
The Wrong Inequality - jackowayed
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/01/opinion/brooks-the-wrong-inequality.html?_r=2&ref=opinion
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pessimizer
The solution is not to get ditch diggers to go to college, but to respect
ditch diggers. Our society, and Brooks, has respect for a person that
increases exponentially with the distance between that person and productive
physical work.

The world cannot function solely on the fruits of debates and negotiations
between middlemen. Ditch diggers have to exist. What we have to determine is
if we will continually have the debate between whether they will be guaranteed
to be paid enough to live, or whether the market determines that we should
reduce their living conditions and liberties in order to bring their cost to a
rate that keeps certain products and businesses viable.

~~~
drunkpotato
Well put.

I would also argue that we need measures of human progress other than
productivity per person. For one example, with each generation pay ditch
diggers more to do less work, and by that standard we are woefully regressing.

Someone posted this the other day, which I'd never read before but I thought
was quite an eloquent argument for the same. Bertrand Russell, In Praise of
Idleness: <http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html>

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dereg
You're getting it all mixed up. The extra cost of hiring a single ditch digger
to do the job is the forgone cost of letting a dude with a giant earth-mover
handle the job.

You're implying that we're becoming less productive, that's totally untrue.
The same argument has been made about the motor vehicle, cotton gin, etc.

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Tsagadai
This isn't really a new issue. Inequity between classes, races, genders,
religions (and lack of), sexuality and upbringing has existed for at least as
long as economic and cultural analysis has. There is a more fundamental
question which society has avoided answering: how do you pay people by merit
when some people's work is devoid of merit. Many comedian have responded with
"soylent green" style answers which is appalling but more of an answer than
most people can provide (the usual response is, "I don't know").

If you have a society of winners where winners take all, what happens to the
losers? What do the hundred million or so people who aren't rockstars of their
domain do?

~~~
fourk
More concerning, what happens to the hundreds of millions of people who don't
have a domain to even be (or not be) a rockstar in? When unskilled labor
available outstrips demand for unskilled labor, we start to see college
diplomas as a requirement for filling a position as a Starbucks Barista.

My initial reaction to the article was dismissive, but the more I think about
it, the bigger the problem seems like it will be by the time it is brought
into the public eye. Is a 'bottom 50%er' version of Occupy WallStreet
something we could end up seeing within our lifetimes?

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jonnathanson
Even the focus on "the 1%" is misleading, because the group is far from
homogenous.

There's a mountain of difference between, say, a doctor earning $400,000 and a
trader earning north of $10 million. The outsized gains in the past 30 years
have been made by the folks in the latter category. Your typical doctor or
lawyer has always done well for himself; this is no great surprise. But he's
never been yachts-and-mansions wealthy, and he's no closer to that mark today
than he was decades ago. Rockstar doctors and lawyers, occasionally. But
doctors and lawyers on average, no.

The real focus should be on the financial sector, where one needn't be a
rockstar to earn more in a single year than most white collar professionals
earn in ten. The finance industry has expanded rapidly in recent decades,
occupying a larger and larger slice of the US economy, and baking more and
more volatility into the pie. That many of its players are mega-rich is merely
a symptom. The real issue is that finance is so powerful and so omnipresent.

There is a place for a healthy financial sector in a modern economy. But an
economy can't thrive on "services" alone -- a fact the US is learning the hard
way, after decades of being told the contrary by banks and consultancies.

~~~
_charles_
it's not just financial sector. there are execs, directors, VPs and such in
powerful organizations getting paid millions in many industries including:

Network and Other Communications Equipment Internet Services and Retailing
Pharmaceuticals Medical Products and Equipment Railroads Financial Data
Services Mining, Crude-Oil production Securities Oil and Gas Equipment,
Services Scientific, Photographic, and Control Equipment Household and
Personal Products Utilities: Gas and Electric Aerospace and Defense Food
Services Industrial Machinery Food Consumer Products Electronics, Electrical
Equipment Commercial Banks Telecommunications Chemicals Construction and Farm
Machinery Insurance: Life, Health (stock) Information Technology Services
Computers, Office Equipment Metals

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duncanj
Dean Baker has a good response to this article with actual data.
[http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david-
bro...](http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david-brooks-
complains-that-he-cant-get-access-to-inequality-data)

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jhancock
"If your ultimate goal is to reduce inequality, then you should be furious at
the doctors, bankers and C.E.O.’s. If your goal is to expand opportunity, then
you have a much bigger and different agenda."

hmm..What if I want to reduce inequality && expand opportunity? What if you
can't fix red without tackling blue and vice versa? Should this combined
perspective be called purple inequality?

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dotcoma
I disagree. It's impossible to have a nation of 100% college graduates. And it
doesn't make any sense, either. Just like it doesn't make sense how much the
'top' 1% are making.

~~~
michaelhoney
No-one is suggesting that everyone should graduate college. What Brooks is
saying is that those who don't have a university degree have dramatically
worse lives than they used to. There is a growing working-poor underclass, and
Brooks correctly states that their plight is a more important problem than
that of the 1%.

~~~
octover
I think they are two sides to the same coin. You can't tackle red inequality
without looking at blue inequality. As someone else put it, purple inequality.
What happens when a CEO screws up? Blue inequality they get some sort of
parachute and bonus regardless of the company tanking, and red inequality
people are laid off, fired, don't get raises, or sometimes receive pay cuts.

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vannevar
This article is a great example of misdirection, summed up neatly in this
quote:

 _That’s because the liberal arts majors like to express their disdain for the
shallow business and finance majors who make all the money._

Nonsense. The 1% aren't there because they are exceptionally savvy and went to
business school, they're mostly there because they were born into wealthy
social networks. The implication of the article is that the other 99% chose
their lot, and that if only we all went to college and studied a lucrative
craft, we'd all be wealthy. All the while he lauds college grads and their
wealthier lifestyle, Brooks incredibly ignores the possibility that maybe
wealthy people are more likely to go to college in the first place. Maybe his
'Red Inequality' is just more 'Blue Inequality' after all.

'Red Inequality?' More like red herring.

~~~
stickfigure
Wow. You just expressed disdain for the 1% because their worth is due to the
shallow reason that they were born into wealthy social networks. Are you a
liberal arts major?

~~~
vannevar
Of course not---I'm a member of the 1%. Engineering and law. ;-)

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rhino42
Now if only we could have started working on the education problem 10 years
ago (and encouraged STEM instead of casting star students as nerds)...

Hindsight being 20/20 and all

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paganel
> These two forms of inequality exist in modern America. They are related but
> different. Over the past few months, attention has shifted almost
> exclusively to Blue Inequality.

It's like we re-discover the conflict between the "small" bourgeoisie and the
proletariat every 15-20 years since the July Revolution
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_Revolution>) .

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synctext
Thank you NYT for this insight.

It is easy to put blame purely at The Banker Bonus. Fixing education and
providing equal opportunity plus social mobility is a continous struggle. A
lot of complex open issues.

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danmaz74
Problem is, non-graduates already feel an incredible competition from Asian
workers, and this brings the market value of their work way down. Graduates
not as much - at least for now.

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specialist
I'd appreciate named prefixes for these news/links, eg. "David Brooks: The
Wrong Inequality".

