S01.E10: Income Inequality

[Athena]

John Oliver discusses the growing income gap in the United States and the CIA twitter account.

[trow125]

John did give us this web-exclusive Fourth of July special YouTube clip to tide us over.

[roamyn]

You mean the day of colonial aggression? ;-)

[possibilities]

No Hobby Lobby follow up. :-(

 

What John sees as optimism, I see as denial. Or maybe superficiality. We buy the shiny packaging (rhetoric of equal opportunity) instead of the actual facts, and gleefully ignore the evidence of daily life experience. It's sort of like how we shun science in favor of a nice story about a wise old man and his magical mystery of making us special. I think it's charming of John to think we're optimists, though. It makes his dimples seem more prominent, like even thinking this way about us is cute.

[attica]

One would imagine that a guy who has risen in his field like Valcke would be self-aware enough to refrain from commenting on the poor behavior of people who consume the beer he forced the event to sell. And one would be hilariously wrong. Once again, the plutocrats are maroons.

[peeayebee]

Yeah, truly fuck that guy. Unbelievable. Does he even hear himself?

 

I need to go check out some of the #betterCIAjokes tweets.

[Traveller519]

Income inequality is one of the best examples of how a lot of people's politics can change with age and experience.

 

A lot of young adults starting their lives do see the income inequality as an issue and would like to see their own situations better set up. However, as you move forward in your career, move up in tax brackets, start a family, own a house and what not suddenly costs start to pile up things like income and property taxes seem like much less of a good idea, not to mention you are marching towards that $5m estate threshold. (One part of this piece I didn't like was John dismissing the fact that you're not the one paying the estate taxes because you're dead. True, John, but your family is and inherently we want to leave our family well off).

 

The problem is that we as a North American society have become addicted to getting things on the cheap, which is suppressing wages and salaries and has put those jobs that created a strong middle class a half-century back on other continents. John made a better point last summer on TDS when the minimum wage debate was ongoing that minimum wage hasn't kept pace with inflation. The fact that the income disparity is on pace with the roaring 20s is scary. Most of your 1%ers are Republican because the economic policy (and coexisting tax policies) serve their political agendas, whereas a lot of the social policy of the party they really have no interest in. The scary thing is that it's that social policy is what helps get them get the votes from a big portion of the population, a long with selling this story that everyone can become a 1%er.

 

Hence the "class warfare" talking point. I really enjoyed most of what John had to say on the topic (one exception noted above). What I think he, and the president, need to do is highlight to his audience and those that can afford premium cable, how reestablishing a stronger middle class is beneficial to everyone, even if there is some pain along the way.

[Athena]

I was a public affairs major so I studied income inequality a lot and also did my grad work in the UK as well. John mentioning the class issue in the UK vs the USA is  interesting. Class is a more prevalent there and even health is defined by class groupings. Very few other countries in the world look at class the UK way, but I digress.

 

I think the point about the 5mil tied in with the optimism or rather denial or anything in between that. I don't live in the USA, but how many of us will actually be able to leave 5mil to our kids? I can barely manage to save for a home and retirement over the long term. It's interesting that many Americans do have the view that they'll someday win or manage to make enough to even break that tax bracket where the tax would be "threat" to their kids' inheritance.

[attica]

It's less that we think we'll have $5mil to bequeath, and more that we (wrongly) think smaller estates are subject to the tax. Usually they just keep yelling DEATH TAX!!!!11one! without bothering to mention that such a terrible thing will never happen to you. So long as you're riled up enough not to vote in anybody in favor of it.

[Sharpie66]

The whole DEATH TAX issue, as the Repubs frame it, is that it targets "small farmers." Well, such a small percentage of farms are affected by the tax that it's really disingenous for the political framing going on. (And this is coming from someone whose family does own small farms in the Midwest!)

 

Oh, and I once read somewhere that for the U.S., the main issue is and always has been race. For the Brits, it's class. That really opened my eyes to how each culture approaches both of those topics.

[Traveller519]

It's also important to note that the estate tax, like income tax is marginal. So if you do qualify for the $5m threshold, it's only the amounts over that will become taxable.

 

I just looked up the thresholds, it's amazing how quickly they've marched up. It's a little scary to look at how effective the Bush government was at providing tax relief for high income earners and wealthy individuals during those years.

[Fremde Frau]

What did John say about beer? (I'm one of the people "stealing" on YouTube, so unfortunately I was only able to watch what they've posted there.)

 

I was surprised they spent so much time on the estate tax, when there is so much else to say on income inequality in addition to that. The 5mil threshold is so out of reach for 99% of Americans that the issue does feel absurd, but I don't think that the question of your family being taxed on the same income for which you were already taxed is, in itself, a completely unreasonable discussion to have. Of course, like most everything else, the nuances of who it actually affects under our current laws (0.14%) get lost in the hyperbolic "class warfare" talking points. I love the point he made about the optimism of Americans hoping to win the lottery of the "American Dream," since that's something that I've also been puzzled by after moving to Georgia fifteen years ago. I've never understood why members of my family support politicians whose policies only hurt their socioeconomic class, and then one day I realized it's because they believe it's "unAmerican" to doubt that dream or to hinder it in any way. It may not happen for them, but it's not their place to say someone else can't have a piece of that pie. Anyway, with so much time spent on the estate tax and then bringing up the Forbes 400 list, I wish he'd also covered what TDS deconstructed about Romney and Jon mentioned in this interview with a Yale professor of corporate finance law, that it's not only the inheritance itself but that those wealthy individuals then become or hire lobbyists to push for legislation that creates an "incumbency of wealth." I think that would have really nailed his overall point on how rigged the game is.

 

This is sort of beside the point, but I am appreciating that LWT is actually a "cleaner" show than TDS. There seems to be a code-shifting, if you will, between the jokes and the substance of a segment; the jokes are almost like non-sequiturs. Penis jokes and such aside, I feel like I could share most of his segments with my most conservative acquaintances and family members without the language or crudity automatically turning them off of the point he's making. (Whether they'd take to "some foreigner telling us how to run our country" is another matter, of course...)

[Grammaeryn]

Watching the show kept making me think of this John Steinbeck quote "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”

[VCRTracking]

Or as Bono from U2 once said on Conan O'Brien's show(6:30 mark): "An American will look up at the mansion on a hill and think 'One day I'm going to live in that mansion." while in Ireland they look up at the mansion on the hill and think "Someday.... I'm going to get that son of a bitch!"

 

Edited July 15, 2014 by VCRTracking

[KerleyQ]

I can't be the only one who was disappointed when he mentioned Carlos Danger and we didn't get the little dance?  

[Wax Lion]

 

What did John say about beer? (I'm one of the people "stealing" on YouTube, so unfortunately I was only able to watch what they've posted there.)

 

There was a segment called "Fuck that Guy" about how the FIFA guy (the one who said that World Cup cities will sell beer whether they want to or not) mused on how it seems like alcohol consumption leads to an increase in violence as if no one ever said anything to him on the topic.

[Fremde Frau]

Thank you, Wax Lion!

[VCRTracking]

John Oliver did a very good job of pretending to be worked up about Lord Grantham's latest f@#k up on Downton Abbey even though he never actually watches it and gives a good explanation of why in this video:

 

[Hanahope]

However, as you move forward in your career, move up in tax brackets, start a family, own a house and what not suddenly costs start to pile up things like income and property taxes seem like much less of a good idea, not to mention you are marching towards that $5m estate threshold.

 

Or you've spent 20-30 years working your ass off and you realize that you're never going to come close to $5mill.  About the only asset that most people will own of any significance is their home and there's so few homes that even come close to that worth.  Maybe you'll get a life insurance policy worth $500,000, but that's not part of your estate either. 

 

And small farms?  That also affects so few people its not even funny.  Most farms these days are owned by the likes of Monsanto.

 

Its total false information being given to people.

[Wax Lion]

I think the idea that you get more conservative with age has turned around.

 

It used to be that fear of crime and frustration with taxes were what changed your idealism. Nowadays, I think the key influences is the impenetrable bureaucracy you face when you get health care, a credit card or even a cell phone. Nowadays, I think people have more reason to fear going bankrupt because they got sick or getting screwed over by your employer than they have to fear a carjacking, though I think that's a generational shift. Crime is down and the nineties was packed with initiatives to streamline government paperwork. The assholes sticking to technicalities are more easily found in your company's HR department than at the DMV, nowadays.

[Hanahope]

I think the idea that you get more conservative with age has turned around.

 

It definitely depends on your life experiences.  I think almost anyone who at some point in their lives lost a job due to layoffs to 'increase the bottom line' for shareholders, haven't gotten a raise in years, had their medical insurance premium increased with service reductions, experienced difficulty in getting to use some basic rights (like voting), had difficulty paying medical bills or their mortgage, will start to wonder really, is having the ability to buy any gun I want really worth this?

[trow125]

LWT's favorite #BetterCIATweets

[Athena]

A bit OT, but going off on the conservative and liberal thing. I was reading about the Harvard Grant study, a 75 year longitudinal study of 268 men and found this amusing:

 

 

Political ideology had no bearing on life satisfaction—but the most-conservative men ceased sexual relations at an average age of 68, while the most-liberal men had active sex lives into their 80s. “I have consulted urologists about this,” Vaillant writes. “They have no idea why it might be so.”

[Fremde Frau]

This is probably an obvious point, but I was glancing at social media and saw someone refer to Jon Stewart as a "limousine liberal" and John Oliver as a "millionaire foreigner" criticizing the American system while making millions from it, and I feel like I finally have a grasp of why some conservatives and libertarians can't stand to hear celebrities discuss income inequality in negative terms and will always come back with "Why aren't they giving all of their own wealth away?" I think they feel that Jon, John, et al., won that "American Dream" lottery but don't appreciate it, and--being, in fact, fundamentally aware that access is limited and there is an incumbency of privilege--they want them to give up their "spot" to someone who would better guard it. Jealously guard it, that is, and not spit on it.

[attica]

You've got something there, Frau; it's like they think people like StewBeef and Olly are traitors to the side.

 

Also: seeing the hashtag 'murderfail' in one of the better CIA tweets is both hilarious and horrifying.

Edited July 17, 2014 by attica

[Hanahope]

Hah, those BetterCIATweets are pretty good.

[possibilities]

I really do think there's something to the idea that some people perceive life as a competition between "sides" and others don't. If you think there have to be winners and losers, you don't fight that there are, and you see attempts to fix it as a call to flip the sides.

[b2H]

 

....and saw someone refer to Jon Stewart as a "limousine liberal" and John Oliver as a "millionaire foreigner" criticizing the American system while making millions from it, and I feel like I finally have a grasp of why some conservatives and libertarians can't stand to hear celebrities discuss income inequality in negative terms....

 

For me, this is known as shooting the messenger.  Don't address the issue they bring up; slander them for having the temerity of speaking the truth.

 

It's why I barely listen to the media anymore - it's nothing but this kind of nonsense.

[dusang]

For me, this is known as shooting the messenger.  Don't address the issue they bring up; slander them for having the temerity of speaking the truth.

 

An ad hominem fallacy if you will.

[Kromm]

There was a segment called "Fuck that Guy" about how the FIFA guy (the one who said that World Cup cities will sell beer whether they want to or not) mused on how it seems like alcohol consumption leads to an increase in violence as if no one ever said anything to him on the topic.

This was only a so-so episode, but Fuck That Guy was definitely the highlight.  John had once last chance to burn FIFA, and I'm glad he took it.

 

Now on to the Fucktards at the IOC!!!