[mycentstoo]

I think Americans workers are willing to tolerate conditions of exorbitant wealth disparity for at least two reasons.

First, because Americans believe someday that they will be wealthy and they do not want to eliminate their chance to join the club[a]. In my opinion, this is the most satisfying explanation. Workers do not want to remove that ladder to the upper class because in doing so, they place a hard cap on their expected outcomes.

Second, American political culture is derivative of a property-rights focused political philosophy. One of the biggest influences on the Bill of Rights and it's explicit protection of property rights was John Locke's Two Treatises of Government. John Locke argues that a defining purpose of government is in the protection of property (life, liberty and property). Americans therefore, view wealth as at least in some part meritocratic and rich, having earned their extra property, are wary of retracting that property. The importance of protecting what's "theirs" is politically, socially and legally baked-in to society.

If Americans' belief in their own prosperity suffer and/or the relative importance of property diminishes in light of other rights (health care, equality, etc.), I think then we might begin to see changes for high-wealth compensation. But, I would argue as long as each of these remain strong, we aren't likely to see any changes.

a. https://www.magnifymoney.com/news/wealthy-survey/, https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/31/44percent-of-americans-think...

[DoreenMichele]

I think Americans workers are willing to tolerate conditions of exorbitant wealth disparity for at least two reasons.

I think most likely most American workers feel pretty helpless, like pawns in a game they can't exercise control over. They likely do not think of themselves as tolerating wealth disparity. They most likely think of themselves as enduring something they simply can't fix.

[andsoitis]

While most Americas say there is too much economic inequality in the US, there are other issues that they are much more concerned about:

1. Making health care more affordable

2. Dealing with terrorism

3. Reducing gun violence

4. Addressing climate change

5. Reducing income inequality

6. Reducing illegal immigration

And #6 is quite telling in the context of income inequality.

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/most-am...

[DoreenMichele]

Health care is crazy expensive in the US. If you effectively addressed that, an issue which can leave The Have Nots bankrupt for needing medical care for a serious condition, you would go a long ways towards redressing income inequality.

[andsoitis]

Yes but notice it is about reducing expenses not about income.

[DoreenMichele]

Last I checked, the US was on a very short list of countries without maternity leave and the only developed/wealthy country without it and also on a short list of developed countries without universal health coverage.

It's not about reducing expenses. It's about trying to establish a social safety net that most countries that see themselves as more civilized than the US already have and it's part of what reduces inequality between The Haves and Have Nots in most places.

[andsoitis]

> It's not about reducing expenses.

Look, I'm only reporting what Pew Research purports to be on Amercans' minds. If you think Pew is wrong or that Americans have the wrong view, that's fine. I'm not arguing that.

[ac29]

The US has maternity/paternity leave via the FMLA, but its not very long (12 weeks) and its not paid. Small businesses (<50 employees) are also exempt.

[jollofricepeas]

I disagree strongly.

Americans only care about moving up that ladder themselves and keeping others below them.

Here’s examples..

1. Universal healthcare was proposed as early as 1912, but overwhelmingly white Americans at the time didn’t want to cover minorities. This was backed by insurers and the work of Frederick Hoffman, the head of American Statistical Association at the time. Nothing has changed on the universal healthcare issue since that time.

Source:

- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1497788/

3. Americans obviously don’t care about gun violence. Since the sunsetting of the Federal Assault Weapons Bans, mass shootings (overwhelmingly committed by AR15) have skyrocketed with no end in sight.

Source:

- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Assault_Weapons_Ban

- https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2022/06/15/did-the-assault-we...

4. 58% of Republicans believe the US country should prioritize expanding exploration and production of oil, coal and natural gas. As an example, China outspent the US almost to 5:1 in transitioning to low carbon energy production in 2023.

Source:

- https://www.politifact.com/article/2023/mar/27/us-versus-chi...

- https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/09/what-the-...

5. Americans don’t care about income inequality. Improving public school education is the best way to improve outcomes for poor people but state legislatures have been defunding public schools since desegregation.

Source: - https://sc.edu/uofsc/posts/2022/04/conversation-jim-crow.php

- https://www.epi.org/publication/public-education-funding-in-...

[andsoitis]

> Americans don’t care about income inequality.

Let's say this is true. Logically then, one could make the point that people who are loudly proclaiming that the American worker is suffering because of income inequality (just look through this thread) are clearly out of touch with the average American worker and maybe even have a saviour complex with a touch self-righteousness.

[jollofricepeas]

White collar workers on HN feign moral outrage at executive pay all while…

..collecting their 401k and equity grants as shareholders.

You see we all “want change” as long as we get to keep our houses, 401k profits and position in society.

[paulddraper]

Or.......

Americans realize that any tool that can be used to remove wealth from the rich can be used wealth from themselves as well.

France recently had what, like a hundred days of continual protests over poor economic conditions? But yes, give politicians more power to fight the fat cats. That'll work!

---

EDIT: Check my profile, I founded a healthcare billing company. You know who supported the Affordable Care Act the most? Insurance companies. [1]

[1] https://publicintegrity.org/health/insurers-backed-obamacare...

[lockhouse]

This! Every time I hear about a new tax for the rich, somehow the middle class end up actually paying it.

The rich have every tool in their arsenal to limit their tax liability. When you can afford the best accountants, lawyers, and politicians that money can buy, you can ensure that you will never have to pay your fair share. Oh, and even if a new law somehow does make their costs go up, they'll just pass it on to the middle class by raising the prices on whatever they sell to us to make money.

Unintended consequences are real.

[paulddraper]

"The poor often say, “‘Why don’t the rich pay for it?’ or ‘The rich should pay more in taxes and give it to the poor.’” However, the real rich never pay taxes. The people who pay taxes are the educated, middle class."

- Rich Dad, Poor Dad

[specialist]

If Books Could Kill's review of Rich Dad, Poor Dad was kind of fun.

https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/if-books-could-kill/ric...

https://www.reddit.com/r/IfBooksCouldKill/comments/12dg2r6/i...

[camgunz]

I don't think this is true, but aside from that, what would you do instead?

[lockhouse]

Reduce government waste. You could leave entitlement programs completely intact and still cut billions of dollars in spending without anyone but heavy hitting political donors noticing. Then simplify the tax code with straight forward graduated income tax brackets without exceptions or deductions.

[camgunz]

I looked around for lists of waste, fraud, and abuse and found this [0], and while I'm loathe to use The Heritage Foundation as a source let's just stipulate we could save something like $300B a year if we deleted all this stuff. That isn't even 5% of the budget, like you're not gonna tackle climate change with that kind of investment, especially if you're scouring all the new green policies to ensure they're minimally wasteful (also imagine the meta-bureaucracy needed for this).

I love the idea of simplifying the tax code, but I think if you're arguing it's useless to tax the rich I think you have to think that would be useless too, right? We'd need to actually have the rich pay their rate, but you're saying that doesn't work.

[0]: https://www.heritage.org/budget-and-spending/report/50-examp...

[lockhouse]

I mean simplify the tax code to the point where it is so simple there are no loopholes for the rich to use.

[endisneigh]

It’s simpler than that - there is no economic system that both rewards and incentivizes productivity that wouldn’t result in stark wealth or income equality.

Consider a simple game of flipping coins would result in similar inequality despite it not being a game of skill at all.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-inequality-ine...

Inequality is inevitable. Waste of time and energy discussing that. Rather we should discuss actual quality of life grievances (and to be fair these may be related to the inequalities).

[nerdponx]

There's also the weird and uncomfortable truth that substantial wealth accumulated all in one place is what keeps a significant amount of private business, arts, and craftsmen in business.

Who really needs a beautifully-curved hand-carved wood staircase? Nobody, but rich guys want them occasionally, so that's keeping a whole company and a couple of master craftsmen in business.

You could argue that this is just a misallocation of resources and that without said rich guys the same economic productivity would move elsewhere instead. But I'm not convinced that's equivalent, it's "mythical man-month" reasoning. $1 in 100 people's pockets is not the same as $100 in one pocket.

I'm not at all arguing that the money is deserved or that we shouldn't consider wealth redistribution policy. As you said, it comes back down to quality of life. When we talk about wealth inequality, it's important to realize that we're not trying to prevent people from making money and spending it on things other than groceries and gas, we're trying to prevent people from being materially poor, and mess with everything else as little as possible.

[mitthrowaway2]

It's sort of true. Give money to the masses, and there will be more demand for mass-produced products. When money is concentrated in the hands of a few elite, they'll commission some exceptional things.

But on the other hand, the same masterwork staircases could be put towards public buildings, like grand libraries, museums, and train stations. Then everyone can enjoy those splendid things and the master craftsmen still stay in business, without their works needing to be confined to the mansions of the wealthy.

But these days we tend to disapprove of public works being anything beyond the bare minimum of utilitarian functionality. Anything else is seen as a wasteful extravagance.

[s1artibartfast]

I often hear your first point repeated, but have never met a poor person that thought they were going to be a millionaire.

However, I think it is a biased caricature of a real phenomenon.

I think Most Americans don't want the government to put limitations on how successful they can be and put barriers in their way if they start being coming successful.

This is essentially the same idea with different framing

[nerdponx]

Part of the issue is that regulation tends to hurt small businesses more than big ones. So I think resistance to adding new rules is somewhat justified by the experience that adding new rules makes it primarily harder to run small business. Whether this is a matter of naivety in policymaking or anticompetitive regulatory capture is another issue.

[nitwit005]

There's just no coherent proposal to fix it.

Even the shareholders of some of these firms think the executives are robbing them with the compensation they've set (see ongoing Tesla lawsuits, for example). But, they can't come up with a clear rule for what "appropriate" pay is.

I suspect we'll hit a point where the pay is so excessive that it's worth buying companies purely to cut the pay of management, as it'll be the easiest way to improve profitability.