Bill Moyers w/Paul Krugman: “What the 1% Don't Want You to Know”

[Camille]

I've always liked Krugman...


http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/...-the-1-Don-t-Want-You-to-Know?detail=facebook

<iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/92308666" width="500" height="281" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe>

What the 1% Don’t Want You to Know

BillMoyers.com
April 18, 2014

The median pay for the top 100 highest-paid CEOs at America’s publicly traded companies was a handsome $13.9 million in 2013. That’s a 9 percent increase from the previous year, according to a new Equilar pay study for The New York Times.

These types of jumps in executive compensation may have more of an effect on our widening income inequality than previously thought. A new book that’s the talk of academia and the media, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, a 42-year-old who teaches at the Paris School of Economics, shows that two-thirds of America’s increase in income inequality over the past four decades is the result of steep raises given to the country’s highest earners.

This week, Bill talks with Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, about Piketty’s “magnificent” new book...

I've written a couple of posts about this story, starting in late January, when the publication of Piketty's book was first announced via the MSM. [SEE: Edsall: "Capitalism vs. Democracy" (Inequality Scholar Piketty Has Published "Watershed" Book) Daily Kos (1/29/14); and Krugman: “Wealth Over Work” Daily Kos (3/23/14).] And, there have been at least a couple of dozen diaries on Piketty's "watershed" work published here since then, as well.

UPDATE: Courtesy of Kossack Mark Lippman, from the comments, HERE'S THE LINK to Piketty's online database.


There is a transcript @ the source link for those who don't wish to watch the video.

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Edit: I found a link to the book discussed Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty. This page has pop-ups just click the x as soon as they start to open. UNCHECK 'Use our download manager and get recommended downloads' (Very important other wise it will try to install a dl manager via exe file) Then click "direct download link". It's located above the number of downloads.
http://www.tusfiles.net/bcukahtmtlzc

 

[SPECTRE1]

There is whole lot more that they don't want you to know...There is hard science out there now, not known publicly to back up what he is saying.

Part of the problem is the imbalanced thinking in the stock market and over reliance on P/E ratios which has resulted in depressed wages and off-shoring.

 

[Greed]

This is where Krugman can really be annoying. He's using his name and status to give legitimacy to a conclusion in an area of research that he admits, in the video, he doesn't know a lot about.

Inherited wealth doesn't make up a majority of the 1%.
Inherited wealth makes up a declining portion of the 1%.

Wealth inequality gets worse, not because of inherited wealth, but because politicians are easily bought like Moyers half-heartedly promotes at the end.

Let's look at the last time government addressed wealth. Per Neil Barofsky (former Obama official), both parties created $23 trillion worth of programs through the financial sector to insulate the rich from the effects of the last recession. And it worked great.

You want to address wealth inequality? How about saying something when your government allots almost double GDP to help rich people get through one recession...that they caused BTW.

 

[Camille]

Another dkos diary....


Moyers: "Gov't Is Now A Protection Racket for the 1%," Krugman: "Why We’re In A New Gilded Age"

Source link has embedded links...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/...Why-We-re-In-A-New-Gilded-Age?detail=facebook

<iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/92306306" width="500" height="281" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe>​

Excerpt from diary:

Government = Protection Racket for the 1 Percent
by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
April 21, 2014

…Inequality is what has turned Washington into a protection racket for the one percent. It buys all those goodies from government: Tax breaks. Tax havens (which allow corporations and the rich to park their money in a no-tax zone). Loopholes. Favors like carried interest. And so on. As Paul Krugman writes in his New York Review of Books essay on Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, “We now know both that the United States has a much more unequal distribution of income than other advanced countries and that much of this difference in outcomes can be attributed directly to government action.”

Recently, researchers at Connecticut’s Trinity College ploughed through the data and concluded that the US Senate is responsive to the policy preferences of the rich, ignoring the poor. And now there’s that big study coming out in the fall from scholars at Princeton and Northwestern universities, based on data collected between 1981 and 2002. Their conclusion: “America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened… The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” Instead, policy tends “to tilt towards the wishes of corporations and business and professional associations.”

Last month, Matea Gold of The Washington Post reported on a pair of political science graduate students who released a study confirming that money does equal access in Washington. Joshua Kalla and David Broockman drafted two form letters asking 191 members of Congress for a meeting to discuss a certain piece of legislation. One email said “active political donors” would be present; the second email said only that a group of “local constituents” would be at the meeting.

One guess as to which emails got the most response…



More @ source link: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/...Why-We-re-In-A-New-Gilded-Age?detail=facebook

 

[SPECTRE1]

I am sick of seeing homeless people being dumped and blighting cities. The U.S. sucks, other countries with more limited resources have found a way to eliminate homelessness.

Housing, Food, and Healthcare should be a guarantee right and priority of the government. This is one of the many reasons I don't like it here.


I think it is done intentionally, as a psychological tactic for workers that walk past to accept their condition and pay. I don't want to complain or risk near death conditions.


Just so the 1% can use your lack of access to housing to get you to accept lower pay. Just think, if you had access to housing and generous food stamps, you would have leverage to push for higher wages.

 

[RepostKing]

subbed

 

[Greed]

Just think, if you had access to housing and generous food stamps, you would have leverage to push for higher wages.

You get the relationship perfectly.

By the way, why do all of you guys' "guaranteed rights" have to come at the expense of someone else? You're mad at the one percent, but they use the same logic to guarantee their standard of living at your expense.

It's obvious none of you want the game to actually change. Instead you just want to be the winner of the "Take the other group's stuff" game.

 

[SPECTRE1]

You get the relationship perfectly.

By the way, why do all of you guys' "guaranteed rights" have to come at the expense of someone else? You're mad at the one percent, but they use the same logic to guarantee their standard of living at your expense.

It's obvious none of you want the game to actually change. Instead you just want to be the winner of the "Take the other group's stuff" game.

Why should a person be allowed to use the threat of starvation and freezing to death on the streets to depress wages? The last job you accepted, if you knew that you could access public housing and generous food stamps to survive, would you have negotiated a higher salary?

You are facing near death conditions if you don't accept that pay rate or working conditions, the counter party (owner) is not. No wonder the wealth disparity is bad in the U.S.

Are people intentionally creating homelessness as a psychological tactic for workers that walk past them? If sick minded and mentally disturbed people are engaging in these tactics, than we need a social welfare state similar to many countries that will give workers equal leverage. There are many ways to design it, to limit the power of government.

 

[RepostKing]

This is where Krugman can really be annoying. He's using his name and status to give legitimacy to a conclusion in an area of research that he admits, in the video, he doesn't know a lot about.

Inherited wealth doesn't make up a majority of the 1%.
Inherited wealth makes up a declining portion of the 1%.

Wealth inequality gets worse, not because of inherited wealth, but because politicians are easily bought like Moyers half-heartedly promotes at the end.

Let's look at the last time government addressed wealth. Per Neil Barofsky (former Obama official), both parties created $23 trillion worth of programs through the financial sector to insulate the rich from the effects of the last recession. And it worked great.

You want to address wealth inequality? How about saying something when your government allots almost double GDP to help rich people get through one recession...that they caused BTW.

Great points. I need to research though to validate the rest. Excellent argument tho.

 

[Greed]

First Thoughts on Piketty

First Thoughts on Piketty
GREG MANKIW
FRIDAY, APRIL 25, 2014

I have been reading Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the 21st Century." It is truly an impressive work, and I am much enjoying it. I have recently organized a session at the upcoming AEA meeting (January in Boston), where David Weil, Alan Auerbach, and I will be discussing the book, followed by a response from Professor Piketty.

Let me offer a few immediate reactions.

The book has three main elements:

1. A history of inequality and wealth.
2. A forecast of how things will evolve over the next century
3. Policy recommendations, such as a global tax on wealth.

Point 1 is a significant contribution. I like this part of the book a lot.

Point 2 is highly conjectural. Economists are really bad at such things. In particular, the leap from r>g to the conclusion of a growing role of inheritance in society seems too large to me. Many capital owners consume much of the return on their capital, so wealth does not grow at rate r. This consumption ranges from fancy cars and luxurious vacations to generous charitable giving. In addition, unless mating is perfectly assortative, or we return to an era of primogeniture, wealth per family shrinks as it is split among children. So, from my perspective, Piketty tries to draw way too much from r>g. (Quick Quiz for econonerds: (a) What does r>g tell you in a standard overlapping generations model? (b) And what is the magnitude of bequests in that model? Answers below.*)

Point 3 is as much about Piketty’s personal political philosophy as it is about his economics. As we all know, you can’t get “ought” from “is.” Like President Obama and others on the left, Piketty wants to spread the wealth around. Another philosophical viewpoint is that it is the government’s job to enforce rules such as contracts and property rights and promote opportunity rather than to achieve a particular distribution of economic outcomes. No amount of economic history will tell you that John Rawls (and Thomas Piketty) offers a better political philosophy than Robert Nozick (and Milton Friedman).

The bottom line: You can appreciate his economic history without buying into his forecast. And even if you are convinced by his forecast, you don't have to buy into his normative conclusions.
-------
* Answers to quiz: (a) That the economy is dynamically efficient (that is, it has not over-accumulated capital). (b) Zero.

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2014/04/first-thoughts-on-piketty.html?m=0

 

[Greed]

Skills, education, and the rise of earnings inequality among the “other 99 percent”

Skills, education, and the rise of earnings inequality among the “other 99 percent”
David H. Autor

ABSTRACT
The singular focus of public debate on the “top 1 percent” of households overlooks the component of earnings inequality that is arguably most consequential for the “other 99 percent” of citizens: the dramatic growth in the wage premium associated with higher education and cognitive ability. This Review documents the central role of both the supply and demand for skills in shaping inequality, discusses why skill demands have persistently risen in industrialized countries, and considers the economic value of inequality alongside its potential social costs. I conclude by highlighting the constructive role for public policy in fostering skills formation and preserving economic mobility.

There are three reasons to focus a discussion of rising inequality on the economic payoff to skills and education. First, the earnings premium for education has risen across a large number of advanced countries in recent decades, and this rise contributes substantially to the net growth of earnings inequality. In the United States, for example, about two-thirds of the overall rise of earnings dispersion between 1980 and 2005 is proximately accounted for by the increased premium associated with schooling in general and postsecondary education in particular (1, 2). Second, despite a lack of consensus among economists regarding the primary causes of the rise of very top incomes (3–6), an influential literature finds that the interplay between the supply and demand for skills provides substantial insight into why the skill premium has risen and fallen over time—and, specifically, why the earnings gap between college and high school graduates has more than doubled in the United States over the past three decades. A third reason for focusing on the skill premium is that it offers broad insight into the evolution of inequality within a market economy, highlighting the social value of inequality alongside its potential social costs and illuminating the constructive role for public policy in maximizing the benefits and minimizing the costs of inequality.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6186/843.full