Is income inequality 'morally wrong'?

All who are lamenting that there is not equal opportunity what would you do to create what you see as equal opportunity?
More government involvement?
is the use of the phrase '"equal opportunity" that important?
Why isn't 'the opportunity to succeed" enough?
A kid born into middle class with 2 parents, does well in school goes to Texas State or TT, gets a job and lives a comfortable life.
Was he deprived because he didn't get sent to Andover and have connections to get hired at Bain?


What defines equal opportunity?
How much more do you want the government to do?
 
LinkedIn is a company founded on the proposition that "good" employees know other "good" employees. Most companies build their employee referral programs based on the facts that employees generally know other good employee prospects AND they stay longer if they have a "friend".

Corporate America is very much an old boys/girls club. Do you think that it's just as easy for the kid from the mobile home to break in as the kid from a wealthy family? If so, I have a bridge to sell you.

I'm not saying Corporate America is wrong but it's a lot harder to break in as an outsider.
 
Husker
great example LinkedIn
Take a look at the people involved in founding LinkedIn and tell me how many had extra opportunity due to birth.
Reid Huffman Allen Blue, Eric Ly, Jean-Luc Vaillant, Lee Hower, Konstantin Guericke, Stephen Beitzel, David Eves, Ian McNish, Yan Pujante, and Chris Saccheri

How many of those had extra advantages the rest of us didn't?

How about Steve Job? Wozniak Zuckerman
Mark Cuban Or if you think the tech world is unreachable what about, Herman Cain, John Schnatter, Robert Johnson Oprah Winfrey, heck even Paula Deen until she crashed etc etc etc etc etc etc.

or you can look back to the Henry Fords George Eastman

There are so many more people who became successful and ultrasuccessful but were from less than advantaged backgrounds thant from the Andover background some think we need to give to everyone .

We do need to give everyone a chance and I think for the vast majority of kids we do.
MORE government involvement won't spur the next Steve Jobs or Robert Johnson
 
I have no doubt that sometime in the future our socialist government will confiscate a portion of our savings for redistribution. The President has already suggested a limit on savings and some congressional leaders are studying confiscating 401s and paying us monthly from the money we have saved. It may sound radical but it could happen. Of course our leaders will get their cut when the money rolls in.
 
One other thought popped in my head about education.

While the market values a top-flight education and financial success is often a result of a top-flight education...financial success is not the raison d'etre for a top flight education. I don't care who your daddy is, that you got a perfect SAT score, that both your parents are blind illegal immigrants, that you rescue baby seals from poaching...if you write on your essay that your want to go to Yale because you want to make money, it's getting thrown immediately into the reject can.

Top flight schools are looking for kids who are genuinely intellectual and curious about the world. The market place also values those kinds of workers. For poor kids, it's not enough to want to escape poverty...they have to be fundamentally intellectually curious and socially ambitious. Those are the kinds of folks people follow and gravitate towards, so it's no wonder that big time Wall Street firms want those kind of folks and recruit Ivy League kids. That fancy degree printed in Latin is not just a meal ticket...there's an unique inherent benefit of studying and being around those kind of students.

Let's look at Wall Street for example. The stereotype is that they're just money grubbing robots. From what I gather from his posts HorninHongKong, who I mentioned earlier, reminds me of a lot of the Ivy League MBAs who went into finance. He is not a robot who's only thoughts are bonuses and models and bottles. HHK has posted about the geekiest, nerdiest finance subjects on WM. He is inherently intellectually curious. He enjoys the subject matter. That's what ultimately fuels a student to go the extra mile in the library, on his paper, in the classroom. It's also probably why a client would want to speak to HHK about his thoughts on the market.

The concept that money just so happens to occur with academic success, which in this scenario I personally define as achieving one's greatest intellectual potential, as opposed to success defined by money is lost on many.
 
Ex_2000's last post about top flight schools wanting intellectually curious people is very true. Education at that level is much more than a means to a financial end. This is especially true when you get to the doctoral level and it is required that you work under a professor. Those professors are going to choose to work with students that have a genuine interest in the academic side of things as opposed to ones trying to get rich.
 
In some respects income inequality is like sex. In and of itself it is not morally wrong. However, there is a lot of sin that occurs in its pursuit.
 
Pointing out the pres and other founders of LinkedIn was pointing out none of them were ultra privileged ' Andover types. Hoffman's background isn't exactly a background of old wealth and connections
None of the others either. but they all high achievers.

What ' connections ' do you think Oprah had? Cuban? Schnatter?Deen? Johnson?Ben Carson?

Do some people get ahead solely due to family and connections? yes

But so many more get ahead due to ambition and drive overcoming incredible obstacles including single parent homes.
The gov't can and should only do so much.
Funny the people who have succeeded out of really poor circumstances typically tell us the opportunity is there for anyone willing to take it.

It is only those who need excuses who continually call for more government money.
 
the andover/S Texas examples helped this discussion in some ways and hindered it in others.

I don't think anyone here would argue that there are viable paths to fame/fortune/success no matter how low you started. That is not the same as equal opportunity.

Equal opportunity would be evident if the same percentage of andover kids went to Yale as the percentage of Del Rio HS. We all know that is no where near the case.

Your posts are peppered with comments like "if he works really hard", "if he applies himself", "if they have lots of drive". I would argue that there are MANY in this country that display none of these attributes and still end up with significant 'success' because the playing field is so unlevel.

The whole separate but equal treatment that minorities received has been shown to have been anything but. The same dynamic still exists, but now it is primarily an income stratification. If you are born to the lower income strat you will very likely be there as an adult.

I will readily admit that it is a super difficult problem. Our existing structure certainly has brought us a long way. but it seems to be getting worse and I think that is a problem.
 
Equal outcome or equal opportunity is just another term for "I want things to be fair". Life isn't fair. I tell my kids that often. All anyone can do is maximize the opportunity they do have. Plus, income level isn't the most important thing in the world. Many people have money whose lives are full of tragedy.

We should all strive to make as much money as possible under the constraints of morality and our own physical limits. But income shouldn't be compared to morality. It's how we get the money and what we do with it that counts.
 
?
At what income level does the 'inequality" start?

does it start with someone who went to a community college then started at minimum wage at Mcdonalds but the franchise owner knew the parents so after the employee showed up on time and worked hard every shift was then promoted to shift super then asst mgr
versus his friend who did not go to CC but started the same time at mickey D, was never on time and called in sick so didn't get any offers of promotion
Is that inequality? did the CC grafuate get promoted because of who he knew or his work ethic?

OR is this the CC grad a victim of inequality because someone else went to Texas was graduated and got a job at HP because his uncle works there
OR is the Texas grad a victim of inequality because his next door neighbor went to Andover and Yale and works on Wall Street because his grandfather owns the brokerage

Where do you see the baseline for inequality?

Read Monahans post carefully
this
"All anyone can do is maximize the opportunity they do have" should be everyone's motto
 
heard/seen a few articles and interviews on this lately. "biggest divergence in a 100 years..."

I do believe that you can have too much inequality and this eventually leads to instability, but more to the point I would like to see an OUTCOME where the richest earn somewhere on the order of 60 times what the bottom earn. In todays dollars that is somewhere on the order of $1.5 mil for the top and $25K at the bottom.

Having said that, I don't know how you get there.

My thoughts...
1. alter the inheritance tax to limit the amount any single person can RECIEVE from inheritance without a big tax bite. Don't tax the giver(dead guy estate) but rather the receiver.. keeps the silver spoon crowd from just handing down privelege generation after generation... would lead to a more meritocratic country
2. publicize and allow shareholders to vote on compensatoin packages for top 10% of company earners
3. change tax law to tax investment income the same as ordinary income if it is a greater portion of the total. ie. if you earn $500K in investment income but only $400k as salary/bonus then your investment income is also treated as ordinary income...reasoning...if your investment income is the greater of the two then really your primary income is your investment income.

a big gap is necessary to encourage risk taking and entrepeneurhsip but it can be too big.
 
While this debate certainly has a "moral" component, at its core the issue is a practical one.

Capitalism works so long as the balance between rich and poor doesn't become too great. If all of the money is concentrated in too few hands, the importance of having capital rises, and the wealth gap grows and grows and grows. Ultimately, the positive feedback loop will yield a super-rich class and a dirt-poor class, with little if anything in between. While Elysium overstates the result, I think we are headed towards a toned-down version of that.

I don't know where the proper balance is, or how to go about reaching it. But so long as the mentality is about fairness and morality, I fear that we will not get our arms around the underlying practical problem that needs to be addressed.
 
I am not sure which is more amusing (or contemptible) that you actually think there is no evidence of an unlevel playing field or that your "evidence" is anecdotal?

You are completely wrong.

In reply to:
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It would be nice to discuss the actual facts, but most conservatives are all touchy feely for a reason.
 
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