re: Reason article on luxury goods and class: don't mind the gap

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Another big difference I see is the ability to afford child care/house keepers and pay for elite schools.

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Which brings up an entirely different discussion of the relative failure of public education.

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Comparative poverty versus objective poverty. The latter doesn't really exist in the US

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True. This really irritated Mrs. Stein, a woman I knew who survived the siege of Warsaw in 1939 when she was 12 years old. There was no food.

She said, "Zach, I hate it when American kids say 'I'm starving to death.' They don't know what starving to death feels like."

I agree with you 100 percent and have discussed this in threads with you and others. It's a slam dunk concept. Which is why it is ignored.

Except where caused by drug abuse and mental illness, there is no real poverty or homelessness or hunger in the United States.

Government benefits alone are enough here to provide what would be a middle class existence in most countries on Earth.

When the poverty line based on a certain percentage of the population, then a certain amount of people will always statistically be in poverty.

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I listened to a podcast recently with Jordan Peterson and some sociology professor, and they were discussing the fact that relative poverty and not absolute poverty play a very big part in crime and other dysfunctional behaviors associated with poverty. I can't remember all of the details, but the gist was that when people, especially young men, perceive that they can't move up their "dominance hierarchy", that will manifest itself in behaviors that work to undermine that hierarchy. And these behaviors are less pronounced in smaller communities of similar status. They used Chicago ghetto vs Appalachia as examples of high and low relative poverty. Of course, there are other factors in that, but relative poverty was a major contributor.


So in a sense, it doesn't matter how much better off the poor are today than 100 years ago, there will always be tension two or more groups live close together but have a high difference in income or status. The left's philosophy of resentment and jealousy (basically marxism) just feeds this tension until it blows up, which of course is their goal whether they know that or not.

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The problem with a yawning gap in income equality in this country isn't that it's unfair, it's that it creates the opportunity for exploitation by authoritarians...an opportunity to seize power. In my view it endangers our democracy.

You conservatives get it wrong when you project what you think the left wants. Socialists aren't concerned about the type of watch you can afford and the type of car you drive. We'd be the first to agree that a Timex and a Rolex do the same thing.

We believe that health care is a universal right and should be available to all in a Medicare for All program. We also believe that public funding of education especially K to 12 should be equal. A kid in the poorest part of the town should have the same educational opportunities as a kid in the richest part of town. Now if you have to increase taxes on the wealthy or impose a luxury tax on your Rolex that's the way to do it.

We don't feed off of jealously. We feed off on the fact that no one in this country should declare bankruptcy due to medical issues and no one should have to worry about how to pay medical bills and that every child should have the same high quality education in the public school system. If you want private schools then that's fine and you pay for it. Don't use public tax dollars to fund your private school or charter school.

We also believe that people should have unemployment insurance and a social safety net. We don't believe that everyone should have a Timex or that everyone should have a Rolex. That's really the last thing we care about.

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That's a ridiculous assertion.

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That the gap is exploited by opportunistic authoritarians? Maybe you should consult recent history before making your assertion.

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The gap should be celebrated, since it is actually proof that our citizens are well taken care of.

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Perhaps it should, but that's an idealistic pipe dream.

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In practical terms, the difference between a $200,000 Tesla and my last car, a beat-up minivan worth $2,000 at trade-in, is not all that large.

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Sounds like something people who can't afford a $200k Tesla tell themselves.

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Warren Buffett has said this exact same thing before. When he's asked how it feels to be rich, he responds that it's not all that different than most folks with the exception of travel. He's lived in the same house for fifty years, drives normal cars, picks up McDonald's on the way to work, and loves Coca Cola. When it comes to getting places, though, he can just hop on his Gulfstream, whereas the normal person can't.

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Per your own post Buffet has made an effort to keep his life the same. There are billionaires that live in ostentation relative to the avg and even upper mid class Americans.

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A kid in the poorest part of the town should have the same educational opportunities as a kid in the richest part of town

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Genetic intelligence, the communists will try to judge this on outcome, they will never say the education is equal.

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We also believe that public funding of education especially K to 12 should be equal. A kid in the poorest part of the town should have the same educational opportunities as a kid in the richest part of town.

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I agree in theory with the second idea. As to the first idea, oftentimes, in the poorest part of town we spend more on public education than some good private schools. The city of St. Louis spends roughly the same as I did to send my kid to a very good private school. Not counting debt and capital expenditures; St. Louis spends $14,779 per student for what is a morass of failure (including debt and capital expenses, that number jumps to $18,476 per student). I paid somewhere between those two numbers and couldn't be happier.

The issue isn't how much money we are funding for public education. The issue is that we allocate resources very poorly, especially in urban districts, and insist on following failed educational theory in those expenditures.