If All The Wealth In The U.S. Were Divided Up Equally ...

Don't blame me that for your ignorance. 0.7% now own 50% of the worlds wealth. Even one who is mathematically challenged (such as yourself) should be able to figure out that this is not good.

Back in the 50's/60's the worker/corp tax split was 50/50. Now it is 80/20.

McDonalds needs roads, infrastructure, police and so on. Perhaps you do not mind paying McDonalds share of the tax bill to pay for that stuff but, don't blame me that you did know how we subsidize the rich.

 

Mathematically challenged, hahaha, that's good, I have four math trophies, how many you got? How many times do I have to point out that the top 10% or top 1% or now the top .7% of people DOESN'T STAY THE SAME PEOPLE? You're assuming that the wealthy people who controlled a quarter of the world's wealth twenty years ago now control half the world's wealth now, and that's simply not the case. Other than Buffett and Gates, I don't think any of today's top people were in that group 20 years ago. All the rest who were in it twenty years ago have either died (Sam Walton) or fallen out of it.

That's incorrect, corporations pay about 9% of all income taxes directly, but if you add in half the payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicaid/Medicare, it comes to 25.8%, or if you figure that the employee never sees those funds and they go directly from the corporation to the federal government, corporations (and other employers) pay 42.4% of all income taxes. (Numbers from this infographic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CBO_Infographic_2016.png) I could not find any information on the breakdown of property taxes, but I know that homeowners get an instant break because almost all jurisdictions allow an exclusion for the primary residence while corporations get no such exclusion. The renters pay no property taxes at all, or only on their vehicles in those kinds of states, and those rich enough to have two houses have to pay full value on the second unit, but I don't feel bad for them.

You're assuming McDonald's doesn't also pay state and local property and income taxes to help finance their portion of the roads, infrastructure, police and fire protection, but they do. And since most major companies, McDonald's included, spend a fortune on transportation (diesel truck deliveries), they are paying a LOT in gasoline taxes. So no, no one in the middle class is subsidizing anyone who is rich.

By the way, most people think of "the rich" as "people" rather than "corporations". By that measure, MOST McDonald's owners are middle class themselves, or upper middle class, not rich. MOST McDonald's stockholders are middle class or upper middle class, not rich. Only a few mega-owners, top directors, and mega-franchisees are in the "rich" of McDonald's. And they all pay taxes twice, once as "McDonald's" and again as themselves. Part of the flaw in Warren Buffett's argument that his secretary paid a higher marginal tax rate than he did was that a great portion of his wealth comes from increases in the value of his stock of Berkshire Hathaway, but another flaw is that he doesn't just pay personal income taxes, he also pays taxes as BH, which if you add that back in to his marginal rate would put his tax rate far higher than his secretary's. No doubt he prefers to keep most of his wealth in the company rather than expending it to himself in dividends because the wealth generated from the increase in stock value isn't taxable until he sells the stock, and at a capital gains rate, while dividends are taxable in the current year, at the current year's rate. So if he really WANTED to pay a higher rate than his secretary, he could.

 

It's the Elizabeth Warren argument which exposed her economic ignorance. Roads are paid for by excise taxes on fuel and heavy duty tires and fees and licenses on heavy duty haulers so yes Ms. Warren they did pay for those roads they use and the police although most have their own security they pay for so yes Ms. Warren they pay for that protection.

The other flaw in that argument is that in order for her to be paying a higher effective rate than he she would have to be making about $500 grand a year. Now suddenly the left is crying we should have sympathy people making $500 grand a year and how much tax they pay when on the other hand they claim they aren't paying their fair share.

 

Let's try it and see what happens!

 

The point of the study(ies) is that having a smaller pool of higher income opportunities doesn't limit people nearly as much as having a low IQ does.

I'll be glad to retract my point if you can find anything that establishes that getting a degree is causative of earning more money and not just correlative. All of the studies I've seen fall into the post hoc ergo prompter hoc error, that because all those wealthy people got degrees before earning their money, getting a degree must have caused that wealth. *BUZZ* Wrong.

As has been repeatedly stated by the pro-immigration crowd, Hispanics are incredibly hard-working. However, their hard work doesn't get them out of poverty. I haven't seen any studies on it, but I'd bet work ethic is only marginally related to lifetime earnings. As for your latter statement, I didn't say that. My personal guess is that luck plays far more of a role in lifetime earnings than any other factor... luck in being born into wealth, luck in finding an occupation that one loves, luck in finding an emerging industry one can ride to the top, luck in finding start-up financing, luck in knowing or meeting the right people, etc., etc. IQ and income are positively correlated, but the connection as I recall is only about .6, better than chance but plenty of room for impecunious geniuses like me and wealthy idiots like Trump.

 

LOL you have a math "trophy" .. what did you get that for ... getting your times tables correct in grade 5 ? Back when I as in elementary school they did not give out trophies for participation.

I have something called a "degree" (albeit in chemistry but, I do have a math minor).

What difference does it make that the top do not remain the exactly the same .. in general they remain near the top. What is your point other to build a strawman by accusing me of saying something I did not. I take it you do not have any Philosophy Trophies ? ... particularly in the field of logic and logical fallacy ? I have a few of those as well as the one's I have in math.

How does this relate to the conversation about the middle class subsidizing the rich ?

Again you drift into fallacy. What said was not incorrect and your graph proves it. It used to be that the income tax portion of corps and workers was split roughly 50/50. Good that they split SS 50/50 but this does not change my claim.

I made no such assumption ... another strawman.

McDonalds is not paying anything that would not have been paid if McDonald's did not exist as someone else would have paid. It is the consumers eating meat (and other thing transported) that are paying the taxes. This is an interesting try but a flawed argument at the end of the day.

The flaw in your argument above is your assumption/Claim that owners of the majority of McDonalds shares are middle class.

Then there is the flawed claim that a shareholder paid taxes twice.

 

Rather than talking endlessly about some study that you think you saw, why not actually post a link to that study? That way we can see what it actually says, assess its validity etc. You already referenced the study, and then I am the one who said that non college graduates have a smaller pool of higher income opportunities. Now all of a sudden the whole point of your mythical study is that having a smaller pool of income opportunities doesn't limit nearly as much as a low IQ. It seems that you morph this study into whatever is convenient at the moment. Lets see it and then we can discuss.

For starters, this isn't about wealthy people. It is about middle class people with and without a college degree.
http://time.com/money/4777074/college-grad-pay-2017-average-salary/
http://www.politifact.com/georgia/s...ional-levels-generally-make-difference-earni/

I provided the above links simply to establish a baseline of earnings for both college and non college graduates. They aren't actually studies, they instead reference raw compliled data from BLS. I realize that your argument is that the raw data doesn't account for differing IQ, and while that is true, the baseline numbers are important to establish.

Now you want to take things one step further beyond correlation and into the causative realm. The problem with that is that unless you are able to isolate down to just one variable, causation is essentially impossible to prove. What you are talking about are sociological studies. Sociology is considered a soft science largely BECAUSE you cannot break sociological factors down to just one variable, hence the true scientific method cannot be followed as it can with a hard science. Although sociological studies frequently CLAIM to show causation, those claims are scoffed at by the actual scientific world. What you are doing is insisting that in order to prove my point, that I must be able to do the impossible, while to prove yours all you have to do is make reference to some unknown study that also is incapable of PROVING causation.

In truth, correlation is adequate in order to provide a basis for an intelligent discussion, and I am more than willing to look at your data and take it into consideration, knowing full well that actual scientific causation will not be shown. It would actually be very interesting to see some data relative to people with a 100 IQ both with and without a degree in terms of their lifetime income. That would not prove causation, but the correlation involved would be very telling. I would suspect that when you go to extremely high IQ's without a degree, they may very well perform close to college graduates with any IQ, but when you are talking about people in a normal IQ range, the difference in earnings between college and non college graduates will be starkly different.

I will reiterate, show your data so that we can analyze and discuss. It is a colossal waste of time debating a study that is coming out of your head thus not providing any opportunity to point out the weakness in your information.

Once again, there are a lot of variable involved in this calculation, with work habits being one of them. Of course a hard working Hispanic immigrant with no education that probably cannot speak the language is only going to be able to pick fruit. While he may work harder than everyone else, he is only going to be paid a fruit pickers wage. To therefore use a Hispanic Immigrant as your reasoning behind your conclusion that hard work is only marginally related to lifetime earnings is utterly preposterous. On the whole, a fruit picker that works hard is going to make more than a fruit picker that is lazy, just like an accountant that works hard is going to earn more than an accountant that is lazy. To claim otherwise is truly silly.

It is true that luck comes into the equation, but on the whole, the harder one works, the luckier one gets. Of course someone that is born into wealth is going to tend to do better financially, and no one is arguing otherwise. However, when discussing the overwhelming majority of people that arent born into wealth,finding what someone loves to do, finding the right emerging industry, finding start up financing, and meeting the right people in most instances involve much more than simple luck. Luck is merely the intersection where preparation meets opportunity. The harder working educated person is better prepared than the lazy, uneducated person when opportunity does present itself. To say otherwise is lacking in even basic common sense.

 

I'll try to track one or both of them down, but my guess is that you would dismiss their results anyway, since you're already criticizing sociology as a soft science. While you are accurate that causation cannot be proven, it can be disproven by showing that controlling for some other variable eliminates the variance showing in some other study. In this case, controlling for IQ eliminates almost entirely the advantage of having a higher education. Here's an unrelated study that shows that controlling for IQ eliminates almost entirely socio-economic status as a predictor of wealth, at least among the top 3/4 of the population: http://www.sullivan-county.com/id5/murrey.htm (Interesting to note that Murray buys into the college argument himself, but then goes on to note in the article that the bright siblings in the study still did well even without the degree, and that controlling for education preserved the income disparities among the different IQ groups.)

While I agree with you that being prepared when an opportunity comes along is important, your random view suffers from survivor bias, i.e., you're failing to account for all those people who were prepared but for whom no opportunity presented itself.

My point was that the hard-working but poor fruit pickers eliminate the connection between "hard work" and "wealth". If working hard truly made you rich, then fruit pickers would be rich, because they work very hard. Since they are not, there's something wrong with your formulation. If you start adding in other variables like education, occupation, and speaking English, that dilutes the importance of "hard work", doesn't it? Here's some math for you: aX+bY+cZ = I, where X is the variable hard work, Y is the variable occupation, and Z is the variable education, and I is the annual income of the person. What do you suppose the values for a, b, and c are? (Note I'm leaving out the most important variable, IQ, but just for argument's sake, let's say Y and Z are independent variables.) Clearly you already believe that having a higher education leads to greater income, so we can give c a sizable value. Occupations are dependent on education to some extent, you can't be a lawyer or doctor, two of the highest-paying occupations, without years and years of education, so b is going to be pretty sizable. So what does that leave for a? Not much. And there are probably half a dozen other variables that can be thrown in there that also diminish the relative value of a, such as years of experience, relative position in the organization, location (big city v. country), etc. So does hard work equal wealth? HELL no.

Edit: "I provided the above links simply to establish a baseline of earnings for both college and non college graduates. They aren't actually studies, they instead reference raw compliled data from BLS. I realize that your argument is that the raw data doesn't account for differing IQ, and while that is true, the baseline numbers are important to establish."
The raw data only establishes correlation. If both education and wealth are correlated with IQ, then the education is not the controlling factor, IQ is, since IQ predates the education.

 

My grandfather was a real estate developer back when the little guy did that ****. He bought a track of land and built 6 bungalow style apartment buildings on it, kept the best one, and sold off the rest. He did this throughout his life with commercial and residential property, in addition to his full time job, because he genuinely believed that working less than 100 hours a week meant you were a lazy bum.

So in a certain sense I understand that concentrated wealth is a pretty big problem, because the land my grandpa kept-corner, commercial properties worth millions of dollars today to actual developers, has created a lot of headaches. I don't give a **** about the dollar amount, but I do care quite a bit about the ground my family has worked, the buildings we've maintained, and the memories that echo through them, especially since my we've lived and love and laugh, and died in several of them.

That being said, most people don't give a ****. I, at 13, when my grandfather died, told my own father I'd murder him in his sleep when he didn't immediately reject an offer to buy us out for WAYYYY above market value at the time. My mother ran a niche real estate service for tying up all the loose ends when old people died. We'd clean out and categorize a person's life-their collections and memorabilia-and outside of items of obvious value such as gold or high end collectibles, did any of these people GIVE A **** ABOUT THEIR PARENTS? Not once. Just send me the check.

I'm 27 and own tens of thousands of dollars of collectables according to their "market" value, because I love history and things with meaning. Might have spent $500 on all of it, because the people I bought them from knew damn well that if they died tomorrow it'd all end up in the trash.

Now where am I going with this? If tomorrow everyone in America got $300,000, I'd show up to work to find that it was just myself and my boss there, and that I was getting a monumental raise.

 

- Yes do track them down, because there is no basis for discussion without them.

-It is 100% incorrect to say that causation can be disproven. In this instance, it is impossible to isolate down to one variable, and with that being the case, it is impossible to prove or disprove causation. Correlation is all anyone has in this type of analysis.

- Its not so much that I am attacking sociology, I am merely pointing out the irrefutable fact that it is a pseudo science. You are insisting on scientific PROOF in an area where it is impossible to do so, while not holding yourself up to the same impossible standard.

- The Murray paper didnt perform an analysis between college and non college. The only thing it said on the subject was.... " Even when the analysis is restricted to siblings who left school without going to college, the brights ended up in the more lucrative occupations that do not require a degree, becoming technicians, skilled craftsmen, or starting their own small businesses. The dull siblings were concentrated in menial jobs." You seem to be under the impression that it is referring to brights that didn't go to college and dulls that did. It is actually not making mention whether the "dulls" went to college or not, but it is safe to assume that in most cases that would not be the case. This is precisely why I want you to provide an actual link, because in this instance, you are misrepresenting what the link you DID provide actually says.

-The hard working but poor fruit picker does NOT eliminate the connection between hard work and earnings. You threw in the term wealth but I in fact made no such claim. You are trying to change my words so that it fits in better with YOUR position. Please don't falsely put words into my mouth. What I have said all along is that hard work is a significant variable. Sure, that variable will be diluted if all other variables are pointed in the wrong direction. A person living in a country where they cannot speak the language is very unlikely to do well financially in that country. That is so blatantly obvious that I am surprised to have to even say it. If you want to evaluate the importance of hard work you need to make sure that all other variables are as similar as possible before trying to draw conclusions. In order to do so with the the variable of hard work, you would have to compare people of similar IQ, similar education, and similar backgrounds. While you can never account for every variable, those would be some obvious ones to control for if your quest was to arrive at as accurate of a conclusion as possible. You on the other hand are seemingly trying to compare a migrant fruit picker to an IVY League MBA and trying to draw a conclusion about how hard each of them works. Everyone knows that a lazy Ivy League MBA is overwhelmingly likely to earn far more than the migrant fruit picker, no matter how hard the migrant fruit picker works. That obvious reality proves exactly NOTHING. If I want to assess the economic value of hard work, I'm going to compare a hard working fruit picker to a lazy fruit picker, and a hard working Ivy League MBA to a lazy Ivy League MBA.

This is once again so painfully obvious that I am shocked that it even has to be said. Your lack of utilizing even the most basic of obvious comparators leads me to believe that you aren't interested in having a legitimate conversation, and instead are only interested in trying to dazzle with BS ( which you are failing at miserably).

 

You obviously understand nothing about statistics. I will try to enlighten you and then I give up.

If A and B move up in tandem, we have correlation. There's no way to prove causation with just this data. Now if I can show that controlling for element C eliminates the tandem movement, I have disproven any causation between A and B. Let's take an old example: For many years, it was true that when hemlines on dresses went up, the stock market went up. When hemlines went down, the stock market went down. Clearly this is correlation and not causation. But what was causing the correlation? The answer was optimism. When people were optimistic about the economy, both hemlines and stock prices rose. When people were gloomy about the economy, hemlines and stock prices fell. So what happened when you controlled for optimism? The correlation between hemlines and stock prices disappeared, proving that there was no causation between them. In the same way, controlling for IQ makes the income disparity between those with college degrees and those without college degrees disappear, meaning it isn't the college degree that determines income, it's IQ.

The reason I gave you the equation I did was to ask you to evaluate just how significant you think hard work is in the grand scheme of things. But by your own admission, it matters relatively little compared to other things like occupation. But then you insist on it being very important. I'm showing you that the "economic value of hard work" is relatively small compared to all those other variables. Successful people like to think that they got where they did through hard work, but considering there are lots of people out there who are working just as hard and aren't successful puts the lie to that claim.

As for the claim about the paper, you are incorrect, he says in the paper that only 2% of the dulls managed to get a college degree. He says further down, "You may be wondering whether the race, age or education of siblings affects my figures. More extended analyses exist, but the short answer is that the phenomena I have described survive such questions. Siblings who differ in IQ also differ widely in important social outcomes, no matter how anyone tries to explain away the results." So yes, the paper does indeed address college degrees. But that's not why I included it, I included it to show the significance of IQ to earnings and to earning a college degree. As I previously noted, if A and B are correlated, but factor C predates one or both A and B, it is factor C that is causative and not A or B to each other. So regardless of whether the paper refers to education (which it clearly does), it debunks the idea that a college education controls income because going to college is significantly controlled by one's IQ, as are income levels. Since IQ predates education (IQ is relatively stable throughout life from fairly early childhood) and income, IQ must be the controlling factor. So education and income are correlated with IQ and move in tandem with it, and are not causative between them.

And that's the best I can do. If you still don't get it, I don't think I can explain it any more simply.

 

I have worked in medical sales for the better part of the last 20 years. I present medical studies to physicians within an evidenced based medicine framework, for the express purpose of educating those physicians on the latest clinical data relative to the products that I represent. I then take the results of those studies and explain why that result illustrates why my product is the best choice in order to accomplish a desired medical goal.

However, I have come across you on a political chat board, and you are trying to masquerade a pseudo scientific sociological study as hard science. You don't actually have a link to that study, because golly gee, you just cant remember where you saw it. You want that pseudo scientific sociological study to be accepted as scientifically proven fact regardless of the fact that it is not a scientific study empowered to establish causation, and regardless of the fact you have not provided a link and thus the study cannot be reviewed. You agreed with me when I correctly pointed out that unless you can isolate down to one variable, you cannot scientifically prove causation, but for some odd reason you are digging in your heels in and insisting that while you cannot scientifically prove causation with a sociological study, you can scientifically disprove causation. This is very perplexing, because the exact same principle that means you cannot prove causation unless you can isolate down to one variable, equally applies in reverse in that you cannot disprove causation unless you can isolate down to one variable. For reasons unbeknownst to common sense, you are insisting that the principles diverge when used in reverse.

With all of that as the background, you will have to excuse me if I giggle just a bit when you boldly declare that I "understand nothing about statistics". You will also have to forgive me if I chuckle just a little harder as you try to condescendingly announce that you "will try to enlighten me", but only for a little while, because then you will simply "give up"...... LOL....are you kidding me? I realize that you are doing your best to put on your poker face and pretend like you know that of which you speak but cmon, you aren't fooling anyone, other than perhaps yourself.

Unless you can isolate down to ONE variable, you have DISPROVEN NOTHING. You are very confused. Pseudoscience is not empowered to prove or disprove ANYTHING. It can create a framework for an informed opinion, but make no mistake, it is an opinion. You cannot refer to a pseudoscientific study and insist that therefore all other opinions are invalid because you saw proof in one of those pseudoscientific studies. You aren't referring to proof of anything, you are merely echoing the opinion that was put forth by the author of the pseudoscientific study. In your above example, it is perfectly logical to say that the stock market went up due to optimism. How do they measure optimism in a scientific framework? How would one prove scientifically that optimism drove the stock market? You are probably tempted to say they could create a self reported rating scale, but that would be a wholly subjective scale. Can you scientifically analyze a subjective score?....NO. When subjectivity comes into play, scientific analysis is out the window. The fact that you have chosen this scenario to explain your position shows just how uninformed you are regarding the notion of a scientific study.

I brought up several very valid reasons why on the whole a college degree provides higher lifetime earnings, and I readily acknowledged that IQ is one of them. You refuse to respond to my opinion, insisting that it is due almost primarily to IQ, and further insisting that you have proof because of a pseudoscientific study which is nothing more than an opinion. To make matters worse you don't even have a link to the pseudoscientific study to which you are referencing. I am all for having an exchange of opinions, but I am not going to sit here and pretend like the opinion that you are pushing is somehow settled science. Your position is nothing short of absurd.

For starters, I don't recall saying much in regards to hard work's importance other than to point it out as yet another variable in the equation. Since you insist upon discussing it.....how do you define hard work? If you were trying to isolate hard work as a single variable, how would you go about that? Would you compare the income of a hard working fruit picker to a lazy Harvard Law Grad in order to isolate hard work as a single variable? Why or why not?..... or would it be smarter to compare a hard working fruit picker to a lazy fruit picker, and a hardworking Harvard Law Grad to a lazy Harvard law grad?

The obvious answer if you are trying to isolate hard work as a variable, would be to make all other inputs as equal as possible, which means that you would compare a hard working fruit picker to a lazy fruit picker. You aren't doing that. You are instead doing just the opposite. You are choosing the path that clouds the impact of hard work on an individuals income as opposed to the path that illuminates the difference. The only reason to do that is because you are choosing the option that supports your point, as opposed to a genuine attempt to arrive at a legitimate conclusion. If you have to choose the path that clouds everything in order to support your point, your point is undeniably nonsensical.

I am not incorrect about ANYTHING that I said referencing that paper. I am not sure what you are trying to claim that " 2% of the dulls managed to get a college degree" disproves, but it certainly doesn't disprove or contradict ANYTHING that I said.

Of course there is a correlation between IQ and getting a college degree. Who said there wasn't? I feel like this entire paragraph is one giant strawman arguing against a point that was never made.

LOL.....You explained it SIMPLY alright......SIMPLY WRONG.

 

You're a bullshit artist for a living, but you want to paint me as presenting bullshit. Nice try.

 

If that happened what would be the effects on the US economy ??

BTW Piketty has stated that wealth distribution is the fairest it has ever been. It is not a problem.

 

Wealth creation is not a zero sum game. The energy from the sun is. Persons must utilize their human capital to create wealth. That is the difference.

 

Move to China - you will fit right in and you can make a lot of money due to their capitalistic economic system. Now that's a real conundrum isn't it ??

 

How can a person be deserving of an income?

 

How can some one consistently fail to comprehend the obvious mistake of using the wrong preposition on an informal internet forum ??

 

There was no "left" under Obama.

 

I present scientific studies for a living. If you want to call that a bullshit artist, so be it. I'm only in it for the money, and on that front I have no complaints.That doesn't change the fact that I very easily thoroughly dismantled your feeble attempt at masquerading pseudoscientific opinion as hard science. You tried your best to throw anyone off the scent by writing out fraudulent equations and theorems, pretending as if those are legitimate principles. That type of gobbledygook may in fact scare some off simply because you are acting as if you know what you are talking about, but to someone that actually deals with this stuff on a daily basis for a living, your schtick amounts to nothing more than nonsensical puffery rooted in abject nonsense. I know that you are a fraud. You know that you are a fraud. You know that I know you are a fraud.

Instead of acknowledging the fact that your argument has been thoroughly exposed as fraudulent and lacking merit, you opt to post a graphic implying that I simply cannot grasp your brilliance. As I said earlier, you aren't fooling ANYONE, other than perhaps yourself.



PS....I especially loved this gem from you..." As I previously noted, if A and B are correlated, but factor C predates one or both A and B, it is factor C that is causative and not A or B to each other".....Pure COMEDY GOLD.

 

And it would wind up in the hands of those who didn't squander it. So not really a loss.

 

Most of the Wall Street Titans have squandered their investor's money and went bankrupt in 2008-2009. Bernie Madoff anyone??? We are just waiting for the next crash. The $700 Billion bailouts and the other bailouts will be squandered by the super-rich. Just wait and see.

 

Simple. Because the amount of income one earns (EARNS) is related to the work that they do. Either through labor, intellect, risk... those dollars are earned.

Sorry, nobody gets an allowance from big papa government just for breathing.

 

That would be an injustice to the people you take the money from

 

It would be a loss to the people you take the money from