I posted this in another thread before it was available, but I think it's really worth a listen.

Author Puts Unconventional Spin On Economics

and seems pretty relevant to the discussion itt

After seeing all the charts and stats over the years, I am very surprised that two new grads working one full, one part-time job can already be in the top 25% of income in America. Dafuq?

also, thank you dib for that link, which had a link to Watch 15 Magically Awkward Seconds Roll By While A Man Panics After Accidentally Insulting America, a daily show interview

hadn't seen that, much laugh, very humor

This didn't blow my mind at all. I knew it was loltastic at the top 400 people in America is equal to the bottom 150 million. Think about that in perspective. You can fit 400 people into your house (granted, it'd be in every single space). You couldn't fit 150 million people an entire ****ing state.


This is what blew my mind. If you can graduate with 2 people at 22 years old, one with an engineering degree and one with almost any other degree and be in the top 25% of the USA is laughable.

For example, I know a waiter in a really nice place that makes about 75k a year and he's 27 years old. He told me he's made more money than his father did in his entire life, and his father is 61.

'merica

Wow. I'm kinda shocked here. I didn't want to say you couldn't fit 150 million people in NY/California/Texas, but the total population of those 3 states is 84 million people.

Oh man. That's utterly disgusting. That's as bad as the trash pile in the Pacific that is the size of Texas.

I'm gonna go have a drink now.

A great metric for rich/not rich is ability to afford British dentistry.

I think he was breaking out a literary reference to F. Scott Fitzgerald from "The Rich Boy"

Working my way through Piketty's tome (not actually a bad read for its length and subject) and he talks about how class definitions are always going to be arbitrary and there isn't really a correct answer as to what defines middle class. He uses deciles and the top centile for his comps... the top 10% he brands "upper class" with the top 1% called the "dominant class" the next 9% "well-to-do-class" the next 40% "middle class" and the bottom 50% "lower class".

As far as your question "working class" generally means working poor in American Society.

Meh, agree and disagree. DB pensions are horrible for companies, which is why they are being done away with (except the military) but they are, IMO, much better for retirees. Alot of stock market returns depend on when you invested (entry year) and even then individuals suck at investing and constantly under-preform the market.

Agree though that companies set themselves up for failure by assuming loltastic investment returns (8% annualized in perpetuity what could go wrong).

I see where you are coming from though (if baby-boom retirees had used an employee match 401K and simply pumped money into long term Treasury STRIPS through their careers they would be set at retirement but, IMO, the interest rate/ generally investing environment was different then than now, and also a big part of my family's DB plans was the health care that they could keep and use as a supplement to Medicare or use as their primary (CSRS era fed retirement if you are familiar) health care...end of life costs are brutal and long-term care insurance is very expensive...

PVN. Paging PVN to the courtesy phone.

I never said DCs make retirees better off than DBs (they do not).

I said retirees, as a group, have found other ways to compensate.

I also implied DBs were unsustainable.

Oh I know, was agreeing with you on that point. Didn't know if you were trying to argue that retirees were better off managing their own money in a 401k/ IRA, which now it's clear that you were not.

All else being equal, they wouldn't be.

But not all else is equal. Retirees for the next 30 years or so (and beyond really) are projected to have more and more investment income in their retirement due to having more disposable income to invest and more choices to invest with.

And yet the elderly are a growing demographic in regards to poverty.

Market crash hurt quite a few of them, too. But yep, disposable income, as a percent of income, has dropped from 8% to 4%. Quite a bite especially as cost of goods has gone up.

b

What I don't understand is isn't it all relative? I mean the better the middle and lower classes are doing the better the rich will fair as well right? Obviously the wealthy in this country are doing great right now so maybe I'm wrong but what if they choke the economy to the point that it crashes? How much is their money going to be worth then?

Read this and thought about this thread.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/bu...less.html?_r=1

Well a while back an internal "Plutonomy" memo circulated by Citigroup got a lot of attention. It posited that the US is a plutonomy (economy driven by the wealthy few) and therefore the consumption of the rest of the masses was largely irrelevant - and would become moreso as income inequality increased.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/1...-Michael-Moore

So if we all agree income inequality is out of control? What is the solution?

Wealth distribution through taxation alone isn't the answer.
Another problem is with taxation you endup just raising taxes on high end professionals and small business owners which isn't really the issue. The issue is the richest 500k or so households that get 50-60% of all capital gains, etc...

0% unemployment?

Has any society really had truly 0% unemployment?

Super low unemployment isn't all it's cracked up to be. The late 90s in SF/Bay Area were a customer service nightmare. Anyone with half a brain was making $50k+ working as an admin assistant in a startup. That left the sloths and malcontents to work in book stores and coffee shops. There's definitely some % of society that are just going to be worthless no matter what they do. Personally I'd rather have them just getting by on the margins of society than ****ing my latte.

Lower unemployment isn't going to change the fact the top .01% are getting a bigger slice of the pie than ever.

Economic equality for all isn't feasible, that is basically socialism. What we need is more mobility/opportunity for all through better education, infrastructure and overall societal structure (less crime, 2 family homes, etc)

I dunno the most efficient way to execute that plan or if it is even possible at this point tho.

Why can't we have the government just give everybody a job that wants one. Pay them a living wage to do whatever. That would lower the unemployment rate to 0 and it should drive wages up for everybody.

Deficits supposedly don't matter so end the Bush tax cuts for the top 2% and keep printing money.

Well the thing is and perhaps its purely a Euro/USA difference, but in Europe class has a values element attached to it. You can still have lots of money and be working class.

It probably has something to do with the Aristocracy. Sometimes someone in the Aristocracy who is definitely upper class might go broke, still upper class though by definition. In fact perhaps one the most delineated lines in the class structure by values is the line between upper middle class and upper class.

Yeah that makes sense, bloodlines and what not.

In the US its just you a baller or you ain't..

Burn it to the ground and start over.

Tax capital gains like ordinary income. Make a new tax bracket at ~$2M or so and hit it around 45%. Cut checks for hoi polloi.