"Back when taxes were so high, the rich were really good at tax avoidance." first, [citation needed]. Second, compared to now? Third, is it relevant? how? I see you glossed over that. It's like hacking..and painting..isn't it.
If the rich didn't actually pay the percentage in taxes as given by their tax bracket, then their tax bracket isn't relevant because it isn't something that was actually followed in practice.
Also, capital gains tax is really. You'd have to make less than $8,500/yr to be in a lower income tax bracket. This hasn't always been the case. So, one easy, legal way to pay less in taxes is to get paid via capital gains.
Man, what fantasy world do you live in? Large corporations decrease inequality? [citation needed] Ambitious people started to lose interest? I can't even dignify that with a [citation needed]. Ambitious people have what to do with anything on a national scale? Ambitious people somehow caused, or were party to, the decimation of the middle class, which somehow never once gets mentioned by the actual economists and political theorists who actually know stuff about this stuff?
Oh! Are you "pg" of that ludicrous "hackers and painters" essay, the one that actual painters tore to shreds because it's the same sort of bizarre nonsequitor drivel? I can see you're still at it. Nice "work".
I don't buy pg's argument, but I don't find it implausible at all that an economy dominated by a few large employers will tend to have more similar compensations for the same job class than one of many small companies.
If you did a survey of developer compensations in Silicon Valley, do you think (a) developers who work in corporations with over 500 or (b) developers who work in companies with under 50 would have more egalitarian compensations?
My intuition suggests the former, in line with pg. I'd love to see actual evidence of this, though.
My disagreement with PG would come with whether that's the primary driver of inequality. For that, I'd argue it's the increasing power of generic capital over generic labor, instead of competition between specific types or quality of labor.
You don't seem to be serious, but I'm making this reply for other people in HN. I might be wrong, so judge and reply.
Large corporations decrease inequality?
Yes. All (most) software developers in a large corporation are paid the same wage. Well, there are persons that can make millions not working in a company (ie. Indie game developer, iphone app developer...). But when you work for a large corporation, you might take 20% more than the average developer, but not 20X times more.
So large corporations increase equality among developers. Boss get paid 10 times more than a dev. gets? Well, a boss is not a developer, and you are doing the wrong comparison here. Compare the boss in this corporation to another boss in another large corporation. They are getting paid in the same range, no? That's equality.
When you are your own boss, and your friends is his own boss; you can become as unequal as you want. So, small businesses and startups promotes inequalities.
Income equality has a broader meaning than just people doing the same job having similar wages. It most definitely includes the difference between the boss and the workers.
But, if, for each class of worker, there is income equalization, you will find that large companies tend to have an equalizing affect rather than an unequalizing affect. In this example, it's not interesting that bosses get paid more than workers, it is interesting that all bosses tend to get paid the same amount.
Seriously, it isn't an oxymoron. To claim certainty in a given context of knowledge is foundational for both philosophy and the special sciences (such as physics, chemistry, etc.) Contextual absolutism amounts to saying, "Given all the things I know (this is part of the context), I am absolutely certain of this conclusion. I am aware that it is possible that I might come across yet more facts that might cause me to revise or even abandon my conclusion, but right now, I know this much."
(To conclude that something is possible, or probable, and not yet certain is itself an example of this process.)
To use your example, people often claim that Newton was proven wrong by Einstein. But I disagree. Newton's context included observations of the local solar system, and depended on the instruments of his time. His system still works in the majority of situations encountered today. Because the context hasn't changed appreciably in those situations, we can apply his mechanics and claim that they are correct. Conversely, GPS and particle physics and the like are out of bounds, contextually. For that, you must understand relativity, which is another truth that is absolutely true in a still wider context.
Of course, there is a price to pay for relativity, which is extra computational and pedagogical complexity. Indeed, this alone is enough to keep Newton around for millennia to come. Remember that knowledge is not an end in itself, despite what some may say. All knowledge is a means to some end. We don't all know the same things, and we can't anyway.
Finally, how could we ever get to the point where we can appreciate relativity, or engineer systems where it is necessary to know about that if we were to simply discard Newton's theory as "false"? Science (and indeed all knowledge) is all about what some deride as mere "scaffolding." But I don't deride it - and that's why I'm a contextual absolutist.
Right. It's all of our money, because we all share the same society. Sorry, "it's mine, all mine" doesn't cut it outside an Ayn Rand fantasy novel or a Ron Paul forum.
Using government data, Robert L. Woodson calculated that, on average, 70 cents of each dollar budgeted for government assistance goes not to the poor, but to the members of the welfare bureaucracy and others serving the poor. Michael Tanner cites regional studies supporting this 70/30 split.
your choice of words suggests that you're a follower of thoroughly-discredited pseudophilosopher ayn rand, and as a consequence i strongly encourage you to read:
and not skim and look to argue. read charitably and see if you can still buy into her ideas, after reading some articulate people dissecting them (and seeing rand's defenders try and fail to defend via the comments sections).
