Since there are no top level comments putting this out for probably obvious reasons, here is a supportive comment for the article.
This is what people feel in their guts when they drive out on tattered roads and avoid going to the hospital even though they are sick, when they don't have a real increase in wages but are working longer hours. They have the sense that something isn't right, that there are two sets of rules and they got the shaft when it comes to that. Where police forces are cashstrapped and turn to civil forfeitures and ticket quotas while they see famous celebrities and politicians get off for things magnitudes more illegal than what they've done, whether it's smoking a joint or driving while black.
People already have a sense that things aren't fair. There's a reason why tax reform is polling so poorly. There's a reason why most of the country thinks taxes should be higher on the wealthy and corporations. They have a feeling that they are not seeing the rise of productivity in their own life, and they want justice.
My SO lives in SG. She is lower middle class (going to school, father works in a factory) and I asked her about income inequality, for there it's quite extreme. She says it's not that bad because people there have a reasonable standard of living; they can go to school, they can go to the doctor, they have access to affordable food, etc. Income inequality I think isn't a bad thing as long as the poorest among us have some basic level of livelihood. The problem is that in the US, that isn't true, and so, people clamor for justice.
>People already have a sense that things aren't fair. There's a reason why tax reform is polling so poorly. There's a reason why most of the country thinks taxes should be higher on the wealthy and corporations. They have a feeling that they are not seeing the rise of productivity in their own life, and they want justice.
There's also just the sheer sense of stagnation. I get mildly enraged every time I look at America's idea of a middle-school and high-school curriculum, then compare it to what people learn abroad. How is it that "everyone else" has more leisure, suffers less stress, and still winds up doing harder things than Americans more easily? America has started thinking like a less developed country, that productivity arises from suffering.
I was in the thread about "lessons from MIT", and thinking of a degree curriculum I looked at from the UK one day.
It basically expected that students (who were going to learn PL theory) start off with a higher level of math knowledge (right out of secondary school) than most American CS students have in sophomore year. AFAIK, their students don't suffer as much stress or depression as the cohort of Americans who've done "sophomore-level" math in high school.
But for another example, well, every other country seems to have an easier time running a working train system than America does, including those who are running top-of-the-line high-speed rail. Or, to take another, the French have one of the highest per-hour productivity rates on Earth, but take four to six weeks of vacation each year. Likewise, the Germans have one of the most productive economies on the planet, but work some of the shortest hours.
Again and again, we find a principle that efficient, productive, intelligently-arranged systems deliver greater results with less sturm und drang.
The difference in educational levels is economic. If you correct for the income & wealth levels of the international district and match them to american districts with similar levels, you have similar academic results. There's no gap.
The issue occurs with taking averages. The United States is a rich country or a developing country depending on where you look. Few other modern industrialized nations are run this way.
Indeed, if you want the best education in the world, many people come to the American universities (public and private). These American Universities which you can name, sit like jewels surrounded by the serfdom education many Americans experience.
It is the same with primary and secondary education.
> The difference in educational levels is economic. If you correct for the income & wealth levels of the international district and match them to american districts with similar levels, you have similar academic results. There's no gap.
So you do learn two extra languages in high school?
> The issue occurs with taking averages. The United States is a rich country or a developing country depending on where you look. Few other modern industrialized nations are run this way.
That's because it's nothing to be proud of. Your country will be judged by how you treat the lowest, worst-off people. Having a couple of "rich" parts[0] doesn't make it look better.
Indeed there is no sense taking averages for these issues. Some people think they're doing better with the median, but that still hides the poor long tail. If (for purposes of central planning etc) you really do need a single number and the minimum isn't useful because it's zero, there is one statistic and it's called modal income.
> Indeed, if you want the best education in the world, many people come to the American universities (public and private). These American Universities which you can name, sit like jewels
Well, people all over the world used to. Like you say they have the name. Give it ten years. Less if you elect Trump again.
[0] where the homeless (and mentally ill) are either cleaned out, hidden, or simply ignored. It's not like the rich parts of the US suddenly take care of them. A real rich country needs to deal with this too, can't just scrub them from the statistics and hope the unavoidable poor people will move to the next country over because they can't afford living here any more.
>If you correct for the income & wealth levels of the international district and match them to american districts with similar levels, you have similar academic results. There's no gap.
Most well-off American school districts do not teach even their honors students integral calculus and linear algebra by the end of high school. Valedictorians in those districts haven't usually learned that much.
Most of those kids in Palo Alto with anxiety problems over academic competition will not learn that much math in high school. It's just not done in formal school curricula. Some people might get it through taking college courses early or joining "math clubs", but no large mass of students will get it through their curriculum -- let alone the full population capable of it.
Money is being left on the table here because Americans think that real rigor comes from suffering, and anyone inadequate for the extreme suffering and boredom of secondary-school level "slow" learning is obviously inadequate to go ahead and do real work.
Weird... I went to regular HS in Texas (there weren't magnet schools yet) in the 80s and they taught integral calculus, analytic geometry, and linear algebra for everyone. Standard algebra was taught in 8th grade. Several of us finished all of the math by junior year and took college classes.
I guess public school just went down hill from there?
Certainly, private schools teach those classes now.
I went to school in New York, and my wife did in Massachusetts, both in the 2003-2008 sorta range. I'm not sure if any linear algebra was taught (it was new to her when she took it in college, and much of it that you don't see in games-programming books was new to me too). The highest math classes in the school were AP Calculus A and AP Calculus AB, corresponding to Calculus 1 and Calculus 1+2; they were meant to be taken as seniors if you were one year fast and as juniors if two years fast. Analytic geometry as in coordinate systems and such definitely got taught.
I can't name a curriculum I know for the 2000s or 2010s where the first three semesters (Calc 1, Calc 2, Lin Alg) of university-level math got fit into high school for anyone, let alone for everyone, let alone making it the first four semesters by including multivariable calculus.
The same is true of our healthcare system. We have some of the best hospitals in the world, if you can afford the ever-increasing cost of care. Meanwhile tens of millions of Americans are skipping regular checkups due to cost, and a significant number of them will get very sick or possibly die as a result.
Couldn't you argue that an increase in compensation driven by 'ballooning healthcare costs' wouldn't actually improve the standard of living of workers? Comparing wages (rather than total compensation) to cost of living would seem more pertinent in this regard.
He's pointing out how there are many facets to the problems we see in America. Healthcare, education, and housing in many areas take massive chunks out of people's livelihood.
I hear a lot about the politics of the poor and the rich, but not about how to actually solve these problems we see in our economic system today.
This may be an unpopular opinion, but new medications for difficult to treat diseases do raise the quality of life for those populations, despite being incredibly expensive. I'm certainly not saying they shouldn't be less expensive, mind you. :)
The overwhelming evidence is that 1) this is not the case and 2) that it's been improvements to access rather than intensity of medical care that have had the biggest impacts.
This is a major component of Robert J. Gordon's The Rise and Fall of American Growth. Effectively, medical progress in the U.S. halted roughly in the 1960s and 1970s, with a very small number of exceptions.
If you go back to the bigger picture, virtually all improvements in healthcare outcomes were made prior to 1920, and those largely constituted public health, sanitation, and nutritional improvements. Laurie Garrett attributes 85% of the improvements in lifespan to public health, rather than acute medical treatments.
Improved pre-natal, natal, and childhood circumstances (medical, nutrition, nurturing, nutrition, and safety), overall safety improvements, environmental regulation, and reductions in high-risk behaviours (smoking, drinking, indiscriminate and unprotected sex, injected drugs) have all had major impacts.
Joel Mokyr notes that the truly effective medical advances are tremendously underreported in GDP statistics as the measurement basis is cost rather than benefit.
Sorry, but this turns out to be a tremendous and highly-repeated canard.
I agree with your point, but are you also implying that 'new medications for difficult to treat diseases' are a primary driver of 'ballooning healthcare costs'? I don't think healthcare costs are increasing as quickly in other developed countries while they do benefit from constant medical advances.
Which "developed" (hopefully we can develop some more) country is creating these medical advances? One might guess the US, but I don't really know. Any good studies I could read?
Well, if we are talking about recent great medical advances, i think Spain and France are leading right now with the discovery of CRISPR.
And i'm pretty happy about this, if it were discovered by an american pharmaceutical company, no other laboratory would have even heard of this before a patented product hit the market, and every research on the subject would be subject to a patent too.
A lot of that is largely fictitious. If an employer health insurer doubles their prices, supposedly my compensation has increased a lot, but in fact, I'm poorer, because my share of the health insurance premium has increased and my coverage has not. The only one getting richer is the insurer.
Are we going to argue then that worker compensation in all the many countries with universal government-paid health insurance is also going through the roof? But my health insurance is identical whether I work or not...
I don't disagree. The worker is worse off on average with this trend.
The point is in where to focus the solution. Yes unionizing (or other wage negotiation methods) will help in some areas, but the best economic bang for your buck is fixing incentives in health insurance.
Counterintuitively, slashing the tax cut on employer provided health insurance would be a step forward (especially if combined with other tax measures).
Worker productivity has been steadily increasing for the past century, but wages stopped growing in the 70s-80s. No amount of corporate compensation can compensate for that.
Assuming SG is Singapore, that is a really specific example, because it is a tiny Island of 4 million people with a lot of very unique attributes - it is a major shipping and airport hub, as well as a financial hub in a notoriously corrupt region.
That's the thing that as an Australian I never understood. The USA - the United States of America - varies so greatly by state. We don't have that - most countries don't. Even when there is variance, UK with London, north and south of Spain and Italy, it is not quite so dramatic.
Back to the example of Singapore, I expect most everyone in Connecticut (GDP PPP per capita of $64,511, population 3.576 million) to have very similar results to Singapore. I don't expect South Carolinans (GDP PPP per capita $37,063, population 4.961 million) to have anywhere near the same results.
The angst in America is a uniquely MASSIVE country phenomenon - hits somewhere north of 100 million mark would be my guess - maybe even higher. People in Milan don't compare themselves and their outcomes to those in Berlin, even though they share an economic zone, but people in Idaho do compare their lot to Silicon Valley.
I don't have an answer BTW, just a vague notion that large countries have it tough - and that China will likely face similar issues in the very near term, as first world level economies like Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin are compared with the outcomes for Gansu (which has Ghanaian levels of GDP PPP per capita - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_administrative...).
>Even when there is variance, UK with London, north and south of Spain and Italy, it is not quite so dramatic.
I'd argue otherwise. Greater London had a GVA per capita of £42,666 in 2013. Several counties had a GVA per capita of less than £19,000, with the least productive (Northumberland) having a GVA per capita of less than £15,000. Excluding Washington DC (which isn't technically a state), that's a significantly greater disparity than between the most and least productive US states.
The UK has seen a huge rise in populism in recent years, I think overwhelmingly because of this stark inequality. Just as in the US, people from less prosperous areas feel marginalised and ignored.
America has Trump, we have Brexit - a decision by the electorate that has shocked the political establishment to the core. Few commentators saw it coming, the overwhelming majority of educated people think that it's a terrible idea, but it still happened. In both cases, the most reasonable interpretation is that a large part of the electorate have rejected the status quo outright, regardless of what the experts might say and regardless of the consequences.
I think that something needs to be done urgently about inequality, or things are going to get ugly. Too many people have lost all faith in the establishment. Too many people feel that they have nothing left to lose.
You could be right - it may affect smaller countries like the Uk as well. Probably Spain also. heck, even Italy has Lombardy separatist movement.
Maybe it is just an issue when a country has more than one city, and solid growth? Singapore is one big city, but so is Hong Kong. Now HK is part of China, that has caused issues as well, whereas SG has no direct comparison.
The massive country issue may be one that hits all multi-city first world countries eventually, as there is no way rural regions can match the GDP PPP of large cities and this variance within nation states would lead to a lot of issues.
Your expectations aren’t reality. If you have a solid middle class job like a policeman, corporate manager, or soldier, you will be fine in Mississippi or South Carolina. The major difference is that state protections will be weaker than in places like California or New York, and you may need to travel to a regional center to get specialized care in some situations.
If you are poor, however, forget about it. Those states are openly hostile to you and generally opt to find the minimum number or services allowed by law. They are so bad that many people establish false residency in states with better systems.
The way these programs are funded, it makes little difference to state balance sheets — it’s all about appealing to particular political bases, and keeping certain taxes (typically property taxes) low to keep the old money people happy.
I think you miss my point. Even if the tax rates are the same, a state with a larger GDP - whether that state is South Carolina or Singapore - will have more money to spend on things like health, and government, actually, just everything - thats's why a higher GDP is so desirable.
An ambulance in Singapore can pretty much reach anyone. A hospital in SG can server anyone - that's how small it is. Who serves Idaho? The Mayo clinic? In a roundabout way yes, but not really.
Quoting US statistics and comparing them to SG is analogous to comparing the same statistics in the Bay Area and Miami.
And that all this gets wrapped up into one single country metric obfuscates the true state for most people, and leads to a lot of problems as one group struggles with a smaller, yet more visibly lacking, share.
"That's the thing that as an Australian I never understood. The USA - the United States of America - varies so greatly by state. We don't have that - most countries don't."
I'm curious about that. IIUC, Australia's wealth is concentrated in the cities on the coast, but all of Austrailia's states are made up of coastline and a big chunk of interior space.
What would happen GDP-wise if you divided Australia's states into interior/exterior areas?
US levels of wealth disparity are not entirely out of line with other very large countries or regions.
The US is better thought of as an empire. It is carved up into a large number of territories (states), 50, as compared with Australia's ... well, it's complicated, but let's look at the six principal states: NSW, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, Northern Territories, Queensland, and Tasmania.
Each major Australian state is comprised, largely, of a single principal city, and ... everything else. Australia has, unlike the United States, relatively little inland settlements: the land tends to be arid, there are no major river systems. The result is ... a rough parity between Australian states, though you'll find a tremendous variance within them.
If you consider other large countries: Russia, Canada, China, Brazil, Indonesia, or India, you'll find that there are in fact large variations in wealth across territory. Or the EU, if considered a single state, ranges from Germany and France to Portugal, Greece, and the Balkan states.
I'm somewhat surprised to see Singapore mentioned as a paragon of social equality. This is a rich country where maids are treated like slaves (locked in apartment and on call 24/7/365, sleep on the kitchen floor etc) and many elderly have no pensions at all, and are forced to work in menial jobs like cleaning bathrooms until they die.
It does show how bad things in the US have gotten though...
I asked her about income inequality, for there it's quite extreme. She says it's not that bad because people there have a reasonable standard of living
I think the point is not that Singapore is a paragon of equality, but rather that its rulers have had the sense to provide adequate comfort for their subjects, rather than trying to take absolutely everything.
Singapore isn't a paragon of social equality, not at all.
However, in spite of that, the PAP has done a very good job of ensuring there's just enough by way of public services and subsidies to keep enough people happy that the government continues to command the people's respect and the opposition will never quite have enough fuel to build a viable political movement.
...and it's still better in many ways than large parts of the US.
A society that values financial and individual success above all else will inevitably lead to an impoverished society with concentrated pockets of wealth that once concentrated are adept at perpetuating themselves.
Its obvious something fundamental in governance changed in the late 70s that has directly led us here.
While technology, progress, wealth are important the magic is always people and humanity that elevate life beyond the mundane and brings happiness into lives.
There is no point being wealthy if most around you are suffering and and in desperate conditions. This can't make anyone happy, except sociopaths. You have to care for other people and society beyond just your immediate interest and benefit.
To be fair a lot were clamoring behind Bernie Sanders. But Hillary bent the DNC to do some fairly corrupt shit and so you got Trump. The democrats are still trapped by this neolib-technocrat-west-wing fantasy-land where the best person at debating wins regardless of the fact they don’t actually stand for anything.
85% is more accurate. The 15% are the 1% plus their enablers/support/wannabes.
I agree, such statements are underappreciated. But I'm not running for office so popularity isn't really my concern. It also doesn't help to be silent when faced with the current status quo. Change is painful; saying what needs to be said even more so.
The specific actions the DNC took to cause Bernie to lose includes:
1) They chose to put the debate between Hillary and Bernie at MIDNIGHT so people wouldn't watch the debates. It was at the start of the primaries when people didn't know much about Bernie so the DNC decided that nobody watching the Democrat's primary debates helped Hillary
2) In the debates, they gave the questions to Hillary before the debates. The DNC controlled debates gave them to a CNN person who would give them to Hillary
3) The DNC owns the decision about Super delegates. Super delegates == ignoring one-citizen-one-vote
4) Arizona greatly reduced polling stations. With 3+ hour waits, people gave up. The DNC knew that Hillary voters voted at a higher ratio on mail-in-ballots, so it skewed to Hillary.
5) The California level had Bernie votes made in a way that they were all not counted:
In California 2016 election, "NPP" (Non-party voters) the election committee training pole workers to give them "provisional ballots". All of those NPP votes ("provisional ballots") were thrown away. The only NPP voters that could be counted were "Democratic cross-over ballots", but they they poll voters weren't trained that way. Bernie Sanders votes where thrown away. In California Bernie had 61% in polls against Clinton, but then lost. .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoGeDGHmwJU
I saw some defenses of Hillary's actions (i.e. the 'bailout' was an ultimately good act, done to strengthen the DNC, proving her commitment to defeat Trump and protect progressivism etc.) which doubles as a cynical defense of Putin/Russian oligarch money in tech (it keeps Silicon Valley running and adding to US employment numbers)
They advertised her superdelegate lead before the voting even began. They leaked debate questions to her in advance of the event. They smeared Bernie with unfair accusations and labels. They worked directly with big media outlets to either deny or put out negative coverage of Bernie. The Washington Post put out 16 negative stories on Bernie in one day. There was unregistering of progressives in New York, and a botched delegate counting process in Nevada. They reduced the number of debates before the first primary by at least a third. DNC leads got caught actively cheating, leading to their resignations - Debbie Wasserman Shultz and Donna Brazile. They actually used the excuse in court that the Democratic party is private and has no legal obligation to run fair elections, and could select in a backroom smoking cigars if they wished. They actually said on national television that superdelegates served the purpose of preventing grassroots candidates from winning. I could go on and on. All of these things are easily verified. I can give you more if you'd like, with references.
I don't think you can point at a specific action, but the leaked (Podesta, I think) emails seemed to show that the DNC was working to help the Clinton campaign to the detriment of Sanders during the primary. This lead to the resignation of Debbie Wasserman Schultz from the DNC chairman position.
Later, it turned out the Clinton campaign had essentially taken over the DNC far in advance of the primary results which is highly unusual, to the say the least. [1]
She won due to superdelegates and DNC corruption as well as media capture. The fact that Bernie did as well as he did in the face of this is a testament to how bad of a candidate she was.
Why should the superdelegates have flipped their votes against the popular vote? This makes no sense.
The only way Bernie would have won is if he convinced superdelegates from states that came out for Clinton to go against the popular vote in their state and erroneously vote for him. He still would have lost with no superdelegates, or if their votes were awarded to their state's primary winner.
I know Trump voters, the majority of whom don't like Trump at all.
Their reasoning: "Why delay the inevitable? How else to wake up the country but to elect a disaster? As things get worse we're ready as we'll ever be."
(FYI: I'm in Michigan where enough of us held back our Clinton vote to send a message that we need a progressive non-corporatist. Margin of victory for Trump was smaller than empty presidential sections. It's over in Michigan for the DNC.)
I hope they realize that their elected legislative representatives matter a lot more for this... The president is chief diplomat, chief military and legal executive, a veto holder. They also do a lot of appointing. Not much else, in reality. So we elected a bloviating racist to be our chief diplomat, because we don't like corporatist legislators? Ok...
I guess is harder to pretend that things are ok? Many people wanted change. I doubt the reality of how that changes is materializing is keeping up with what those who voted for Trump wanted
They clamor for justice behind anyone who will promise it to them, authoritatively, with or without merit. Trump is a symptom of the underlying problem.
But that's the beauty of the ruse isn't it? The Establishment (of both parties) has the masses believing Trump invented racism, sexism, income inequality, etc. That before Trump there were no such things.
Trump is to blame for racism?
>The Establishment (of both parties) has the masses believing Trump invented racism, sexism, income inequality, etc. That before Trump there were no such things. Trump is to blame for racism?
No, "the masses" have never believed that. Not even Trump's most rabid opponents believe that he invented racism, for instance, merely that he is more openly racist than his predecessors, and that he is more openly supported by racists than his predecessors.
So covert racism is okay? But open support is not?
The point is, the (white) "liberal" left has been sitting on it's hands, head in the sand, believing there has been sufficient progress. They did well to sell that (lie).
Now Trump shows up and suddening all hell is breaking lose? Nah. It's been there all along; swept under the rug. So rather than admit "yeah we underestimated the lack of progress" Trump & Co get the blame. This is fake history and it conpletely ignores real history.
Note: I'm not a Trump supporter. He's not my type of leadership. But we can't solve the right problems the right way if we are in complete denial about the root of those problems. The left's just-blame-Trump strategy is a great distraction. It's also, ultimately, a another step in the wrong direction.
The stupid ignorant masses don't appreciate their intellectual betters on HN. They ignored hollywood, silicon valley, the media, and voted for Trump (with Russia's help of course).
We've documented Trump's relations with a variety of Soviet and Russian individuals and organizations in the attached bullet book. Financial crimes and money laundering explain a large part of Trump's wealth.
Trump's basic grift seems to be one that he learned from his father. A loan is just a tax-free transfer of cash. So don't pay yourself income when you can loan yourself cash instead. Whether it's embezzled FHA mortgages, Mitchell-Lama funds, NJHFA funds.... it doesn't matter. Borrow way more than you need, live off the borrowings, use the loan payments to offset gains from other legitimate sources of income.
40 Wall Street in NYC would be a great example of this. Trump bought the building for $1 million cash in the latter half of 1995 (a time of many highly suspicious cash transactions for a man who was allegedly $900 million in the red). He borrowed $35 million supposedly to renovate it (maybe). Let's imagine that it loses money, let's go wild and say it's losing $1 million a year (an overestimate) for 20 years. Overall, Trump's out of pocket by $56 million. But he's borrowed $160 million against the building. That means his net cash position is $104 million. And many of his deals are structured in a similar way.
This looks to us like a classic money-laundering scheme known as a "loan-back." Let's say Trump's brother Robert loans a company $500k which it then uses to open up a $5 million account offshore (Financial Performance Corporation) and another company affiliated with Robert (Management Technologies) spends nearly $13 million buying a shady group of international companies called Winter Partners... which Midland Associates (a Trump family partnership) then loans an unknown sum secured against all their future accounts receivable. Management Technologies would later write off its Winter Partners investment as a complete loss.
So we can show that Robert Trump was shoveling money overseas in 1995. And just when Trump needed it, investors from Hong Kong showed up and bought the mortgage on Riverside South, overing him insanely generous terms. When they sold the mortgage later for a billion dollar profit, Trump freaked out (even by his standards) - a reaction that makes more sense if you realize that the loan was originally Trump's money, and the Hong Kong investors were only supposed to act as nominees. After they cashed out their profit, they ended up selling their 70% stake, which found its way into the hands of Trump's friend at Vornado Realty, Steve Roth.
So that's the core of the insight we've had. It's an explanation that seems to hold up well when we examine individual deals that Trump's been involved in. So many of his ventures lose money because the loans themselves are just part of a money laundering show - a tax free way to legitimately receive a pile of cash you're not otherwise entitled to. And the lender has access to an offshore asset as security, so even if you eventually default, they'll be made whole. We're not sure how much of it is Trump's money.
Here's a quick dash through the overall timeline of Trump's life that we think we see:
1974-1987: Trump comes up in New York real estate rubbing elbows with various mobbed up figures (Cohn, Salerno, Tomasello, et al.) and working as a kind of front man for the Genovese, Gambino and Scarfo crime families. A lot of his early projects are just classic mob grifts. Borrow a bunch of money to build something, hire a bunch of mob contractors, pay too much... Trump's being taken care of but not enormously so
1988-1990: Trump borrows $3 billion in the course of 2 years, $650 million of which is mean to finish construction of the nearly completed Taj Mahal. Within two years the money is gone, despite the fact that many of the construction contractors hadn't been paid. So this is the period where we think Trump embezzled the money, got a cut, and had to hide it offshore until the statute of limitations had cleared.
1991-1995: Trump's laying low. The Soviet Union collapses. Tamir Sapir, Sam Kislin, Eduard Nakhamkin ... three (at least) Russian figures suddenly leap from working-class Russian immigrants to international financiers in control of huge sums of money. Our working theory is they were ex-KGB, after the Soviet Union's fall they began collaborating with American counter-intelligence officials at the FBI and CIA, and they used their positions in New York to help their former associates back home embezzle billions of dollars in state-owned assets out of the former Soviet Union.
1995-2005: Trump begins repatriating his own money in some of his most bizarre business deals. Trump perhaps realizes he can syndicate this model and also begins facilitating loan back schemes for Russian investors by putting his name on their buildings (the whole Bayrock period)
2006-2015: Most of Trump's money has come back to him by now, and he's basically running a money-laundering syndicate for Russian oligarchs (though there are still some Italians and Asians in the mix) - some of whom are in favor with Putin and the state, others who are decidedly not.
If we're right, it's an audacious scheme that he's managed to pull off right in front of our faces. He's managed it by exploiting our preconceptions about debt and net worth. All the fights over Trump's wealth have been about his net worth - what's the value minus the liabilities? And we look at a debt as a zero-sum transaction. But the Trump enterprise really seems to be operating on net cash flow.
This is where your argument collapses. The building dramatically increased in value - that's why he was able to borrow so much against it. That's the real estate game - and it's legit.
The opposite, I think. Lvt does not tax the value of improvements. And while lots can be very valuable, they are not very valuable compared to the improvement if the improvement is a skyscraper.
Trump buys an office building in downtown Manhattan in 1995 - the year he allegedly lost $1 billion. All cash. He then borrows $145 million from a union pension fund to carry out a $35 million renovation. The previous owners, a Hong Kong company that may have been a front for Ferdinand Marcos, bought the building for $8 million two years before Trump and also renovated it. The building sits on top of land that is owned by a shady overseas partnership whose principals are unknown. Trump recently refinanced that mortgage after the building changed hands, receiving $160 million from Ladder Capital.
Fall, 1995: Donald Trump purchases 40 Wall Street for $1 million cash. “Donald Trump has hired Cushman & Wakefield as leasing agent for 40 Wall St., which he plans to rename The Trump Building at 40 Wall. Mr. Trump bought the 1.1 million-square-foot building last fall for $1 million in cash and is seeking office tenants. He has secured a loan commitment on the property.” (Crain’s New York Business, February 19, 1996)
Trump purchased the building from a company based in Hong Kong that had paid $8 million to acquire it two years earlier. “The real estate developer Donald J. Trump completed his purchase of 40 Wall Street yesterday, buying the distinguished 70-story office building, across the street from the New York Stock Exchange, for a price estimated at less than $8 million. Mr. Trump in July had disclosed an agreement to buy the building, which contains 1.1 million square feet of space, from Kinson Properties of Hong Kong. Kinson paid $8 million for it in 1993. While representatives of Mr. Trump declined to disclose the price he had paid, published reports said it was less than $8 million. In July, representatives of the developer said he planned to spend $100 million converting the building, which is 89 percent vacant, to more modern offices. The land on which the building stands is owned by the Hinenberg family of Germany.” (New York Times, December 7, 1995)
v Previous owners from Hong Kong made substantial renovations to the building, installing a $300,000 pool in the lobby. “But as more Chinese investors have come to the New York area, feng shui has become an increasingly familiar term to developers and designers. The former Gulf and Western Building on Columbus Circle, 40 Wall Street and the China Trust Bank in Flushing, Queens, are among projects in which developers called in feng shui experts to review the sites. […] Edmund Yu, president of Kinson Properties, which is renovating the 1.1-million-square-foot office building at 40 Wall Street, said that even though he was an avowed nonbeliever, he still commissioned the construction of a $300,000 pool in the building's lobby on the advice of a feng shui master. ‘It's like killing two birds with one stone,’ he said. ‘Other people will just see it as an attractive addition. But for the Chinese, when they see it, they will know.’” (New York Times, September 22, 1994)
v A financial reporter claimed that Trump had acquired the building from a front man for Ferdinand Marcos. “It is the possibility of loss now, when markets have performed so well for so long, that preoccupies James Grant, the author of "The Trouble With Prosperity." No one knows 20th-century financial history better than Mr. Grant, and it shows as he glides through eras when investors thought everything was wonderful, only to be stunned when something went wrong. The best part of the book is Mr. Grant's tale of a New York building, 40 Wall Street, conceived in the 1920's and now being renovated by Donald Trump, who got it after Citibank sold it for a fraction of the loan it had foolishly made to a front man for Ferdinand Marcos, the late Philippines dictator.” (New York Times, December 22, 1996)
Renovations of 40 Wall Street were financed by loans from a union pension fund. “Mr. Eichner had earlier persuaded the Union Labor Life Insurance Company (Ullico), a union fund manager that invests in projects that employ union labor, to commit $33 million in long-term loans for his almost-completed 25-story, 121-apartment condominium at 201 East 80th Street, called the Richmond. […]General Electric Pension is behind the joint venture that rebuilt Trump International Hotel and Tower at 1 Central Park West, formerly the Gulf & Western Building; the Ullico is financing Mr. Trump in his $35 million rehabili-tation of 40 Wall Street, which, he says, will have a completed lobby in three weeks.” (New York Times, January 26, 1997)
2015: Trump used the building as collateral for a $160 million from the hedge fund, Ladder Capital. “Currently, 14 entities with ties to Mr. Trump owe banks in excess of $315 million, according to the disclosures released by the Federal Election Commission. The actual amount of debt is not known and is higher -- presidential candidates are required to reveal only debt of $50 million or above, without further specificity. For instance, a Ladder Capital loan secured by a lease at 40 Wall Street is for $160 million.” (New York Times, May 24, 2016)
Trump pays a $1.6 million lease on the ground under the building to an unknown investment group with German ties: ““At 40 Wall Street in Manhattan, a limited liability company, or L.L.C., controlled by Mr. Trump holds the ground lease -- the lease for the land on which the building stands. […] The land is owned by two limited liability companies; Mr. Trump pays the two entities a total of $1.6 million a year for the ground lease, according to documents filed with the S.E.C. The majority owner, 40 Wall Street Holdings Corporation, owns 80 percent of the land; New Scandic Wall Limited Partnership owns the rest, according to public documents. New Scandic Wall Limited Partnership's chief executive is Joachim Ferdinand von Grumme-Douglas, a businessman based in Europe, according to these documents. The people behind 40 Wall Street Holdings are harder to identify. For years, Germany's Hinneberg family, which made its fortune in the shipping industry, controlled the property through a company called 40 Wall Limited Partnership. In late 2014, their interest in the land was transferred to a new company, 40 Wall Street Holdings. The Times was not able to identify the owner or owners of this company, and the Trump Organization declined to comment.” (New York Times, August 21, 2016)
v Trump has used 40 Wall Street as collateral to secure a $160 million loan from hedge fund Ladder Capital that includes a $26 million personal guarantee: ““In 2015, Mr. Trump borrowed $160 million from Ladder Capital, a small New York firm, using that long-term lease as collateral. On his financial disclosure form that debt is listed as valued at more than $50 million. […] Other instances in which Mr. Trump could be personally responsible can be found in public filings. He guaranteed as much as $26 million for the loan taken out against his land lease at 40 Wall Street, money the lender could take if certain things went wrong.” (New York Times, August 21, 2016)
40 Wall Street has lost money or barely eked out a profit for the past several years, but pays the Trump Organization a nearly $1 million management fee. “Another seeming cash cow, at least as far as the forms portray it, is 40 Wall Street, an office building Mr. Trump has spoken of as perhaps the greatest bargain he ever struck. ''I make approximately $20 million a year in rentals from 40 Wall Street and the building is now worth $500 million,'' Mr. Trump wrote in ''Trump Never Give Up,'' published in 2008. '[…] On his financial disclosure forms, Mr. Trump listed the income he derived from rents in the building in the highest category on the form -- more than $5 million. […] But the income and expense statement that he filed with the New York City Tax Commission to appeal his property taxes shows that after mortgage payments and other costs, the building produced a cash flow of about $104,000 in 2014. Over the previous three years, it had generated a negative cash flow of $5.5 million, as the fallout of the 2008 financial crisis took a toll on downtown office buildings. Last year, the building rebounded and turned a significant profit: Occupancy rose to 95 percent, according to securities filings. The building's cash flow after expenses was just under $3 million, still well below the more than $5 million that Mr. Trump reported on his disclosure forms. The building also paid the Trump Organization $966,000 last year in management fees. (New York Times, November 4, 2016)
10/23/05: Trump took out a $145 million mortgage on 40 Wall Street, spent $35 million acquiring and refurbishing it. “And Donald did scramble back to gain control of some other Manhattan buildings, including 40 Wall Street, which he spent about $35 million to buy and refurbish in 1996. The building has about $145 million in debt attached to it, and New York City tax assessors currently value the property at about $90 million. Donald values it at $400 million.” (New York Times, October 23, 2005)
Hi Vasili - I don't think you understand. He bought an office building on Wall Street in the mid-1990s for $1 million. That's a price so low that it's shady. As usual with Trump, he buys real estate at prices that don't make sense unless you assume there's another half to the trade. Then he borrows money against the building's supposed increase in value and uses that debt as income without an income tax. His deals are all funny numbers.
I see you're also an apologist for Facebook's approach to Russian ads during the election.
You've stooped to the kind of personal attack that is most unwelcome in HN threads, especially partisan/political flamewars that we don't want on HN in the first place.
do you have any evidence that buying an office building on wall street for 1 million in the 90s is a shady price that doesn't make sense? also, how in the world did you bring facebook into this conversation?
It’s not just “an office building”, it’s a 71 story skyscraper. Even setting aside its highly desirable location a $1M price makes no sense.
The thing is, though, that the only source I can find for the $1M purchase price is Trump’s own mouth, while bragging about its real value (hundreds of millions), and we know he lies and exaggerates all the time.
>There is no evidence whatsoever that something illegal is taking place ?
Why would you want evidence that something illegal was taking place if something illegal was taking place? Sure in the absence of evidence I do believe we cannot declare anyone guilty, but the presumption of innocence doesn't mean we can't cast suspicion.
How is 1/8th of the price "market price"? Quite the opposite. You seem to have trouble addressing facts here.
EDIT: Responding to your answer below. You are materially misreporting the substance of the NYT article, which I find to be telling. It says that the building was sold for $8 million two years before, and that Trump paid "less than" that.
Bloomberg claims Trump bought the right to lease the building for the next 60 years or so. Trump does not own the property at 40 Wall Street. He is paying something like $1.5 million per year in rent. He bought the rights to lease the building from someone who previously bought those rights for the mostly empty building for $8 million but were having trouble getting tenants. It isn't clear if Trump bought all of the same rights or if they retained some.
The people who previously had the rights to lease out the building paid $8 million, but along with that came the responsibility of paying rent to the landowner. If they hadn't been able to make progress in two years, it doesn't seem outlandish that they would be willing to sell for much less than they paid. Their big expense wasn't going to be the cost of the rights to lease the tower, but the actual cost of leasing the tower (or maybe it is better to say the land the tower sits on) over time.
Further, they may have retained some rights that they found valuable so I wouldn't assume that what they bought for $8 million was the same thing Trump says he bought for $1 million.
So was the deal "shady"? Not from any information presented in this thread nor from anything that is readily available from a quick search. It could be of course, but the actual facts that are available don't appear to support such a claim.
It's a shady price, and a shady building, because he now rents it out to crooks like himself. (See Bloomberg piece.)
In the future, do your own research. It's just a Google away.
I bring up your Facebook comment because this is the second time you've come down on the side of the Kremlin and the conman they helped plant in the White House. It's an interesting pattern.
Edit: Responding to your comment below due to limits on nested comments on HN.
40 Wall is a well known center of criminal activity.
"Since Donald Trump took over 40 Wall St. in 1995, prosecutors have filed criminal charges against at least 29 people connected to 12 alleged scams tied to the building. Nine other firms have faced serious regulatory claims. Authorities prevailed in most but not all of the cases."
Trump also housed Trump University there, as well as Trump Mortgage, which shuttered the year before the 2008 crash. Trump paid $25 million to settle charges of fraud against Trump U.
This isn't the only Trump property associated with large-scale crime. Trump's Taj Mahal casino was fined a record amount in 2015 for violations of anti-money laundering regulations, because it claimed to have lost records of all transactions for years.
Trump has effectively led and profited from an international money-laundering syndicate for years. He is the leader of an organized crime family. He became president of the US with the help of dirty money and dirty tricks. Much coming from Russia.
Disagree. There's nothing wrong with looking at somebody else's previous comments, nor anything wrong with pointing out to the reader that there might (rightly or wrongly) be something of interest there. Comments are public, and a user's comment history is public too.
This breaks both the HN guideline against personal attacks ('be civil') and the one against insinuations of astroturfing and shillage without evidence. Someone having an opposing opinion is not evidence. Please don't do this again.
You are changing the argument. I'm not defending trump and I am not saying he is or isn't a crook. I'm saying your original statement and argument is false.
And yet the comment you just replied to gives evidence that you are the one actually incorrect, as it backs up his original statement and strongly counters your assertion.
To paraphrase for you:
vonnik: $1m purchase price is shady
vasilipupkin: No its not it is the real estate game, unless you can show me $1m in mid 90's is shady for a 71 story office building in premium location on Wall Street
I'm not changing the argument. I answered your question precisely, and added new information about criminal activity at the building in question. You have not given a satisfactory explanation of the discrepancy between what the market pays, and what Trump pays. Lacking subpoenas, it's unlikely that we can know what the other side of the trade was. But Mueller's team surely knows. That's why Mueller hired a team of financial crimes experts with Enron experience. They were able to nail Paul Manafort for money laundering, tax evasion and failure to report his status as a foreign agent. Trump is guilt of all that by 100x. The coming months will bring it all out.
Where did you get the number that he paid 1/8th the market price ? You provided zero evidence to this effect. If he did pay 1/8th the market price, I'll concede that something shady was taking place
your whataboutism is a classic kremlin maneuver. What about this and what about that ? The fact that I defended Facebook's handling of Russian ads in an unrelated online discussion has nothing to do with the fact that your specific argument about details of a specific deal is bullshit.
You said he bought it for 1 million and he bought it for 8. Apparently the same price as previous buyer paid ? So we can dispense with this line of reasoning ?
>We've documented Trump's relations with a variety of Soviet and Russian individuals and organizations
a telling hypothesis, now we know who to blame Mr Trump on. I am sorry to tell you but your friend is doing it on the dime of someone pushing the current hysterical Russophobia. Either that or he is delusional.
it's been many decades of the same issue, people work, people share, things go weird, they get angry (and rightly so).
let me blame the victims slightly (barely at all, it's mental exercise). Isn't the problem in the tax -> action function ? it's a big black box. That's always the case when people get angry about anything, it's because they have to deal with an unpredictable and costly black box.
Solution: no more big, no more black. We need a more tractable and open system that can be more efficient.
More questions: should people be able to see all what their money does ? or would it backfire into micromanagement and critics ?
It’s interesting. In other third world countries like Tunisia (my mother’s homeland) income inequality is even worse, yet the lower classes are content with where they are. In America it seems like everyone is crawling to “make it.”
There indeed are a two sets (or multiple striated on your lobbying power) of rules. The rich lobby to get exceptions, we don't 'cause we can't (afford it).
TL;DR
It's the government which is to blame here for the rich stashing their wealth in tax havens rather than deploying them productively in the economy.
Details:
- The rich don't like stashing their wealth in tax havens. I'm not rich myself to have first hand experience, but let's logically think this through.
- If you've capital, you want it deployed and earning money for you. And you'll choose the best risk adjusted ROI you can get (you'll be especially rational about this if you have the means to hire consultants like the rich do).
- Therefore, we can reach the poignant conclusion that stashing it away in tax havens, which in fact costs money to do, is the best option you've. There is a lot of cost involved even if you want to re-route money to invest it via tax havens - 1) Risk of government(s) confiscating your money 2) Cost of setting up and operating complicated corporate structures.
- Taxation is theft. Pretty radical, but please humor me and read through. This is not even an original idea, this is a common notion in libertarian circles (eg: https://mises.org/blog/taxation-isnt-only-theft-its-destruct...). Let me share a few points why:
- Why #1: Government is a bad monopoly. The ditches on the road you referenced, is because you can't stop paying govt for doing a bad job on roads and enlist an alternative vendor. The reason why it's _bad_ is because it's forced upon you - you cannot stop paying taxes to enlist someone else to make your roads better, you'll be put in jail. Google is a good monopoly, because we all voluntarily use google. If something better comes around, you can use it and google wouldn't (shouldn't) force you to use theirs. They can persuade, but not force.
- Why #2: Government (policy makers) are humans. They put their self interest above yours (just like you do) and make bad public policy as a result. Paying them money (tax) blindly is silly.
- Why #3: Government (policy makers) don't understand (or perhaps deliberately mislead everyone on) economics. We still think public roads are good, public healthcare is good, public police, public (fiat) money, rent control, import tariffs, export controls and more are all good. They are all patently bad for reasons which you can google out. This distortion is a wealth destroyer and distorts & cripples the economy. Paying them money (tax) when the policies don't benefit you is insane.
## Conclusion:
There is an alternative system to government which works - privatize everything a.k.a Free Markets. This is also known by the rather dire name "Anarcho Capitalism" (please don't go by the bad connotations of the name). Why use free markets:
- Why #1: They're ethically, morally superior to government. All transactions in an economy are voluntary and involve no force. Force is immoral, and unethical. Every action that government does implies force - if you don't pay taxes, you get jailed => force; etc.
- Why #2: Good monopolies. Everyone competes to be a monopoly by providing the best service at the lowest cost, which is a benefit to society, if they don't, you can choose an alternative. Note: Monopoly here rarely means the strict definition of just one compnay providing a good, there are usually alternatives.
It's always disappointing to find people on the web who don't believe in basic human rights.
Don't we all have the right to a basic level of livelihood? Why should the family I was born to determine wether I have clean water to drink or not, for example?
I don't agree. Some rights are fundamental - the people who had their lives stolen by trans Atlantic slaving had their lives stolen. Their rights were violated. The fact that the social and political system of the time conspired to facilitate that doesn't make it less true.
I think the parent commenter was trying to say that rights only exist as a productive concept when other people agree with them.
You can argue that certain rights are fundamental, but it doesn’t mean anything if most people disagree with you. Whether or not rights are “fundamental” (i.e. exist outside of an enforcement structure) not a useful distinction, because it’s meaningless - whether or not you get to exercise that right has nothing to do with your claim being correct, it has to do with other people agreeing and sanctioning your behavior.
Like most normative claims, personal rights do not really exist coherently if you don’t first define them in the context of a relationship. This is demonstrably the case because the idea of a right would be redundant or meaningless if it were not for an adversary threatening that right in the first place.
They had their lives stolen before that - they were already slaves by the time the Western slave traders bought them from their local, African slave owners.
So here's the basic problem with your attitude: it proceeds from comprehending only your half of a fundamental equation. You feel no responsibility toward those less fortunate than yourself, but at the same time you expect them to feel a general responsibility to respect your property rights. Why should they? Because it's in the Bible or written in law books? In the wild there are no property rights, no individual freedoms. What keeps the poor from your door when they realize that the responsibility is one-sided?
In the wild there is ownership (or possession), and animals defend it with brute force. Property rights regulate this and tend to enforce the concept of ownership in a civilized way.
Without property rights, we'd be back to defending ownership with violence, even on the individual level. Few people want that, and I'm not one of them.
No, there is no "ownership" in the wild. Posession is not ownership. Ownership is a concept. Posession is a physical fact. Any connection between the two is based on ideas in your head.
By the way, we are not at risk of going back to defending ownership with violence, for the simple reason that we haven't left that situation. Property is defended with violence and the threat of violence every day in the most civilized of countries. That's what police and prisons are: violence.
> By the way, we are not at risk of going back to defending ownership with violence, for the simple reason that we haven't left that situation. Property is defended with violence and the threat of violence every day in the most civilized of countries. That's what police and prisons are: violence.
True. That's why I added "even on the individual level". It's difficult to explain what is different about the way say a lion defends his territory by attacking any intruder and the way a man defends his house by calling the cops when burglars show up, but I'm sure there is a difference, and I believe it makes sense to say that one of the method is civilized when the other is not.
I wonder, does the suffering of your fellow man mean nothing to you? Make you feel bad? How do you manage to feel such callous disregard for the agony of others? I'm really curious about how one can be so coldly and consciously cruel.
Right, even torture has some legal limits. One cannot deprive someone from sleep, food, or clean water for longer than certain reasonable periods during torture, poverty on the other hand has much less certainty.
Ok, let's set aside for a moment your personal politics, since compassion is clearly not a concept you're likely to grasp right now.
As a practical matter, what do you think happens to any society that suffers a class divide severe enough that (a) the majority of the citizenry ends up in the underclass and (b) being in the underclass sucks badly enough to really piss people off?
Societies need to take care of their citizens and ensure they receive, if nothing else, fair treatment under law and approximately equal opportunity. Otherwise, you get behavior like this: https://youtu.be/HL45pVdsRvE?t=60
What a lot of people on both sides don't seem to be getting is that Trump getting elected was an expression of bipartisan anger and frustration on the part of voters. Their anger and frustration may have created an even worse result, depending on whether you think Trump is going to ease or worsen inequality in this country, but guess what? Stupid things are exactly the result of festering anger and resentment.
There are a bunch of folks out there -- maybe you're one of them, maybe not, I dunno -- who kind of wish for some kind of implosion of American society. They think they'll come out ahead, because they've got guns or they live in the middle of nowhere. But, they won't come out ahead, they'll lose. Everyone will lose.
So you can pontificate about the ideological merits of extreme Libertarianism all you want, but in practice it works exactly as well as extreme socialism.
"As a practical matter, what do you think happens to any society that suffers a class divide severe enough that (a) the majority of the citizenry ends up in the underclass and (b) being in the underclass sucks badly enough to really piss people off?"
It has a violent revolution. But your question contains an unstated assumption: that capitalism leads to "the majority of the citizenry [ending] up in the underclass". Feudal societies saw most people living in poverty. Communist societies saw most people living in poverty. Properly functioning capitalist societies have a healthy middle class, and a tolerable standard of living even for people at the bottom.
"So you can pontificate about the ideological merits of extreme Libertarianism all you want, but in practice it works exactly as well as extreme socialism."
The society that came closest to "extreme Libertarianism" was the United States in the 19th century. (Especially after the civil war). That was the century of the industrial revolution, huge advances in technology and wealth production, and an unprecedented rise in the standard of living.
> But your question contains an unstated assumption: that capitalism leads to "the majority of the citizenry [ending] up in the underclass".
No, not capitalism specifically, and that's not a claim I made. (Unless of course you believe that capitalism necessarily leads to the exploitation of the poor.)
> That was the century of the industrial revolution, huge advances in technology and wealth production, and an unprecedented rise in the standard of living.
Even if I agreed with your premise, is it your argument here that those things happened because of libertarianism? Because (a) historians would disagree with you, and (b), you're still stuck with the same problem as every other libertarian: where are all of the 21st century libertarian utopias then? Is it in Galt's Gulch, Chile (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bn53b3/atlas-mugged-922-v...)? Is it somewhere in Antarctica, one of few (barely) habitable places on Earth with no government? Is it Mauritius? Liberia? Colorado Springs (https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/30/colorado-...)?
> Societies need to take care of their citizens and ensure they receive, if nothing else, fair treatment under law and approximately equal opportunity.
I'm not sure what you mean by "approximately equal opportunity", since the circumstances of life are so different it seems delusional to me to hope for equal opportunities for everyone.
But I do agree on the concept of fair treatment under law, and I believe it's a fundamental basis for the notion of justice.
I just don't believe poverty necessarily results from any unfair treatment, and that as such its prevention or mitigation is not society's duty.
"Terry Bossert, Range’s vice president for legislative and regulatory affairs, told a Pennsylvania Bar Institute gathering in Harrisburg earlier this month, that the company tries to avoid siting its shale gas wells near “big houses” where residents might have the financial resources to challenge the industrial-type developments."
http://www.post-gazette.com/powersource/latest-oil-and-gas/2...
"I make a lot of poor financial decisions. None of them matter, in the long term. I will never not be poor, so what does it matter if I don’t pay a thing and a half this week instead of just one thing?"
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/your-br...
I have 5,233 carefully-organized bookmarks in Pinboard. I can keep doing this for a while.
The fact of the matter is that poverty by itself is unfair treatment. Those living in poverty automatically have fewer judicial options in legal disputes, bear an unfair proportion of costs in legal matters, have their communities unfairly targeted by exploitative businesses that know the citizens don't have the resources to fight back, and are subjected to poorer nutrition and harmful living environments which virtually guarantee that those people born into poverty will also die in it -- and of it.
Wait, wha??? You have the right to it, but you are not entitled to it? I don't know if you are American, but let's assume you are. The Declaration Of Independence enshrines three "unalienable rights" that governments are "created to protect".
Let's take them one at a time.
1. Life - so one has the right to life, yet is not entitled to it? If I take your life and don't get prosecuted for it, then everything is cool?
2. Liberty - if your skin color was black in the Antebellum south, you had the right to libery, you just weren't be entitled to it?
3. Pursuit of Happiness - you have the right to say, be able to read, which I think most would agree is pretty essential to pursuing your happiest self. But you are not entitled to any basic education, and the onus should be on you?
This is one of the most cynical viewpoints I can think of.
If Law itself can't prevent you to exercise your rights, it usually also means it should prevent other people from preventing you to exercise your rights. Thus murder (someone preventing you from exercising your right to live) is a crime and so is slavery (someone preventing you to exercise your freedom).
Your third example is interesting because indeed, I personally believe that education should be a service like any other, one that society is not supposed to provide, at least not by law. On the other hand, law should not prevent your from getting one, nor should it allow anyone to prevent someone from having one. Hopefully you can see the difference.
It's like say owning a car. You have the right to own one. If someone steals it, it's a crime and society must punish it. But society does not have to provide you one if you don't have any.
>If Law itself can't prevent you to exercise your rights, it usually also means it should prevent other people from preventing you to exercise your rights. Thus murder (someone preventing you from exercising your right to live) is a crime and so is slavery (someone preventing you to exercise your freedom).
You are part of a lynch mob in the 30's. Your crime of murder is swept under the rug.
You live in Alabama in 1836. A man frees your slave, and you had to shoot him as he runs away. You are now out one slave (no murder, right?) and the man who freed him is in prison.
Well, I may have oversimplified when I wrote that rights were what you can't be prosecuted for. I'm no constitutionalist. But you can't just shrug on the idea that there is a difference between rights and entitlements. I suppose you can though, since it fits your political view. Still a quick search for "rights vs entitlements" returns ample documentation, including quotes from Law professors, like this one:
"America was founded on the idea that human beings are born with natural rights, such as the rights to life, liberty and property. A person who holds this view of rights makes no demands on others except that they respect those rights. Today, however, many Americans talk about rights to a college education, state of the art medical care and even birth control pills. These are rights understood as entitlements and a person who holds this view of rights, far from making no demands on other people, is making claims on other people’s money and resources. This understanding of rights not only sets citizens against each other, but it undermines the whole idea of natural rights."
Maybe it would be, but it's generally considered folly to ignore community norms. Based on your response, clearly you know what people actually mean here, but it sounds like you're arguing out of some desire for pedantry, which is not something that goes over well here.
In my humble opinion, the job of the government is absolutely not to give money to the poorest people, not even to maintain a "basic level of livelyhood".
I'm also fairly certain this has nothing to do with the concept of justice.
Most of the world has signed conventions that makes basic livelihood a right -- and puts it on the state to ensure this.
Perhaps you don't agree with these laws and conventions. But please consider that the very concept of "ownership" and "property" is also something that is only upheld by laws.
Also on a pragmatic level, why should those without property acknowledge and support a state which doesn't look out for their basic livelihood? A state that does not at least try to make sure everyone has a livelihood is a sure path to social unrest / revolutions that causes problems for rich people as well.
You should turn around and ask: Why should people support the notion of property?
Property is part of the social contract in much the same way that human rights (everyone having a livelihood) is part of the social contract.
> to social unrest / revolutions that causes problems for rich people as well.
Some problems for sure, but it's probably manageable. Poverty is not and should never be an excuse for crime. Rich people can build as many prisons as necessary.
Things were close in the US in 1932 - hence the new deal.
Poverty isn't an excuse for a crime, but people with children to feed can be used as a tool by revolutionaries very easily. One revolution often leads to another (France and Russia also Germany saw this) as the faction in power loses it's grievance and acquires shiny things.
The problem is that this precipitates economic collapse and therefore more poor people.
"Managing" the problems isn't cheap either; thugs, cameras, guns, torture, prisons and PR are not free. There are a variety of costs, including the personal ones when the children of the rich discover that Daddy or Mummy spends half their weeks chainsawing people's arms off.
And Jesus, what's the point? I mean, isn't it just better to have a world where you can go out for a latte or buy a pair of pants in a store without being afraid ?
Technically we can say that equilibrium is that the rich support a welfare state and the poor do not use the rich to decorate lamp posts. Some players have forgotten this, they are irrational, but that doesn't change the game and in future iterations it will return to it's balanced state.
>Poverty is not and should never be an excuse for crime.
If I'm starving to death and you're hogging the bread, I'm taking it from you. The law is not morality. At some point (I don't think we're there yet today, but we're heading in that direction) I think crime - stealing in particular - is more excusable when the rich have stacked the deck.
You want to define one set of laws you agree with "justice" and another you disagree with "charity". That is namecalling and intellectually lazy.
The same state and body of laws that define property also defines taxation.
Without a social contract, there is no property. Property isn't obvious! My viking ancestors considered it good and noble to pillage Englishmen.
The social contract you live in happens to define property, but also define taxes and redistribution to the poor. It gives the poor rights. Not charity.
You seem to consider property more "natural" or God-given or such than taxation and everyones right to eat. Why?
How is that even remotely the point? If you have a huge prison population, your society is unhealthy. Full stop. Even if those people "deserve" to be in prison. If they do, that's the society's failing in successfully educating and raising people to be productive members of that society. It's rotten to the core.
To be clear, would you morally condemn someone for stealing if they would otherwise starve?
It seems like you think the right to "property" is somehow above the right to life. In most of the world BOTH of those are guaranteed by the same laws and the same social contract.
>Some problems for sure, but it's probably manageable. Poverty is not and should never be an excuse for crime. Rich people can build as many prisons as necessary.
You are one of the people for whom they build gulags.
Ah then you must also believe that the government should not be giving money to corporations, and special breaks to the rich; breaks that make it so the poor have a harder time escaping poverty??
The way to fix this is by design: to have a government small enough that buying it wouldn’t bring you advantages comparable to succeeding in the free market.
Most people disagree with that and seem to think it’s possible to have angels from heaven running the government machine. The thing is that even if you manage that, it’s bound to go wrong at some future election.
The problem will always be that the profit motive is an engine that chews up the weak and the helpless, and as a moral society we want to limit these kind of behaviors, both by local gangs, and by massive corporations. Government is one way to do this.
I agree that government should be more limited in some way. I think that the solution will be to empower local government, and the yoke the power of the federal fiat currency to local authority.
You could argue rights as being in the welfare category. But in all reality this centers on first agreeing to basic definitions of terms. Words do have meanings, but the most frustrating thing about our "post truth" world is everyone wants to define words in a personal level. It makes any sort of debate or discussion next to impossible.
Overwhelmingly large number of people in society are selfish. They say that social welfare is good, but when time comes to increase taxes to fund it, either they oppose, or build in clever loopholes to work around it (the rich do anyway). What's left is the middle to lower class getting the burden, and that causes them to also reject tax increases.
Two things: it relieves me to see that you are in the minority with that kind of repellent thought. Second, I'm almost 100% sure that you would sing a very different tune if you had drawn the short stick in the birth lottery.
This is what people feel in their guts when they drive out on tattered roads and avoid going to the hospital even though they are sick, when they don't have a real increase in wages but are working longer hours. They have the sense that something isn't right, that there are two sets of rules and they got the shaft when it comes to that. Where police forces are cashstrapped and turn to civil forfeitures and ticket quotas while they see famous celebrities and politicians get off for things magnitudes more illegal than what they've done, whether it's smoking a joint or driving while black.
People already have a sense that things aren't fair. There's a reason why tax reform is polling so poorly. There's a reason why most of the country thinks taxes should be higher on the wealthy and corporations. They have a feeling that they are not seeing the rise of productivity in their own life, and they want justice.
My SO lives in SG. She is lower middle class (going to school, father works in a factory) and I asked her about income inequality, for there it's quite extreme. She says it's not that bad because people there have a reasonable standard of living; they can go to school, they can go to the doctor, they have access to affordable food, etc. Income inequality I think isn't a bad thing as long as the poorest among us have some basic level of livelihood. The problem is that in the US, that isn't true, and so, people clamor for justice.