Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Yglesias on Inequality...

Has a nice post here .

Shows that for the bottom decile of workers, the US ranks below the OECD average in income...

1 comment:

  1. «for the bottom decile of workers, the US ranks below the OECD average in income...»

    Ha, but for a conservative that means that the USA is doing better than the other OECD countries.

    Because the above point means that the USA have better social justice, as workers earn incomes that are more proportional to their productivity and creativity, and the unproductive and uncreative in the bottom 10% exploit other more deserving workers less than in other OECD countries.

    Consider for example the minimum wage: for a conservative every time a business owner pays $6/h to a parasite who would without a minimum wage law get $4/h, that business owner is being injustly exploited by the parasite, as the work of the business owner is being undeservedly underpaid (Senator Gramm famously opined that Verizon's CEO was the most exploited worker in the USA).

    For a social darwinist (plenty of them in the USA), good riddance to such looters in the bottom 10%.

    Now the above point of view is not mine, but it has *some* plausibility, and it is very popular in the USA.

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