Sunday, January 22, 2017

Lars P. Syll — The inequality gap — five sickening facts


The points that Oxfam lists are results rather than causes. The symptom is asymmetrical distribution. The question is the causal factors and attendant conditions underlying those results and how to correct them before there is political upheaval.

One of the causal factors is asymmetrical distribution of power, socially (class status and networks), politically (influence, privilege), and economically (wealth begets increased class status, power and wealth).

The challenge is not wealth redistribution but leveling the distribution of social, political and economic power.

Lars P. Syll’s Blog
The inequality gap — five sickening facts
Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

20 comments:

Matt Franko said...

Has anybody ever mapped the training of the people onto the inequality and/or underemployment?

What is the demographics of training in "Gender Studies" vs. the employment opportunities?

Peter Pan said...

I think they call it structural unemployment. Another reason why nothing can be done.

Tom Hickey said...

What is the demographics of training in "Gender Studies" vs. the employment opportunities?

Isn't that sort of like Sarah Palin criticizing government funding of experiments on fruit flies?

There was just a "Women's March" yesterday that draw enormous crowds and gender studies is unimportant? The ladies are pissed and are finally standing up to say so en masse.

One thing that the ladies are more than just whining about now is inequality of opportunity and pay along with other matters that affect them like health care. While the men continue to dither about it, the women are educating themselves. Those specializing in general studies could be gainfully employed educating both women and men about this.

Economically, the status of women has resulted and is still resulting in underutilization of potential, which is inefficient, that is, wasteful of resources.

Tom Hickey said...

I think they call it structural unemployment. Another reason why nothing can be done.

In cyclical UE, a return to the past of high employment is the solution, which is doable based on increasing demand.

Structural UE is not based on returning to the old by seeding demand but by developing new structures.

That requires a creative solution involving emergence of new opportunity to meet the rising challenges rather than a mechanical one of greasing the machine.

Tom Hickey said...

"general studies" above should be gender studies.

Matt Franko said...

Tom that is not answering the question of what is the employment opportunities in Gender Studies... I am not saying those studies are unimportant or uninteresting... where are the jobs? There arent any...

We are what we train for... so now everybody is all pissed that the infrastructure is all f-ed up well what do you expect when everybody is studying genders?

"Hey the Flint MI water system is all f-ed up! What do we do???"

"I know! Lets send in some Gender Studies people in there to figure out how to fix the situation!!! "

"Yes!"

???????

Matt Franko said...

Look at Chris Christy's 'Bridgegate', what was the training of those people there at that crony Bridge Commission? Civil/Mechanical/Transportation engineers???

Noooooooooo.... a bunch of non-material cronies and non-material Title 9ers who wouldnt know what end of a bridge was up...

Matt Franko said...

Here the female charged in Bridgegate:

"Bridget Anne Kelly is the former Deputy Chief of Staff to the Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie. Kelly, a New Jersey native, grew up in Ramsey and graduated from Immaculate Heart Academy in 1990. Wikipedia
Born: December 18, 1972 (age 44), Ramsey, NJ
Spouse: Joseph Patrick Kelly (m. 1995–2012)
Parents: Richard Daul
Education: Mount St. Mary's University"

No engineering school at Mount Saint Mary's I can tell you that....

Yet she is somehow involved in decisions about how to operate the GWB????

No technocracy involved here and its a major scandal... which shouldnt be surprising when you put unqualified into these positions of material systems administration...

Tom Hickey said...

Tom that is not answering the question of what is the employment opportunities in Gender Studies... I am not saying those studies are unimportant or uninteresting... where are the jobs? There arent any...

That's the point. We are not creating them and they are needed, which is what the women are saying. In their view, this is just perpetuating gender repression.

Of course, it's not just gender studies.

There was an article in the paper here this week that there is a shortage of teachers in Iowa. Well, after cutting salaries and extending hours, what did they expect?

No engineering school at Mount Saint Mary's I can tell you that....

Yet she is somehow involved in decisions about how to operate the GWB????


Government is is the poster child field of poor selection since it is based on politics rather than competence in that position. Any economist will tell you that this is downside of democracy. It's also a reason that the small government people want limited government. The selection process is broken.

Tom Hickey said...

No technocracy involved here and its a major scandal... which shouldnt be surprising when you put unqualified into these positions of material systems administration...

I don't know the relevant details but my impression has been that this was a result of moral failure rather than technical incompetence. The investigations to determine whether the failure was designed as political payback.

Matt Franko said...

But there is no respect for the process because she never studied it intensely... so hence the moral failure is set up...

Someone who studied transportation systems intensely would never make a decision to operate that type of system improperly... they would have too much respect for the whole transporation process...

Look technocracy eliminates all of that cronyism, etc... if we put in only the qualified...

Look at economics how f-ed up that is... Larry summers is Samuelson's nephew ie 100% guaranteed nepotism there... who knows how many others via nepotism, or the Title 7's and 9's, cronyism...

Tom Hickey said...

But there is no respect for the process because she never studied it intensely... so hence the moral failure is set up...

Then she was appointed to a position for which she was not qualified. Whose responsibility is that?

Random said...

Look up Peter Principle Tom. Its interesting. "Promoted to incompetence." Actually you prob already know it if you follow S. Adams.

Matt Franko said...

Well it is Christie's responsiblity...

But I was addressing your general disdain for technocrats... the technocrats are not the problem ... if they are qualified...

Tom Hickey said...

Look up Peter Principle Tom

Yeah, I have know about that for a long time and when I first encountered it, it confirmed my experience.

It's hard to get around, and it is also why once at the top people get reappointed when they fail.

The problem is emergence. In an emergent situation it is difficult to impossible to tell much about future performance based on past performance. In the well-known disclaimer: "Past performance is no guarantee of future performance.

This was known in the militaries of the world for a long time. Each promotion ups the scale and requires different classes of organizational power. This is true at the top where strategy is more important than tactics. Commanding a corp is one thing, a division another, an army another and a number of armies another. Rommel was a legendary tactician, for example, but not a good strategist.

Tom Hickey said...

But I was addressing your general disdain for technocrats... the technocrats are not the problem ... if they are qualified...

I don't have a distain for technocrats but rather technocracy. High-level management as the scale increases requires leader that are capable of wearing many hats.

I have a friend who only consults to CEOs of tech companies. He is a human relations guy with a strong tech background. He is called in when things are going wrong and the CEO is not able to apply tech solutions.

He told me that it is always the same story. He conducts his investigation and then schedules a meeting with the CEO.

He comes in and says, "Well, I found what is wrong with the company."

The CEO naturally asks what it it,

He responds, "Everyone thinks you are asshole."

The CEO's eye widen and he says, "They do?"

My friend says, "Yes. and here's why."

He then proceeds to tell the CEO how people are not machines and have feelings, etc.

Anonymous said...

"The challenge is not wealth redistribution but leveling the distribution of social, political and economic power."

I don't see this as making sense. Wealth is the monetary token of the underlying reality of social, political, and economic power. They all move together in a monetary socioeconomy.

Jim

Tom Hickey said...

I don't see this as making sense. Wealth is the monetary token of the underlying reality of social, political, and economic power. They all move together in a monetary socioeconomy.

The question is fairness, which boils down to a question of free riding. People are willing to put up with a certain amount of inequality, but when it becomes evident that something other than "just deserts" based on "marginal productivity" is at work, then they begin to question the foundations of the system.

Biological systems mobilize against free riders as parasites on the system. This is operative at the cellular level in the immune system. It is also found at relatively now levels in organism. Bees and ants sting free riders to death, for example.

Here is a clip that has gone viral of a money illustrating the fairness principle in action.

https://youtu.be/NOZ8OSd5xlg

That's beginning to happen and Davos Man is getting concerned enough to realize that the handwriting is on the wall.

The people "want their country back" and that is not only in the US, but also the UK and Europe.

Unless the big owners make adjustments, others will do it instead in reaction to neoliberal globalization and the concentration of power and wealth in the hands of a few oligarchs as puppet masters.

AXEC / E.K-H said...

How the 99 percent can bring overall profit of the 1 percent legally down to zero in 2017
Comment on Lars Syll on ‘The inequality gap — five sickening facts’

David Ruccio summarizes elsewhere: “In recent years, corporate profits have been rising because they’ve been able to squeeze their own workers, by forcing more of them to work not for themselves but for corporate giants and, when they do, paying them a smaller and smaller share of the value that is created. ...”

This story has been told again and again since Adam Smith. It is commonsensically convincing but, on closer inspection, nothing but soap box economics. The scientific fact of the matter is that economists do NOT know what profit is. More specifically, the four main approaches ― Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism ― are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, and ALL got profit wrong.#1 As Mirowski put it, “... one of the most convoluted and muddled areas in economic theory: the theory of profit.”

By consequence, everything economists have said since Adam Smith about distribution is scientific rubbish.#2 It does not matter which political flag an economist waves, ALL economists are scientifically incompetent.

The mistake/error/blunder of economists is that they argue from the micro perspective of the firm or the worker. Thus, they inevitably crash against a logical wall. The run-of-the-mill-best-and-brightest economists correctly observe that profit rises, for example, with productivity or increasing monopoly power or lower wages. Now, these factors are indeed effective for a SINGLE firm or a sub-sector. But what is true in partial analysis is NOT true for the economy as a whole.#3 This false generalization is known since antiquity as fallacy of composition. Most of standard economics consists of this fallacy.

For the economy as a WHOLE neither productivity nor monopoly power plays a role; overall profit for the closed investment economy is given by Qm=Yd+I-Sm. Legend: Qm monetary profit, Yd distributed profit, I investment expenditures, Sm monetary saving. With the trade balance and government added the equation becomes a bit longer.

The systemic Profit Law says that for the economy as a WHOLE it is NOT wage income that is the antagonist of profit but monetary saving Sm (see the minus sign). Put the other way round: it is deficit spending/dissaving of the household sector (and the government sector) that is a major profit determinant. Distributed profit, investment and an export surplus are the others.

The height of OVERALL profit is NOT an indicator that American firms are particularly productive or that American business people are particularly smart or greedy or monopolistically. These factors only influence the distribution of profits WITHIN the business sector. Overall profits are in the main the mirror image of GROWING private and public debt.#4

The Profit Law tells the 99 percent how to bring down overall monetary profit to zero: save and pay back your debt. No further action is needed (if prices fall proportionally).#5

ALL commonsensical partial profit theories are false and neither orthodox nor heterodox economists have realized it until this very day. Economics is a failed science and the proof is in the profit and distribution theory.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

#1 See ‘The Profit Theory is False Since Adam Smith. What About the True Distribution Theory?’
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2511741
#2 See ‘Inequality: Market failure or theory failure?’
http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2017/01/inequality-market-failure-or-theory.html
#3 See ‘How the intelligent non-economist can refute every economist hands down’
http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2015/12/how-intelligent-non-economist-can.html
#4 See ‘Rethinking deficit spending’
http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2016/12/rethinking-deficit-spending.html
#5 See also ‘Mathematical Proof of the Breakdown of Capitalism’
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2375578

AXEC / E.K-H said...

Three sickening facts about Keynesianism
Comment on Lars Syll on ‘The inequality gap — five sickening facts’

Paul Davidson argues: “In the GT Keynes noted that the two major faults of the capitalist monetary system was (1) its failure to provide full employment and (2) its arbitrary and inequitable distribution of income and wealth.” (see post Jan 22 on RWER blog)

The three facts about the General Theory are:

(i) Keynes messed up the employment theory, see ‘Mass unemployment: The joint failure of orthodox and heterodox economics’
http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2017/01/mass-unemployment-joint-failure-of.html

(ii) Keynesian deficit spending literally produced the extremely biased income distribution, see ‘Keynesianism as ultimate profit machine’
http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2015/07/keynesianism-as-ultimate-profit-machine.html

(iii) After-Keynesians neither detected nor rectified Keynes’s elementary mistakes/errors/blunders but parrot them until this day, see ‘How Keynes got macro wrong and Allais got it right’
http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2016/09/how-keynes-got-macro-wrong-and-allais.html

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke