SPLIT: speaking of haves and have nots&quo

armchair_warrior wrote: man this thread could go on for many pages :P. hmm wondering anyone on this board use your services yet MPWW? and anyone rate wanna rate her lol.

are you hinting that we should start an escort fund for you armchair? :-'

apollonia666 wrote: The "broad" in my avatar pic is Edith "Little Edie" Bouvier Beale.

Speaking of whom, I got my Criterion 2-DVD set of 'Grey Gardens' and 'The Beales of Grey Gardens' today. Little Christmas present for myself.

pitu wrote: funny, it takes us back to the theme of Haves and Have Nots . . .

Yes, I was going to point that out ... ... they certainly experienced extremes of both.

I'm one of those pathetic people who can quote whole swaths of the first film, so I was quite excited to hear about the new one.

caaahyoko wrote: [quote=alafairnadia]
if it's something like a costume that you can't really wear outside of a particular purpose, like a show, it's a costume, and that's, to a degree, deductible.

AH-HA! No wonder all those hair metal bands wore godawful spandex on stage!

And Elton John must have been savvy to that as well

You know it, sister! Gene Simmons could probably teach an IRS course on the subject. The '70s acts must've had a field day with that stuff. It seems like they all wore outlandish costumes. Especially the likes of Genesis, LaBelle, EWF, and of course PFunk. Hell, a few years back, in Mojo magazine, I saw a photo of Todd Rundgren from that era where he looks like a cross between a peacock and Alanis Morissette in drag!

Oooh, I'm envious! I just finally got around to getting my special edition DVD of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, and The Beales of Grey Gardens is on my shopping list for after my next payday.

escap wrote: Clearly have vs have not is a relative distinction, and with that in mind, I think it's absolutely absurd to call virtually anyone in the United States a have not. Maybe the bottom 1/100th of 1%, who is dying of AIDS and living in a gutter can be fairly classified as 'have not' on a global scale, but virtually everyone else has so much more in every way than the real have nots of this world. Your average American homeless person was provided with access to free public, quality education through high school, inoculations and other critical medical treatment at birth, access to free, quality medical treatment in case of emergency, public shelters, free food, handouts on the street that amount to far more than what many others earn in other parts of the world, the world's most developed infrastructure, and above all, life in a place that is free of war, chaos and widespread disease. Though obviously none of this access is sufficient by our standards, it is all well above what the real have nots are faced with. On a global scale, Americans dividing themselves into haves and have nots is essentially the equivalent of investment bankers and hedge fund managers quibbling with each other. With just a few exceptions, we are all "haves", and therefore, well, we should all stop bitching.

interesting..how do you think the Katrinia victims fit in to this? Do they fall into the category of "just a few exceptions"?

I recall reading a study of different people in different cultures, comparing wealth and happiness. There is a very direct and strong correlation between the two up to the point where you have food, clothing, shelter, some healthcare and security. Anyone who has these is a 'have'. After that, it's fairly flat to the horizon through what we call working, middle, upper class, with shallow negative correlation at upper levels corresponding to a few rich and unhappy people.

In this sense, the leaner of the Western social democracies (but better functioning than the US) seem to have the right balance to me: it makes sense in a rich society not to have lots of people going without the bare necessities, but anything more is a waste in utilitarian terms.

I found a free link that alludes to the study. Here's the quote:

According to a Pew Research Center 2006 report, the percentage of people who declare themselves "very happy" goes up as family income rises. People were asked: "Taken all together, how would you say things are these days, would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?" Twenty five percent of people with incomes of $30,000 or less said they're "very happy." That compared with 50% of people with incomes of $150,000 or more.

And here's the link--it's an op-ed that refers to studies on both sides of the argument.

http://www.careerjournal.com/jobhunting/change/20060906-rubin.html

escap wrote: An another interesting corollary to this study was that one of the highest determinants of happiness was charity. The people who give away the most money are the happiest. Food for thought.

Which is the cause and which is the effect here? Maybe people who are happy are more likely to give to charity, rather than the other way around. It could also be an epiphenomenon, in that both could be due to some other root cause (such as religious faith, for example).

Carnivore wrote:
Which is the cause and which is the effect here? Maybe people who are happy are more likely to give to charity, rather than the other way around. It could also be an epiphenomenon, in that both could be due to some other root cause (such as religious faith, for example).

Absolutely. I agree 100%. You can't draw conclusions on causation.

doctorj wrote: Anywhere where pretty much anyone can get a basic standard of healthcare, education (including tertiary), food, clothing, housing, without too much hassle. But the state isn't paying for beer and skittles for the middle class. Britain, Australia, New Zealand, France, Canada, Germany. As opposed to the US at one extreme and Scandinavia at the other.

I would strongly object to your use of the adjective "leaner" with respect to either France or Germany, both of which are struggling with decades old unemployment crises and deadweight economies.

I also object to the notion that the US and Scandinavia are opposite extremes. Scandinavians countries have extremely liberal market economies, far more so than either France or Germany, or many other European and Asian countries. Just because they have a generous welfare state doesn't mean that they don't also have free markets. More importantly, America is no icon of capitalism, despite this widespread perception. We have social security, a massively socialist institution if there ever was one, we have medicare and medicaid, we have a higher percentage of private sector unionization than France, huge subsidies for favored industries like steel, textiles and agriculture, rising protectionism, we have far lower shareholder rights than in the U.K., and while Europe and Japan are moving forward with post office privatization, ours is firmly ensconced as a public institution. America is every bit a social democracy--it is not Hong Kong, it is not Estonia. In fact, in the Heritage Foundation's index of economic freedom, a measure essentially of how capitalist a country is, the U.S. is 10th, behind Ireland, Luxembourg, the U.K., Ireland and Denmark. http://www.heritage.org/index/countries.cfm

The more appropriate comparison is not capitalist vs. socialist, but rather capitalist vs. corporatist, with such countries as Hong Kong, Singapore and Ireland representing the capitalist side, and France and Japan representing the corporatist side, in which there is a blurry line between state and corporation, large national banks dominate corporate access to capital (and therefore their policies), vital industries like energy, finance and telecom are state-owned and controlled, and there is widespread cross-shareholder ownership between companies, their suppliers and their banks (and of course the govt).

doctorj wrote: [quote=escap]
I also object to the notion that the US and Scandinavia are opposite extremes.

I can think of several ways they're opposite extremes from an end-user perspective. Cradle-to-grave welfare compared with individual responsibility and risk. Income and consumption tax rates. Years of education per person funded by the state. Number of vacation days per year. Universal public vs. private healthcare. Maternity and paternity leave. Most vs. fewest atheists, and separation of church and state. National monopolies for many services vs. local or state-based organisation. Level of immigration. Neutrality vs. militarism. Environmental policy.

In terms of liberal markets and capitalism, I agree they're not opposites.

OK, I agree with you on many of those points as well. Only would nitpick with:

Cradle-to-grave welfare: Between welfare, social security, medicare and medicaid, and federal pension guarantees, we have this in the US as well. The only difference is a matter of degree (our benefits are admittedly less generous), but not black and white safety net vs. individual risk as you say.

Income tax: Both Finland's top income tax rate (33.5%) and corporate rate (26%) are lower. Sweden and Denmark both have much higher personal income tax rates (up to 60%), but their corporate tax rates are lower (around 28%). Norway has something close to a flat tax at 28% for personal and corporate income, with an exception only for the very rich that rises up to 48%. So it's a mixed picture. (The US's top personal and corporate rates are 35%.)

Separation of church/state: Is it really that church and state are more separate in Scandinavia, or is it just that the government and people are more secular? I don't know, I'm just asking.

Healthcare: I don't know about this one either, but is Sweden's healthcare completely socialized such that all private medicine is outlawed, like in Canada, or are there private clinics and hospitals that can compete in the market, but the patients themselves are insured by the state (like medicare)? If it's the latter, I'd say this doesn't represent an extreme socialized healthcare model.

I could nitpick on others but essentially agree with you. If we're just including Europe and America then America is on the extreme end of many of the points you made like military, religion, vacation days, etc. Taken on a broader scale America is far closer to the middle of many of these areas, of course. One interesting stat I came on was that the avg Scandinavia govt's expenditures as a % of GDP are more than 55%, despite negligible military spending! That's huge. America's is around 35%, and then you have countries like Hong Kong and Singapore that are down in the teens. All are wealthy and successful, so I guess there is no one model that works for all.

escap wrote:
Mypass, the current unemployment rate for people with college degrees is 1.8%. By the standards of western democracies, that is phenomenal, and shows a cornucopia of opportunities for young professionals. I think what you're referring to is more an issue of values than opportunities, that people seem to respect wealth above all else in their attitudes, but this may or may not be unique to America or NY.

We are indeed living in fat times for people with tertiary education. Which is why it bothers me that secondary education is universal and state-funded, but tertiary is mostly pay-for-play here and out of reach for many of the poor, except via the military. And in this sense, I think there's a long way to go before there's equality of opportunity. Roll forward just a few years: a hundred million Indians and Chinese with degrees totally trump the American labor pool for everything other than local physical services on an ever more level playing field. This is one area where I admire the Scandinavians: if the only natural resource you have is people, the only way to stay ahead for the smaller players is to educate all to the limit of their ability.

doctorj wrote:
We are indeed living in fat times for people with tertiary education. Which is why it bothers me that secondary education is universal and state-funded, but tertiary is mostly pay-for-play here and out of reach for many of the poor, except via the military. And in this sense, I think there's a long way to go before there's equality of opportunity. Roll forward just a few years: a hundred million Indians and Chinese with degrees totally trump the American labor pool for everything other than local physical services on an ever more level playing field. This is one area where I admire the Scandinavians: if the only natural resource you have is people, the only way to stay ahead for the smaller players is to educate all to the limit of their ability.

Fair enough. Certainly greater access to higher education is a worthy goal, but with just one caveat: primary and secondary education in the US is really horrible by international standards, but our costly, private university education is widely recognized as the world's best. It is the one bright spot in our education picture, at the unfortunate cost of being non-egalitarian. I would like to see greater access in the form of more scholarships and student loans available, but would never want to see us wipe out our Harvards and Princetons as a tradeoff for universality, which is what most of the rest of the developed world seems to have done (as an example my school is full of European students who would apparently gladly pay egregious sums to study here rather than accept the free education they could get in their own countries). Our private universities generate immeasurable benefits to our society at large and shouldn't be threatened in the name of egalitarianism.

escap wrote: [quote=pitu]

a pet peeve of mine . . .
USA Dept of Labor employment figures are under-reported. Basically, only people drawing unemployment insurance are counted as unemployed.

Not true. The two most commonly referenced figures are based on a household survey and an employer survey, not unemployment insurance. There are certainly problems with this method and I agree that the number is understated, but the problems are consistent over time and across populations, so the fact that 1.8% represents a relatively low figure compared to most previous periods, and to the population at large, is significant.

I just don't know about those numbers. It's been a couple of years since I did any research on the subject, but anecdotally, I see lots of highly educated freelancers adversely effected by this economy . . . the under-employed, the given-up on finding employment. I disagree that the problems are consistent over time since the structure of employment in America has radically shifted.