Focus On The Wielder, Not the Wielded
Every time a shooter pulls a gun nowadays and uses it with lethal force, donations to political organizations dedicated to restricting firearms in some way skyrocket. No one can blame the donors; they see an out-of-control situation and seek a means to staunch the bloodshed
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Comments 9
My thoughts on watching a partial episode of "The Secret Lives of the Rich and Famous" is why? Even granting I am a rather plain and simple person,
why would I even want a million dollar watch, gold faucets, or a collection of $250,000+ cars (maybe one would be nice, but I could probably get what I'd really like for less than 100k...but I digress).
Don't get me wrong, nearly everyone would like more than what they have, including me; but the only thing that bugs me is the CEOs that get that kind of money and do a lousy job. I mean that's worse than a jouney-man infielder who makes 800K a year.
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major corps: major corporations, relating to the relatively few ceos who bring down that type of money.
My point is, and I could (barely) possibly be wrong, but I think you give too much weight to how much the average wage earner really cares or thinks about the super rich; and how much resentfulness they feel.
I accidently heard a speech given at Berkley in 1968 by one of the Free Speech guys (never did find out who it was)but a point was made that it isn't the poor who will fuel the revolution, but the middle class. (The speech was about getting support in Guatemala (and other South and Central American countries) to the Revolutionaries) It was quite fascinating, I had forgotten just how the rhetoric went in tose days...."we are beyond burning draft cards and need to burn draft boards" :D
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The research is pretty solid about what happens when inequalities get to X. I think that's the point; we are people. Whether or not we "think" about this or that, this or that have an effect. It need not be a conscious recognition of resentment to have an effect.
In this way, we can explain far more than if we should, say, simply examine those reasons people claim motivate their behaviors. These reasons, after all, are what people think affect them, when the source of their thinking (or at least state or frame of mind) might be another source entirely.
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Interesting, isn't it, that the one thing that hasn't changed under the ACA is the pay docs and drug suppliers charge?
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Does income inequality cause those things, or are those things and income inequality all effects of some other causative factor? Treating a symptom rather than the cause may actually result in a worsening of the cause, and a negative long-term result.
It reminds me of the wage gap between men and women. Many folks are upset by that, and quite a few have proposed legislation that would force companies to pay men and women equally.
The problem, though, is that the gender-based gap is a symptom, not in and of itself a cause. A man and a woman, each with the same educational background, earn about the same amount. The reason that there is a gender gap in wages is because there's a gender gap in education. Mandating equal pay would mean that women were being paid more for less, actually enforcing inequality rather than ending it ( ... )
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Does CEO pay actually cause problems, or is it a symptom of some other causal factor?
CEO pay is not really the problem, as the authors of The Spirit Level note. Those CEOs were taking advantage of a societal shift that judged what is and is not appropriate compensation, a shift that followed a massive PR campaign questioning the same. (See the Powell Memorandum.)
The problem is the accumulation of wealth at the top. The Spirit Level proposed some conjecture about why the correlation between income inequality (as measured by the GINI coefficient) and various social situations, but did not make any firm and fast declarations about why this is happening. Why? There are no studies, or at least at the time of the publication there were no such studies ( ... )
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