That isn’t even the half of it.
Income inequality is the result of free people creating value for the market. If the market values what they offer then they make money. Some skill sets, products and services are worth more than others in the marketplace. This isn’t unjust.
Let’s take two individuals Jeff Bezos and high-school dropout schmuck… we’ll call him Joe Schmoe. Let’s imagine 3 scenarios from Joe’s perspective since the people who make this argument care about Joe’s plight.
Scenario 1: Real world. Joe is a dropout who can barely hold down a minimum wage job. Jeff creates Amazon and makes billions by providing goods to the marketplace. If Jeff’s products create value for Joe he can buy some of them, enriching his life. Joe can get a job at an Amazon fulfillment center, enriching his life. Joe can buy stock in Amazon, potentially enriching his life (if he buys prudently). Jeff pays millions in Federal, State, Local, Real Estate and employment (FICA etc.) taxes that fund roads, the social safety net etc. for poor folks like Joe, enriching his life. Joe can sell odds and ends through Amazon, enriching his life. There are very few scenarios where Jeff’s rise and accumulation of wealth harms Joe: If Joe worked for a company that Amazon put out of business by doing things better (creative destruction), if an amazon box flew off a truck and killed Joe etc… Jeff having more money than Joe does not detract from Joe’s well being at all. In fact Jeff’s success has a life enriching effect for thousands of customers, vendors, employees and investors… including Joe if he chooses to participate.
Scenario 2: Jeff never exists. Joe and humanity are stuck with KMART and Sears and never get “free delivery”, prime movies, same day drone delivery etc… Tens of thousands of jobs never happen. Products don’t get moved. Prices stay higher without Amazon’s market disruption. Society, amd Joe are worse off.
Scenario 3: Jeff is a wild success. The government deems this as unfair and moves to redistribute his wealth. The maximum Joe can benefit from this is $71.4B/319.8M people = $223.89 which might cover two weeks of Joe’s groceries. And that’s if we shoot Jeff in the head and take everything he owns to redistribute it. At which point, no prime, deliveries etc… any scenario where we don’t take ALL Jeff’s wealth is worth <$223.89 to Joe. And the market as a whole would be worse off without Amazons jobs and products.
Lamenting “income inequality” only makes sense in a few scenarios:
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When wealth is made without creating value in the marketplace. I.e. through graft and corruption: (Clinton speaking fees, tax laws written by wholly owned politicians, grants for pet industries, bribery, printing fiat currency). This steals wealth from the ruled to enrich the ruling elite.
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When those who cannot create value for the marketplace (children, elderly, disabled) are allowed to starve in the streets of a prosperous nation.
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When creating value in the marketplace causes harm that society is unwilling to accept. Heroine is a very demanded product that addicts value very dearly.
The solutions to these problems are limited government, a bare bones safety net and rule of law. Throw in some personal responsibility and you’ve got the Republican platform. Well at least their spoken platform anyway. What they actually do in office is no better than the progressives.
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Nor did I say that it was due to sexism.
I am merely explaining the contents of the article.
I will say that I think part of the reason to perform research like this is not “proof of sexism” but more along the lines of “observational and informational” research. If men are indeed just better negotiators who drive harder bargains, perhaps a useful finding to come from this study is that female physicians should consider being more aggressive in their own negotiations as well.
I also will say that the study does debunk the idea that a salary gap in this particular profession is entirely driven by (insert common mansplanation here). The “women choose different specialties” / “women take more time off” / “women see fewer patients” / “women don’t do complex procedures” arguments all were taken into consideration, and that still did not fully explain the gap, leaving us to understand that other factors beyond those classically given reasons could be part of the picture.
The catch here is that the burden of proof for the sexism claim is on the other foot. If someone is to claim sexism, you need more than disparity, if you can even show disparity. Many of the things were taking into consideration. Many were not. The more that are taken into consideration, the smaller the gap gets. There are more things out there that would need to be taken into consideration to show the remainder as sexism. What I’m discussing and what I’m contradicting is the general political narrative on this topic. The study blows the general narrative out of the water. 70 cents on the dollar for exactly the same output and companies override their selfish interest to push sexist hiring is total garbage. What the study apparently shows is that (in a narrow view of doctors) non-sexist based differences account for at least the majority of the pay gap and sexist ones amount to at most less than 8%.
Women pay only 28%of income tax and men pay 72% at least based on figures in the UK.
In terms of inequality it’s men who get the short end of the stick
Here’s a real life example:
Haha read a history book.
Either a great troll attempt or more insight into your twisted world view.
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What percentage of income do women/men bring home in the UK?
It’s obviously less but the reason it matters is in relation to tax funded services they disproportionately cater to women
If men earn 72% of income and women earn 28% of income, what percentage of income tax should each gender pay?
They should pay relative to their use of tax funded services
That’s a slippery slope of a mess.
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Trolling aside - do you think there’s nothing wrong with the current disparity?
Should things stay the course or is there change needed
I’m not an expert on the UK economy. However, if this is a hypothetical economy. I do not see this as a problem.
There are numerous tax-funded services that I ‘support’ but will never use. My free-lancing wife, on the other hand, has much more free time and will likely use the $10mm pedestrian bridge that is nearing completion and will possibly head to litigation (currently in mediation). A bridge that I see from my office window every day, and is beyond frustrating because the city shouldn’t of utilized the bidding process or ‘felt’ required to award a contract to the specific contractor who had to close his previous business for wrongful change orders on state projects… but I digress.
I support these, not because I use the services I pay for, but because they enrich the community with which I live. This isn’t without benefit to me either, the schools and parks that I am supporting directly contribute to the appreciation I receive in my property and local economy, which also ensure I continue to have employment (and, in my case, employ others).
That’s not to say I agree with all tax-supported services. There are some I disagree with completely, and others I disagree with the methods used.
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I wish more people could understand the difference between Wages and Earnings.
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I’ll repeat this again because you may have missed it and I’m actually curious… Does the research cover the “relative value units,” which is pay based on performance, not necessarily how many visits they see. I didn’t quite see that in there(medical reimbursements/clinical revenue is broad.)but may have missed it.Could you point it out if it is in there… Since men statistically see more clients, isn’t it possible that the type of care provided by males for each individual is a higher profile visit and not just a routine checkup, hence higher pay?
This is why I ask. I don’t see where they debunk my point…
Overly simplistic republican logic from an ideal world as always.
Really 1 person = 11 millions. Its all about the ideaz and the hard werk
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That suggests that there is non-simplistic competing logic from the real world that argues that “income inequality” is harmful. I’d like to hear it.
That’s not what I said. If 1 person makes the income of 11 million “average” persons. That means that they brought 11 million times the value to the marketplace of the average person. Again this is assuming no fraud, corruption etc… which is a different issue.
Every human has intrinsic value as a person and should be afforded equal protection under the law. That doesn’t mean they are due money.
You call my argument simplistic and you resort to lol cat speak. You seem apathetic to this issue, which is odd. It’s the limited government types that claim income inequality is not a problem and the progressives who feel it is. This leads me to believe you’re either trolling or you are tired of arguing this issue.
So I’ll ask 100% seriously: In the real world, how does someone having more wealth than me harm me?
For example Oprah has earned more than I will likely ever come within 10% of (unless I can come up with something way better than my attempts this far). I picked her because while I don’t value any of her shows or magazines the market very clearly does.
If Oprah was never born it wouldn’t change my life at all. If Oprah had 10x her current wealth it wouldn’t change my life at all.
I’m not being deliberately dense here. The only rational arguments for income inequality causing harm (that I can fathom) are in the markets for food and housing. If the evil rich drive up food and housing prices then it would stand to reason that the poor would starve and die of exposure at record rates since income equality in the USA is off the charts!
That isn’t what happens. In the US the poor are far more likely to die of obesity correlated diseases than of starvation. Let that sink in, for all of human history the lower classes have had to scratch and claw to not starve. We are so prosperous in this country that the poorest of us are feeding themselves to death. Can I eat at Morton’s Steak House every day? No. Can I get 30lbs overweight “on accident” just eating a normal american diet in an office? Yep… did that (working the other way finally).
It’s the same thing with housing. If income inequality messed housing prices up so badly then the lower classes would all be in tents freezing to death. But even non high-school educated workers can get houses and rent decent places if they work. For those that are unwilling/unable to work there is public housing and HUD compliant private places. Look at how the poor live in Brazil and then let’s talk about US income inequality.
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Solid post. It’s always nice to have new posters that don’t feel their way to conclusions.
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Because money is considered speech, the wealthy individual has a vastly ‘louder voice’ when it comes to influencing government policy. This allows the wealthy to engage in rent-seeking, which directly (and negatively) impacts the quality of life of the less affluent.
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Money that is sequestered in the holdings of the wealthy is ‘dead’–it does not contribute to economic growth/development. This in turn limits the economic opportunities of the less wealthy.
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