literacy in the whole world (99% literate) and the highest rate of secondary school completion.[/quote]
Who measured that? Them? Did you know that Saddam Hussein won 100% of the votes cast in the last Iraqi election?[/quote]
A fair question. It is well documented in Sovietological literature both from during and since that era in Russia. Foreign (i.e. Western) spies and non-covert agencies all discovered the same thing.

It only makes sense if you think about it. Communist society did not coddle the worthless and they didn’t have a bunch of post-modern idiots running some social services in schools. The nation as a whole went from pre-industrial to on par with (sometimes surpassing) western technology in 40 years and very little of that was through espionage, as one example of their focus on learning.

From 20x in the 1960s to 300x now.

(I know this is an old thread necro but the title was perfect!)

Wow, the old comments in this thread are amazing! ‘Income inequality is good, the more the better.’ Fuck me!

I feel it.

The Why is inequality bad? thread was somewhat more recent, but whatever.

There is a large contingent of people who actually believe that low wage earners are just jealous.
Seriously.
“There’s nothing wrong with some dude making millions, you’re just jealous!”

There are too many unused lampposts.