June 09, 2005

• 50% of those surveyed don't think there should be any estate tax... yikes.
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• I guess I'm upper middle-class according the NYT. I've just about maxed out the education scale, and my income just breaches the top 5th. My job (clergy) carries some residual prestige, but not like physician or lawyer. It's my negative net worth that really brings my score down. Stinkin' student loans!
• Whoa, according to the times, I pretty classy after all!! On second thought, nah. Can't be right. stripe: I don't consider myself a conservative in any regard, but I have never seen the value or fairness in an estate tax. Of course, before everyone jumps all over that single statement - I think the rest of the tax code is f'ed up beyond all hope of fairness too. (not trying to hijack the thread either!)
• I would be very high up on education and I'm a qualified librarian, but probably lower/middle on income/wealth, mainly because I'm working far lower than I'm qualified to be.
• It says I have no class...
• In last part of that series, they spoke of the hyper rich, but somehow they forgot to provide a meaningful illustration of what hyper rich is. Maybe you'll all find this helpful in understanding. Sometimes I wonder what the public's reaction would be if mainstream media put as much effort into explaining wealth distribution disparity as as they do into crap like runaway brides and celebrity publicity hijinx. If you found the series interesting, I would also recommend reading Paul Fussell's book "Class"
• Who cares about wealth disparities when we've got missing white women!
• I had no idea masters degrees were so rare. But that's my only high score, and will be very hard to eat if I don't make it through quals. I was shocked at first to see the top quintile in income be only $60,000 - especially after this huge long derail on metafilter where some people were saying $60,000 was barely middle class (and that I had no idea what I was talking about because I'm a spoiled grad student from Canada :). But then I realised that was individual, not family income. But it goes to show just how low incomes are for most people in the states, and just how lucky anyone who makes more than $60,000/year is.
• mmmuttly, that L-curve isn't very informative. Try this image I whipped quickly in PS a couple of months ago
• I really liked that graphic. It drives home some of the incorrect assumptions a lot of us make about the U.S. population. For example, I'm very surprised (and a little skeptical) that having a bachelor's degree places me right in the middle of the top fifth of the country in terms of education. Couldn't find any credible statistics with a quick bit of googling, though.
• First, the infoporn on this is *substantial*. Sweeeet link, StoryBored. Apparently, I am upper class. That said, I'd love to hang out with you plebes, but the Lady Fessington and I are dining with the Snotheads at eight. Toodles, rabble!
• For years I've described myself as high socio, low economic, so I'm really surprised to find myself right at the middle (52% if I use my old job, 50% if I use my current one.) That's fairly staggering - I guess the college degree balances out the low wages.
• I would *love* to make $60,000 a year. I can only dream of making $60,000 a year. I make slightly more than half that now.
• That's "attractive" white women, surlyboi. You can be damn sure that missing unattractive white women do not make the front page at cnn.
• Apparently, I need to move to Denmark. I DON'T EVEN SPEAK SWAHILI, DAMMIT.
• Exactly, karmakaze.
• I make slightly less than $60,000 and honestly wonder if I'll ever make more than that. . . *sigh* (descends back into the salt mines)
• See... per my arguments in the other class thread, I think the NY Times is missing an important piece about the nature of class... which has to do with the connections made among people among the upper classes. I think this factor is what makes class "sticky" across generations. Privilege and connection make it harder to fall out of the upper classes, and I am not talking specifically about inherited wealth. There are just more safety nets for some one born into an upper class, than someone who works their way there. While I (surprisingly) fall into the 78th percentile for wealth, and the 63rd percentile overall, my newly gained upper middle class status feels far more precarious than many of my friends who may make less and/or who have less education than I do, but don't come from poor families. Or maybe I just need to start anti-anxiety meds.
• Lawyer, 84th percentile. Education, 99th percentile. Income, 69th (Canadian). Wealth, 29th. Average -- 69th. I'm sunk by my total lack of wealth. Servicing massive student debt and having to buy into the firm has left me with nothing to show for all this money I'm supposedly making. In other words -- I'm doing better than 69% of the population, but I'm still living above a mattress store in an overheated apartment with no cable. (Not that I mean to either boast or gripe, but it seems pretty wonky that I'm doing better than 69% of the population when in terms of sheer toys, I'm behind the kids at the bus stop yappin' on their cell phones.)
• *whistles 'Everybody's got nice stuff but me'.*
• Doesn't every in New York City make "top fifth" for income? If not, how do you pay rent?
• s.b. "everyone"
• Help me, Monkeys -- I'm trying to figure out how moneyjane would fill out this form. Is she under: 1. Miscellaneous Health Technician (42) 2. Recreational Therapist (54) 3. Social Worker (126) 4. Misc. Social Service Specialist (148) 5. Human Resources (115) 6. Actors (86) 7. Other Extraction Workers (386) 8. Woodworkers (379) 9. Personal & Home Care Aide (271) 10. Non-farm Animal Caretaker (441) Thoughts, please.
• stripe: I don't consider myself a conservative in any regard, but I have never seen the value or fairness in an estate tax. Of course, before everyone jumps all over that single statement - I think the rest of the tax code is f'ed up beyond all hope of fairness too. (not trying to hijack the thread either!) Don't listen to that taxing money twice shit. You pay tax on it when you get it, and the recipient pays tax on it when you give it to them in exchange for some good or service. If you get nothing in return for it, does that mean it shouldn't be taxed? No, otherwise, I'd give someone a gift of $20k, and he'd give me a gift of a car (completely unrelated to my gift of course) and we wouldn't pay tax on any of it. Obviously there's a threshhold- you don't pay tax on the $20 gift card you got for your birthday. If I'm doing business with a member of my own family, should our exchanges be exempt from tax? Probably not if he's selling me his old computer for $50, but yes if my retail chain is using his trucking company to ship inventory for thousands of dollars a year. Again, threshhold. If I die, my estate still exists, controlled by the guidelines laid out in my will, and any transfer of money from that estate to someone else should be subject to the same tax as if the recipient had received it in any other way. And just like the rest of the circumstances, there's a threshhold, and in this case, that threshhold is beyond the reach of all but the richest 1% of Americans. In addition to that, the estate tax helped recirculate some money into the economy, instead of rich families hoarding it all and passing it on from generation to generation. It's the Paris Hilton tax, not the death tax. /hijack
• This interactive is a very blunt instrument. The increments of wealth are particularly broad. And rolypolyman is right in that it does not take into account differences in cost of living. In another part of the country, my scores would be very different (income, equity).
• 43rd percentile and holding, firmly lower-middle class. Pretty disgraceful, considering I'm college educated. How depressing. *sob*
• It's the Peg that's dropping you down, Koko. Just blame it on the Peg. We do.
• Because I'm incredibly poor I'm average at 55th percentile! woo! Teaching college and working on my phd maxes those out, but since I only make $12700 a year that sinks me back down. As far as inheritance taxes go, I have no pity for the rich. Tax the hell out of them. There's a lot of truth in the old joke, "How do you make a million dollars? Well, first, you get a million dollars..."
• No pity here, either. Whatever someone can make through their own skills, more power to them. If you can trade stocks better than anyone else, or throw a baseball faster than anyone else, I have no problem with selling those skills on the market to the highest bidder. But to simply be rich because your daddy used to throw a baseball faster than anyone else, or to earn royalties from a recording your grandmother did sixty years ago -- tax it. It's a bonus. There's no right to complain about the size of a bonus.
• As always, the NYT has fallen into the trap of oversimplification, as the issue is incredibly complex. My income may be in the top quintile, and my education and job may be "high prestige," but that top quintile income goes not so far in the locale where I live, and my negative net worth (and getting more negative by the month, with mrs. chimaera in full-time school) isn't helping much. I guess I technically fall into middle class or upper middle class, but I'm looking at no less than 8 years before we're likely to afford a down payment on a house. My top-quintile income, however, would put me in a house in 6 months if I lived in, say, Iowa. But then, even people on welfare are in the top quintile of earners, worldwide.
• If people really wanted to live in a meritocracy then inheritance taxes would be 100%.
• If I had known that I would be so overqualified to be poor, I would have had more fun while in school.
• 89% -- apparently my job (computer programmer thingy) isn't cool enough. The divorce isn't helping the wealth much, either. (Is there a category for business owner? Christ, I own two of em...)
• Is there a poll-type deal here? If so, I can't find it, which means I'm probably doomed to living in cardboard boxes while simultaneously drinking cheap wine that comes in cardboard boxes.
• Estate taxes only come into effect on estates that are worth more than one million US$, total. (At least in TX. My grandmother died recently, and even though she was firmly upper-middle class her estate didn't even approach a million bucks, including the house.) Most people think the estate tax would apply to them, and most people are wrong.
• Yeah, I max out on education and am rather high because I'm an educator, but I'm worth less than nothing because of student loans. I should have a house to show for all the debt I have, but all I got is a Ph.D.
• Cap'n, somehow there's something wrong when a great teacher, scientist, or other real contributer to our society can make more than some idiot that can bounce, throw, or kick a ball.
• And I am *shocked* by the class mobility of Denmark, as compared to the US. Their income tax is like 60% for gawd's sake!! If anything, I woulda thought they had slim to zero class mobility. Something doesn't add up here. (Seems like a cool place to live, though.)
• somehow there's something wrong when a great teacher, scientist, or other real contributer to our society can make more than some idiot that can bounce, throw, or kick a ball. Why is that wrong? We make what we make. That some hump baseball player pulls down insane bucks doesn't force my employer to pay me less. I earn what I earn, and what I contribute to society has nothing to do with it. If we were to start paying people on what they were worth to society as opposed to what the market for their services will bear...? Well, suddenly you have the payers making overt judgement calls on how much we each as individuals were worth to our society, and what happens when someone far away decides you are worth nothing to society, mmm?
• For research, I recommend the Andrew McCarthy/Rob Lowe opus Class. In high school it really showed me where I stood.
• Fes wrote: Apparently, I am upper class. That said, I'd love to hang out with you plebes, but the Lady Fessington and I are dining with the Snotheads at eight. Toodles, rabble! One day your butler will get you for that :-)
• the Andrew McCarthy/Rob Lowe opus Class. ... which, the esteemed Mr. Pettle didn't mention, has some wicked Jacqueline Bisset milfy goodness in it (although no nudity, shamefully enough). Stiffler's mother? A mommie-come-lately by many years, even if one discounts the late Ms. Bancroft's turn as boomer-icon Hoffmann's Mrs. Robinson. Also, a pretty laughable (which is to say, a fairly accurate depiction) of an earnest high school fistfight betwen Lowe and McCarthy, which is worth (imo) the price of admission alone, to see them ludicrously try to bust each other up. One day your butler will get you for that :-) I already operate on the assumption that any bouillabaisse he serves is well peed in.
• *stirs soup toureen, rings dinner gong* Will Molly Ringwald be joining you this evening sir, or will it be pre-enhancement Demi Moore?
• 1) beeswacky will have to say upper-class, since of course all bees are related to the queen. It is not easy being a bee, let alone bees -- mind-muddling. 2) However, as poet lariat, of course I live in a garret in a condition of extreme emaciation and dubious hygiene, while the rest of my unfortunate househ9ld lift dazed eyes to passers-by along with their tin cups and begging bowls.The dachshund is best at obtaining supplemental hand-outs.
• ...they forgot to provide a meaningful illustration of what hyper rich is. Maybe you'll find this helpful in understanding. ...helpful? ohhhh noooooo. Definitely not. The graph you linked to supposedly shows family income. A million dollars in $100 bills is 40 inches high it claims. But here's the funny part, it says that the highest family income would be represented by a line 30 miles high. 30 miles = 1,900,800 inches, which would represent 1,900,800/40 millions of dollars. Do the math and it looks like the highest family income in the U.S. is US$47.5 billion! Who is this mystery family because they make more in one year than Bill Gates made in his entire life! Maybe the graph shows net worth rather than income but if so, the family with $1 million dollar net worth would not be one foot from the goal line. It'd be somewhere two to seven yards away. Or would it? I can't be sure because the graph has no scale on the horizontal axis... no surprise because there's no label or scale on the vertical axis either..and no mention on source/year of data but most annoying of all: what is the purpose of the "zoom"?? The result has no scale, but you had to click *twice* to get the explanation. Why twice? Why not click ten times? Why not click once and get a *huge* picture of the little stack o' bills? The statistical meaning of the zoomed-in-picture is completely nil! They could have replaced it with a picture of some bunnies! Horrible graphic design makes me mad...ARGH! ARGH! (crumples up computer screen, runs out of room screaming). My inner robot hurts.
• And I am *shocked* by the class mobility of Denmark, as compared to the US. Their income tax is like 60% for gawd's sake!! If anything, I woulda thought they had slim to zero class mobility. posted by LordSludge at 06:25PM UTC on June 09, 2005 Why do you think that high income tax would lower mobility? I ask, because in my experience, high income tax tends to go along with high social spending (education, health, welfare) and these things would, in my mind, encourage social mobility by reducing inequality. The fact that Scandinavia and Canada show more social mobility would seem to support this. Also, in very progressive systems, people who are poor pay less tax. Things can be more complicated though: In the previous thread, one person pointed out from some links from a pervious metafilter thread (I'm too lazy to bring them out, but you can follow them back :) that according to some recent research, children of average ability have more social mobility in Scandinavia and Canada, but children of above average ability have more in the U.S. This surprised me at first, but then I thought about how it might be so - American education, for instance, provides much more financial support to outstanding students who are poor than Canada does (largely due to the amount of money). As pointed out in both threads, much of this money is in debilitating student loans, but if you go to certain schools, you can get grants. But I also wondered how they determined what group of people were "above average", especially if they used something like standardized testing, which is itself affected by your social class and upbringing. Canada also doesn't really have standardized testing in the same way, so that could be affecting things. I would like to read the book cited in the mefi thread, but I don't know when I will be able to get around to it.
• Will Molly Ringwald be joining you this evening sir, or will it be pre-enhancement Demi Moore? Actually, my good man, I was hoping a lissome Mia Sara ca. Ferris Bueller might stop by for a teensy drinkie-poo after Lady Fessington retired for the evening. Oh Sloane, dear? Come along now. /Mr. Howell
• jb: Why do you think that high income tax would lower mobility? I guess I always figured the high taxes served to enlarge the middle class while nearly eliminating the lower and upper classes, the downside of which being 'getting rich' is nigh impossible. /Happy to be wrong on this one, still sorta confused...
• Lord Sludge - I think you are thinking of a different meaning of social mobility. It's colloquially used to mean chances of "getting rich", but technically it's used to mean just the likelyhood of changing socioeconomic status up or down - moving from poor to middle class would be social mobility, as would moving from rich to middle class. One of the graphics in the link above shows this quite well (it shows people moving all over in just 10 years, including from upper fifth to bottom fifth, though only a few). When I first started looking at social mobility in history for an essay a few years ago, one of the best articles I read for it was about how historians (early modern England specifically) are always talking about social mobility but are only interested in going up, usually from middling to upper (because they were interested in how "open" the elite was), but middling people were themselves most concerned about social mobility DOWN.
• Also, I haven't read the book, but if social mobility were being measured by quintile, as it is in the NT Times graphics, then reducing inquality would still leave as many "poor" and "rich" (because they would just be the lowest and highest fifths of the population, regardless of the range of income) - they would just be closer together. But I think that most cultures have ideas of rich and poor and middle that don't actually conform to simple population distribution. So our North American and European ideas of rich is well above just being in the top quintile, our ideas of middle class (especially on the internet, which is more likely to have people with higher income, but also in the media) are more like the top two quintiles not the middle one. Is it rhetoric not matching reality, or is it that middle doesn't really mean middle of the population?
• 'getting rich' is nigh impossible. If you're talking about becoming super-rich, then the U.S. has that particular niche nailed down. The New York Times article mentions that of those on the Forbes 400 List of wealthiest americans, only 37 inherited the money. However, if you can't become super-rich easily in Canada, you can become normal rich (i.e. $1M-2M). On the subject of mobility, much of it depends on the economic cycle as well. The tech boom probably made many a fortune for Americans. When times are good, super-rich mobility in America likely increases compared to other countries. And vice versa, in the 1980s, when times were bad, the number of congenital rich folks on the Forbes 400 was closer to 200.
• ...children of above average ability have more [mobility] in the U.S. This surprised me at first, but then I thought about how it might be so - American education, for instance, provides much more financial support to outstanding students who are poor than Canada does Jb, this sounds like a reasonable explanation. It is anecdotally backed up by this quote (again from the NYT education article). "'We need to recognize that the most serious domestic problem in the United States today is the widening gap between the children of the rich and the children of the poor,' Lawrence H. Summers, the president of Harvard, said last year when announcing that Harvard would give full scholarships to all its lowest-income students."
• Interesting. I don't disagree strongly with it, but there are a few tweaks I would make to the occupation section. Specifically, there are some industries which deal exclusively in luxury goods and are considered high prestige despite the kind of work being done and that isn't taken into consideration. A pig farmer and a polo pony breeder are not equivalent, and there is no category listed that would apply to a winemaker.
• Storeyboard, that does make sense, though I would really like to read to book to understand how "above average" was determined, and what kind of mobility was seen. If they used standardised tests, then you would have many more above average scores among middle-income and above families, and they may likely see social mobility up. It's also true of Canadian universities (I don't know about Scandinavian) that we have few "elite" schools - you can go to one of the best universities in Canada, but you just don't get the cultural cache or social capitol you would going to an elite American school. I've noticed this, having moved into the American system, and talking to people just about simple things like which employment recruiters came to their school. I think at my Canadian university (a good solid one), the employment and education fair (I was there to look at grad schools) consisted largely of Devry, British Education departments trying to recruit Canadians to give them a lot of money to get a BEd while living in a castle, and CSIS. Whereas I have a friend here who worked briefly in "consulting" - I don't actually know what "consulting" is, or how you get into it.
• Education has traditionally been the great driving force behind social mobility. It is the force that allowed our parents generation, and their parents generations, to break down class barriers like never before. It also allowed them to invent the idea of student debt. Cheers, guys! As such, education is now the driving force behind keeping you exactly where you are... Yes, I'm yet another person grumpy at the disparity between "prestige" (fairly good, considering), "education" (woohoo!), "income" (okayish) and "worth" (dick all)...
• Is there a poll-type deal here? If so, I can't find it, Under the tab called "class components."
• Do you own/control the means of production? I thought so.
• Richer - where do you put professionals (as many people here are) in that system? I don't think Marx would have called them working class. That said, I think the issue of the control of the means of production (literally land, tools for craftsmen, etc) is worth some more historical study. It's been dropped with the fall of Marx out of fashion, but I think there is some interesting stuff there. I'm interested in the past use of natural resources and how they may act as a buffer against the market, myself.
• Marx has been sidelined by the fact that *everyone* these days owns a piece of the means of production. Gotta a pension plan? In line for Old Age Security? If so, you're part owner of a pension fund that's invested in stocks and bonds. Dividends and capital appreciation, interest income from bonds, that's where the pension cheque comes from.
• I also wonder what Marx would think of the free-agent entrepreneur? One-person shops, the self-employed who own their means of production but are proletarian as well. I'm tired of exploiting myself. I wanna exploit someone else.
• I don't own any means of production. No pension, no stocks. No longer even any Canadian savings bonds. But I think what Marx meant was not being an owner, but having the means to make a living without working for a wage. So, in the early 16th century, only about 20-25% of people worked for a wage. The rest of the labouring classes either worked land (rented or owned) or had a craft, usually a shop that they owned. By the early 18th century, about half (? I've been trying to find a good reference on this recently) worked for a wage, and then by the nineteenth, the majority. Working for a wage doesn't necessarily mean worse living conditions, but it does leave you much more vulnerable to the market. More vulnerable to losing your liveyhood, more vulnerable to changing prices. Subsistence farmers are not outside the market - they still have taxes and rents to pay - but they can be less engaged in the market than an agricultural labourer who only has their own labour to trade, and much buy everything including housing and foodstuffs in cash. I'm actually quite interested in this transition in history.
• Oh - no, people who own their own shops would not be prolitarian in the nineteenth century - they are middling sort. That was their own term for themselves, coming out of the seventeenth century. I was using labouring classes loosely, to refer to all below professionals (who live by their minds) and the gentry (who live by their rents). But in the middle of the seventeenth century, the terms "middling sort" emerged to refer to those between the poor and wage-dependent, and the rich: the yeomen and other farmers (as opposed to agricultural labourers), the shopowners and craftsmen. Lots of grey areas, of course; weavers were proud craftsmen, but often very poor and may have owned their looms, but not the wool they wove - that could be owned by an large merchant or manufacturer. Sorry for the derail into history, but it's important to remember the context Marx was writing in. He wrote at a time when wage-labouring was extremely precarious - men might make a good wage for a time (good by their standards), but one illness and they could loose it all. An early death, and their family was condemned to the poor rate, because there was no property, nothing to sell or rent to support themselves. These were, of course, problems in the centuries before he wrote, but now it affected more people.
• Under the tab called "class components." Still not seeing it. I give up.
• On the left top side of the graphic linked in the FPP. Maybe changing browsers would help? I have that problem sometimes (stupid anti-Opera html designers).
• Ah, that did it. Thanks, jb and PY!
• Hmm... 62nd percentile if I list my occupation as "elementary and middle school teacher," 56th if it's "musicians, singers, and related workers" with all other factors remaining equal. That's a pretty drastic change.
• Professionals and intellectuals are the dominated fraction of the dominant class. But if I continue this discussion, I'm going to end up shouting stuff like 'revisionist pigs' and we don't want that.
• I don't own any means of production. No pension, no stocks. No longer even any Canadian savings bonds. About 50% of households in the U.S. own some stock, although a lot of this is also admittedly small potatoes. I think the pension thing is more where the action's at. If you are a Canadian citizen and have lived here for 10 years you get Old Age Security payments even out-of-country. Similarly if you have made contributions to the CPP, you'll get a CPP pension as well. No problem with the derail. It's interesting to know some of the background. I think it underlines the point that Marx went wrong exactly because of the rapid social evolution that happened in the hundred years after his death that he couldn't foresee. Just checking the list of occupations in the NYT graphic, there are jobs like "roustabout" and "blaster", job titles that i've never even heard of....
• But if I continue this discussion, I'm going to end up shouting stuff like 'revisionist pigs' and we don't want that.... Speak for yourself :-). But seriously, i'd like to hear what you have to say on the general topic.
• Class War raise the tone of the debate.
• I'm just an irreasonable orthodox marxist. I believe class distinction (e.g.: a doctor is more prestigious than a garbage collector) is just a trick (an involuntary one) of the dominant class to maintain its status. And that the good living conditions we've been enjoying in the West are just a passing phase, one of capitalism's bad days. Of course I use false consciousness to argue that, so free-will lovers won't like it.
• I see your tone, and I raise it . :-)
• Whoops, on preview, my last post was in reply to Abiezer!
• I believe class distinction (e.g.: a doctor is more prestigious than a garbage collector) is just a trick (an involuntary one) of the dominant class to maintain its status. I'm not sure I understand...how does this trick work?
• It tricks people into thinking they are better than the poor, so that instead of overthrowing the dominant class, they lose their energy in petty squabbles.
• Hmmm not sure about that. The four reasons why i'm not keen on overthrowing the dominant class are: (not in any order). 1. I'd end up in jail. 2. Even if successful, I doubt I would be better off. In fact, I would probably be worse off. 3. Who exactly is the dominant class I'm supposed to be overthrowing? 4. It would involve burning things and shooting people.
• It's quite simple, really. You go up to people ask them if they own the means of production. If they say yes, they're part of the dominant class. But actually, the dominant class are the people who have an interest in keeping our current inequal society inequal. A good program to overthrow them would be: a) take control of the democratic institutions -- they are a minority -- you only need to convince the other people in the oppressed classes that they are, in fact, oppressed. b) once in power, enact reforms. Avoid forced collectivisation. avoid using violence. c) wait for them to come back at you with guns. They will. violent, almost inevitable struggle ensues.
• Okay, let's take this a step at a time. Let's say we're on the ball and actually manage a) taking control of the democratic institutions. Now the next thing is b) enact reforms. What kind of reforms are we talking about? Keeping mind that we want to avoid coll. & viol.
• If you're rich, be prepared to pay a lot of taxes. If you own big means of production and offer commodities (you're US steel, a big electricity company, a defence contractor), prepare to get nationalized. Private schools are over. Anything surviving on gov't pork becomes national property. Standard minimal revenue is implemented. Tempted by fiscal evasion? Hope you don't mind the prison term.
• I'm certain that'll work out splendidly.
• Because of course nationalization backed by the threat of the Gulag isn't forced collectivization. Onward, stalwart comrades!
• If you own big means of production and offer commodities (you're US steel, a big electricity company, a defence contractor), prepare to get nationalized. I'm puzzled as to why we're picking on commodity producers. Most of the GNP these days isn't produced in factories anymore. Shouldn't we nationalize Microsoft, Walmart instead? But then once we nationalize these companies, what changes? Would they be giving their goods away to the public? If not, what prices would be charged?
• rodgerd or vitalorgnz can respond to this better than I can, I bet: NZ privatised most of its larger industries (electricity production, telecommunications, railway transport, broadcasting) back in the '80s and the effects, in my uninformed memory, were not good. I know that currently the railway system is a shambles because the company that took it over let the infrastructure slowly fall apart. And we've got all kinds of issues with electricity production right now, although I don't know how they relate to privatisation. With that, though, I don't know if nationalisation was/would be any better.
• Well, California seems to show privatised electricity is a very bad idea.
• Fes: why wouldn't it work? Most of these measures have been taken successfully at one time or another. goetter: Huh? There would be compensation. Like when the gov't says "well, sorry about your house but we're building a canal here". Sorry about your company, but it's better for the common good if these heavy means of production are nationalized. The companies would then offer fair wages (of course many of them already do because of unions) and offer their goods -- some to consumers, but alot of them to other businesses (I don't buy raw steel very often) -- at fair prices. They need to make profits so they can reinvest in infrastructure. However, instead of shareholder profit, their goal -- and they would be answerable to some sort of oversight comittee -- would be the common good. MS et al. would probably be left alone, but we wouldn't let them and their entertainment conglomerates friend write copyright laws. I don't think the government should intervene in the retail area, but there should be tougher pro-union laws -- anti-scab laws, for instance, avoid some of the corruption problems union face because it's tempting to bust the scab's kneecaps (and bring/encourage all sorts of unsavory characters).
• ...and they would be answerable to some sort of oversight comittee Meet the new dominant class, same as the old dominant class? Why is it that whenever we try for the classless society we end up slowly but surely back in the same boat? I'd like to argue that there is something in our genetic makeup, call it drive for status, alpha behaviour, whatever, that makes class inevitable. Isn't it more than social or cultural programming? Doesn't this have to do with sex? Any social movement that, uh, f*cks with sex is doomed.
• I was thinking more along the line of something democratic like they do in charities. A board. some reps from the general population, some from the gov't, some from the personel, some from management.
• If you have a top-down organised society, where a small group of people can inflict their will upon others greatly removed from them, you will have stratified social relations, or in other words class. One of the greatest spurs for 'revolutionaries' of the authoritarian type has been to take that power which they have been excluded from themselves and then wield it over others for their own personal benefit. That they may have used the rhetoric of others truly concerned with creating a different, less authoritarian world, should not obscure our understanding of this.
• We already have a top down society, in which a small group of people can inflict their will on others greatly removed from them. It's called representative democracy.
• I would have thought that was self-evident.
• Cool. Palindromic usernames.
• It's sort of better than merely palindromic, it's mirrored usernames.
• (except the mirror is all types of fucked-up)
• I don't think our usernames look anything alike. /black and white cookie Star Trek episode.
• Wolof needs to change names to WoloW. That would be pretty cool.
• ...not only palindromic but it would also look like a face, two 'o' eyes and two big floppy 'W' ears.
• A board. some reps from the general population, some from the gov't, some from the personel, some from management These folks would be the new dominant class. Since they define what the "public good" is, they are a power elite. They control the means of production. How long before the "public good" includes permanent assignment and perks for power elite family and buddies? For Kofi Annan, t = 2 years.
• Why do we need to change the government? It's somewhat corrupt, but not so much, and answerable to the people. The difference between a nationalised business and a private one isn't so much about who owns the means of production - it's impossible in our society for us all to own the means of production, those means are just too big. It's about who's making the profit and where that profit goes. The LCBO is government run, offers excellent service and selection and makes the government money. Some people complain that they can't get this or can't get that, but having lived in the US for a few years, I see the wonder that is the LCBO - they have 10 times the selection of any of the dinky stores around me, and are far less scuzzy. About the whole elite class thing - see, this is why we should not try to change class, but to reduce inequality between them. We'll always have class, no matter how it develops (smartest, strongest, tallest, darkest - there's always some kind of status system). But low status should not mean leaving in terrible conditions. If low status is just not quite as nice as high status, there is still incentive to acheive, and yet the chances of acheiving are much better for the low status. It's about flattening the social pyramid, not eliminating it (which is impossible). We were acheiving this for some time after the war - inequality was going down. But it's been widening again since the 1970s. Also, everyone should read Michael Young's Rise of the Meritocracy - it's enlightening. I've heard his Families in East London is also very good, but more specific to issues of social networks among the poor in 20th century London (I haven't read it, but would like to - as soon as I'm done reading about the decline of serfdom - oh yeah, and actually reading what I'm suposed to be.)