.

[bleeding heart]

Let me amend a little; your argument is not precisely the same. But you do fully concede that money=power (though you've limited it to vote-influencing, for...some reason, unstated).

But even there...no way. Unions don't have an awful lot of effect in election, especially outside of localized electoral systems. And "NGO's" can and do contain many pro-business, pro-corporate lobbying groups. they're not just a bunch of "lefties."

Further, your statement that "groups like unions or NGO's can overcome any disadvantages caused by wealth disparities" is an idea you have...but which you offer nothing substantive in support. And small wonder. That such groups can in certain ways effect elections and policies doesn't mean they've "overcome...the disparities," and are therefore equal players.

[Shady]

And if I were to agree with every single point you've just made, we could only conclude that my general thesis was precisely correct.

Yours isn't a thesis. Yes, somebody with more currency in their bank account can participate it more goods and services with said currency. If you stand out in the rain, you're likely to get wet. That's my thesis!

Anyways, this particular drift isn't part of the OP. Tim's post and link to economic mobility is.

[bleeding heart]

It's telling that you'd conflate political power with "participat[ing] in more goods and services."

[eyeball]

Big unions and big corporations spend a lot on money in elections trying to influence the vote in order to pad the wallets of their members. They will always claim they are standing up for altruistic values but we all know it is really about more money for unions and corporations.

FIFY.

Like I said ideology is utterly irrelevant. Power is the missing coefficient in all of your calculations and the consequences of power disparity, one way or the other, is every bit as predictable as evidenced by events both historical and in the present.

[Shady]

It's telling that you'd conflate political power with "participat[ing] in more goods and services."

Political power can be as simple as being able to print and distribute more political pamphlets than somebody of lesser means.

[bleeding heart]

And?

I mean, you've gone from "the rich can buy stuff" to "some people can print more pamphlets."

What gives?

Edited January 26, 2014 by bleeding heart

[Shady]

And?

I mean, you've gone from "the rich can buy stuff" to "some people can print more pamphlets."

What gives?

Nothing gives. It goes back to your non-premise. It always has been the case that if one has more currency in their bank account they have advantages over somebody with less. Those advantages extend to every aspect of life, which includes politics. I suggest getting back to the original topic now.

[bleeding heart]

1. Your "meh" response to political power disparity based on wealth is--by definition--an elitist one.

2. If you wish a topic to cease being discussed, continually responding to it is perhaps not the best way to achieve your goal.

[eyeball]

Nothing gives. It goes back to your non-premise. It always has been the case that if one has more currency in their bank account they have advantages over somebody with less. Those advantages extend to every aspect of life, which includes politics. I suggest getting back to the original topic now.

We are on topic. You're ignoring how or why the disadvantages into certain aspects of life, like parenthood for example, begin to pile up when the distribution of power goes too far in the direction of the advantaged. If anything you seem to be thrilled with the consequences.

[GostHacked]

The issue, as eyeball says, is that of Power, and political influence.

The fact that money equals political power is not a debatable subject. It's an uncontroversial truism. And people with more money have more power--which is plainly an issue in any society.

The myopic from their point of view. And yes I agree 100%, as we have seen evidence of money equaling power. Money is the REAL power here. Power based on money that does not really exist in the first place. If there is money here, there is debt somewhere else. It's all a show.

[kimmy]

Wealth isn't distributed. It's earned.

This is one of the things that's becoming grating.

The term "earned" is becoming dubious when applied to the financial industry.

I have no complaint about using the word "earned" to describe the investor who puts money into a business, helps the business grow, and reaps the rewards later. But it is ridiculous to use the word "earned" to describe the way "preferred investors" have cashed in on IPOs (as wrote previously regarding the Twitter IPO). Simply by being "preferred clients" of an investment bank, these "preferred investors" afforded the opportunity to purchase shares at an undervalued price and flip them the same day at an obscene profit. That has nothing to do with creating wealth, in fact it's essentially a tax on the people who actually created the wealth-- the entrepreneurs and the early investors that created the whole thing.

Or the Bain Capital - Sealy Mattress thing. They bought a profitable company, and as directors they issue "special dividends" to themselves to recoup the money they used to buy Sealy- by saddling Sealy with debt. And to repay the debt Sealy goes through cost-cutting including layoffs and sacrifices to product quality that leave the company a shell of itself that eventually gets sold to a competitor at a bargain-basement price. That's not wealth creation, that's wealth destruction. "Harvesting" was the term used by Bain for this sort of deal. We saw a similar story recently with Warren Buffett's takeover of Heinz.

And we've seen derivatives market scams and all of these things that earn money without actually creating anything. We've seen that they can earn "capital gains" tax breaks without actually investing capital.

In theory capitalism serves the common good by investing their wealth to create new businesses and jobs. But at this point the wealthy are finding ways to get more money without actually creating wealth at all.

-k

[eyeball]

And the most efficient way to do that is to influence people in power to tilt the playing field to your advantage. To call or imagine this sort of advantage is earned and too support it as such is...well, it should be obvious why a purge of sycophants is so popular in the wake of the most egregious social resets. It's predictable.

[bush_cheney2004]

In theory capitalism serves the common good by investing their wealth to create new businesses and jobs. But at this point the wealthy are finding ways to get more money without actually creating wealth at all.

Capitalism was never intended to serve the "common good". As for not "earning it", I guess the poor unwashed masses should stop buying lottery tickets, stop visiting casinos, stop buying equities and municipal bonds, and cash in all their bank CDs. From now on everybody has to open a business to create jobs. Yeah...like that will work.

[Michael Hardner]

"Income inequality within communities is correlated with lower levels of mobility. However, its predictive power—measured in their study by a Gini coefficient—is comparatively weak: According to their results, in statistical models with all of the five factors they designated as most important, economic inequality was not a statistically significant predictor of absolute or relative mobility./"

I predict these findings will be ignored by the left because they are inconvenient.

That paragraph is ambiguous. The first sentence is obvious, but the second sentence begs more information. Were they looking at individual groups and using the Gini as a predictor of mobility out of that group ? If so, how would that work ? If it means what I think it means (that people are motivated by similar factors to improve, across nations and culture) then that makes sense to me.

The link went to some kind of video, though.

[Michael Hardner]

In democracies money equals political power because money allows one to influence voters.

It's quite cute how you recite such a thing like it's a law of physics. The fact is that wealth has varying degrees of influence in democracies, over time based on many factors. It's not at all an idealistic idea that this is something that can and should be considered, in the public sphere.

Big unions spend a lot on money in elections trying to influence the vote in order to pad the wallets of their members. They will always claim they are standing up for altruistic values but we all know it is really about more money for unions.

Yes, and as a nod to the fact that laws need to apply to big money on both sides of the political divide the 'big unions' will be limited. But have a look at the relative gains by the owner class vs the unionized members in order to see how much influence we're talking about.

Of course, people don't look it that way because if they don't get their way they automatically assume the system was rigged against them by some nefarious cabal of wealthy people. I guess conspiracies are more appealing than admitting their ideas don't always win public support because they are bad ideas.

Agreed. You either put your bets on science or you don't. If you do, then you win some and you lose some. There's still the pragmatic vs. moralistic axis to argue on though when you fail !

[Michael Hardner]

Political power can be as simple as being able to print and distribute more political pamphlets than somebody of lesser means.

And on some level it always will be. But if a mass media machine can be influenced to set the parameters of the debate, then that provides a further challenge to grassroots organizing.

[bush_cheney2004]

And on some level it always will be. But if a mass media machine can be influenced to set the parameters of the debate, then that provides a further challenge to grassroots organizing.

History says otherwise, as Thomas Paine aptly demonstrated more than 200 years ago with Common Sense.

[Michael Hardner]

In theory capitalism serves the common good by investing their wealth to create new businesses and jobs. But at this point the wealthy are finding ways to get more money without actually creating wealth at all.

-k

And we end up back on the pragmatic vs moral axis again:

The left argues that CEOs don't "deserve" high pay, however they (sometimes tacitly) support a system that rewards seniority over merit pay.

The right argues that people shouldn't be limited in earning as much as they can get, but reject the idea that labour can collude in exactly the same ways big business does.

[Michael Hardner]

History says otherwise, as Thomas Paine aptly demonstrated more than 200 years ago with Common Sense.

How so ?

[bush_cheney2004]

...The left argues that CEOs don't "deserve" high pay, however they (sometimes tacitly) support a system that rewards seniority over merit pay.

The "left" also argues that the "poor" shall receive income and benefits without having "earned" them, financed by the "rich" of course.

[cybercoma]

The left argues that CEOs don't "deserve" high pay, however they (sometimes tacitly) support a system that rewards seniority over merit pay.

The left argues no such thing. CEOs do deserve high pay. They don't deserve disproportionate pay. There should be a healthy ratio that rewards people for advancement and personal liability, but not a ratio that's so disproportionate that society suffers as wealth is hoarded at the top.

[bush_cheney2004]

How so ?

Common Sense communicated American colonists' grievances and solutions in basic language with Biblical references. Published anonymously, it leveraged the media of the day against the power of the monarchy and Parliament.

[Michael Hardner]

The "left" also argues that the "poor" shall receive income and benefits without having "earned" them, financed by the "rich" of course.

Yes, it's true. In practice the economy is defined by "what works", and part of that formula is the collective delusion that we live in a fair and moral system 100% of the time. In order to keep that going, we have to offer minimal protection against the worse excesses of the economic anarchies of the past.

[Michael Hardner]

Common Sense communicated American colonists' grievances and solutions in basic language with Biblical references. Published anonymously, it leveraged the media of the day against the power of the monarchy and Parliament.

Yes, but that example doesn't really work for or against the point I was making since the media landscape was different. See sociologists and media theorists such as Innis, McLuhan, Habermas, Kant and so on...

(Edit: By 'so on' I mean "all of them")

[bush_cheney2004]

Yes, it's true. In practice the economy is defined by "what works", and part of that formula is the collective delusion that we live in a fair and moral system 100% of the time. In order to keep that going, we have to offer minimal protection against the worse excesses of the economic anarchies of the past.

Obviously, as the chatter above about "earning it" aptly demonstrates. We don't have to offer anything, and neither do charities. It is only through the wealth generated by "capitalism" that this game of robbing Paul to feed Peter can continue.