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| 5/25 |
| 2005/1/17 [Politics/Domestic/Crime, Politics/Domestic/SocialSecurity] UID:35743 Activity:insanely high |
1/16 Dear libertarians (ie "all man for himself") and conservatives
(ie "flat tax means equality"), what is your opinion on the
following article and why is it flawed? -moderate
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/01/17/wealth.gap.ap/index.html
\_ Dear moderate (ie "I am too dumb to make up my mind"),
please fuck off.
\_ I'll bite. The article points out that the income
gap has closed but the wealth gap has not. It seems
intuitive that if the gap in income and wealth
were to both close, that the income gap will come first.
That we haven't seen the wealth gap close yet does
not indicate a market failure. Also, doesn't take
into account that regional variations in wealth/income
and regional variations in race are highly correlated
(see <DEAD>www.csua.berkeley.edu/~darin/upload/black.PNG<DEAD>
--Darin (moderate libertarian)
\_ user/pass? I tried moderate/libertarian and it didn't work.
\_ I'll go in as well. Again, they point out that the income gap
has closed, but not the wealth gap. In the article they
attribute this to racism in companies giving morgages. BS.
Lack of loans don't stop people from investing in the stock
market or any other sort of saving. Basically, America has a
big problem with people not saving. There's an epidemic of
people living beyond their means in America, and blacks seem to
be particularly susceptible to the lure of conspicuous
consumption. This is cultural, if your parents didn't save
money, you probably won't either. (In this case, it may be
their parents didn't save money because some white guy would
come and steal it. It doesn't matter, the result is the same
now.) I think we should make a class in money management a
high school requirement. -jrleek
\_ I agree with everything you say, and yet I am a liberal.
This may be one of the first jrleek posts I would say that about.
\_ Ahh! You used the b**** word!!! Racist!!!
\_ People keep saying blacks don't save money. Then you go
look up life expectancy of black males and it's like 69.
The amount of money one needs to save for retirement is
vastly different depending on whether one is going to live
to 69 or 82.
to 69 or 82. White people complain a lot, but it's they
who live a long, unproductive, useless post-retirement
life on government subsidies. They should learn to die
earlier like black people, and stop wasting my tax dollars.
These days, you start getting social security at like 67,
so the average black male is only gonna get two years'
worth, whereas someone who lives till 87 is going to get
20 years' worth. So, please stop dissing on black people.
\_ Sigh. This is why a little knowledge of statistics is
such a dangerous thing.
\_ well, the same thing can be said of jrleek's post,
which is my point.
\_ I must have missed it then. Could you explain
where my post goes wrong in more detail? Your post
makes a number a wierd logical fallacies that I
makes a number of weird logical fallacies that I
don't THINK I commited, which you claim to have
understood when you posted. Please be more
specific. -jrleek
\_ Please explain what weird logical fallacies
were in my post?
\_ I don't think you know how life expectancy
works. - !jrleek
\_ That's the main problem. The way you
apply life expectency is criminal, and
the resulting argument is horrifying in
it's circularity. -jrleek
\_ This is the first time I've heard of the notion of African
Americans in general not saving money vs. other Americans. I
read last night in the Post editorial on Social Security that the
average U.S. household saves 1.5% of disposable income, compared
to 11% two decades ago.
So ... that must mean blacks are dragging down the average, even
though they make up ~ 10% of the U.S. population?
(That was an absurd statement; of course I don't believe that.)
\_ I was just using the stats from the article. I guess you
could say that blacks are "dragging down the average" but
I wouldn't. It's a huge probelm in every race. Blacks
just seem to be particularly afflicted with it. -jrleek
\_ I just updated my stats for you since I remembered my
source. Anyway, if you said, whiteys played more stocks
than black people, even if they make the same money -- I'd
agree with you.
But I think the numbers don't lie, for all Americans, when
it comes to annual savings.
I don't know if the Post's result intelligently classified
some stock market investments as savings, so I can't argue
there.
\_ Again they focus on equal outcome rather than equal opportunity.
The goal is clearly socialism.
\_ socialism is equal income.
communism is equal outcome.
\_ capitalism is equal cum.
\_ no, capitalism is equal outcome when you have enough income
\_ "Victims!" |
| 5/25 |
|
| www.cnn.com/2005/US/01/17/wealth.gap.ap/index.html NEW YORK (AP) -- Forty years after the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and decades after the Rev. made strides in ra cial equality, America remains split along racial lines -- divided by th e color green. Economic equality has become the paramount civil rights issue of the 21st century, civil rights advocates said as they prepared to celebrate King 's birthday on Monday. Fewer blacks than whites own their houses, get fair loans, invest in the stock market or sit on corporate boards, or have any real control over m uch of the trillions of dollars flowing in mutual funds, pension plans a nd the financial markets, they said. "Very real gains have been made on some parts of the economic front and t he education front and most particularly on the job front," said Thomas Shapiro, professor at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. "(But) those gains are being reversed through w idening racial wealth gaps." There is a difference between income and wealth, which the latter include s investments in stocks or pension plans, equity from paying a mortgage, and assets that can be used to pay for education or retirement. In 1999, during a boom economy, Shapiro said, black middle-class families on average had one-fourth of the wealth of similarly educated, similarl y employed white middle-class families. The disparity was even starker across all income groups -- black families as a whole had only 10 cents in wealth for every dollar white families had, according to government figures. There are historical reasons -- generations of poverty, a legacy of slave ry and laws that kept them from education, housing and good jobs. But ad vocates say there also is persistent discrimination in mortgages and oth er loans. "The biggest problem is that we've been choked off to a large degree from capital," said Shawn Baldwin, 38, who recently started his own brokerag e and asset management firm with the help of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who introduced him to executives at Citibank. According to the Center for Responsible Lending, less than half of black households own their homes, while 75 percent of white households do. Hom e equity is the leading source of wealth for most Americans. "If you don't have any equity, you don't control anything," said Keith Co rbett, senior vice president with the center. Melvin Oliver, dean of the Division of Social Sciences at the University of California at Santa Clara, said there has been progress in helping bl acks increase homeownership, but "that progress has mainly been because banks have had to legally meet community investing requirements." In 1998, 57 percent of b lacks making at least $50,000 a year invested, compared with 81 percent of whites, said Mellody Hobson, president of Ariel Capital Management, a minority-owned firm in Chicago. During the stock market boom, the percentage of black investors shot up - - 74 percent in 2002 -- but had dropped to 64 percent by 2003. "Whites sort of pared back some of their equity investments but they didn 't sell out of them completely. We ran for the door," Hobson said, attri buting it to fear and a lack of experience with the stock market and its cycles. Jackson points out that while minorities put money into mutual funds and pension plans, they are scarcely to be found among the decision makers w ho determine how those funds and plans are invested. His Rainbow/PUSH or ganization has called for more diversity on Wall Street, among money man agers and board members. "They should be invested in the people's interest," he said. Corbett worried about forcing people into a "permanent underclass." "When people do not have access," he said, "you're leaving those people o ut of the system." |