[redrockcoulee]

Mike

Most of your posting does not relate with anything I have ever read about social equaity or social justice. Therefore it is IMHO a poor place to start a debate.

[Nesster]

And was it simply that American seniors made worse choices in their working lives than did Canadians who made worse ones than at least four other countries?

According to personal choice theory, these poor American seniors have not made poor choices per se, but rather need to set their expectations in line with the choices they did make.

In other words, "Yeah, I could have done the things that would make me better off now - saving more, not getting sick without insurance, not working for a corporation that stole my pension, I could have moved to Canada, and I should have divorced my spouse before she/he got Alzheimers - but that was too much work for me, so I'm satisfied living in poverty. I don't need anything more, and I take full responsibility for it all."

Followed by, "Those dam takers think they should have everything handed to them by a nanny state. I'm 48 years old and I've worked for 40 of those years, and I'll be damned if those lazy sob's reach into my pocket for their freebies during the last 5 years I can expect to live!"

[redrockcoulee]

According to personal choice theory, these poor American seniors have not made poor choices per se, but rather need to set their expectations in line with the choices they did make.

In other words, "Yeah, I could have done the things that would make me better off now - saving more, not getting sick without insurance, not working for a corporation that stole my pension, I could have moved to Canada, and I should have divorced my spouse before she/he got Alzheimers - but that was too much work for me, so I'm satisfied living in poverty. I don't need anything more, and I take full responsibility for it all."

Followed by, "Those dam takers think they should have everything handed to them by a nanny state. I'm 48 years old and I've worked for 40 of those years, and I'll be damned if those lazy sob's reach into my pocket for their freebies during the last 5 years I can expect to live!"

OK that makes sense, never thougth of it that way.

My younger brother used to say his finiancial problems were our parents fault, he was meant to be born to rich parents.

[mikemike]

Mike

Most of your posting does not relate with anything I have ever read about social equaity or social justice. Therefore it is IMHO a poor place to start a debate.

The choices to marry or not, to have children or not, to wait for marriage before children or not, and if you do marry who you marry are all choices of major consequence when it comes to income, wealth, retirement, health, and happiness.

By combing a 2%er with a 2%er you will usually have a 1% household and if you look at the wedding section of the NYT that is all you will see. So the fact that doctors are coupling other doctors, professionals are coupling with other professionals, and large swaths of the population are not even getting married and forming households has huge effects on all facets of equality, social justice, food security, and housing.

[Ratmagiclady]

I think, Mike, that this 'we' you speak of is *your* sort of mentality.


This is a *book,* basically, but.... what do you mean "we," kemosabe?

http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/TheAuthoritarians.pdf


Also, your math is messed-up, there. Two "2 percenters" don't make one "One Percenter." This isn't how those numbers work.

In fact, that 'One percent' is orders of magnitude wealthier *per capita* richer than pretty much the rest. It's not a linear distribution, it's more like trinomial, really. You don't add even two millionaires and get one billionaire. You get a two-milliionaire. (And even your combined two-million is chump-change to a multibillionaire... (Unless it's in a social program.)


I mean, seriously, even if you and a spouse both earned a million dollars a year, some of that 'One Percent' throws *parties* that cost more than that. Some of those CEOs get handed a hundred *times* as much as a 'bonus' .... a *perk,* for their part in tanking the real economy.



(Also, incidentally, thanks to the same right-wing social agenda, I'm presently *not* 'combining' what I can take in on my own with my dear one's income, as we lived and planned on for some nine years, ...instead, we're both paying rents in different places and I'm trying to live on more like eight *thousand,* you poor deprived soul. (And that's eight thousand we wouldn't have even *had* if we *could* get married, or herself could have gotten one of those real jobs we lived pretty bohemian for her to qualify for, .... but most of that goes right back out the door to keep a roof over my head anyway, ...basically, the same people spewing your 'Oh, the poor millionaries' line actually have spent more *preventing* us being able to 'combine our resources' (and keep rents and housing prices inflated despite your own crash) than they could even expect to milk out of the labor of thousands like me in the first place.

Why? Do you gain something?

[Nesster]

The choices to marry or not, to have children or not, to wait for marriage before children or not, and if you do marry who you marry are all choices of major consequence when it comes to income, wealth, retirement, health, and happiness.

By combing a 2%er with a 2%er you will usually have a 1% household and if you look at the wedding section of the NYT that is all you will see. So the fact that doctors are coupling other doctors, professionals are coupling with other professionals, and large swaths of the population are not even getting married and forming households has huge effects on all facets of equality, social justice, food security, and housing.

So let's see, in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland there are laws that mandate marriages 'out' of demographic? So a gay person must marry a hetero, and vice versa, and a doctor's daughter a bum's son? They must have abolished all inheritance, and coupling within one's estate (yea, the 'estates' were very much alive there) is strictly illegal.

How else do these societies achieve greater social equality than the US?

People in those countries are free to marry whoever, and I'm sure there's a tendency of like with like. And, oh yes, they do produce Wealth Generating Job Creators too.

[causey]

The choices to marry or not, to have children or not, to wait for marriage before children or not, and if you do marry who you marry are all choices of major consequence when it comes to income, wealth, retirement, health, and happiness.

By combing a 2%er with a 2%er you will usually have a 1% household and if you look at the wedding section of the NYT that is all you will see. So the fact that doctors are coupling other doctors, professionals are coupling with other professionals, and large swaths of the population are not even getting married and forming households has huge effects on all facets of equality, social justice, food security, and housing.

This is one of the most plausible justification of inequality I've read so far. Still, I find it far more plausible to justify inequality by pointing out that the Universe is ultimately mauve.

[Ratmagiclady]

This is one of the most plausible justification of inequality I've read so far. Still, I find it far more plausible to justify inequality by pointing out that the Universe is ultimately mauve.

I think spectrography would show more of a magenta-ish than mauve, but that's scarcity-thinking anyway. HII regions and all.

[mikemike]

So let's see, in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland there are laws that mandate marriages 'out' of demographic? So a gay person must marry a hetero, and vice versa, and a doctor's daughter a bum's son? They must have abolished all inheritance, and coupling within one's estate (yea, the 'estates' were very much alive there) is strictly illegal.

How else do these societies achieve greater social equality than the US?

People in those countries are free to marry whoever, and I'm sure there's a tendency of like with like. And, oh yes, they do produce Wealth Generating Job Creators too.

The countries you listed have a combined population of 25MM people and the cost of living in them would make NYC seem like a bargain.


Cost of Living in Stavanger, Norway. Prices in Stavanger.
Cost of Living in New York, NY, United States. Prices in New York, NY.

If a combo meal cost $17 at McDonalds and dinner for 2 at a sit down restaurant was $147, you would have a lot more Americans protesting than you do now.

Ethnically and religiously they are all very homogeneous societies. Has anyone scaled the Scandinavian model to a jurisdiction with a large heterogeneous population?

[Nesster]

Ethnically and religiously they are all very homogeneous societies. Has anyone scaled the Scandinavian model to a jurisdiction with a large heterogeneous population?

Without guns, no.

But yes, that's a criticism that's been mentioned over time. And there's something to it too... back in the middle of the last century it surely was not a good time to be an ethnic minority, you were being marched towards the melting pot. Now, things are a bit different. And there are regional differences in wealth, jobs, and so on.

So what explains the thing that other, larger and more heterogeneous countries also rank above the USA in 'equality' - defined as it was in that chart so as to value the Nordic style societies highest?

And even though these are small countries, they do have liberty and marriage freedom, and economic development, and innovation... without creating a large gradient in wealth and opportunity.

While certainly more polyglot, even within smaller polities in the USA a great deal of inequality exists:
Cities With Highest Levels Of Income Inequality: Report
The States With the Biggest Income Inequality | News | Money/Investing | Mainstreet
Income Disparity Greatest in New York, Census Finds - NYTimes.com

Now, perhaps it is easier to put yourself in another's shoes when you're from the same tribe. Perhaps the social contract is more valued, yet one of the long standing strengths of the USA I thought was its social contract, one that by design overcomes religious, political and ethnic prejudices. That seems to be dismissed these days.

From personal experience, I can say that in Finland we did have rich and poor, educated and non educated, and so on. There was not such a great division however, and at least back in the 70s there was still a sense of common social purpose. One striking difference between Finland and the USA was how people treated others - in the US there's a strain of behavior that treats those below us rudely... where in Finland that doesn't usually happen. A doctor doesn't breathe different air than the staff. OTH, in Finland, at least back then, there was more of a sense of the "state", whereas in the USA kids were encouraged to talk back to authority. Oh, and both places have their share of clueless, egotistical bosses

[Ratmagiclady]

The countries you listed have a combined population of 25MM people and the cost of living in them would make NYC seem like a bargain.

That was a *question,* not a *claim* on Nesster's part. A rhetorical one, mood subjunctive, contrary to fact.

If a combo meal cost $17 at McDonalds and dinner for 2 at a sit down restaurant was $147, you would have a lot more Americans protesting than you do now.

Ethnically and religiously they are all very homogeneous societies. Has anyone scaled the Scandinavian model to a jurisdiction with a large heterogeneous population?

What does your 'what if' prognostication have to do with anything? As a matter of fact, though, a 'sit down dinner' for most *common folk* in reality here in America has become rare and inaccessible to many of us in this supposed 'service economy.' Even in humble pub settings, they're wanting eleven bucks for a real burger and fries, getting on fifteen for a fish and chips. ..... and it's not even the prices so much as that all the rest of the bills mean you can't spare the difference. Gods know that if I even *go* to McDonalds you can't even get a double cheeseburger off the dollar menu any more, for an emergency recharge if you're caught out on an empty stomach: they charge twenty percent more for the ersatz *cheeze.* (Let's not even get into 'where's the beef, it's mostly soy anyway, but that's shrinking, too. (Actually the soy content and a bit of meat is why it makes a decent emergency recharge when my digestive tract is shut down, from not eating: it's basically pablum anyway. )

Sit-down restaurant? What the *Hel* does that have to do with your worries about 'heterogeneity?' Most people in America right now just can't be *bled* anymore. Never mind worry about how much a fancy dinner costs.

[yucatanPentax]

Looking at Mike's original post, I'd think the answer -- my answer -- is that we want to provide all people with:

1) Equal and fair access - to public buildings, public transportation, public accommodations
2) Equal and fair access - to education, to employment, to travel, to health care (yeah, I know it is controversial, but without it, you can die)

based on who people ARE - race, creed, ethnic origin, color, religion, sexual orientation, national origin - those are Identities.

Not based on their actions, talents, skills, associations (or lack of any of these), but on who they are -- Equality based on Identity. Everyone, regardless of Identity, should be equal in the eyes of the law, in opportunity, in access.

No one proposes, I don't think, that everyone in society be leveled to the precise same income, house size, automobile color or anything like that. I don't believe anyone has ever espoused that we should tear down the rich to the exact median income and raise all the poor to the same. It would be an interesting social experience to observe, but hardly what anyone proposes.

But isn't there a minimal level below which it is bad for all of society to have people living? That's the safety net concept. People who are ill, starving, poverty stricken, disaster-struck, or otherwise suffering should not, in my opinion, simply be tossed by the way-side.

[Nesster]

+1 yucatan! (You don't mind it if I call you yucatan?)

More so, do we or don't we believe there is such a thing as social progress, or social evolution? That political and economic organization changes over time?

Even the most reactionary conservative who yearns for the end of the century... the 19th century... as the best model of how society and the economy ought to be, even such a reactionary - probably unknowingly - subscribes to the idea that society evolves. The difference is that such a person thinks 1890 is the high point of American society -and human social evolution, and the one that ought to stay fixed.

Without getting into the 'when does life begin' debate about human society, let's say the first real political city-state was Hammurabi. Or, let's say it was Abraham's. Either way, we could say that human society has gone bad ever since. Of course that is poppycock. As is the thing about pre-Wilsonian or pre-Rooseveltian political economy.

So what, that at some point in time we didn't have welfare in the form we have it now... or health care coverage. We didn't have polio vaccine or anti biotics either.

The libertarian idea is at base one of smugness - that "I" am better informed and smarter than everyone else. This is because within it, we are all gamblers with our lives and families and livelihoods. That we 'succeed' has not much to do with chance, but everything to do with personal choice... yeah, like playing blackjack at the casino. Ascribing value to being fortunate not to have encountered the many sorrows and disasters life brings...

The idea that is is 'natural' for a human being to have risk exposure of the type we had in earlier societies is, at best, selective reasoning. So maybe it is 'natural' for you and me to have exposure to being made a slave, to being publicly tortured, to being left destitute when illness strikes a family member... as a 'natural' price for the chance to 'win'? Really?

[causey]

The libertarian idea is at base one of smugness - that "I" am better informed and smarter than everyone else. This is because within it, we are all gamblers with our lives and families and livelihoods. That we 'succeed' has not much to do with chance, but everything to do with personal choice... yeah, like playing blackjack at the casino. Ascribing value to being fortunate not to have encountered the many sorrows and disasters life brings...

My impression is that some people have such a grand, romantic idea of freedom of action that the notion of chance/fortune doesn't fit in their picture of the world: we are all basically free to do what we want to do, hence also responsible for pretty much everything. (If only they manifested the same grandeur in thinking of inner freedom...)

[yucatanPentax]

You can call me Jay, you can call me Ray.... or you can call me Yucatan, or YP or whatever...

It has always seemed to me that The Libertarian concept ignores the contributions of everyone in society that we take for granted.

Take our ideal "self-made man or woman." Were they really "self-made?"

Didn't they travel public streets to public education? Wasn't the power to their house possible because of governmental agencies and regulation that make all systems compatible? Wasn't the gasoline in their car derived from oil pumped from wells registered with the county for ownership of mineral rights?

Each little thing in our lives comes to us because of those around us and those before us. The "self-made person", it seems, chooses to discount all the contributors to all the things that enabled them to succeed. Is it narcissism? I'm not sure. But it isn't reality.

The best example of a libertarian state on earth today is Somalia. No thanks, folks. No thanks.