One very effective way to close the racial wealth gap would be more good union jobs. Unionized black workers earn 16.4% than non-unionized black workers, unionized Latinos 40% more! I'm amazed how little attention gets paid to labor policy by anti-racist activists and thinkers. Not knowing them or what motivates them, I can't assume they…
One very effective way to close the racial wealth gap would be more good union jobs. Unionized black workers earn 16.4% than non-unionized black workers, unionized Latinos 40% more! I'm amazed how little attention gets paid to labor policy by anti-racist activists and thinkers. Not knowing them or what motivates them, I can't assume they're "grifters" but I do have some very different political priorities than they do.
Yeah the wealth gap is a tricky one. I think union jobs would definitely help. But for the time being, this would always feel more like a fix for the income gap than the wealth gap.
Accruing wealth takes time, usually generations. So I think it's going to be a source of grievance for a long time to come. It's a lingering reminder of the injustices of the past.
But yeah, honestly the thinking of a lot of "antiracist" activists is a mystery to me. I really wonder what the net effect of activism has been in the past ten years or so. I'd be genuinely surprised if it was positive.
Steve, I think a note from the trenches is in order. First, I want to say that any progress ever made in this country was the work of activists – years and years of unpaid, un-recognized and thankless work. So please, do not conflate activists with fans, fashionistas, and wanna-bees. We need a new term for these people.
Activists have been coping with newbies forever. Newbies are the bane of our existence, but cope with them we must. Whenever a new fad is a “cause” activists must stop work and do everything possible to keep newbies from de-railing years and years of work. Coping with newbies, is like herding cats. I offer you an example of the difference between an activist and what I call, fluster-clucks.
Her name is Marjorie Taylor Greene. While seasoned activists know that people like Greene are dangerous, the internet made it impossible for us to manage them any longer. In 2017, Greene decided she was an activist and launched her newest career. Two years later Greene was sworn into office as a United States Senator. Marjorie Taylor Greene is a fluster-cluck, not an activist.
Stacey Abrams is an activist. Abrams earned her title “activist” with a mile long list of accomplishments. I would follow Abrams to the end of the earth. I wouldn’t follow Greene to the bathroom.
"First, I want to say that any progress ever made in this country was the work of activists – years and years of unpaid, un-recognized and thankless work. So please, do not conflate activists with fans, fashionistas, and wanna-bees."
You're absolutely right. A really unfair conflation on my part. Yes, we need a new term. It's the curse of so many issues at the moment that the loud, irritating minority get lumped in with the quiet, sensible majority. I'm usually better at differentiating between the two.
Not sure what revised title to use. I'll try to think of something suitably scathing and report back 😁
Can you offer an objective definition of "activist" which includes the folks you think should be included and excludes those you think should be excluded?
For example, is the divide between liberal/progressive "activists" (all true activists) versus conservative "activists" (all being cluster-fucks)? Or does it have to do with some specific behaviors, regardless of political affiliation?
I used to consider myself an activist (intermittantly, depending on whether I was at that time engaged in activism (beyond voting, donating, talking w friends, writing letters to the editor or to representatives, which I didn't consider activism per se). If I was travelling to Nicaragua on Sandinista solidarity delegations or editing a local newsletter or helping organize protests, those were the times I thought of myself as engaging in activism rather than just ordinary civil engagement. I didn't tend to describe myself to others as an "activist", I just did it.
Today if somebody self-identifies as an "activist", the main thing that conveys to me is that they most likely have massive confirmation biases and have a weaponized and over-simplified concept of the world. Close to identifying themselves as an ideologue. Not always (everyone can be understood as an individual), but most often. That they have self-identified is one potential clue. Being an "activist" is highly valorized today, a positive thing to enhance one's social status. That social status seeking was never part of the activism I engaged in.
Passion - you really are guided by reason. I love your reply. No, I cannot offer an objective definition of "activist", but let's try to find one. Remember, objectivity is not my strong suit, so keep that in mind - okay?
I belong to a multi-disciplinary activist network. Most activists I know have anywhere from 10 to 40 years’ experience as activists, organizers and civic entrepreneurs. A lot of activists lend their professional expertise and knowledge to the work (lawyers, accountants, doctors, linguists, etc.). Rural land-use and cultural planning is my specialty. I also bake cakes and cookies.
There are no college degrees in activism, so activists must teach themselves, learn from others, learn from mistakes, and eventually teach new activists.
Newbie activists have no frigging idea what they’re doing and no respect for those who do. They walk into some meeting, look around and decide, they are the most qualified person in the room. Near as I can tell, they make this decision based on our appearance.
Activism is the people’s game, not a game show. Activists have power, The know how to use it. And they do not squander it or give it away. Activists don’t look like powerhouses; we don’t wear fancy suits, drive fancy cars and a lot of us wear thrift store clothes. But Senators, Congressmen and elected officials take our calls, and they take our meetings. National political parties send people to meet with us. We raise millions of dollars to fund our own work. If we call, 500 people show up. Politicians and VIPs, and CEOs, do not mess around with people power. More often than not, they try to hire us.
True story. One year a newbie joined one of our activist organizations. About six months later, Mary was on our agenda, but was late, so we waited for her report. Mary finally arrived and began her report. When newbie, Debby realized that Mary had just come from a meeting with our Senator, she came unglued. Off she went on a lecture about “our image” and the appropriate attire for a meeting with a “Senator” and proper etiquette (OMG). Newbie Debby had no frigging idea who she was talking to.
Mary never went to college, or law school. She taught herself the law, passed the bar the first time, got her license and had been practicing labor law for decades. At night, Mary taught the law to farmworker’s children. Just like Mary, her students pass the bar on the first try, get their license and practice law. If Mary makes the call, 1,500 people show up. You don’t speak that way, to a woman like Mary.
So, Passion, what do we do with newbie activists? How do we manage their expectations? And what do we call them?
There seems to be two issues about "activists" here.
(1) Distinguishing old timers with experience, from newbie activists working within the same movement. I would think that might just involve teaching some respect for elders in the movement (elders by experience, not just age). _This is of course leaving out people whose activism is declared in their online profiles and who may never have even met, much less worked alongside, a long term activist in the field like yourself (much less Mary)._
(2) Distinguishing Stacie Abrams and Marjorie Taylor Greene. This appears to be a different distinction than #1. I'm sure we can find people who have worked in the trenches against abortion for decades; would they qualify as "activists" due to their long experience?
Passion, we’re making progress – yes? Good thinking. Good questions. Good phrasing.
(1) By necessity, civic activists are self-educating. I promise you, us, old-timers are learning from younger newbies whose technology, social media and communication skills far surpass ours. Put the old-timers together with young newbies and they are dynamite good and super effective.
On their own, newbie activists are counter-productive, even destructive. 1. They don’t know how government works and lack the civic education necessary to effect a change of policy, systems or directions. 2. They have tons of information but little experience using that information to craft a vision. 3. They lack strategic skills and organizational planning skills. 4. They are not clear on the difference between civic education and political propaganda.
I mentor several young activists and they are far beyond me in many ways, all they lack is experience. After the Roe decision came down, two of my young activists told me they finally understand how important it is to know how government works. Right now, they are studying the U.S. Constitution and their state Constitutions. Who knows how long it will be before they study state and local government. Until then, they rely on me. Passion, relying on someone else for basic 101 stuff, is not okay.
(2) Absolutely! My views on civic activism have nothing to do with politics. Pro-life activists are amazingly good. I don’t like their tactics, I don’t agree with their goals, and I fear they are short-sighted, but I have tremendous respect for the work these activists do. The commitment pro-life activists have demonstrated for the last fifty years is awesome.
Crisis pregnancy centers are ubiquitous in rural America. Women count on their support, only to discover that support ends very quickly after delivery. Over 400,000 children are already in the system, and these numbers will increase rapidly. The idea that experienced pro-life activists might walk away, now the Roe was overturned, terrifies me.
Wait a minute here. I was about to post and read what I wrote and caught something new. Is there a generation gap here? Young (age 16 – 30) newbie activists are terrific to work with. It’s the older, over 30, newbies that are so destructive. Passion, have you any thoughts on that?
Interesting observation about 16-30 yo newbie activists and 30+ yo newbie activists. There could be something about the birth cohort, or just about current stage of maturity (or some of each of course). We could check back in 15 years and see if the same pattern repeats with the same ages, or if the pattern shifts upward in age by 15 years. (Joking about doing that, not joking about that being a useful datapoint if one could wait for the results).
---
So if the distinction you want to make between Stacy Abrams and Marjorie Taylor Greene is the number of years of experience as activists, how many more years of activism would the latter need before graduating from cluster-fuck to activist?
Passion, are we discussing activism, or my opinion of Marjorie Taylor Greene? If you want to discuss Greene, say so. If you want to defend Greene, do it. If you want to praise her, I’d like to hear what she does that pleases you. Your turn.
Talking about activism and the proper definition of the term "activist".
I find MTG atrocious for many reasons. The length of time she has been active is not among them, however.
But the contrast between MTG and Stacy Abrams was used above to distinguish "activists", so I'm looking for what criteria are being used, other than our liking one more than the other. We very likely agree on which of those two we prefer; that is not the issue.
Dave, I chose Greene and Abrams as examples, because they are both very well known. While I did not choose them, because of their political affiliations, I can see how someone might get that impression. My bad.
In my mind, activism is civic work, the work of citizens. Civic activists keep politics out of their work. In that regard, I'm a bit of a purest. If a civic organization accepts donations, or direction from any political organization, I do not participate.
Changing a system, crafting public policy, or effecting a change of direction takes a long time. Over the years, civic activists must work with anyone who happens to be in office.
My own civic activism revolves around public policy and the land-use system (rural America is my specialty, because that is where I live). As I mentioned elsewhere, I work in multi-disciplinary teams that serve a coalition of civic organizations. The more diverse our personal backgrounds, the more knowledge we bring to the table (if that is a diversity measure, so be it).
I watched the film, Uncle Tom, you linked. It is moving and I can see its appeal. However, I've come up against too many think tanks not to recognize their influence.
Conservative billionaires’ think tanks have exerted tremendous influence in rural communities, and their prescribed and formulaic policies have done tremendous damage. Our farmers, ranchers, factories and small businesses are suffering so badly, I’m not sure they can recover.
The left has nothing even remotely comparable. In my state, our colleges, universities and training schools escaped the conservative trap by adopting the civic activist’s position (no politics). This has enabled them to move into the future. In more than one arena, Kentucky today, is more progressive than California.
PS. Thanks for the link, I enjoyed the film - a lot.
raffy, no foul intended toward you. Activism and political partisanship (which I find to be a reason why nothing gets better) sometimes has overlap. Your "𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘷𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 "𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘴" (𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘣𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘤𝘭𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳-𝘧𝘶𝘤𝘬𝘴)" was implicitly partisan so it did have something to do with allowing me to use such an explicitly (mentioned parties by name) example of conservative activism. Where we draw a line in how we think of it is separated by a broad and blurry line.
You mention "Conservative billionaires." Are they conservative? They own the media which they use effectively to shape public opinion. How does it tilt? A big part of that is to divide people with common interest (the poor and working class of all "races". As George Carlin famously said, "The owners don't give a f*k about you!" they just want to keep us divided so we won't get together and com for them with pitchforks and torches. It has always been that way. When financial ends were just waving at each other, rather than meeting, and we lived in an edge of town rented mobile home, who did I have more in common with, an economically stressed black family or "the owners"? Promotion of the racial divide is all about preventing us asking ourselves that.
During the p̶a̶n̶d̶e̶m̶i̶c̶ panic, which party enthusiastically destroyed small businesses with the shutdown, as if the covid virus was not a danger in large chain grocery stores, Walmart, Costco or for Amazon workers? Small businesses that were the result of 2nd mortgages on the owner's home and their life's dream. Who benefited from that? How do people become multimillionaires on a congressman's pay other than them knowing who the winners and losers of their legislation will be? Who always seems to benefit and who gets screwed? I see the Ds and Rs as partners in these crimes while making suckers out of the people (that video spoke to that). Is it activism or partisanship do call that stuff out?
Depending upon the issue we are discussing, I may appear to be left or right but given the lack of logic for why the left right issues are on the side they are on, I think that people who line up on all issues with a political tribe have been conned. Things are complex and rarely simple enough to fit on a bumper sticker.
Dave, you are accusing me of something I did not do. I said, and I quote myself, "Marjorie Taylor Greene is a fluster-cluck, not an activist." I did not say, conservative activists were fluster-clucks. I did not even mention politics. As I wrote earlier, in reply to Passion, I think the pro-life activists are awesome activists. I don't have to agree with their goals, to respect them, or their work.
Regarding those billionaires, I was specific, and I quote myself, again, “Conservative billionaires’ think tanks have exerted tremendous influence in rural communities, and their prescribed and formulaic policies have done tremendous damage.”
Dave, I don’t know where you live. For all I know, you could have a balcony, a backyard or a 1,000 acre ranch. I am talking about rural America and all I’ve ever seen, or heard of out here, are think tanks funded by conservative billionaires. I’ve been following these beasts since I first encountered one in the mid-1990s. Back then, the state had passed a mandate requiring jurisdictions to reduce waste going into landfills by 50%, or face $10,000. a day fines. We had ten years to meet that mandate and more than 8,000 square miles of land, people, businesses, aerospace and military installations to consider.
A coalition of engineers, elected officials, attorneys, local activists and our local bank, city and county managers got together and figured out how to do it. The local bank, a business and the city county partnered on the funding, signed the contracts and the facility got built.
Five years before the deadline, we’d reduced waste going into the landfill by as much as 81% a month. That project extended the life of our landfill by 20 years, added more than 80 jobs, reduced city and county waste management costs, turned a profit for the owner and added a new revenue stream for the city and county – without raising trash fees for anyone at all. Thanks to that project, no one in our community has ever separated their trash and recyclables.
Suddenly, a conservative billionaire think tank arrived, determined to shut that facility down. Why? What could possibly be wrong with a project that successful? Dave, can you guess the answer?
The coalition put me to work, finding out what this think tank was and who these people were. As I said, I’ve been following these think tanks ever since.
Over the years, these think tanks have sent in people to oppose or support prison expansion, sex education programs in our schools, general plan updates, water management, hydroponic, family, boutique and organic farming, affordable housing, wastewater treatment, water reclamation, chemical manufacturing, mining and timber operations, wind farms and healthcare system. Dave, can you guess what their stake is, in this rural region? Can you guess what they supported and what they opposed?
As I also said, “The left has nothing even remotely comparable.”
I don't want to get into a partisan demonization of the "enemy" debate. That's not what the commentary is about. As I've written, the demand for lock-step compliance to the party checklists (both of them) from on high is the reason nothing gets done. If I found a genie in a bottle my first wish would be for the end of political parties to disconnect issues from irrational party linkage. The second would be to remove money (bribery by lobbyists) from politics.
My bad and sincere apology. That was a cut and paste from a comment by Passion guided by reason in the thread. I lost the who reading all the whats. The ideas are more important to me than who said them. Sloppiness on my part. There are 66 comments at the time of this comment. Names scroll off the screen.
Fixing the tax system to tax the wealthy in a fairer manner would help a lot. I'm not in favour of taking the money they have and redistributing it, but in making them pay their fair share of taxes - the more money you have/make, the more you should pay - some of their money will slowly get redistributed and affect everyone else. Sorry, but we have too many billionaires and some insanely wealthy billionaires. If Jeff and Elon can afford rocket ships, they can afford to pay higher taxes and help feed and house the poor more, since *no one* needs to have as much money as they have.
On the one hand, I see the concentration of wealth among a tiny fraction as corrosive to democracy, and wealth inequality as one of our key problems. My concern is about the societal effects, not about envy or resentment. New taxation is one approach to potentially reducing that disparity.
On the other, I'm not too much inclined to make billionaires the new bogeymen, to fuel resentment and ill will through anti-wealth populism. I think it's misleading to frame things like SpaceX and Blue Origin as if Musk and Bezos had purchased some new toy like a Lamborgini. The money they have invested in space technology is very much working capital, and appear to be creating more innovation than NASA or the ESA. Even Bezos going up in one of his rockets is a PR stunt, demonstrating in the most visceral way that he himself considers it safe enough for passengers. Their wealth is not a bunch of coins and bills sitting in huge vaults so they can swim in it (like Scrooge McDuck), it consists of a partial ownership interest in a functioning business, whose value is in turn partially derived by investors trusting their management. If say, the US Government decided to confiscate Bezos' wealth (which I know you are not advocating, but others do), it would not come from bank vaults, but would instead mean taking ownership and control of Amazon, AWS, etc. I don't really think they would run it well, on many fronts. And it would be hard to sell, having dropped in value greatly, plus they might in turn confiscate it again from the next buyer. If the government did get some cash for it, they would likely spend most of that on consumption, rather than reinvesting it in new wealth generation - which would languish by comparison to how that wealth is used now.
Most ordinary folks think of personal wealth in terms of what they could buy for personal consumption, but at the top it often is more about having (partial) control over a complex enterprise which one can try to guide towards functionality and growth. Becoming a high level politician is another way to get (partial) control over a complex enterprise, similarly (but with many differences). Musk and Bezos will personally consume only a tiny fraction of their wealth on paper. Their wealth is invested in enterprises which provide services, employs people at all levels, and advances technology - very little is spent on toys for their own consumption. Removing their influence from those enterprises would not make those enterprises better, in my best guess.
People envision Musk and Bezos as being motivated by acquisitiveness and having more money to spend on buying happiness. I think they are more in it to build the best businesses they can - facing and solving problems, coming up with creative strategies, hiring the right people and delegating appropriately, guiding policies. The business itself IS the "toy", interpreted broadly - in the same sense that a carpenter who builds a house whose craftsmanship they are proud of could be said to have that as their "toy".
And I am, I admit, somewhat tired of hearing "their fair share". Musk recently paid the largest tax assessment in history, by selling of 10% of his stock and paying the unmitigated top-bracket taxes on it. "Fair" is just so incredibly subjective, and the implied resentment is so populist (uninformed), that it's hard to jump on that bandwagon. In that direction lies "equity, not equality" and other semantic pitfalls.
People love hearing about how little some rich people pay in taxes, but that is removed from context and usually cherry picked. In California, half of all state taxes are paid by 1% of the population (it's a problem in that it varies greatly as the economy changes). Even after any "tax schemes" the wealthy do pay for a great deal of the government already. I think that needs to be tweaked higher, but not based on the false idea that they are all getting by super cheaply now.
All that said, I still think we need to do more to reduce income and wealth inequality. I just think we need to be wise about it, and not cause "unintended consequences" at a large scale.
So yes, more progressive taxation (ie: higher marginal rates for higher incomes) is needed, and likely some kind of "wealth tax", done very carefully. Wealth taxes on unrealized paper assets can be extremely tricky to do right.
But I am wary of the social forces, motivated by hostile caricatures of the actual dynamics and fueled by resentment and envy, jumping in to make billionaires "pay their fair share" without much thought or care about the consequences. It needs to be done soberly and carefully, in thoughtful service to creating a better society, not disguised vengeance against those who are more successful.
And we need to avoid exaggerating how much we can "feed and house the poor" from that money. Even if we outright confiscated all of Bezos' and Musk's wealth accumulated over decades, it would be gone in a couple of years, after which we'd have to look for the next goose. The US spent 6.82 trillion in 2021 alone; adding a one time infusion of 400 billion would not have a huge impact on the overall spending during the next decade.
A non-destructive wealth tax would bring in less than that (in the short term), tho it might bring in money for decades to come. We need to avoid over-promising the size of the bonanza, leading to dissapointment and resentment from the masses, who imagine the divided up spoils will change their lives materially.
And I'm not directing that at you per se, Nicole; your comment just stimulated these thoughts to crystalize. Sometimes my muses emerge unbidden, rather than accepting a pre-defined task I'd like to assign them.
Many arguments have been made re why the rich and the super-rich are paying more taxes than we think, but in the last 20-25 years Republican policies have clearly favoured tax breaks for the them and that's where the bulk of income inequality really got juiced. It's not about envy of those who are more successful; it's funny how when we talk about asshole billionaires Warren Buffett's name never seems to come up. He's the one talking about how he pays less taxes than his secretary, and as we learned a few years ago, Donald Trump paid $750 in his annual taxes a few years ago. I don't know how well-paid Elon Musk's employees are but the conditions at Amazon's warehouses for the rank and file are notoriously bad and underpaid. So while Bezos play with his rocketship, and he's doing it for the coolness factor, not because he's trying to demonstrate safety (only the superrich can afford it anyway), his warehouse people are struggling to make ends meet.
We can blame ourselves for that as well; we've been partly trained by the Walmart mentality to value low prices and ignore sweatshops in the Third World and even in our own land; until recently Walmart was the dirt standard for lousy, shitty pay. But bargain basement prices are now a necessity as wealth funneled from the bottom to the top. My sister-in-law commented to me last year that she and my brother are almost getting to the point where it would be worth it for them to vote Trump, but they won't do that because they have a responsibility to everyone who can't afford a seat at their table. And while they do well for themselves, they're nowhere close to being Bezos, Musk or Trump.
Perhaps raising minimum wage would be a good start, along with bringing back the perks of a job that contributed to how well-off someone was, like affordable healthcare. Since the rich famously hate anyone getting 'government handouts', maybe tax them higher is their employees' salaries don't meet a certain standard; those employees would then quality for a gov't UBI stipend.
It's a complicated subject, but higher wages = higher prices = all boats lifting. Costs would be reduced all around in other, less tangible ways in the forms of lower poverty and crime rates. I'm not interested in 'punishing' people for being successful, but an awful lot of their wealth in recent decades came from tax breaks by Republicans, not because of increased effort, and Darwin knows Bezos has never sweated his ass off in his life. The money flowed upward, much of it unearned; now it's time to reverse some of that, esp since they'll feel a lot less pain than the poor and middle class did.
(1) Your and my critiques may not be motivated by envy or resentment of the rich, but I do not think we can dismiss that for everybody. Reading social media and comments on news stories suggests that envy/resentment is at play in many cases - consciously or unconsciously.
(2) Resentful conservatives don't criticize Trump, because they think he's a class traitor who is on their side, and likewise progressives and Buffet. Both men criticize other rich people in their appeal to the masses.
(3) I do not know Trump's finances, but in general people whose wealth is in leveraged investments show (paper) profits some years and not others. They pay only at flat $750 filing fell in the years they lose money, so you'll see a spike at that exact taxes in a tax distribution chart. A fair way to evaluate such things would be to see what the average taxes were over a decade of ups and downs, but to fuel resentment, some authors prefer to "cherry pick" the years when some rich person paid essentially no taxes, and sweep under the rug the years where they paid large amounts in taxes. That's manipulation, not illumination. Read the stories about a weathy person paying little or no taxes carefully to watch for this factor (real news sources will note that specfic years in question, albeit buried rather than highlighted, while opinion pieces often omit that aspect entirely).
(4) Likewise I have come to be cautious about news regarding who benefits from tax breaks. As I have mentioned, about half of California's income tax revenues come from 1% of the population while a large part pay no income taxes; so if California did a 10% reduction in all taxes (fat chance), the news stories would frame this as "half of all tax relief went to the top 1%". So some tax breaks specifically benefit the rich more (eg: changes to estate taxes, which don't cut in until over $12 million so only affect the rich), and others have disproportionate benefit to the rich ONLY to the degree that the rich are disproportionately paying more to begin with. Conflating these two to foster a sense of unfairness is again, manipulation and deception. Call out the former, but stop pretending the latter is an obvious disgrace.
(5) I think it's misleading to blame the appeal of low prices on Walmart; this phenomenon shows up all around the world and through much of history. Walmart is a designated scapegoat, but objective analyses do not show that company as being unusually bad - it's just popular among liberals to imagine the worst. That is not to say that they are ideal, just that the alternatives may be just as bad in many cases, but it's less popular to call them out. Are you aware that Walmart long ago endorsed single payer healthcare? Why is that not mentioned?
(6) One tends to hear only part of the story about Amazon warehouses from certain biased sources. There are bad conditions in some warehouses, but I've also seen testimony from satisfied warehouse workers. They have in some locations paid well above local wages. They have offered to pay expenses for workers seeing an out of state abortion. Again, Amazon is a favored whipping boy, but to my most neutral assessment (to date, always under revision) they seem to be judged by a double standard. Amazon's raison d'etre is not low wages, but advanced logistical integration, from a market leading user interface, to advanced warehouse technologies with a mix of automation and workers, distributed warehouses, and tight integration with multiple shipping services. If you use Amazon to get decent price and fast shipping and generous return policies, that comes from their organizational structure, not from underpaying employees. (Again, that doesn't mean employees should keep organizing for a better deal, just that it's not on the whole as bad as progressives want to convince us with one sided coverage)
(7) UBI is an interesting concept to continue to explore. We could discuss it further, along with the important limitations of the pilot programs so far. But tying qualifying for UBI to which corporation one works for and what their employees earn is not UBI, it's some new tax/benefit regime you are proposing which should not be conflated with UBI.
(8) What I find problematic is any policy which rewards companies in fields where labor inherently needs to be well paid, relative to companies which are in an inherently lower wage market. So for example, considering that Microsoft or Google or Goldman-Sachs are good corporate citizens because their average wage (based on the market for the skills they need) is high, while Delilah's Janitorial Service is an evil company because they don't pay their employees as well. Any fair comparison will operate within the same industry and geographic region, and not yield misleading comparisons between industries. If the society could run by making everybody a software engineer or surgeon, that would be fine, but we also need less skilled jobs, and we cannot act as if the latter might as well go out of business unless they can pay wages competitive with software engineers.
(9) To be clear, I do favor higher marginal rates on income taxes (more progressive) and I am not a Republican or a free market zealot; my first allegiance is to honest and factual understanding of the world; my values then come into play on top of that, rather than instead of that.
(10) "higher wages = higher prices = all boats lifting" could be just another description of inflation. It's the *ratio* of wages to prices which matters, so tripling both is not gaining ground. And underneath all of this is the need to increase productivity - roughly, how much value is produced by an hour's labor - as the engine which can drive increases in that ratio.
(11) I would say that very little of the increase in wealth at the top was *created by* tax breaks. However, that growth may not have been inhibited enough by taxes. A tax break doesn't create wealth, it just inhibits it's growth less. Remember I'm for increased "progressive taxation", in large part because I want to inhibit that growth - because when its excessive, it's corrosive to a democratic society. But I nevertheless distinguish between the engines which *create* wealth, and the policies which partially *inhibit* undue concentrations of it.
(12) I think your picture of folks like Bezos is off kilter. That man had to put in more hard hours than 99.9% of people to create and build his empire. He did so in competition to other very intelligent hard working people. This is not the age of aristocracy, where most wealth is inherited and passive (eg: ownership of rentable property). Today, stats show, the wealthy on average work much harder than most people, with long stressful hours. So it does not serve us well to pretend they are the idle rich who have never worked hard. I would argue that the distribution of income is too wide, with people at the top earning way more than they should (hence, progressive income taxes to reduce that differential), but not that they don't work extremely hard. Our case for a less extreme disparity of income (and wealth) does not depend on falsely characterizing the rich, or the very rich, as typically slackers when the reality is the opposite. People who work harder or smarter deserve more rewards - but only to an extent, not as a blank check for exponentially increased rewards.
Nicole, I respect your writing a lot, and I hope you can see this partial pushback on some of what strikes me as "not deeply enough interrogated conventional assumptions" in the light it is intended. In no way do I mean to disrespect you; I'm more sharing some different and additional lenses through which one might gain additional insights about how the world works. I have found myself on a journey of questioning many of my prior opinions, as I find that some of them were based on assumptions which I had never examined in detail. The resulting reflections have sometimes changed my opinions, sometimes not; and even if they did not revers my opinions, they have have nuanced them more, or helped me defend them with more well considered arguments (while abandoning arguments I no longer hold as valid, even when I continue to support the overall direction based on other arguments). I'm primarily engaged in an imperfect collaborative search for truth, not trying to put people down who disagree, or ensure my tribal acceptance by regurgitating the conventional bullet points undigested.
No offence taken, and I don't mind the pushback. I would note that my opinions have formed over the last twenty years or so between experience and a lot of reading. My thoughts on a UBI are a bit sarcastic, I'll admit, but I continue to be annoyed by what I see as a lot of unnecessary income disparity, and sorry, a lot of it WAS juiced by Bush II's tax cuts.
Amazon's lousy working conditions have been well-documented, although I don't doubt there are some happy workers and perhaps decent warehouses there somewhere. But I've had a more jaundiced opinion of them since reading about CamperForce, which looks an awful lot like Amazon taking advantage of folks who lost everything in the Great Financial Meltdown, created by those at the top and who didn't suffer or go to jail for it.
Since then, other investigative pieces have demonstrated the lousy working conditions there, and while I'm sure Jeff Bezos worked hard initially, I'm quite sure he's not working nearly as hard as his factory workers, and much of that is wheeling and dealing and board meetings. He's not in the warehouses getting actual shit moved from one place to another, having to pee in a bottle because he's not allowed proper bathroom breaks. I've often wished there was a way to disguise him so he could work in his own warehouse for a couple of weeks under Amazon conditions, but there's no way you could disguise those offset eyes, everyone would know him immediately.
Wal-Mart has done better in recent years, and I didn't know that about backing the single payer system; how are they doing on providing healthcare for their workers, most of whom, a few years ago, couldn't afford it? Let's remember, Walmart 'helped' them navigate various parts of the welfare system they'd need to survive since, back then, Walmart was paying shit after driving out the better-paying businesses out of business. I also remember reading an article several years ago - back in the '00s - about how lousily they treated their vendors who were essentially breaking even on doing business with Walmart, but they didn't dare *not* do business with them because if they didn't, their competitors will. I'm not quite sure how that would benefit their competitors - how much business can you afford to do with a #1 customer and only be breaking even? Maybe no one thought to break their competitors by refusing to do business with Walmart unless the latter agreed to a more equitable deal.
However, in recent years I acknowledge they've raised their wages (which meant everyone else could do the same) and also, lesser-known, Walmart underwent a large sustainability makeover several years ago, implemented efficient recycling and and waste treatment, better practices at the stores, and saved about $400M which benefits the environment. I've never forgotten that about them.
The fact is, wages have remained stagnant for decades for the lower and middle classes, and the middle one is disappearing. In the wake of the Great Financial Meltdown the class formerly known as middle slipped into poverty, with a rise in all the pathologies associated with the lower classes - a rise in domestic violence, divorces, criminal activity, and substance abuse. The very rich on Wall Street benefited mightily from the meltdown, and no one went to prison for it. Speaking of not going to prison, that reminds me of Trump. It's interesting he never released his financial records as president, so no, we *don't* know what he's paying or not, but I'd guess not much since he supposedly wasn't paying anything for years after one of his many bankruptcies. Although I doubt that's the reason why he won't release them - too many far more embarrassing, and likely illegal revelations there. If there's one thing many of us have learned about the rich, it's that the more they earn, the less likely they are to want to pay for anything, and Trump was famous for that during his real estate years in NYC.
Ever read the book "Bullshit Jobs" based on the viral essay of a few years ago? Very eye-opening and not specifically an indictment of the rich - more so just an overall poorly-structured economic system in which the most vital, necessary jobs pay the least. What if no one wanted to make a janitor's low wages? What if there needed to be a revolving schedule of various employees' turn to clean the restrooms? Why are teachers paid shit to educate future generations and so much more paid to entertainers like sports athletes and rock musicians? Not to diss those careers, but if we can afford to pay Michael Jordan millions we can afford to pay a teacher liveable wages AND maybe even support them with school budgets for something other than armed guards and defensive shooting training for teachers. I laughed as the BJ book dinged the financial services industry for being largely a bullshit industry, which has been my opinion since my last office job where our target market was big financial institutions. For a year and a half I scrutinized all the big players in North America and realized just how much of a scam so much of it is - nothing productive, just shifting money around for people high enough in the system, and there you don't have to even be a middle manager for that to happen. I think about 20% of what FIs do is truly vital - we do need a place to keep our money, buy insurance, get loans, support for entrepreneurship, pay America's labour force - but the rest of it is sheer horse shit and everyone knows it. The games bankers played with CDSs and ARMs led to the financial collapse and even *they* didn't understand the financial 'products' they were selling to clueless investors, with various 'tranches' of crap investments bundled in and buried so deep the sellers themselves didn't know what was there and didn't want to know. Just sell sell sell to the next chump.
As far as progressive taxation goes, I'd be in favour of one that scales back maybe a little less the more you make. You don't want to be taking like 50% of someone's pay or net worth - that's counterproductive. But for sure if you an afford a rocket ship, you can afford to pay more in taxes. America is very good to many of its citizens regardless of the carping that goes on about inequality - some of it coming from folks who just aren't trying hard enough (and I'm not thinking about any 'group' specifically - self-inflicted underachieving is a universal human sport). But I also don't think there should be a max on taxation - the more you make, the more you pay, but your taxes don't go up as much as they did several hundred million or a few billion ago.
BTW "Bullshit Jobs" has a great description of what a fucking waste of productivity much of the California entertainment industry is - how people are making huge sums of money literally doing little more than lunching with each other, (and expensing it), discussing a few putative business issues, and then going home to swim in the pool. It's amazing how little time is actually spent by so many of these people on creating better content, although obviously someone somewhere is doing it, as Netflix has produced many high-quality TV and movies in the last fifteen years that get a lot of kudos (I don't subscribe to even basic cable, so apart from one summer with Netflix several years ago, I don't read and hear about them).
I'm curious as to what you've read that you think might change my mind. I'm open to that. I'd especially like to read what you've got on how the wealthy work longer and more stressful hours than the hoi polloi. I'd like to know more about them.
Also, open to better/differing opinions on the UBI idea. Conservatives are skeptical of it, some of their skepticism is questionable but some of it isn't (particularly the idea that some people will coast. I disagree with them on why but I've seen it myself so I support 'strings attached' to make sure people are working to become or become again productive members of society).
Sources: Preferably middle of the road, neither super right-wing nor super left-wing.
Hmm. There's a lot of material there, some of which I agree with and some of which I question. Let's take on some pieces; addressing everything would be a huge essay and many hours of work.
---
I read the Wired story at your link, and did not find it as terrible as you perceive. The writer says she spent months interviewing Amazon workers (and mentions working for a week at a warehouse, tho perhaps she also worked other times?). From that, she chose a handful of people for the article. Are they representative, or selected for some other reason?
I'm mildly skeptical of the framing "taking advantage of folks who lost everything in the Great Financial Meltdown". The lead couple lost 100% of their investments ($250K and $200K) according to the article. I and my friends all lived through that too, but nobody lost anything close to 100% on invested money. How does that happen, unless one is investing in a very high risk/high gain option? It says that he believed that a $250,000 investment would yield $4000/mo (or $48K/yr, about 20% per year). Sound like a good, safe investment to you? Anyway, it's sad if he was given to think that was guaranteed and safe, and I would be happy to have any fraud investigated in that regard.
So they hit the road, broke. They had trouble finding work, until they encountered Amazon's seasonal work, which sounds like it proved a godsend in terms of better employment than they found elsewhere, although it was hard work with long hours. Some picker jobs involved a lot of walking, but according to the article that is changing as robotics handle more of the long distance stuff. Eventually, Amazon will likely automate more and more of the work, reducing their human labor needs, so that folks like the Stouts will have to do without Amazon seasonal jobs - will that be a boon to them?
Is that really such a horror story? Have you ever worked construction or in a factory? Or is your norm for comparison set by white collar work? It sounds like pretty much all of the jobs I had until I worked my way into computers, and which I'd still have been working had I not. It's unfortunate that they are doing that at a more advanced age, but is that Amazon's fault?
Before you answer, remember that the article involves selectivity. Go to indeed.com and look for what Amazon warehouse workers are paid today, and compare that to the local wages for equivalently skilled workers in those locations. I was seeing wages in the $16-25/hr range around the country (where minimum wage varies from $7.25 to $16ish).
What I'm driving at is: we can select stories of people who have suffered personal losses, and then contrast that with companies which paid above market wages yet it was still not enough. Does that justify singling out the company as a particular evil doer, in the mind of the reader juxtaposing selected people who suffered losses not (fully) their own fault, and a company (not responsible for previous losses) which is not making things right for them by paying them sufficiently above prevailing wages. It sets up the reader to think badly about the company, but I think unfairly so.
Criticizing the entire system of market based labor rates might be more appropriately targeted (tho such criticisms also need to be examined of course).
I am NOT any sort of Amazon apologist, I'm just trying to understand things in context. I tend to resist being stampeded nowadays, after finding that I have been taken in so many times. Most folks (including me) have a tendency to easily believe a good story that fits what they want to believe, without checking. We can partially compensate for that by also checking the stories we most want to believe, which have the appropriate white hats and black hats.
---
> "But I also don't think there should be a max on taxation - the more you make, the more you pay, but your taxes don't go up as much as they did several hundred million or a few billion ago."
I don't know what you mean there. There is no maximum tax - the more income you have, the more you pay; the more retail you by, the more sales tax; the more expensive your real property, the more you pay. In the case of income taxes, you not only pay more total, higher income gets taxed at a higher rate. (I would add some more tiers at the top, but not too extreme). The one exception might be social security taxes. In general, the more you pay in, the more you can take out in benefits later. That at the bottom of the scale get back more than they paid in, those at the top get back less than they paid in (so it does already move wealth downward), but at all levels paying higher SS taxes bring more SS benefits than paying less. But the maximum taxed income for social security is $147K this year - which also limits their benefits. (There are proposals to remove the limit for taxes but revise the formulas so there are no increase benefits associated with the higher taxes).
Is that what you mean by max taxation? Or something else?
------
About the fact that the wealth on average work very hard. I recall Daniel Markovits, who is a critic of the meritocracy and the wealthy, but nevertheless admits that the wealthy on average work longer hours, a reversal of historical trends; he speaks of the disappearance of the leisure class. See Sam Harris podcast 205 for an interesting interview (which is not to say that I endorse everything that either person says), or you can just google is name and find other articles.
CEO's in this study worked an average of 62.5 hours a week (including working on 79% of weekend days, and 70% of weekdays).
When I say "work hard" I don't mean that the high income folks tend to sweat and use their muscles a lot; but many jobs are intellectually and emotionally challenging nevertheless.
And let's be clear - I'm questioning the idea that high income folks in general don't work as hard or as many hours as most others do today - I am NOT asserting that means their pay is always appropriate! I think we need a pay differential to motivate people (rather than everybody getting the same pay regardless of contribution), but currently the curve is way too steep, with way too much reward at the top. Even if higher income people on average work pretty hard, there are limits to how much extra that should earn.
>"Accruing wealth takes time, usually generations."
I know that's conventional wisdom. But I wonder how broadly true it is today. (A theme for me today it seems :-)
First, let's be clear what type of wealth we are talking about. When the question is about a wealth gap, it's usually measured at the median (50 percentile), so we are not talking about the wealth of the top 10%, 1% or 0.1%. So wealth among ordinary people consists of net assets - add up all that one owns and subtract all of one's debts.
I see people around me to earn similar incomes, but use it in different ways. Some borrow constantly, buying cars and boats and taking vacations; some are more frugal and save a larger portion of their income. Their net assets (ie: wealth) can vary wildly on the same income, depending on spending and investing habits. How large is this effect, compared to inherited wealth, among ordinary people?
I know that I personally inherited no wealth (indeed needed to support my mother), but managed to make it into a frugal middle class. I always saved the maximum possible on work plans (invested in tax free stock market funds), and had additional savings as well. My partner and I bought a house as soon as we were able, which along with subequent residences have appreciated at about 10% per year on average (no bonanzas, but ongoing growth). As a result, I'm doing OK - not wealthy but comfortable.
Others I know have had different trajectories, up or down from their parents. The state of their net assets today has depended more on their personal behaviors and choices, than their parent's status.
I do understand that I've been focusing on inherited money, and that intergenerational wealth correlations may sometimes involve more than money, like inculcated attitudes about handling money. So even if a child does not get much money from their parents, they might gain from wise attitudes regarding use of income to build wealth. Or even if they get financial assistance from a parent, they may use that to build net assets, or spend it on consumables. But the information about spending habits which build wealth rather than consumption, can be transferred laterally, and can be learned in a single generation.
I am NOT saying that there is no effect from having parents who can afford to fund a good university education, or an earlier down payment for their kids. I'm just questioning the degree to which that is the dominant factor in accumulating net assets today, for those in the middle of the income and/or wealth spectrum. Admittedly, my wanting to look more deeply is inspired by looking around me at ordinary people who do not seem to follow the same patterns as wealth among the 1% does. That's enough to raise questions, but not to answer them.
TL;DR: When we speak of wealth we can too easily have unconscioiusly in mind the dynamics we associate with rich people, say elite1% and above, while the gap is measured at the 50 percentile, where wealth (net assets) has as much to do with choices as with inherited money. This difference could taint our "intuitions", and thus would need deeper analysis.
Where I live, many of those in the trades are non-white. We just got solar in, and a majority of the crew were Latino or Black. It was a non-union job (tho at least one of the crew was a former union electrician). All the ones I spoke with liked the company and seemed content with the pay. So I don't think the route to increased wealth is only through unions, tho obviously than can play a part.
One very effective way to close the racial wealth gap would be more good union jobs. Unionized black workers earn 16.4% than non-unionized black workers, unionized Latinos 40% more! I'm amazed how little attention gets paid to labor policy by anti-racist activists and thinkers. Not knowing them or what motivates them, I can't assume they're "grifters" but I do have some very different political priorities than they do.
Yeah the wealth gap is a tricky one. I think union jobs would definitely help. But for the time being, this would always feel more like a fix for the income gap than the wealth gap.
Accruing wealth takes time, usually generations. So I think it's going to be a source of grievance for a long time to come. It's a lingering reminder of the injustices of the past.
But yeah, honestly the thinking of a lot of "antiracist" activists is a mystery to me. I really wonder what the net effect of activism has been in the past ten years or so. I'd be genuinely surprised if it was positive.
Yeah good point--I conflated income and wealth. This chart is intereresting b/c it looks at wealth and shows that union households have far more wealth but the gap b/w races is still huge and, in fact, the gap b/w black union and white union households is bigger than the gap b/w black non-union and white-union. https://www.forbes.com/sites/christianweller/2018/10/17/racial-wealth-gap-much-smaller-among-union-members/?sh=6e95b84d6c99
Steve, I think a note from the trenches is in order. First, I want to say that any progress ever made in this country was the work of activists – years and years of unpaid, un-recognized and thankless work. So please, do not conflate activists with fans, fashionistas, and wanna-bees. We need a new term for these people.
Activists have been coping with newbies forever. Newbies are the bane of our existence, but cope with them we must. Whenever a new fad is a “cause” activists must stop work and do everything possible to keep newbies from de-railing years and years of work. Coping with newbies, is like herding cats. I offer you an example of the difference between an activist and what I call, fluster-clucks.
Her name is Marjorie Taylor Greene. While seasoned activists know that people like Greene are dangerous, the internet made it impossible for us to manage them any longer. In 2017, Greene decided she was an activist and launched her newest career. Two years later Greene was sworn into office as a United States Senator. Marjorie Taylor Greene is a fluster-cluck, not an activist.
Stacey Abrams is an activist. Abrams earned her title “activist” with a mile long list of accomplishments. I would follow Abrams to the end of the earth. I wouldn’t follow Greene to the bathroom.
How do we handle this "title" problem?
"First, I want to say that any progress ever made in this country was the work of activists – years and years of unpaid, un-recognized and thankless work. So please, do not conflate activists with fans, fashionistas, and wanna-bees."
You're absolutely right. A really unfair conflation on my part. Yes, we need a new term. It's the curse of so many issues at the moment that the loud, irritating minority get lumped in with the quiet, sensible majority. I'm usually better at differentiating between the two.
Not sure what revised title to use. I'll try to think of something suitably scathing and report back 😁
Personally, I would appreciate scathing (cluster-fluck is my favorite). But, I want to draw people in, not turn them away, so... there's that.
Can you offer an objective definition of "activist" which includes the folks you think should be included and excludes those you think should be excluded?
For example, is the divide between liberal/progressive "activists" (all true activists) versus conservative "activists" (all being cluster-fucks)? Or does it have to do with some specific behaviors, regardless of political affiliation?
I used to consider myself an activist (intermittantly, depending on whether I was at that time engaged in activism (beyond voting, donating, talking w friends, writing letters to the editor or to representatives, which I didn't consider activism per se). If I was travelling to Nicaragua on Sandinista solidarity delegations or editing a local newsletter or helping organize protests, those were the times I thought of myself as engaging in activism rather than just ordinary civil engagement. I didn't tend to describe myself to others as an "activist", I just did it.
Today if somebody self-identifies as an "activist", the main thing that conveys to me is that they most likely have massive confirmation biases and have a weaponized and over-simplified concept of the world. Close to identifying themselves as an ideologue. Not always (everyone can be understood as an individual), but most often. That they have self-identified is one potential clue. Being an "activist" is highly valorized today, a positive thing to enhance one's social status. That social status seeking was never part of the activism I engaged in.
Passion - you really are guided by reason. I love your reply. No, I cannot offer an objective definition of "activist", but let's try to find one. Remember, objectivity is not my strong suit, so keep that in mind - okay?
I belong to a multi-disciplinary activist network. Most activists I know have anywhere from 10 to 40 years’ experience as activists, organizers and civic entrepreneurs. A lot of activists lend their professional expertise and knowledge to the work (lawyers, accountants, doctors, linguists, etc.). Rural land-use and cultural planning is my specialty. I also bake cakes and cookies.
There are no college degrees in activism, so activists must teach themselves, learn from others, learn from mistakes, and eventually teach new activists.
Newbie activists have no frigging idea what they’re doing and no respect for those who do. They walk into some meeting, look around and decide, they are the most qualified person in the room. Near as I can tell, they make this decision based on our appearance.
Activism is the people’s game, not a game show. Activists have power, The know how to use it. And they do not squander it or give it away. Activists don’t look like powerhouses; we don’t wear fancy suits, drive fancy cars and a lot of us wear thrift store clothes. But Senators, Congressmen and elected officials take our calls, and they take our meetings. National political parties send people to meet with us. We raise millions of dollars to fund our own work. If we call, 500 people show up. Politicians and VIPs, and CEOs, do not mess around with people power. More often than not, they try to hire us.
True story. One year a newbie joined one of our activist organizations. About six months later, Mary was on our agenda, but was late, so we waited for her report. Mary finally arrived and began her report. When newbie, Debby realized that Mary had just come from a meeting with our Senator, she came unglued. Off she went on a lecture about “our image” and the appropriate attire for a meeting with a “Senator” and proper etiquette (OMG). Newbie Debby had no frigging idea who she was talking to.
Mary never went to college, or law school. She taught herself the law, passed the bar the first time, got her license and had been practicing labor law for decades. At night, Mary taught the law to farmworker’s children. Just like Mary, her students pass the bar on the first try, get their license and practice law. If Mary makes the call, 1,500 people show up. You don’t speak that way, to a woman like Mary.
So, Passion, what do we do with newbie activists? How do we manage their expectations? And what do we call them?
There seems to be two issues about "activists" here.
(1) Distinguishing old timers with experience, from newbie activists working within the same movement. I would think that might just involve teaching some respect for elders in the movement (elders by experience, not just age). _This is of course leaving out people whose activism is declared in their online profiles and who may never have even met, much less worked alongside, a long term activist in the field like yourself (much less Mary)._
(2) Distinguishing Stacie Abrams and Marjorie Taylor Greene. This appears to be a different distinction than #1. I'm sure we can find people who have worked in the trenches against abortion for decades; would they qualify as "activists" due to their long experience?
I would not dignify Greene with any title like "activist." She is an utterly vile human being and the is the alpha and the omega.
I saw her burst into laughter at the mention of thousands dying of COVID. She thought it was funny, She deserves impalement.
Passion, we’re making progress – yes? Good thinking. Good questions. Good phrasing.
(1) By necessity, civic activists are self-educating. I promise you, us, old-timers are learning from younger newbies whose technology, social media and communication skills far surpass ours. Put the old-timers together with young newbies and they are dynamite good and super effective.
On their own, newbie activists are counter-productive, even destructive. 1. They don’t know how government works and lack the civic education necessary to effect a change of policy, systems or directions. 2. They have tons of information but little experience using that information to craft a vision. 3. They lack strategic skills and organizational planning skills. 4. They are not clear on the difference between civic education and political propaganda.
I mentor several young activists and they are far beyond me in many ways, all they lack is experience. After the Roe decision came down, two of my young activists told me they finally understand how important it is to know how government works. Right now, they are studying the U.S. Constitution and their state Constitutions. Who knows how long it will be before they study state and local government. Until then, they rely on me. Passion, relying on someone else for basic 101 stuff, is not okay.
(2) Absolutely! My views on civic activism have nothing to do with politics. Pro-life activists are amazingly good. I don’t like their tactics, I don’t agree with their goals, and I fear they are short-sighted, but I have tremendous respect for the work these activists do. The commitment pro-life activists have demonstrated for the last fifty years is awesome.
Crisis pregnancy centers are ubiquitous in rural America. Women count on their support, only to discover that support ends very quickly after delivery. Over 400,000 children are already in the system, and these numbers will increase rapidly. The idea that experienced pro-life activists might walk away, now the Roe was overturned, terrifies me.
Wait a minute here. I was about to post and read what I wrote and caught something new. Is there a generation gap here? Young (age 16 – 30) newbie activists are terrific to work with. It’s the older, over 30, newbies that are so destructive. Passion, have you any thoughts on that?
Interesting observation about 16-30 yo newbie activists and 30+ yo newbie activists. There could be something about the birth cohort, or just about current stage of maturity (or some of each of course). We could check back in 15 years and see if the same pattern repeats with the same ages, or if the pattern shifts upward in age by 15 years. (Joking about doing that, not joking about that being a useful datapoint if one could wait for the results).
---
So if the distinction you want to make between Stacy Abrams and Marjorie Taylor Greene is the number of years of experience as activists, how many more years of activism would the latter need before graduating from cluster-fuck to activist?
Passion, are we discussing activism, or my opinion of Marjorie Taylor Greene? If you want to discuss Greene, say so. If you want to defend Greene, do it. If you want to praise her, I’d like to hear what she does that pleases you. Your turn.
Talking about activism and the proper definition of the term "activist".
I find MTG atrocious for many reasons. The length of time she has been active is not among them, however.
But the contrast between MTG and Stacy Abrams was used above to distinguish "activists", so I'm looking for what criteria are being used, other than our liking one more than the other. We very likely agree on which of those two we prefer; that is not the issue.
"𝘍𝘰𝘳 𝘦𝘹𝘢𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘦, 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘭𝘪𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘭/𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘷𝘦 "𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘴" (𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘦 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘴) 𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘶𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘷𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 "𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘴" (𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘣𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘤𝘭𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳-𝘧𝘶𝘤𝘬𝘴)? 𝘖𝘳 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘰 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤 𝘣𝘦𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘪𝘰𝘳𝘴, 𝘳𝘦𝘨𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘱𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘢𝘧𝘧𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯?"
Oh my! Definitely without regard to political affiliation. This is legitimate activism, and its thoughts are appropriate for this discussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bef-2FUbQcI&t=1183s&ab_channel=UncleTom
Dave, I chose Greene and Abrams as examples, because they are both very well known. While I did not choose them, because of their political affiliations, I can see how someone might get that impression. My bad.
In my mind, activism is civic work, the work of citizens. Civic activists keep politics out of their work. In that regard, I'm a bit of a purest. If a civic organization accepts donations, or direction from any political organization, I do not participate.
Changing a system, crafting public policy, or effecting a change of direction takes a long time. Over the years, civic activists must work with anyone who happens to be in office.
My own civic activism revolves around public policy and the land-use system (rural America is my specialty, because that is where I live). As I mentioned elsewhere, I work in multi-disciplinary teams that serve a coalition of civic organizations. The more diverse our personal backgrounds, the more knowledge we bring to the table (if that is a diversity measure, so be it).
I watched the film, Uncle Tom, you linked. It is moving and I can see its appeal. However, I've come up against too many think tanks not to recognize their influence.
Conservative billionaires’ think tanks have exerted tremendous influence in rural communities, and their prescribed and formulaic policies have done tremendous damage. Our farmers, ranchers, factories and small businesses are suffering so badly, I’m not sure they can recover.
The left has nothing even remotely comparable. In my state, our colleges, universities and training schools escaped the conservative trap by adopting the civic activist’s position (no politics). This has enabled them to move into the future. In more than one arena, Kentucky today, is more progressive than California.
PS. Thanks for the link, I enjoyed the film - a lot.
raffy, no foul intended toward you. Activism and political partisanship (which I find to be a reason why nothing gets better) sometimes has overlap. Your "𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘷𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 "𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘴" (𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘣𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘤𝘭𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳-𝘧𝘶𝘤𝘬𝘴)" was implicitly partisan so it did have something to do with allowing me to use such an explicitly (mentioned parties by name) example of conservative activism. Where we draw a line in how we think of it is separated by a broad and blurry line.
You mention "Conservative billionaires." Are they conservative? They own the media which they use effectively to shape public opinion. How does it tilt? A big part of that is to divide people with common interest (the poor and working class of all "races". As George Carlin famously said, "The owners don't give a f*k about you!" they just want to keep us divided so we won't get together and com for them with pitchforks and torches. It has always been that way. When financial ends were just waving at each other, rather than meeting, and we lived in an edge of town rented mobile home, who did I have more in common with, an economically stressed black family or "the owners"? Promotion of the racial divide is all about preventing us asking ourselves that.
During the p̶a̶n̶d̶e̶m̶i̶c̶ panic, which party enthusiastically destroyed small businesses with the shutdown, as if the covid virus was not a danger in large chain grocery stores, Walmart, Costco or for Amazon workers? Small businesses that were the result of 2nd mortgages on the owner's home and their life's dream. Who benefited from that? How do people become multimillionaires on a congressman's pay other than them knowing who the winners and losers of their legislation will be? Who always seems to benefit and who gets screwed? I see the Ds and Rs as partners in these crimes while making suckers out of the people (that video spoke to that). Is it activism or partisanship do call that stuff out?
Depending upon the issue we are discussing, I may appear to be left or right but given the lack of logic for why the left right issues are on the side they are on, I think that people who line up on all issues with a political tribe have been conned. Things are complex and rarely simple enough to fit on a bumper sticker.
I am normally loath to put a link to something I've written but rather than cut and paste I'll give you this on why I wrote that last paragraph. https://medium.com/@dmurray110/the-doom-of-political-parties-acec668393df
Dave, you are accusing me of something I did not do. I said, and I quote myself, "Marjorie Taylor Greene is a fluster-cluck, not an activist." I did not say, conservative activists were fluster-clucks. I did not even mention politics. As I wrote earlier, in reply to Passion, I think the pro-life activists are awesome activists. I don't have to agree with their goals, to respect them, or their work.
Regarding those billionaires, I was specific, and I quote myself, again, “Conservative billionaires’ think tanks have exerted tremendous influence in rural communities, and their prescribed and formulaic policies have done tremendous damage.”
Dave, I don’t know where you live. For all I know, you could have a balcony, a backyard or a 1,000 acre ranch. I am talking about rural America and all I’ve ever seen, or heard of out here, are think tanks funded by conservative billionaires. I’ve been following these beasts since I first encountered one in the mid-1990s. Back then, the state had passed a mandate requiring jurisdictions to reduce waste going into landfills by 50%, or face $10,000. a day fines. We had ten years to meet that mandate and more than 8,000 square miles of land, people, businesses, aerospace and military installations to consider.
A coalition of engineers, elected officials, attorneys, local activists and our local bank, city and county managers got together and figured out how to do it. The local bank, a business and the city county partnered on the funding, signed the contracts and the facility got built.
Five years before the deadline, we’d reduced waste going into the landfill by as much as 81% a month. That project extended the life of our landfill by 20 years, added more than 80 jobs, reduced city and county waste management costs, turned a profit for the owner and added a new revenue stream for the city and county – without raising trash fees for anyone at all. Thanks to that project, no one in our community has ever separated their trash and recyclables.
Suddenly, a conservative billionaire think tank arrived, determined to shut that facility down. Why? What could possibly be wrong with a project that successful? Dave, can you guess the answer?
The coalition put me to work, finding out what this think tank was and who these people were. As I said, I’ve been following these think tanks ever since.
Over the years, these think tanks have sent in people to oppose or support prison expansion, sex education programs in our schools, general plan updates, water management, hydroponic, family, boutique and organic farming, affordable housing, wastewater treatment, water reclamation, chemical manufacturing, mining and timber operations, wind farms and healthcare system. Dave, can you guess what their stake is, in this rural region? Can you guess what they supported and what they opposed?
As I also said, “The left has nothing even remotely comparable.”
I don't want to get into a partisan demonization of the "enemy" debate. That's not what the commentary is about. As I've written, the demand for lock-step compliance to the party checklists (both of them) from on high is the reason nothing gets done. If I found a genie in a bottle my first wish would be for the end of political parties to disconnect issues from irrational party linkage. The second would be to remove money (bribery by lobbyists) from politics.
I second the motion. Let's vote. Its unanimous. The deed is done.
My bad and sincere apology. That was a cut and paste from a comment by Passion guided by reason in the thread. I lost the who reading all the whats. The ideas are more important to me than who said them. Sloppiness on my part. There are 66 comments at the time of this comment. Names scroll off the screen.
No worries, Dave, I'm lost half the time myself. Smiles to you.
Fixing the tax system to tax the wealthy in a fairer manner would help a lot. I'm not in favour of taking the money they have and redistributing it, but in making them pay their fair share of taxes - the more money you have/make, the more you should pay - some of their money will slowly get redistributed and affect everyone else. Sorry, but we have too many billionaires and some insanely wealthy billionaires. If Jeff and Elon can afford rocket ships, they can afford to pay higher taxes and help feed and house the poor more, since *no one* needs to have as much money as they have.
I am of mixed mind here.
On the one hand, I see the concentration of wealth among a tiny fraction as corrosive to democracy, and wealth inequality as one of our key problems. My concern is about the societal effects, not about envy or resentment. New taxation is one approach to potentially reducing that disparity.
On the other, I'm not too much inclined to make billionaires the new bogeymen, to fuel resentment and ill will through anti-wealth populism. I think it's misleading to frame things like SpaceX and Blue Origin as if Musk and Bezos had purchased some new toy like a Lamborgini. The money they have invested in space technology is very much working capital, and appear to be creating more innovation than NASA or the ESA. Even Bezos going up in one of his rockets is a PR stunt, demonstrating in the most visceral way that he himself considers it safe enough for passengers. Their wealth is not a bunch of coins and bills sitting in huge vaults so they can swim in it (like Scrooge McDuck), it consists of a partial ownership interest in a functioning business, whose value is in turn partially derived by investors trusting their management. If say, the US Government decided to confiscate Bezos' wealth (which I know you are not advocating, but others do), it would not come from bank vaults, but would instead mean taking ownership and control of Amazon, AWS, etc. I don't really think they would run it well, on many fronts. And it would be hard to sell, having dropped in value greatly, plus they might in turn confiscate it again from the next buyer. If the government did get some cash for it, they would likely spend most of that on consumption, rather than reinvesting it in new wealth generation - which would languish by comparison to how that wealth is used now.
Most ordinary folks think of personal wealth in terms of what they could buy for personal consumption, but at the top it often is more about having (partial) control over a complex enterprise which one can try to guide towards functionality and growth. Becoming a high level politician is another way to get (partial) control over a complex enterprise, similarly (but with many differences). Musk and Bezos will personally consume only a tiny fraction of their wealth on paper. Their wealth is invested in enterprises which provide services, employs people at all levels, and advances technology - very little is spent on toys for their own consumption. Removing their influence from those enterprises would not make those enterprises better, in my best guess.
People envision Musk and Bezos as being motivated by acquisitiveness and having more money to spend on buying happiness. I think they are more in it to build the best businesses they can - facing and solving problems, coming up with creative strategies, hiring the right people and delegating appropriately, guiding policies. The business itself IS the "toy", interpreted broadly - in the same sense that a carpenter who builds a house whose craftsmanship they are proud of could be said to have that as their "toy".
And I am, I admit, somewhat tired of hearing "their fair share". Musk recently paid the largest tax assessment in history, by selling of 10% of his stock and paying the unmitigated top-bracket taxes on it. "Fair" is just so incredibly subjective, and the implied resentment is so populist (uninformed), that it's hard to jump on that bandwagon. In that direction lies "equity, not equality" and other semantic pitfalls.
People love hearing about how little some rich people pay in taxes, but that is removed from context and usually cherry picked. In California, half of all state taxes are paid by 1% of the population (it's a problem in that it varies greatly as the economy changes). Even after any "tax schemes" the wealthy do pay for a great deal of the government already. I think that needs to be tweaked higher, but not based on the false idea that they are all getting by super cheaply now.
All that said, I still think we need to do more to reduce income and wealth inequality. I just think we need to be wise about it, and not cause "unintended consequences" at a large scale.
So yes, more progressive taxation (ie: higher marginal rates for higher incomes) is needed, and likely some kind of "wealth tax", done very carefully. Wealth taxes on unrealized paper assets can be extremely tricky to do right.
But I am wary of the social forces, motivated by hostile caricatures of the actual dynamics and fueled by resentment and envy, jumping in to make billionaires "pay their fair share" without much thought or care about the consequences. It needs to be done soberly and carefully, in thoughtful service to creating a better society, not disguised vengeance against those who are more successful.
And we need to avoid exaggerating how much we can "feed and house the poor" from that money. Even if we outright confiscated all of Bezos' and Musk's wealth accumulated over decades, it would be gone in a couple of years, after which we'd have to look for the next goose. The US spent 6.82 trillion in 2021 alone; adding a one time infusion of 400 billion would not have a huge impact on the overall spending during the next decade.
A non-destructive wealth tax would bring in less than that (in the short term), tho it might bring in money for decades to come. We need to avoid over-promising the size of the bonanza, leading to dissapointment and resentment from the masses, who imagine the divided up spoils will change their lives materially.
And I'm not directing that at you per se, Nicole; your comment just stimulated these thoughts to crystalize. Sometimes my muses emerge unbidden, rather than accepting a pre-defined task I'd like to assign them.
Many arguments have been made re why the rich and the super-rich are paying more taxes than we think, but in the last 20-25 years Republican policies have clearly favoured tax breaks for the them and that's where the bulk of income inequality really got juiced. It's not about envy of those who are more successful; it's funny how when we talk about asshole billionaires Warren Buffett's name never seems to come up. He's the one talking about how he pays less taxes than his secretary, and as we learned a few years ago, Donald Trump paid $750 in his annual taxes a few years ago. I don't know how well-paid Elon Musk's employees are but the conditions at Amazon's warehouses for the rank and file are notoriously bad and underpaid. So while Bezos play with his rocketship, and he's doing it for the coolness factor, not because he's trying to demonstrate safety (only the superrich can afford it anyway), his warehouse people are struggling to make ends meet.
We can blame ourselves for that as well; we've been partly trained by the Walmart mentality to value low prices and ignore sweatshops in the Third World and even in our own land; until recently Walmart was the dirt standard for lousy, shitty pay. But bargain basement prices are now a necessity as wealth funneled from the bottom to the top. My sister-in-law commented to me last year that she and my brother are almost getting to the point where it would be worth it for them to vote Trump, but they won't do that because they have a responsibility to everyone who can't afford a seat at their table. And while they do well for themselves, they're nowhere close to being Bezos, Musk or Trump.
Perhaps raising minimum wage would be a good start, along with bringing back the perks of a job that contributed to how well-off someone was, like affordable healthcare. Since the rich famously hate anyone getting 'government handouts', maybe tax them higher is their employees' salaries don't meet a certain standard; those employees would then quality for a gov't UBI stipend.
It's a complicated subject, but higher wages = higher prices = all boats lifting. Costs would be reduced all around in other, less tangible ways in the forms of lower poverty and crime rates. I'm not interested in 'punishing' people for being successful, but an awful lot of their wealth in recent decades came from tax breaks by Republicans, not because of increased effort, and Darwin knows Bezos has never sweated his ass off in his life. The money flowed upward, much of it unearned; now it's time to reverse some of that, esp since they'll feel a lot less pain than the poor and middle class did.
(1) Your and my critiques may not be motivated by envy or resentment of the rich, but I do not think we can dismiss that for everybody. Reading social media and comments on news stories suggests that envy/resentment is at play in many cases - consciously or unconsciously.
(2) Resentful conservatives don't criticize Trump, because they think he's a class traitor who is on their side, and likewise progressives and Buffet. Both men criticize other rich people in their appeal to the masses.
(3) I do not know Trump's finances, but in general people whose wealth is in leveraged investments show (paper) profits some years and not others. They pay only at flat $750 filing fell in the years they lose money, so you'll see a spike at that exact taxes in a tax distribution chart. A fair way to evaluate such things would be to see what the average taxes were over a decade of ups and downs, but to fuel resentment, some authors prefer to "cherry pick" the years when some rich person paid essentially no taxes, and sweep under the rug the years where they paid large amounts in taxes. That's manipulation, not illumination. Read the stories about a weathy person paying little or no taxes carefully to watch for this factor (real news sources will note that specfic years in question, albeit buried rather than highlighted, while opinion pieces often omit that aspect entirely).
(4) Likewise I have come to be cautious about news regarding who benefits from tax breaks. As I have mentioned, about half of California's income tax revenues come from 1% of the population while a large part pay no income taxes; so if California did a 10% reduction in all taxes (fat chance), the news stories would frame this as "half of all tax relief went to the top 1%". So some tax breaks specifically benefit the rich more (eg: changes to estate taxes, which don't cut in until over $12 million so only affect the rich), and others have disproportionate benefit to the rich ONLY to the degree that the rich are disproportionately paying more to begin with. Conflating these two to foster a sense of unfairness is again, manipulation and deception. Call out the former, but stop pretending the latter is an obvious disgrace.
(5) I think it's misleading to blame the appeal of low prices on Walmart; this phenomenon shows up all around the world and through much of history. Walmart is a designated scapegoat, but objective analyses do not show that company as being unusually bad - it's just popular among liberals to imagine the worst. That is not to say that they are ideal, just that the alternatives may be just as bad in many cases, but it's less popular to call them out. Are you aware that Walmart long ago endorsed single payer healthcare? Why is that not mentioned?
(6) One tends to hear only part of the story about Amazon warehouses from certain biased sources. There are bad conditions in some warehouses, but I've also seen testimony from satisfied warehouse workers. They have in some locations paid well above local wages. They have offered to pay expenses for workers seeing an out of state abortion. Again, Amazon is a favored whipping boy, but to my most neutral assessment (to date, always under revision) they seem to be judged by a double standard. Amazon's raison d'etre is not low wages, but advanced logistical integration, from a market leading user interface, to advanced warehouse technologies with a mix of automation and workers, distributed warehouses, and tight integration with multiple shipping services. If you use Amazon to get decent price and fast shipping and generous return policies, that comes from their organizational structure, not from underpaying employees. (Again, that doesn't mean employees should keep organizing for a better deal, just that it's not on the whole as bad as progressives want to convince us with one sided coverage)
(7) UBI is an interesting concept to continue to explore. We could discuss it further, along with the important limitations of the pilot programs so far. But tying qualifying for UBI to which corporation one works for and what their employees earn is not UBI, it's some new tax/benefit regime you are proposing which should not be conflated with UBI.
(8) What I find problematic is any policy which rewards companies in fields where labor inherently needs to be well paid, relative to companies which are in an inherently lower wage market. So for example, considering that Microsoft or Google or Goldman-Sachs are good corporate citizens because their average wage (based on the market for the skills they need) is high, while Delilah's Janitorial Service is an evil company because they don't pay their employees as well. Any fair comparison will operate within the same industry and geographic region, and not yield misleading comparisons between industries. If the society could run by making everybody a software engineer or surgeon, that would be fine, but we also need less skilled jobs, and we cannot act as if the latter might as well go out of business unless they can pay wages competitive with software engineers.
(9) To be clear, I do favor higher marginal rates on income taxes (more progressive) and I am not a Republican or a free market zealot; my first allegiance is to honest and factual understanding of the world; my values then come into play on top of that, rather than instead of that.
(10) "higher wages = higher prices = all boats lifting" could be just another description of inflation. It's the *ratio* of wages to prices which matters, so tripling both is not gaining ground. And underneath all of this is the need to increase productivity - roughly, how much value is produced by an hour's labor - as the engine which can drive increases in that ratio.
(11) I would say that very little of the increase in wealth at the top was *created by* tax breaks. However, that growth may not have been inhibited enough by taxes. A tax break doesn't create wealth, it just inhibits it's growth less. Remember I'm for increased "progressive taxation", in large part because I want to inhibit that growth - because when its excessive, it's corrosive to a democratic society. But I nevertheless distinguish between the engines which *create* wealth, and the policies which partially *inhibit* undue concentrations of it.
(12) I think your picture of folks like Bezos is off kilter. That man had to put in more hard hours than 99.9% of people to create and build his empire. He did so in competition to other very intelligent hard working people. This is not the age of aristocracy, where most wealth is inherited and passive (eg: ownership of rentable property). Today, stats show, the wealthy on average work much harder than most people, with long stressful hours. So it does not serve us well to pretend they are the idle rich who have never worked hard. I would argue that the distribution of income is too wide, with people at the top earning way more than they should (hence, progressive income taxes to reduce that differential), but not that they don't work extremely hard. Our case for a less extreme disparity of income (and wealth) does not depend on falsely characterizing the rich, or the very rich, as typically slackers when the reality is the opposite. People who work harder or smarter deserve more rewards - but only to an extent, not as a blank check for exponentially increased rewards.
Nicole, I respect your writing a lot, and I hope you can see this partial pushback on some of what strikes me as "not deeply enough interrogated conventional assumptions" in the light it is intended. In no way do I mean to disrespect you; I'm more sharing some different and additional lenses through which one might gain additional insights about how the world works. I have found myself on a journey of questioning many of my prior opinions, as I find that some of them were based on assumptions which I had never examined in detail. The resulting reflections have sometimes changed my opinions, sometimes not; and even if they did not revers my opinions, they have have nuanced them more, or helped me defend them with more well considered arguments (while abandoning arguments I no longer hold as valid, even when I continue to support the overall direction based on other arguments). I'm primarily engaged in an imperfect collaborative search for truth, not trying to put people down who disagree, or ensure my tribal acceptance by regurgitating the conventional bullet points undigested.
No offence taken, and I don't mind the pushback. I would note that my opinions have formed over the last twenty years or so between experience and a lot of reading. My thoughts on a UBI are a bit sarcastic, I'll admit, but I continue to be annoyed by what I see as a lot of unnecessary income disparity, and sorry, a lot of it WAS juiced by Bush II's tax cuts.
Amazon's lousy working conditions have been well-documented, although I don't doubt there are some happy workers and perhaps decent warehouses there somewhere. But I've had a more jaundiced opinion of them since reading about CamperForce, which looks an awful lot like Amazon taking advantage of folks who lost everything in the Great Financial Meltdown, created by those at the top and who didn't suffer or go to jail for it.
https://www.wired.com/story/meet-camperforce-amazons-nomadic-retiree-army/
Since then, other investigative pieces have demonstrated the lousy working conditions there, and while I'm sure Jeff Bezos worked hard initially, I'm quite sure he's not working nearly as hard as his factory workers, and much of that is wheeling and dealing and board meetings. He's not in the warehouses getting actual shit moved from one place to another, having to pee in a bottle because he's not allowed proper bathroom breaks. I've often wished there was a way to disguise him so he could work in his own warehouse for a couple of weeks under Amazon conditions, but there's no way you could disguise those offset eyes, everyone would know him immediately.
Wal-Mart has done better in recent years, and I didn't know that about backing the single payer system; how are they doing on providing healthcare for their workers, most of whom, a few years ago, couldn't afford it? Let's remember, Walmart 'helped' them navigate various parts of the welfare system they'd need to survive since, back then, Walmart was paying shit after driving out the better-paying businesses out of business. I also remember reading an article several years ago - back in the '00s - about how lousily they treated their vendors who were essentially breaking even on doing business with Walmart, but they didn't dare *not* do business with them because if they didn't, their competitors will. I'm not quite sure how that would benefit their competitors - how much business can you afford to do with a #1 customer and only be breaking even? Maybe no one thought to break their competitors by refusing to do business with Walmart unless the latter agreed to a more equitable deal.
However, in recent years I acknowledge they've raised their wages (which meant everyone else could do the same) and also, lesser-known, Walmart underwent a large sustainability makeover several years ago, implemented efficient recycling and and waste treatment, better practices at the stores, and saved about $400M which benefits the environment. I've never forgotten that about them.
The fact is, wages have remained stagnant for decades for the lower and middle classes, and the middle one is disappearing. In the wake of the Great Financial Meltdown the class formerly known as middle slipped into poverty, with a rise in all the pathologies associated with the lower classes - a rise in domestic violence, divorces, criminal activity, and substance abuse. The very rich on Wall Street benefited mightily from the meltdown, and no one went to prison for it. Speaking of not going to prison, that reminds me of Trump. It's interesting he never released his financial records as president, so no, we *don't* know what he's paying or not, but I'd guess not much since he supposedly wasn't paying anything for years after one of his many bankruptcies. Although I doubt that's the reason why he won't release them - too many far more embarrassing, and likely illegal revelations there. If there's one thing many of us have learned about the rich, it's that the more they earn, the less likely they are to want to pay for anything, and Trump was famous for that during his real estate years in NYC.
Ever read the book "Bullshit Jobs" based on the viral essay of a few years ago? Very eye-opening and not specifically an indictment of the rich - more so just an overall poorly-structured economic system in which the most vital, necessary jobs pay the least. What if no one wanted to make a janitor's low wages? What if there needed to be a revolving schedule of various employees' turn to clean the restrooms? Why are teachers paid shit to educate future generations and so much more paid to entertainers like sports athletes and rock musicians? Not to diss those careers, but if we can afford to pay Michael Jordan millions we can afford to pay a teacher liveable wages AND maybe even support them with school budgets for something other than armed guards and defensive shooting training for teachers. I laughed as the BJ book dinged the financial services industry for being largely a bullshit industry, which has been my opinion since my last office job where our target market was big financial institutions. For a year and a half I scrutinized all the big players in North America and realized just how much of a scam so much of it is - nothing productive, just shifting money around for people high enough in the system, and there you don't have to even be a middle manager for that to happen. I think about 20% of what FIs do is truly vital - we do need a place to keep our money, buy insurance, get loans, support for entrepreneurship, pay America's labour force - but the rest of it is sheer horse shit and everyone knows it. The games bankers played with CDSs and ARMs led to the financial collapse and even *they* didn't understand the financial 'products' they were selling to clueless investors, with various 'tranches' of crap investments bundled in and buried so deep the sellers themselves didn't know what was there and didn't want to know. Just sell sell sell to the next chump.
As far as progressive taxation goes, I'd be in favour of one that scales back maybe a little less the more you make. You don't want to be taking like 50% of someone's pay or net worth - that's counterproductive. But for sure if you an afford a rocket ship, you can afford to pay more in taxes. America is very good to many of its citizens regardless of the carping that goes on about inequality - some of it coming from folks who just aren't trying hard enough (and I'm not thinking about any 'group' specifically - self-inflicted underachieving is a universal human sport). But I also don't think there should be a max on taxation - the more you make, the more you pay, but your taxes don't go up as much as they did several hundred million or a few billion ago.
BTW "Bullshit Jobs" has a great description of what a fucking waste of productivity much of the California entertainment industry is - how people are making huge sums of money literally doing little more than lunching with each other, (and expensing it), discussing a few putative business issues, and then going home to swim in the pool. It's amazing how little time is actually spent by so many of these people on creating better content, although obviously someone somewhere is doing it, as Netflix has produced many high-quality TV and movies in the last fifteen years that get a lot of kudos (I don't subscribe to even basic cable, so apart from one summer with Netflix several years ago, I don't read and hear about them).
I'm curious as to what you've read that you think might change my mind. I'm open to that. I'd especially like to read what you've got on how the wealthy work longer and more stressful hours than the hoi polloi. I'd like to know more about them.
Also, open to better/differing opinions on the UBI idea. Conservatives are skeptical of it, some of their skepticism is questionable but some of it isn't (particularly the idea that some people will coast. I disagree with them on why but I've seen it myself so I support 'strings attached' to make sure people are working to become or become again productive members of society).
Sources: Preferably middle of the road, neither super right-wing nor super left-wing.
Hmm. There's a lot of material there, some of which I agree with and some of which I question. Let's take on some pieces; addressing everything would be a huge essay and many hours of work.
---
I read the Wired story at your link, and did not find it as terrible as you perceive. The writer says she spent months interviewing Amazon workers (and mentions working for a week at a warehouse, tho perhaps she also worked other times?). From that, she chose a handful of people for the article. Are they representative, or selected for some other reason?
I'm mildly skeptical of the framing "taking advantage of folks who lost everything in the Great Financial Meltdown". The lead couple lost 100% of their investments ($250K and $200K) according to the article. I and my friends all lived through that too, but nobody lost anything close to 100% on invested money. How does that happen, unless one is investing in a very high risk/high gain option? It says that he believed that a $250,000 investment would yield $4000/mo (or $48K/yr, about 20% per year). Sound like a good, safe investment to you? Anyway, it's sad if he was given to think that was guaranteed and safe, and I would be happy to have any fraud investigated in that regard.
So they hit the road, broke. They had trouble finding work, until they encountered Amazon's seasonal work, which sounds like it proved a godsend in terms of better employment than they found elsewhere, although it was hard work with long hours. Some picker jobs involved a lot of walking, but according to the article that is changing as robotics handle more of the long distance stuff. Eventually, Amazon will likely automate more and more of the work, reducing their human labor needs, so that folks like the Stouts will have to do without Amazon seasonal jobs - will that be a boon to them?
Is that really such a horror story? Have you ever worked construction or in a factory? Or is your norm for comparison set by white collar work? It sounds like pretty much all of the jobs I had until I worked my way into computers, and which I'd still have been working had I not. It's unfortunate that they are doing that at a more advanced age, but is that Amazon's fault?
Before you answer, remember that the article involves selectivity. Go to indeed.com and look for what Amazon warehouse workers are paid today, and compare that to the local wages for equivalently skilled workers in those locations. I was seeing wages in the $16-25/hr range around the country (where minimum wage varies from $7.25 to $16ish).
What I'm driving at is: we can select stories of people who have suffered personal losses, and then contrast that with companies which paid above market wages yet it was still not enough. Does that justify singling out the company as a particular evil doer, in the mind of the reader juxtaposing selected people who suffered losses not (fully) their own fault, and a company (not responsible for previous losses) which is not making things right for them by paying them sufficiently above prevailing wages. It sets up the reader to think badly about the company, but I think unfairly so.
Criticizing the entire system of market based labor rates might be more appropriately targeted (tho such criticisms also need to be examined of course).
I am NOT any sort of Amazon apologist, I'm just trying to understand things in context. I tend to resist being stampeded nowadays, after finding that I have been taken in so many times. Most folks (including me) have a tendency to easily believe a good story that fits what they want to believe, without checking. We can partially compensate for that by also checking the stories we most want to believe, which have the appropriate white hats and black hats.
---
> "But I also don't think there should be a max on taxation - the more you make, the more you pay, but your taxes don't go up as much as they did several hundred million or a few billion ago."
I don't know what you mean there. There is no maximum tax - the more income you have, the more you pay; the more retail you by, the more sales tax; the more expensive your real property, the more you pay. In the case of income taxes, you not only pay more total, higher income gets taxed at a higher rate. (I would add some more tiers at the top, but not too extreme). The one exception might be social security taxes. In general, the more you pay in, the more you can take out in benefits later. That at the bottom of the scale get back more than they paid in, those at the top get back less than they paid in (so it does already move wealth downward), but at all levels paying higher SS taxes bring more SS benefits than paying less. But the maximum taxed income for social security is $147K this year - which also limits their benefits. (There are proposals to remove the limit for taxes but revise the formulas so there are no increase benefits associated with the higher taxes).
Is that what you mean by max taxation? Or something else?
------
About the fact that the wealth on average work very hard. I recall Daniel Markovits, who is a critic of the meritocracy and the wealthy, but nevertheless admits that the wealthy on average work longer hours, a reversal of historical trends; he speaks of the disappearance of the leisure class. See Sam Harris podcast 205 for an interesting interview (which is not to say that I endorse everything that either person says), or you can just google is name and find other articles.
CEO's in this study worked an average of 62.5 hours a week (including working on 79% of weekend days, and 70% of weekdays).
https://hbr.org/2018/07/how-ceos-manage-time
I've seen other indicators, but these are quick.
When I say "work hard" I don't mean that the high income folks tend to sweat and use their muscles a lot; but many jobs are intellectually and emotionally challenging nevertheless.
And let's be clear - I'm questioning the idea that high income folks in general don't work as hard or as many hours as most others do today - I am NOT asserting that means their pay is always appropriate! I think we need a pay differential to motivate people (rather than everybody getting the same pay regardless of contribution), but currently the curve is way too steep, with way too much reward at the top. Even if higher income people on average work pretty hard, there are limits to how much extra that should earn.
>"Accruing wealth takes time, usually generations."
I know that's conventional wisdom. But I wonder how broadly true it is today. (A theme for me today it seems :-)
First, let's be clear what type of wealth we are talking about. When the question is about a wealth gap, it's usually measured at the median (50 percentile), so we are not talking about the wealth of the top 10%, 1% or 0.1%. So wealth among ordinary people consists of net assets - add up all that one owns and subtract all of one's debts.
I see people around me to earn similar incomes, but use it in different ways. Some borrow constantly, buying cars and boats and taking vacations; some are more frugal and save a larger portion of their income. Their net assets (ie: wealth) can vary wildly on the same income, depending on spending and investing habits. How large is this effect, compared to inherited wealth, among ordinary people?
I know that I personally inherited no wealth (indeed needed to support my mother), but managed to make it into a frugal middle class. I always saved the maximum possible on work plans (invested in tax free stock market funds), and had additional savings as well. My partner and I bought a house as soon as we were able, which along with subequent residences have appreciated at about 10% per year on average (no bonanzas, but ongoing growth). As a result, I'm doing OK - not wealthy but comfortable.
Others I know have had different trajectories, up or down from their parents. The state of their net assets today has depended more on their personal behaviors and choices, than their parent's status.
I do understand that I've been focusing on inherited money, and that intergenerational wealth correlations may sometimes involve more than money, like inculcated attitudes about handling money. So even if a child does not get much money from their parents, they might gain from wise attitudes regarding use of income to build wealth. Or even if they get financial assistance from a parent, they may use that to build net assets, or spend it on consumables. But the information about spending habits which build wealth rather than consumption, can be transferred laterally, and can be learned in a single generation.
I am NOT saying that there is no effect from having parents who can afford to fund a good university education, or an earlier down payment for their kids. I'm just questioning the degree to which that is the dominant factor in accumulating net assets today, for those in the middle of the income and/or wealth spectrum. Admittedly, my wanting to look more deeply is inspired by looking around me at ordinary people who do not seem to follow the same patterns as wealth among the 1% does. That's enough to raise questions, but not to answer them.
TL;DR: When we speak of wealth we can too easily have unconscioiusly in mind the dynamics we associate with rich people, say elite1% and above, while the gap is measured at the 50 percentile, where wealth (net assets) has as much to do with choices as with inherited money. This difference could taint our "intuitions", and thus would need deeper analysis.
Where I live, many of those in the trades are non-white. We just got solar in, and a majority of the crew were Latino or Black. It was a non-union job (tho at least one of the crew was a former union electrician). All the ones I spoke with liked the company and seemed content with the pay. So I don't think the route to increased wealth is only through unions, tho obviously than can play a part.