Senate Income Inequality in the U.S.: Causes, Effects, Solutions

I'd be interested to see the actual studies and methodology being sited in that article, because it's not clear to me how the author is coming up with his data. Specifically, given that charitable giving isn't an itemized deduction among the poor, clearly the data for the amount of relative charitable giving isn't coming from IRS returns. So where is it coming from?

Even it you did use IRS data, it isn't exactly the most reliable source given that all charitable contributions are self-reported and only a very small fraction of that data is verified through audits. I know I probably only report maybe half of my charitable giving--the stuff that actually produces receipts that I can have on hand in the future. Most of my charitable giving doesn't get deducted because I rarely think about it until tax time. On the other hand, many people may claim charitable giving that they didn't actually execute to try and cheat the system. Who knows?

My point is that in reading the article, the readers seems to be expected to trust the conclusions without being presented any of the data. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it does make one wonder. Dr. Piff, for example, who is quoted in the article, contributed no data to the article, just a conclusion from his study that

Not exactly an unbiased scientific observer. Nor is the author.

*paraphrased for TOS

 

When I was little, I would spend up to 50% of my income on my friends, to buy them a cookie or a soda or a slice of pizza, or whatever.

My point is, are the percentages what really matter?

 

No, I'm only suggesting the study is flawed on its conclusions. As reported by the article, at least, it pays lip service to correlation not meaning causation. It then goes on to harangue rich people for being selfish or self-centred, implying that is the reason for low charitable giving. If you want to make the argument "rich people give less just because they're mean and selfish", you have to eliminate other possibly causative factors first, one of which may well be "My giving is lower because I pay taxes to the government who is meant to handle that sort of thing."

I am saying a study conducted on charitable giving in a country which doesn't have any sort of social safety net would be a stronger indication of the causes at work. If you there had rich people giving less, you would presumably eliminate the factor that the existence of the social safety net retards charitable giving. I'm wondering if such a study exists.

It's also notable - whether it may be propaganda or not, but at least the methodology and results are a bit more transparent - the Bank of America's studies on the measures of charitable giving in wealthy households seem to contradict Piff's study. This might not be a settled question, but in either event I'd be cautious of duelling studies that don't narrow things down to single causes and then presume to draw conclusions about whole ranges of people from them.

 

I'm late to this discussion, but is this where we talk about McDonald's employees demanding $15/hour?

 

I came upon a bunch of articles about this subject that speculate that raising wages really shouldn't increase the price of a big mac. Regardless, why is there no talk in politics about substituting the minimum wage with a living wage?

 

That article has been a major topic of discussion where I work. It basically confirms what we've always known. Basically, its hard to plan for tomorrow when you are worried about surviving today. But the issues go beyond that. For many people, once they are adapted to that mindset it is difficult to break free. Financial windfalls (like tax returns) end being a much needed mental and emotional vacation for them and they spend frivolously only to end up in trouble later.

 

We're living in a time of record-high income disparity between rich and poor. It's a direct consequence of social welfare policies that ignore the poor and tax policies that privilege the rich. The failure to make our tax system more progressive, to provide state-funded college education, universal healthcare, including basic things like paid maternity leave, allowing unchecked immigration of unskilled labor and the failure to support a robust system for organized labor, the failure to make good on the early promise of civil rights and equal opportunity, have all eroded our society and killed the middle class, which was the real foundation of our 20th century peak as a nation.

All these great studies in behavioral economics and the actual workings of markets have proven that classical economics as a basis for social morality is a great big bust, a terrible social experiment gone tragically awry where it has been most vigorously embraced without reasonable qualification.

 

I don't think that fast food is that cheap. It's gone up a little bit more in the last 5 years.

 

I'll field that one, since you've already partially answered the question. It is a divisive subject, and one that has difficulty finding support on both sides of the aisle. Logistically, it would require an incredible amount of cooperation and convincing to pull off, and that's completely leaving aside how fundamentally it would reshape the structure and expectations of an entire society. Change that major doesn't come easily.

 

Not to mention the fact that you're working under the misguided assumption that everything you think is, in fact, an accurate disagnosis. I suspect that when you have large groups of people who disagree on what the problem actually is, getting them to line up behind a solution is completely foolhardy.

 

A living wage also means different things to different people. Do you mean a living wage for one person, a single parent with x number of children, a married couple with a family?

The current minimum wage, for a full time worker at 40 hrs per week, would have a single person above the Federal Poverty Guidelines. ($15,080 per year over $11,490.) But for a family of 2 they would be considered in poverty ($15,510).

And what about the geographic location? A living wage where I am is a lot less than a living wage in a big city. Then you have different states following different "minimum" wages. I'm not sure how that works for national companies. Does a Walmart cashier in California get the same starting wage as one in Alabama?

It is a great concept, but impossible to define across the country.

Plus, I would like someone with a better knowledge of economics to explain how that would work without it resulting in the exact same problem. You want to make sure that single parent is making enough to live and pay for child care expenses - that's great, but those child care expenses are going up too because the provider also needs to meet the minimum wage. So does the gas station, and so on. Soon you're right back where you started.

 

I would love to see the dollar menu go away. It causes a lot of health problems. Decrease obesity, and there's a benefit for everyone.

 

To my knowledge, a living wage is traditionally considered to be sufficient to support a family of four on two full-time incomes.

 

Then the minimum wage achieves that. $30K is roughly $6,500 over the poverty guideline. So apparently people need to quit whining

 

Depending on their family size, yes. But WIC doesn't use the Federal Poverty guidelines to determine eligibility - few programs actually do. Welfare is 130% of poverty, energy/fuel assistance and child care assistance are better than that (where I live) and go on a sliding scale for reimbursement. Free and reduced school lunches are sliding fee as well. Head Start, the program I work in, uses the absolute guidelines then allows for a certain percentage of families to be enrolled who are above that, if there are still openings available after serving the truly impoverished.

I am equating livable wages to these official guidelines because that is what the government uses to define poverty. To be clear, I do not agree with this. But I think we need use the existing definitions for clarity. Someone on WIC might be "low-income" but not necessarily in "poverty" - in the government's eyes.

 

My wife and I were on WIC when our firstborn was born. It was a very difficult experience and incredibly difficult to attain. The Health Department does an incredibly poor job of customer service. You have to make an appointment by phone, but their phone lines are always busy. Adding to that, they don't just keep you on hold. They have a recorded message that says, "All lines are busy. Try again later." And it hangs up on you. So you call and you call and you call until one day, you FINALLY get some angry employee on the phone. That employee schedules your appointment but doesn't tell you EXACTLY what you need to bring with you (even when you ask them, the details they provide are vague).

Then the day comes when you make your way to the health department office...which always, always happens to be in the seediest part of town. I mean, you park your car and get the feeling that you're going to get mugged as soon as you step outside.

Anyway, you walk in to a crowded waiting room full sneezing, crying children and stone silent women. Then you proceed to wait in that germ-infested hot zone for 2-3 hours (despite the fact that you actually showed up early for your appointment) until they finally call you. From there, this experience can play out in one of two ways. If you're lucky they then rudely tell your wife that she gained too much weight in pregnancy and needs to follow their eating restrictions/advice. They inspect the baby and reluctantly give you a couple weeks worth of grocery checks, and you leave with the knowledge that you're going to have to do this again in a couple weeks).

If you're unlucky, when they call you from the waiting room after the 3 hour wait, they'll ask for papers they NEVER mentioned requiring over that elusive phone call within which you specifically asked them what papers they'll require. In this scenario, you are asked to make another appointment and thereby start again at square one with trying to lock onto that slippery phone call.


We were not in poverty while were using WIC, but our household income was shot since my wife's employer doesn't offer paid maternity leave.


For our second child, my wife just couldn't handle the stupid health department phone system ("all lines are busy, try again later" *disconnect*). After repeating this frustrating pattern for a couple days, we decided to forget about it. I had a second job by now and she cut her maternity leave short and went back to work 2.5 weeks after giving birth.

At the same time, my cousin up in Canada was delivering her baby, and enjoying a year of paid maternity leave.

 

Her employer has been sued numerous times from ill-treated employees. They are currently facing an employee class action suit in another state. I imagine they'll settle out of court, as they've previously done.