CEO Pay Has Grown 90 Times Faster Than Workers' Since '78

Because the change would be gradual, like we see now with manual labor being replaced by robots. Also, extremely wealthy folks will have lots of money to buy things, so it will be attractive to sell to them.

And I sense that you are coming around to my original point (or you were always there and we just needed to hash it out) when you say "And if we ever reached the point where all of our basic needs could be met by robots run without a profit motive then the government could manage said robots and capitalism would still be in place for everything else." That's exactly what I was getting to and simply pointed out that our current system is terribly equipped to put something like that in place. The point I'm not with you here is how would capitalism be in place for everything else if people are not required to work and can't compete with robots even if they wanted to? Would they get some type of cash distribution from the government? It's an interesting thought experiment and I'm sure there are lots of possibilities, but to my original point, I think we need to rethink labor as it relates to our economy.

But there will be a small number of wealthy people so they're not much of a market. They don't eat more than anyone else. They might spend more money on what they buy but they don't necessarily buy so much more that they can carry an economy.

Sure, our current system is not equipped for such a thing and we need to rethink labor.I agree with both of these. I simply don't think income inequality or capitalism are the problems. The system that is changing is the concept of labor itself and, accordingly, how we compensate that labor.

To violate Panamaican's Law and reference slavery (yes, I'm still trying to make that stick), slavery created massive inequality between the top and the bottom and it was predicated on capitalism. The problem there was not the actual income inequality between the slaves and the top of the economic food chain. Nor was the problem capitalism itself. The problem was the concept that one person could legally own another person and their labor. Fixing the problem meant freeing slaves, not redistributing wealth from masters to slaves but keeping them as slaves in every other aspect. Nor would switching to socialism have solved the problem if the government would have been able to keep slaves as part of it's labor pool.

Similarly here, the problem is that labor needs a new definition and a new compensation model.
 
But improving education and healthcare are the types of things that need addressing. They would need addressing even if income inequality wasn't as pronounced. But when people fixate on income inequality, you're going to get solutions like "redistribution of tax revenue to those on the lower end of the income scale," instead of solutions like "overhaul primary education systems so that people leave high school with directly marketable skills."

One is treating the canary, the other is fixing the mine shaft.

The problem is that increasing the market value of labor and eliminating poverty are entirely separate issues that get conflated in these discussions. Redistributing tax revenue works to eliminate (or alleviate) poverty, as we can see here and in countries that do it more aggressively. Trying to engineer higher market incomes for people does not have much of an impact on poverty. Look at pre- and post-transfer poverty rates around the developed world. Different approaches to economic policy don't lead to much of a difference in pre-transfer rates but they do lead to big differences in post-transfer rates. And people genuinely suffer from having not enough income.

Separately, people are rightly upset that median labor income hasn't tracked increases in overall national income (though it has more recently). Making our educational system more income-focused could help that, though I'm a little skeptical.
 
The problem is that increasing the market value of labor and eliminating poverty are entirely separate issues that get conflated in these discussions. Redistributing tax revenue works to eliminate (or alleviate) poverty, as we can see here and in countries that do it more aggressively. Trying to engineer higher market incomes for people does not have much of an impact on poverty. Look at pre- and post-transfer poverty rates around the developed world. Different approaches to economic policy don't lead to much of a difference in pre-transfer rates but they do lead to big differences in post-transfer rates. And people genuinely suffer from having not enough income.

Separately, people are rightly upset that median labor income hasn't tracked increases in overall national income (though it has more recently). Making our educational system more income-focused could help that, though I'm a little skeptical.

I agree in large part. Increasing the market value of labor and eliminating poverty are entirely separate issues. Income inequality could be a sign of problems in either area. So, if we're going to try and eliminate poverty then let's be direct about the problem we're trying to solve - it's not income inequality, it's poverty. And if we're trying to increase the market value of labor, let's be direct about that - it's not income inequality per se, it's that the compensation rate for labor has declined at such a rate that we think something should be done.

Speaking in terms of reducing income inequality means we don't talk about either problem directly.
 
I agree in large part. Increasing the market value of labor and eliminating poverty are entirely separate issues. Income inequality could be a sign of problems in either area. So, if we're going to try and eliminate poverty then let's be direct about the problem we're trying to solve - it's not income inequality, it's poverty. And if we're trying to increase the market value of labor, let's be direct about that - it's not income inequality per se, it's that the compensation rate for labor has declined at such a rate that we think something should be done.

Speaking in terms of reducing income inequality means we don't talk about either problem directly.

Fair enough on the points you're making here. I think that redistribution through changes in fiscal policy (not necessarily on the spending end) can effectively eliminate poverty *and* be part of increasing median incomes. I've been thinking it might be good to have a sovereign wealth fund.
 
Fair enough on the points you're making here. I think that redistribution through changes in fiscal policy (not necessarily on the spending end) can effectively eliminate poverty *and* be part of increasing median incomes. I've been thinking it might be good to have a sovereign wealth fund.

Yes to the first half but not the second half. I don't know if you're saying that you would include the results of the redistribution as part of income but I wouldn't (unless you're envisioning some regulation that incentivizes companies to pay higher wages).

When I think of increasing the value of labor, I'm thinking primarily in terms of paychecks.
 
Yes to the first half but not the second half. I don't know if you're saying that you would include the results of the redistribution as part of income but I wouldn't (unless you're envisioning some regulation that incentivizes companies to pay higher wages).

When I think of increasing the value of labor, I'm thinking primarily in terms of paychecks.

I'm thinking that a corrective to capital getting a bigger slice of the pie is the gov't owning income-generating capital (and getting dividends or something) and distributing back to workers or others.
 
I'm thinking that a corrective to capital getting a bigger slice of the pie is the gov't owning income-generating capital (and getting dividends or something) and distributing back to workers or others.

So a variant of communism? Communism-lite?
 
So a variant of communism? Communism-lite?
I was thinking it was a step towards socialism. It's giving shares of ownership of capital goods--the means of production--to the people.
 
The gov't owning index funds or something could be described as a form of socialism. Still a market economy, though.
I was thinking it was a step towards socialism. It's giving shares of ownership of capital goods--the means of production--to the people.

The same result can be achieved with taxation and without the government directly owning anything any means of production income. Although the idea of the government entering the marketplace as a producer has pros and cons, I think there are plenty of risks involved.

For example, if the government owned index funds, what's to prevent it from crafting self-serving regulations/laws?
 
The same result can be achieved with taxation and without the government directly owning anything any means of production income. Although the idea of the government entering the marketplace as a producer has pros and cons, I think there are plenty of risks involved.

For example, if the government owned index funds, what's to prevent it from crafting self-serving regulations/laws?

Nothing currently prevents self-serving regulations or laws. I don't see how it changes anything. Sovereign wealth funds do exist already (including at the state level) without any real issues, though they're usually in commodities. Note that even though it isn't called that, the SS trust is like a SWF, and a gov't fund holding gov't bonds seems even weirder. National parks also generate revenue, right?

Anyway, I wouldn't say that there are no concerns and that it's risk-free. It's something that seems interesting to me, but I'm not married to the idea. Just seems like a reasonable alternative to trying to engineer market outcomes so that labor gets a bigger share or something. Let capital end up with the share it ends up with but have the public take a portion of capital's slice of the pie. It can be done completely optionally (like if companies are offered the choice of paying a portion of taxes in equity or if the gov't offers a loan program that comes with equity requirements).
 
Nothing currently prevents self-serving regulations or laws. I don't see how it changes anything. Sovereign wealth funds do exist already (including at the state level) without any real issues, though they're usually in commodities. Note that even though it isn't called that, the SS trust is like a SWF, and a gov't fund holding gov't bonds seems even weirder. National parks also generate revenue, right?

Anyway, I wouldn't say that there are no concerns and that it's risk-free. It's something that seems interesting to me, but I'm not married to the idea. Just seems like a reasonable alternative to trying to engineer market outcomes so that labor gets a bigger share or something. Let capital end up with the share it ends up with but have the public take a portion of capital's slice of the pie. It can be done completely optionally (like if companies are offered the choice of paying a portion of taxes in equity or if the gov't offers a loan program that comes with equity requirements).

But a sovereign wealth fund that distributes its proceeds doesn't give labor a bigger share. It redistributes the gains of capital. But getting labor a bigger share, to me, means getting it at the point where labor is actually performing the job itself, not 1 year later via cash payouts from capital (even if it's government owned capital).
 
But a sovereign wealth fund that distributes its proceeds doesn't give labor a bigger share. It redistributes the gains of capital. But getting labor a bigger share, to me, means getting it at the point where labor is actually performing the job itself, not 1 year later via cash payouts from capital (even if it's government owned capital).

That's correct. But if the market is shifting so that labor gets a smaller share of the pie, is it really a good idea to try to engineer a shift back? Why not just make it so workers get some of the piece that's growing? We could incentivize equity as part of pay (Clinton had a proposal to do that), but that subjects workers to risk that would benefit some and hurt others through no fault of their own.
 
The same result can be achieved with taxation and without the government directly owning anything any means of production income. Although the idea of the government entering the marketplace as a producer has pros and cons, I think there are plenty of risks involved.

For example, if the government owned index funds, what's to prevent it from crafting self-serving regulations/laws?

Does the US even have a sovergien wealth fund?

Other than that, i cant see an area in which government should own market funds -- unless its majority ownership of a crown corporations
 
I just realized we haven't seen Hillary at all. Bernie is being a leader, doing interviews, town halls, pushing for better policies.
 
That's correct. But if the market is shifting so that labor gets a smaller share of the pie, is it really a good idea to try to engineer a shift back? Why not just make it so workers get some of the piece that's growing? We could incentivize equity as part of pay (Clinton had a proposal to do that), but that subjects workers to risk that would benefit some and hurt others through no fault of their own.

I agree. I don't think there's any point in trying to engineer a shift back. But I also think that means we're not giving "labor" or workers a bigger piece. It means we're moving away from thinking about labor and work as how we meet primary needs. It's the same result but I categorize the activities to achieve it (and, more specifically, how we should think about what we're doing) differently.
 
Does the US even have a sovergien wealth fund?

Other than that, i cant see an area in which government should own market funds -- unless its majority ownership of a crown corporations

I'm not sure. We own stuff but I'm not familiar enough with it to know how to label them.
 
The added access and manipulation of Stock options changed the game.
 
I agree. I don't think there's any point in trying to engineer a shift back. But I also think that means we're not giving "labor" or workers a bigger piece. It means we're moving away from thinking about labor and work as how we meet primary needs. It's the same result but I categorize the activities to achieve it (and, more specifically, how we should think about what we're doing) differently.

Fair enough.

I'm not sure. We own stuff but I'm not familiar enough with it to know how to label them.

We definitely do not label the SS Trust Fund as a SWF, though it effectively is one. I think on the state level, we're more open (like the Texas Permanent School Fund gets that label).
 
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