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Politics : Actual left/right wing discussion

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To: koan who wrote (8843)	12/15/2010 2:00:23 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) of 10087

Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson take on the winners and losers in public policy over the last thirty years. The winners are clearly the hyper-rich. The top one-tenth of one percent of Americans now make an average of $7.1 million a year. In 1974, they were making just over $1 million. Being a winner financially, doesn't equal being a winner in the public policy debate. It esp. doesn't mean you are a winner in that debate at the expense of the rest of the country as a whole. Also a million in 1974 is equal to about four and a half million today. Still a big increase but less than 2x instead of around 7x. Income inequality in the US is skyrocketing No it isn't. By normal measurements its increased over the years, but "skyrocketing" goes well beyond "increasing" or "has increased". And if you adjust for the fact that the average consumption bundle of the non-rich hasn't increased in price as much as the items the rich by, much of that increase goes away (except for comparisons to the "hyper rich", who are rare). Markets just can’t produce public goods we all need To an extent that's true by definition, but then its a tautology which doesn't really tell us much. Public goods can be defined as goods the market won't provide, but then you get "the market will not provide the goods it won't provide", which is a statement which conveys no information. A better definition is that public goods are non-rivalrous and non-excludable. That is goods whose use by one does not prevent their use by others and when generally you can't prevent people who have not paid for it from using it. By that definition sometimes the market does find a way to provide the goods. Also by that definition many things commonly considered public goods only partially fit the definition, or don't fit it at all. For example subway systems are not public goods.

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