Don't blame me---I'm one of those crazy libertarians.
Even with the subsidies, though, price is still the best way to ration scarce resources. We could, and should, make the teams pay back the subsidies, but that wouldn't make the tickets any cheaper.
It's worth pointing out here that scarce resources are scarce. No matter how you ration the tickets, you can only fit 15,000 people into an arena with a seating capacity of 15,000.
Sporting events actually give a pretty good example of how consumption inequality differs from income inequality. Modern high-definition television sets provide a much, much better substitute for attending a sporting event than the TVs of 40 years ago. Even as incomes have diverged, consumption has in many ways converged.
You cry bloody murder when you imagine that I'm accusing you of antisemitism, but here you are making an actual bogus accusation of racism when it's quite clear that the "Democrat" is doing all the heavy lifting in "biracial Democrat."
All the while complaining about hypocrisy. Is there a word for a hypocrite accusing someone of hypocrisy? Hypercrite?
Five percent of the population accounts for almost half (49 percent) of total health care expenses.
Am I correct in assuming that this is for any given year, and not over a single birth cohort's entire lifetime? That is, if we were to look back at lifetime health care expenditures for everyone born in 1900, we would see a much more even distribution, would we not?
Come to think of it, this also applies to income inequality. By looking only at a single-year snapshot, we see higher highs and lower lows than we would if we were looking at lifetime or ten-year-average incomes. This could even account for some of the increase in intranational income inequality, if incomes are becoming more volatile due to a shift towards stock-based compensation at the high end.
I'm not seeing how that substantiates your claim. It's mostly about sleep, so they mention statistics about work hours only in passing, and aren't really clear how they define it. I'm guessing that when they say "the 9.5 hour average workday," they're including travel time and lunch break, because I'm not seeing that figure supported anywhere else.
Quoting you from the other thread: Since 1980, the average working week has ballooned from 40 (with a 45 minute lunch included) to now 55 (with lunch being charged as “off the clock”).
It’s hard to form business partnerships with people you never meet; it’s hard to convince someone to loan money to start a new business when you’re competing with their fraternity-buddy’s son from Trustfund Delta Silverspoon fraternity, who went to universities that deliberately price themselves so high that nobody out of the 0.1% could ever attend.
Every single one of the top fifteen universities in the USNWR rankings offers need-based financial aid. The most elite universities don't have high sticker prices to keep out the riff-raff, they do it because they want students from rich families to pay extra to subsidize the students from poor and middle-class families.
The “9-to-5? day, in which workers worked 8 hours and were credited a 30-45 minute lunch break, has been replaced by the 55-plus hour “overtime exempt” workweek and making employees “get off the clock” for assigned breaks or lunches.
I meant to challenge your assertion that the average work week was 55 hours over on this thread. I don't see anything in the piece you linked to that substantiates that claim. The American Time Use Survey gives an average of 42 hours per week for men classified as full time workers (35+ hours), and 38.5 for women. The presentation is a bit confusing, but you get that by multiplying the average hours worked per day times seven days per week times the average percentage of workers working each day.
"Good" is very much a subjective value judgment. I think that having an economy in which people are paid based on the marginal product of their labor is a good thing because it maximizes productivity, which I like because I enjoy having a high standard of living. As do most people. Some people don't. I think they're nuts and will oppose their attempts to lower standards of living. But they're not wrong in any objective sense---they just my enemies because they have preferences which are fundamentally incompatible with mine.
Right. But Euclidian and non-Euclidian geometries are both valid---provably so---for different sets of axioms. Axioms which are based on observable properties of the real world. To the best of my knowledge, no theory of justice is based entirely on observable properties of the real world.
One problem with the height tax is that while height correlates with income potential, the correlation is far from perfect. So some guy's going to get screwed over because he's tall but unintelligent, unathletic, and socially awkward. So he has a characteristic that correlates with income potential but doesn't actually have that income potential.
Of course, the income tax screws over people who overachieve through hard work, but at least they can afford to pay it. It also subsidizes people who underachieve either through inadequate effort or through intentionally dropping out. I wonder if a tax based on the prestige of your college might work better. It's gameable, but it's not clear that it's worth gaming.
They can AFFORD to not consume every penny they have as soon as they get it. The 99% can’t.
You said you weren't going to respond to me anymore, you big tease.
In any case, it simply isn't true that 99% of the population can't save. I know that for a fact, because my income is less than half what it would take to get me into the top percentile, and I save about a third of it. But don't take my word for it---your claim can be proven false through simple introspection: If a person with a $40,000/year income can't afford to save anything, then a person with a $30,000/year income can't afford to live. Given that many people do in fact live on $30,000/year and less, then clearly a person making $40,000/year can afford to save.
Again, I think you're conflating large personal fortunes and large corporations. The two are somewhat independent, since a large corporation may be owned jointly by many people, and a very wealthy person may have his wealth spread out among many different investments.
And the problem you're describing is most associated with large corporations, not with large personal fortunes. Furthermore, large corporations need not be controlled by a handful of extremely wealthy individuals to have a corrupting influence, the obvious counterexample being labor unions.
When automation made possible finely woven fabrics and ceramics … there is no denying that benefits accrued more to the capital/marketing people than the unskilled laborers. But the bigger benefit is that every single woman wasn’t spinning thread and weaving cloth anymore and a pair of pants no longer cost a months ordinary wages.
This isn't a valid explanation for real median wages rising so much more slowly than productivity. The real median wage is adjusted for inflation, so it takes the falling real prices of consumer good into account.
I thought of it, too. I think I actually had that idea before Mankiw published the paper. Not a tax on height specifically, but on natural endowments more generally.
Any idea why there was a shortage of plumbers? I get that it takes some training, but it's not like you need ten years of college. Generally that sort of thing sorts itself out when people figure out that there's money in it.
No, that's completely wrong. What they're saying is that with the total amount of money we actually spend on means-tested programs* ($927 Billion per year---roughly $3,000 per American, $9,000 per capita, and $19,000 for each American below the poverty line), we could supplement every household's income enough to get them to the size-adjusted equivalent of $44,000 for a family of four.
All of this is clear from reading the first page of the document.
And before you start talking about the "laughable assertions" of others, you'd best pull that beam out of your own eye.
*This does not include Social Security, Medicare, or unemployment benefits.
Nihilist. They're all arbitrary. Even mine. Really, how can they be anything but arbitrary? Justice is an abstraction, not a real thing. Theories of justice aren't testable---they're subjective value judgments.
Because, if it is objectively the case that justice requires us to maximise (within the constraints of respecting basic liberties) the lifetime material prospects of the worst off
If that's true, then all that other stuff follows. But it's not true. It's a postulate. It's assumed to be true for the sake of argument, but no more than that.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Entertaining Inequality”
And not at all bigoted.
"
I misjudged you, sir. I can tell by this comment that you are a very serious and intelligent person.
"
Don't blame me---I'm one of those crazy libertarians.
Even with the subsidies, though, price is still the best way to ration scarce resources. We could, and should, make the teams pay back the subsidies, but that wouldn't make the tickets any cheaper.
"
It's worth pointing out here that scarce resources are scarce. No matter how you ration the tickets, you can only fit 15,000 people into an arena with a seating capacity of 15,000.
Sporting events actually give a pretty good example of how consumption inequality differs from income inequality. Modern high-definition television sets provide a much, much better substitute for attending a sporting event than the TVs of 40 years ago. Even as incomes have diverged, consumption has in many ways converged.
On “On inequality and healthcare”
You cry bloody murder when you imagine that I'm accusing you of antisemitism, but here you are making an actual bogus accusation of racism when it's quite clear that the "Democrat" is doing all the heavy lifting in "biracial Democrat."
All the while complaining about hypocrisy. Is there a word for a hypocrite accusing someone of hypocrisy? Hypercrite?
"
Five percent of the population accounts for almost half (49 percent) of total health care expenses.
Am I correct in assuming that this is for any given year, and not over a single birth cohort's entire lifetime? That is, if we were to look back at lifetime health care expenditures for everyone born in 1900, we would see a much more even distribution, would we not?
Come to think of it, this also applies to income inequality. By looking only at a single-year snapshot, we see higher highs and lower lows than we would if we were looking at lifetime or ten-year-average incomes. This could even account for some of the increase in intranational income inequality, if incomes are becoming more volatile due to a shift towards stock-based compensation at the high end.
"
Not to mention the extensive plastic surgery needed to fix the eight-inch-high lump on the top of my head.
"
Those of you struck from above by falling pianos, congratulations on beating the system.
Hardly. I caught H5N1 from one of the little birdies that started circling around my head after the piano fell on me.
On “How Inequality Harms”
I'm not seeing how that substantiates your claim. It's mostly about sleep, so they mention statistics about work hours only in passing, and aren't really clear how they define it. I'm guessing that when they say "the 9.5 hour average workday," they're including travel time and lunch break, because I'm not seeing that figure supported anywhere else.
Quoting you from the other thread: Since 1980, the average working week has ballooned from 40 (with a 45 minute lunch included) to now 55 (with lunch being charged as “off the clock”).
"
It’s hard to form business partnerships with people you never meet; it’s hard to convince someone to loan money to start a new business when you’re competing with their fraternity-buddy’s son from Trustfund Delta Silverspoon fraternity, who went to universities that deliberately price themselves so high that nobody out of the 0.1% could ever attend.
Every single one of the top fifteen universities in the USNWR rankings offers need-based financial aid. The most elite universities don't have high sticker prices to keep out the riff-raff, they do it because they want students from rich families to pay extra to subsidize the students from poor and middle-class families.
"
The “9-to-5? day, in which workers worked 8 hours and were credited a 30-45 minute lunch break, has been replaced by the 55-plus hour “overtime exempt” workweek and making employees “get off the clock” for assigned breaks or lunches.
I meant to challenge your assertion that the average work week was 55 hours over on this thread. I don't see anything in the piece you linked to that substantiates that claim. The American Time Use Survey gives an average of 42 hours per week for men classified as full time workers (35+ hours), and 38.5 for women. The presentation is a bit confusing, but you get that by multiplying the average hours worked per day times seven days per week times the average percentage of workers working each day.
On “A Clash of Models”
"Good" is very much a subjective value judgment. I think that having an economy in which people are paid based on the marginal product of their labor is a good thing because it maximizes productivity, which I like because I enjoy having a high standard of living. As do most people. Some people don't. I think they're nuts and will oppose their attempts to lower standards of living. But they're not wrong in any objective sense---they just my enemies because they have preferences which are fundamentally incompatible with mine.
"
Right. But Euclidian and non-Euclidian geometries are both valid---provably so---for different sets of axioms. Axioms which are based on observable properties of the real world. To the best of my knowledge, no theory of justice is based entirely on observable properties of the real world.
On “Dance 10, Looks 3 – Inequality of Talent and Looks”
One problem with the height tax is that while height correlates with income potential, the correlation is far from perfect. So some guy's going to get screwed over because he's tall but unintelligent, unathletic, and socially awkward. So he has a characteristic that correlates with income potential but doesn't actually have that income potential.
Of course, the income tax screws over people who overachieve through hard work, but at least they can afford to pay it. It also subsidizes people who underachieve either through inadequate effort or through intentionally dropping out. I wonder if a tax based on the prestige of your college might work better. It's gameable, but it's not clear that it's worth gaming.
On “Why Inequality Might Matter”
They can AFFORD to not consume every penny they have as soon as they get it. The 99% can’t.
You said you weren't going to respond to me anymore, you big tease.
In any case, it simply isn't true that 99% of the population can't save. I know that for a fact, because my income is less than half what it would take to get me into the top percentile, and I save about a third of it. But don't take my word for it---your claim can be proven false through simple introspection: If a person with a $40,000/year income can't afford to save anything, then a person with a $30,000/year income can't afford to live. Given that many people do in fact live on $30,000/year and less, then clearly a person making $40,000/year can afford to save.
"
Again, I think you're conflating large personal fortunes and large corporations. The two are somewhat independent, since a large corporation may be owned jointly by many people, and a very wealthy person may have his wealth spread out among many different investments.
And the problem you're describing is most associated with large corporations, not with large personal fortunes. Furthermore, large corporations need not be controlled by a handful of extremely wealthy individuals to have a corrupting influence, the obvious counterexample being labor unions.
On “Why Inequality Is Necessary”
When automation made possible finely woven fabrics and ceramics … there is no denying that benefits accrued more to the capital/marketing people than the unskilled laborers. But the bigger benefit is that every single woman wasn’t spinning thread and weaving cloth anymore and a pair of pants no longer cost a months ordinary wages.
This isn't a valid explanation for real median wages rising so much more slowly than productivity. The real median wage is adjusted for inflation, so it takes the falling real prices of consumer good into account.
On “Dance 10, Looks 3 – Inequality of Talent and Looks”
I thought of it, too. I think I actually had that idea before Mankiw published the paper. Not a tax on height specifically, but on natural endowments more generally.
On “A Clash of Models”
I was twice hired to work as a programmer in a language I didn't know at the time.
"
Any idea why there was a shortage of plumbers? I get that it takes some training, but it's not like you need ten years of college. Generally that sort of thing sorts itself out when people figure out that there's money in it.
"
No, that's completely wrong. What they're saying is that with the total amount of money we actually spend on means-tested programs* ($927 Billion per year---roughly $3,000 per American, $9,000 per capita, and $19,000 for each American below the poverty line), we could supplement every household's income enough to get them to the size-adjusted equivalent of $44,000 for a family of four.
All of this is clear from reading the first page of the document.
And before you start talking about the "laughable assertions" of others, you'd best pull that beam out of your own eye.
*This does not include Social Security, Medicare, or unemployment benefits.
"
We should totally do that. It's been way too long since our last welfare heist.
"
What? Where?
"
They make a compelling argument, James. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.
"
Nihilist. They're all arbitrary. Even mine. Really, how can they be anything but arbitrary? Justice is an abstraction, not a real thing. Theories of justice aren't testable---they're subjective value judgments.
Because, if it is objectively the case that justice requires us to maximise (within the constraints of respecting basic liberties) the lifetime material prospects of the worst off
If that's true, then all that other stuff follows. But it's not true. It's a postulate. It's assumed to be true for the sake of argument, but no more than that.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.