Inequality.is website teaches the alleged causes of inequality

Economics
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Inequality.is

 

This interactive website aims to teach you (from a certain political perspective no doubt) the causes and solutions to inequality.  It begins with this opening question:

“If it were up to you, how would you split up income between the top 10% and the other 90%”

 

The right response is: It is not and should not be up to me.

 

But this is a game with loaded dice so if you want to play, you have to play with the dice they give you.  

 

The first major claim is that women and minorities in the same category (mine was age 45-54, some college) as white males make substantially less (about $11,000 to $12,000 per year less).  

 

The next major claim is that if American wages had kept up with increased productivity, I’d be making about $26,000 more a year.  “You Make More Stuff.  They Make More Money” is how it is put.  Yeah, who knew my boss was exploiting me for his personal profit.  

 

Anyway, the solutions are what you expect: Increase taxes on the rich, higher minimum wages, more worker protection, more regulation of the financial sector.. ..   

 

In other words more of the same old same old.. 

 

 

 

The Error
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People just won’t think. They end the conversation or start repeating themselves (“It ain’t fair..”) if you ask them any one of the very next logical questions: “Who is responsible for making your job?” “Who should decide how much everyone makes?” “What do you think is the point of upper management?” “Are all jobs equally valuable? If not, why should all pay be equally distributed? It shouldn’t? Then who should decide what is fair?”

 

There are just so many holes in the egalitarian argument I don’t know how it still exists as credible in the mind of anyone.

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  This topic,  believe it or not, is critically important. Before I start, for anyone who reads this, I am living in Toronto, Canada and am Canadian.

  I came across a group in Caledonia, Ontario who were fighting collectivists (tribal collectivists, Unions, Communists, Palestinians, anarchists) for what used to be a core Canadian value: Equality Before the Law) not as “equality” is understood in its redistributive sense today. This group was determined to get the SWAT line, police and provincial politicians to enforce equality before the law by making a stand on that principle. I invited myself to the group and, by crossing the collective line with them, was arrested (twice) for crossing the police lines wherein we peacefully insisted on marching but the police deemed was a, “breach of peace.” (We were not the proven violent group).

  You see, tribal groups, and too many favored groups get favored political treatment which they should not. I believe it is this favored treatment that is the subjectivity and arbitrariness so prevalent today. Now that I and this group called CANACE (Canadians for Charter Equality) have been arrested, the actions of the police are now being contested in the courts - and CANACE is winning the cases. No group or collective has any special rights or privileges that an individual should not possess.  

  The entire sordid story of this fight and how the government is losing and being forced by the courts to be more fair (just) to Canadians has just been published in a book, “Victory in the No-Go Zone.” Written by Gary McHale.

  I hope you can buy the book for it truly is enlightening. The author professes religious ideas, but his actual work and strategy is anything but divine. The entire work is well fought human effort.

  Canada is leading the charge towards socialism in North America, so we here have to be more active in opposing the statist policies. The government opposing our lawsuits are dragging it out, hoping we will quit, but I don’t think we will.

  I do have some remarks I’d like some to answer if you will about the importance of, “Equality Before the Law.” I deemed this principle important enough to go to jail (When I was first thrown in it was very intimidating. I couldn’t physically resist or raise my voice as I was being handcuffed. I honestly didn’t know if the police were going to lock me up and throw away the key - or what they would do to me there. I just knew I was right).

  I’d like some feedback on the relation of “Equality Before the Law” to individual rights. Priority, relationship, and need of,… etc. if anyone doesn’t mind. Thanks.        

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The first major claim is that women and minorities in the same category (mine was age 45-54, some college) as white males make substantially less (about $11,000 to $12,000 per year less).

The question of the wage gap between men and women has been refuted time and again. This is a fairly good article that was written in response to President Obama claiming in the state of the union that women make 77% of what men make.  In short, that number is just the median female wage vs. the median male wage.  It does not control for different occupation choices, differential time off for raising children, different hours worked, different education choices, etc.  Once you control for the really obvious stuff, the wage gap shrinks from 23% to 5%.

 

The next major claim is that if American wages had kept up with increased productivity, I’d be making about $26,000 more a year.  “You Make More Stuff.  They Make More Money” is how it is put.  Yeah, who knew my boss was exploiting me for his personal profit.

 

In addition to being a red herring, this claim is also simply false.  Don Bourdreaux and Liya Palagashvili address the claim here, in a recent WSJ op-ed.  In their view, the ‘decoupling’ of wages with productivity is an illusion fostered by two mistakes.  First, people fail to include fringe benefits, like health insurance.  Fringe benefits make up 19% of the average worker’s pay today, as opposed to 10% 40 years ago.  This error tends to understate wage growth.  The second mistake is to use different price deflators to correct for inflation on the two different measures.  Although it’s a more technical point, the way that analysts typically do this also tends to understate wage growth relative to productivity.  When these common errors are corrected for, the gap between productivity growth and wage growth disappears.

 

Even though both of these issues are sideshows in the debate over inequality (the real issue is the right to redistribute wealth in the first place), we shouldn’t let them go unchallenged, because these claims are simply wrong.  People who spread them are using misinformation and ignorance to advance their political agenda.

1 Like
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There are just so many holes in the egalitarian argument I don’t know how it still exists as credible in the mind of anyone.

Its plausibility is a direct consequence of their most basic values.

When collectivists talk about sacrificing freedom for security, while it appears to us as a sacrifice (an exchange of more value for less) it isn’t to them; they don’t want the responsibility of making their own decisions.  They don’t see it as a “sacrifice” at all; for them the sacrifice would be hands-off Capitalism.

When they talk about penalizing the rich, it’s a mistake to mention whose decision that is; they have no fundamental concept of “my decision, as opposed to yours”.  It isn’t even a matter of equality (and their references to such are anticonceptual camouflage).

 

All of their explicitly political theories are smoke and mirrors, designed to convey an intention without ever actually referring to it.  Do not pay attention to the details of their theories because you will miss the essentials (as you’re meant to).

However, when they talk about “greed versus need”, that’s the thing to pay very close attention to- because it’s the only sincere part of their arguments.  And the important thing to observe, when they discuss “greed versus need”, is that they use “greed” to refer to any true aspirations, and “need” to refer to the requirements of maintaining a heartbeat.

What they hate is not actual “greed” although that is how they actually perceive it.

 

What they mean by “greed versus need” is love of life VERSUS fear of death.

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Every statement, action and choice a human being ever makes, involves (implicitly or explicitly) an evaluation of its risks versus its rewards; cost-benefit analysis.

 

Objectivism is based on the fundamental axiom that the rewards outweigh the risks.

Epistemologically, that the rewards of knowledge outweigh the possibility of error.

Morally, that the rewards of living selfishly (by one’s self-chosen standards) outweigh any thing and everything else in the universe.

Politically, that the rewards of keeping your hands off of other men outweighs the risk they may pose to you.

 

Whoever finds egalitarianism credible holds the inverse premise, all the way to their core.

 

I contend that the implications of that, though rather disturbing, precisely fit the facts.