"The veracity of the statement has no bearing on the fact that you dismissed/questioned it first"

<Sigh> Pedantry is tiresome. Tell your friends.

My original statement had to do with my belief that wealth inequality is not a bad thing. It had little to do with OP's assertion that he foolishly sees current wealth inequality as "staggering".

"Forgive us if we take the words of economists, historians, reality, and our own senses over a random person's opinion. "

You are free to heed whoever pleases you. If you crave my
forgiveness, consider yourself forgiven.

"If that's not excessive, I have to wonder what could be in your opinion. "

I too have to wonder what "excessive" wealth inequality actually looks like. I don't think I have ever seen a large scale example. So, I'll just pull a number out of the air: under most distribution models, I would say that I consider a Gini coefficient of, say, .9 to be "excessive".

"My wife, head of her department for 10 years, working 45-50 hour weeks, makes $30k a year working like a dog....Warren Buffet makes >10000 times that much doing absolutely nothing...not excessive?!"

I thought we were talking about wealth distribution, not income distribution. Anyhow, to answer your question, the answer is "No", I do not consider that to be "excessive".

The veracity of the statement has no bearing on the fact that you dismissed/questioned it first, and now agree. Your position changed....and so has your argument now from 'staggering wealth inequality isn't a bad thing" to ' wealth inequality isn't staggering'.
Forgive us if we take the words of economists, historians, reality, and our own senses over a random person's opinion.

Wiki- in 2014 the top wealthiest 1% possess 40% of the nation's wealth; the bottom 80% own 7%; similarly, but later, the media reported, the "richest 1 percent in the United States now own more additional income than the bottom 90 percent".[8] The gap between the top 10% and the middle class is over 1,000%; that increases another 1,000% for the top 1%. The average employee "needs to work more than a month to earn what the CEO earns in one hour"
If that's not excessive, I have to wonder what could be in your opinion. My wife, head of her department for 10 years, working 45-50 hour weeks, makes $30k a year working like a dog (at a job that is life and death for her customers, platelet donation, her department keeps our only local blood bank open as the only money making department, she doesn't make fries.)...Warren Buffet makes >10000 times that much doing absolutely nothing...not excessive?! Also, because he only pays taxes on what he spends, he pays less in taxes than we do.
Thpp!....Ack!

Did you ever consider they ganged up on him because he's so incredibly anti American and destructive that anyone who cares about American Democracy would oppose him, Democrats, Republicans, independents, honest media, the intelligence community, law enforcement, etc? Probably not, you're convinced his party is turning on him because he's winning too much.

Lol. Steele dossier....the one that was just upheld in court when Trump's lible/slander cases were thrown out....or did you not know that?

Yes. It was the turn to backing him that was the wrong, self serving, proven short sighted move.

Trump has not sold out conservative principles, he's thrown them in the trash and shit on them. Clearly principles are NOT what you hang your hat on, he has none and you've admitted it privately.

The creature from the bronze lagoon was hardly the one to help clean up the swamp, and his most criminally convicted administration ever is pretty good proof of that.

That $80 you got goes away in a few years and becomes a raise in your taxes by around $160, in case you won't read the actual law. You didn't get a tax break, you got a tax raise and a 5 year loan packaged as a tax break, and you bought it. Trump, according to economists that studied his public holdings, stands to gain around $1 million per year forever....his tax breaks are permanent. Not what he said, but you don't care he outright lied to you about it for months, do you, yet one corrected mistake by Clinton (Benghazi was a protest over Koran burnings in America, quickly retracted) and you still think she'll be indicted for....something you're incapable of naming, but something.

Fuck, Bob. Your insistence on backing Trump's every move no matter what has made you bat shit insane, inconsistent, and totally disconnected from reality. I hope you can get therapy.

Pretty much everything @ChaosEngine said, and as pointed out in the Humans Need Not Apply video. There are far more factors going into this than the economists are willing to look at.

Shelf checkouts might result in slightly higher theft rates, and each person might be at the register than they would be with a properly trained cashier, but you now have one minimum wage employee watching 6 or 12 registers, rather than 6 or 12 people... that is a huge savings. That's 5 to 11 jobs lost, and at the low end, where people can least afford to lose job opportunities. It's just a matter of time until McDonald's, Wendy's and the like all add app-based ordering, or ordering at a kiosk, and that saves a couple employees there (Chick-fil-a already has that in their app, order, notify when you are there, they process the order)... and it wouldn't be too difficult to automate the McDonald's cooking line either... the burgers aren't flipped, the grill cooks both sides at the same time, drop them in place, grill down, cook, up, then put them in the stream tray, easy for a cheap bot to do. Portion control would be far easier with a bot too... there are huge incentives for them to move to automate...

The only real incentive not to automate as fully as everyone can is the fact it would cause a huge disruption to the economy if a Universal Basic Income isn't in place. I'd expect the biggest push for a UBI to eventually come from the various industries that want to automate, who'd gladly pay an automation tax to help pay the UBI in order to greatly increase their bottom lines, because we are very close to where a UBI, even based on an automation tax, is still cheaper than employing people.

Your video, Arthur Laffer, Economist to the Rich and Republican, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Wait wait wait... do you mean to tell me Trump ISN'T one of the smartest people ever? He's not smarter than all the generals, economists, etc? So he's been lying to us this whole time? I mean, he's clearly stated "I'm like.. a really smart person, ok." I just.. I mean... this is all very confusing and overwhelming.

Mark Blyth is my third favorite Scot, right after two brothers who are dear friends of mine. After his famous interview for Athens Live, every video of his released by the Watson Institute has pretty much been a must-watch, particularly his takes on "The Deplorables" and the Front Nationale.

I got his book "Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea" after it was praised heavily over at NakedCapitalism 3-4 years ago -- to me, there is no bigger compliment for an economist than praise by Yves and the commentariat over at NC.

His takes on the mercantilism of Germany are among the best, and by far the clearest. Bill Mitchell had some great pieces on it as well, but Blyth's capacity for facilitating understanding of these concepts is on a different level entirely.

So do I disagree with him on parts of his economic analysis? Yes, but only on the fringes where MMT/functional finance is concerned.

Check out the companion talk to his book:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQuHSQXxsjM

And a recent bit:
https://youtu.be/vGiHiZyKuAE?t=43m2s (juicy, this one)

Punchline for an old joke about opening a can of beans on a desert isle:

Economist: First, assume a can opener....

"Your gonna be on Gawker"

Lol, no he aint.

You might be right about the coup being a deception, but I also think that that's the opposite of Occam's razor. Saying that Erdogan ordered / incited / allowed the coup in order to facilitate greater dictatorial authority for himself is a more complex explanation than saying it's a poorly executed military coup. The world has seen failed coups before, so it's not an impossibility.

The least complex explanation would be that it was a poorly executed, earnest coup attempt. The second least complex explanation would be that it was a poorly executed coup attempt that Erdogan allowed to happen because he was confident that it would play into his hands. The third least complex explanation is that it was a poorly executed coup attempt funded by the CIA to undermine a potential Putin ally? http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21702337-turkish-media-and-even-government-officials-accuse-america-being-plot-after

I've largely opted out of this one. I'm not an economist or an expert in european law, so I haven't the knowledge to make an intelligent choice.

I am somewhat naturally inclined toward remaining: there was never a trace of patriotism in my soul, and the european courts at least have done some service toward protecting british freedoms, both from our government and from those corporations who'd like to own it. The common market's a good principle, and I don't have anything but admiration for the idea of a european superpower to oppose the twin fascisms of the US and China.

I never thought I'd grow up to care about immigration, but it turns out I don't like seeing millions of social conservatives marching into western europe from lesser cultures, pushing back against the progress we've made in recent decades.

There's another dimension to that question in the UK, which I don't think is well understood externally: where absolutely anyone with a european passport is allowed permanent residence here, the government keeps the figures down to appease its more xenophobic voters by making it practically impossible for those outside the EU. So, every year we tell thousands of highly skilled, highly intelligent prospective immigrants to just fuck off. Good policy.

In any event, I don't endorse unjust systems like democracy, and wouldn't vote in any referendum.

Good point. I admit I'm mostly quoting The Economist's recent article on it, since I haven't compared them myself:

"Meanwhile, fees as a percentage of assets under management have dropped from 0.68% in 1983 to 0.12% today (see chart). This compares with an industry average of 0.61% (or 0.77%, when excluding Vanguard itself). Fees on its passive products, at 0.08% a year, are less than half the average for the industry of 0.18%. Its actively managed products are even more keenly priced, at 0.17% compared with an average of 0.78%."

http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21700401-vanguard-has-radically-changed-money-management-being-boring-and-cheap-index-we

Also: http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21700390-rise-low-cost-managers-vanguard-should-be-celebrated-slow-motion-revolution

Totally agree with you on diversifying across index funds (as safe as fund managers are in theory compared to other financial institutions, I would never assume any financial company is 'safe') and of course staying under $250K FDIC insurance level.

The Donald said something sensible:
http://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11639292/donald-trump-default-print-money

To quote the St. Louis Fed, again: "As the sole manufacturer of dollars, whose debt is denominated in dollars, the U.S. government can never become insolvent, i.e., unable to pay its bills."

People talk about how much dollar value media exposure he got for free, but I think it's more the lack of criticism by networks afraid of losing access to him. That and being afraid of alienating the viewers who support him.

Instead you get the usual news equivocation of opposing views as equally valid and the treating of his policy ideas as serious proposals no matter how loony.

Similar to the Daily Show under Stewart, polit-satire shows like Colbert are able to get away with more direct criticism because it's under the umbrella of 'it's comedy, so everything is fair game' so I wouldn't equate him with more general TV news coverage.

Plenty of written coverage has been very good (Economist, Vox, hell even Fox had some good criticism):

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/05/03/any-republican-who-thinks-its-better-to-elect-trump-than-hillary-needs-their-head-examined.html

But obviously that has a much narrower reach or effect on publicity.

Yeah, that Krugman piece was pretty ridiculous.
'It wasn't the big banks that caused the crash, it was smaller banks....like Lehman Bro's' (really, smaller?), not BofA and their cohorts.....um....no. I'm sure he's technically correct, that SOME economists have said that, but not those that are impartial.

I'm also getting pretty sick of this lie that Sanders didn't have a plan and couldn't answer the question of "how do you break up the big banks". It's a lie, pure and simple, and only works on the ignorant willing to listen to edited 'interviews' where his actual answer is cut out, or willing to believe those with a clear bias against him. He had a clear plan, he explained it, it's a reasonable plan and it's well thought out. That Clinton can't 1)understand it or 2) admit it, and that her subordinates are willing to spread the lie exemplifies HER lack of qualification to be president, not his.

It's funny (sad really) that many of the 'extravagant promises' that she mentions that have taught the African-American voting block to be distrustful came from the Clintons.

Again with the 'large lead in delegates' lie.....it is 1) not large and 2) quickly evaporating. Without the (well paid for) super delegates, Clinton's lead (before losing Nevada and Missouri) was already <10%, with most states yet to vote polling heavily for Sanders (except in land line only, day time polls). In the past week, 2 states that were called for Clinton have gone to Sanders thanks to her delegates not showing up for her...even they don't really care for her enough to vote, and they're HER DELEGATES! When do we get to start saying Sanders is the clear frontrunner and that Clinton is harming the Democrats by badmouthing HIM? That day must be coming soon.

To the guilty, blame assignment is often called 'petulance' and 'self righteousness'. When one answers charges with insults against those making the charges, it's a pretty good indication that the charges are true.