Forbid teaching about White privilege

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Lew Dolby
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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by Lew Dolby » Thu Sep 10, 2020 8:58 am

Millennie Al wrote:
Thu Sep 10, 2020 12:25 am
I would be very interested to see such a demonstration, as it seems very highly implausible. Especially in the UK with inheritance tax at 40%.
No, the rate of inheritance tax is 0% - in that, that's what most pay. The marginal rate that a tiny number pay is 40%.

And 40% is only paid by dead households that leave, say, 1 milliion £. The very rich don't pay a penny. Eg the poor old Duke of W|estminster. He didn't inherit anything except access, control and the ability to spent millions (if not billions) but it was all placed in Trusts or some other tax avoidance vehicles. The super rich, for whom the laws are written, can always afford to find ways round paying taxes.
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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by Woodchopper » Thu Sep 10, 2020 9:23 am

Lew Dolby wrote:
Thu Sep 10, 2020 8:58 am
Millennie Al wrote:
Thu Sep 10, 2020 12:25 am
I would be very interested to see such a demonstration, as it seems very highly implausible. Especially in the UK with inheritance tax at 40%.
No, the rate of inheritance tax is 0% - in that, that's what most pay. The marginal rate that a tiny number pay is 40%.

And 40% is only paid by dead households that leave, say, 1 milliion £. The very rich don't pay a penny. Eg the poor old Duke of W|estminster. He didn't inherit anything except access, control and the ability to spent millions (if not billions) but it was all placed in Trusts or some other tax avoidance vehicles. The super rich, for whom the laws are written, can always afford to find ways round paying taxes.
It isn't complicated. UK inheritance tax is only paid on assets possessed within seven years of death. Just pass on ownership a decade or so before death is likely and there is nothing to pay.

In the UK, people only pay inheritance tax voluntarily or by accident.

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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by Little waster » Thu Sep 10, 2020 9:33 am

Lew Dolby wrote:
Thu Sep 10, 2020 8:58 am
[the poor old Duke of Westminster.
Yeah but he's only the 7th Duke of Westminister, the 1st Duke of Westminister was only the 3rd Marquess of Westminister. The 1st Marquess was virtually self-made being merely the 2nd Earl Grosvenor, his dad being the 6th Baronet Grosvenor. The 1st Baronet Grosvenor was the grandson of a mere Sir who founded the wealth of his family through the entrepreneurial genius of buying some church land on the cheap from a mate after the dissolution of the monasteries coerced the sale.

So its a heart-warming story of riches-to-mega-riches sustained over a mere 19 generations, you don't get much more meritocratic than that!
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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by Bird on a Fire » Thu Sep 10, 2020 12:03 pm

Somewhere between a third and a half of the UK is still owned by the aristocracy:
Shrubsole estimates that “the aristocracy and gentry still own around 30% of England”. This may even be an underestimate, as the owners of 17% of England and Wales remain undeclared at the Land Registry. The most likely owners of this undeclared land are aristocrats, as many of their estates have remained in their families for centuries.

As these estates have not been sold on the open market, their ownership does not need to be recorded at the Land Registry, the public body responsible for keeping a database of land and property in England and Watales.
Thats's excluding the crown/royals, who account for <2%.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/ ... ers-author
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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by discovolante » Thu Sep 10, 2020 12:11 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Thu Sep 10, 2020 12:03 pm
Somewhere between a third and a half of the UK is still owned by the aristocracy:
Shrubsole estimates that “the aristocracy and gentry still own around 30% of England”. This may even be an underestimate, as the owners of 17% of England and Wales remain undeclared at the Land Registry. The most likely owners of this undeclared land are aristocrats, as many of their estates have remained in their families for centuries.

As these estates have not been sold on the open market, their ownership does not need to be recorded at the Land Registry, the public body responsible for keeping a database of land and property in England and Wales.
Thats's excluding the crown/royals, who account for <2%.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/ ... ers-author
*cough* that's England, not the UK ;) although Scotland is probably worse. I wild camped on a large estate owned by some Dutch company not too long ago. Not sure what Wales looks like.
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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by Little waster » Thu Sep 10, 2020 12:14 pm

discovolante wrote:
Thu Sep 10, 2020 12:11 pm
Not sure what Wales looks like.
It's a bit like a pig's head.


HTH.
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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by Bird on a Fire » Thu Sep 10, 2020 1:16 pm

discovolante wrote:
Thu Sep 10, 2020 12:11 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Thu Sep 10, 2020 12:03 pm
Somewhere between a third and a half of the UK is still owned by the aristocracy:
Shrubsole estimates that “the aristocracy and gentry still own around 30% of England”. This may even be an underestimate, as the owners of 17% of England and Wales remain undeclared at the Land Registry. The most likely owners of this undeclared land are aristocrats, as many of their estates have remained in their families for centuries.

As these estates have not been sold on the open market, their ownership does not need to be recorded at the Land Registry, the public body responsible for keeping a database of land and property in England and Wales.
Thats's excluding the crown/royals, who account for <2%.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/ ... ers-author
*cough* that's England, not the UK ;) although Scotland is probably worse. I wild camped on a large estate owned by some Dutch company not too long ago. Not sure what Wales looks like.
Ooops! :oops:

I'm sure I've seen similar figures for Scotland somewhere. This Guardian article reporting on Andy Wightman's work suggests that a lot of the land formerly owned by aristocrats has now been sold to foreign billionaires and corporations, but also says that nobody really knows who owns what at the moment, remarkably.

It's possible that less of Scotland is owned by people who inherited it than the proportion of England.

Nevertheless, I think the salient point - that wealth is highly concentrated in a very small number of families - has been quite well supported.
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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by discovolante » Thu Sep 10, 2020 1:32 pm

Millennie Al wrote:
Thu Sep 10, 2020 12:25 am
However the idea that we pass wealth like that is ridiculous. How many very wealthy people have inherited it from their great grandparents? Generally when people inherit wealth they are less able to manage it than their parents, and another generation or two generally sees the wealth decline a lot.

And, quite apart from that, it betrays a fundamental error in how the world works. Wealth is not zero sum. In aggregate, people today are wealthier than their parents, who in turn were wealthier than their parents. You don't have to go very far back before the comparison gets to the point that an ordinary person today is wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of their ancestor.
I'm talking about distribution, not relative wealth over time within generations.

Can you give evidence of how people 'generally' squander their inherited wealth?
To take a very simple and concrete example - houses. There has been lots of house building going on, resulting in a very obvious and tangible increase in the total wealth to go around. And it's certainly not the case that the new houses are distributed amongst the descendants of wealthy people. Many homeowners have become so simply by paying for their house.
Or...granting a security over the property to their bank. Which is owned by...you may own the house outright eventually but most people aren't cash buyers.
as far as I can remember, it's been demonstrated that inherited wealth is becoming more concentrated rather than the other way round.
I would be very interested to see such a demonstration, as it seems very highly implausible. Especially in the UK with inheritance tax at 40%.
I think perhaps what I was getting at was concentration of wealth, with inheritance being a factor, but my memory played tricks on me. Anyway for now I've just managed to dig up a couple of graphs from Thomas Piketty which are a bit more modest than I might have suggested but show a reversal of a trend in the 20th century towards a lower concentration of inherited wealth (connected with WWII of course). The first one is based on figures from France but I wasn't specifically talking about the UK.

http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capital ... /F11.6.pdf - a simulation of the value of inheritance as a percentage of national income, from 1820 to present and then projected to 2100.

http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capital ... F11.12.pdf - inheritance flow in France, UK and Germany 1900 to 2010 (again, value of inheritance as a percentage of national income). Lower than 1900 but on the increase from the mid 20th century.

The data is limited and only goes so far back historically but as well as looking at the present, if it shows that inheritance was even more significant historically, you can suspect that the structures put in place by the beneficiaries of that wealth will still have effects today. That's something that requires more evidence than I can provide for now but the extent to which a lot of institutional wealth is founded on slavery is something that has been discussed a lot in recent months.
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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by sTeamTraen » Thu Sep 10, 2020 3:44 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Thu Sep 10, 2020 12:03 pm
Somewhere between a third and a half of the UK is still owned by the aristocracy:
But that was at least as true 40 years ago, when people with reasonably normal jobs could imagine buying a house of some kind within 20 miles of a major city.

ISTM that the bigger current problem is that my generation have slurped up much of the 60-70% of the non-aristocracy resources and concentrated it in the value of their houses, yet typically leave estates well below the IHT threshold. Our (collective) kids are waiting for us to die so they can get a chance to stop paying rent. If we live to 90 then they will be able to do that when they're 60. Woo-hoo.
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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by JQH » Thu Sep 10, 2020 4:17 pm

sTeamTraen wrote:
Wed Sep 09, 2020 11:18 pm
Of course, one can also apply that to, say, the daughters of a poor US white family, versus Malia and Sasha Obama.)
That's economic privilege rather than white privilege. If Malia and Sash Obama are in one BMW and two young white women are in another, which car will be stopped by the cops on the assumption that those within had probably nicked it?
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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by sTeamTraen » Thu Sep 10, 2020 6:18 pm

JQH wrote:
Thu Sep 10, 2020 4:17 pm
sTeamTraen wrote:
Wed Sep 09, 2020 11:18 pm
Of course, one can also apply that to, say, the daughters of a poor US white family, versus Malia and Sasha Obama.)
That's economic privilege rather than white privilege. If Malia and Sash Obama are in one BMW and two young white women are in another, which car will be stopped by the cops on the assumption that those within had probably nicked it?
Well, I presume that the Obamas will have a secret service escort. I agree that if you have, say, a white and a black Premiership footballer each driving a Bentley, all other things being equal, the black one will get stopped more. But a couple of white likely lads in tracksuits with Peaky Blinders haircuts driving a nice Merc around certain parts of London might well get pulled over as well. As I tried to say in my earlier post, at least some part of the black experience overlaps with the poor experience; that doesn't mean that 100% does, of course. (The single most useful thing I have taken away from my PhD studies into real life is the concept of effect size. Basically, most politics is a shouting match over binary claims, and most reality is about 15-20% maximum of variance explained.)
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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by EACLucifer » Thu Sep 10, 2020 8:56 pm

JQH wrote:
Thu Sep 10, 2020 4:17 pm
sTeamTraen wrote:
Wed Sep 09, 2020 11:18 pm
Of course, one can also apply that to, say, the daughters of a poor US white family, versus Malia and Sasha Obama.)
That's economic privilege rather than white privilege. If Malia and Sash Obama are in one BMW and two young white women are in another, which car will be stopped by the cops on the assumption that those within had probably nicked it?
There's actually interesting empirical evidence of this - at times of day when the light levels means you can't see the identity of the driver, traffic stops are much less racially biased (in whichever bit of the US the research was in, at least)

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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by EACLucifer » Thu Sep 10, 2020 8:58 pm

sTeamTraen wrote:
Thu Sep 10, 2020 6:18 pm
JQH wrote:
Thu Sep 10, 2020 4:17 pm
sTeamTraen wrote:
Wed Sep 09, 2020 11:18 pm
Of course, one can also apply that to, say, the daughters of a poor US white family, versus Malia and Sasha Obama.)
That's economic privilege rather than white privilege. If Malia and Sash Obama are in one BMW and two young white women are in another, which car will be stopped by the cops on the assumption that those within had probably nicked it?
Well, I presume that the Obamas will have a secret service escort. I agree that if you have, say, a white and a black Premiership footballer each driving a Bentley, all other things being equal, the black one will get stopped more. But a couple of white likely lads in tracksuits with Peaky Blinders haircuts driving a nice Merc around certain parts of London might well get pulled over as well.
IIRC, Graeme Swann was largely pulled over for driving an expensive car in a poor bit of Nottingham, although given the time of night, they probably hadn't a clue who was in it.

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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by Millennie Al » Mon Sep 14, 2020 3:50 am

discovolante wrote:
Thu Sep 10, 2020 1:32 pm
Millennie Al wrote:
Thu Sep 10, 2020 12:25 am
However the idea that we pass wealth like that is ridiculous. How many very wealthy people have inherited it from their great grandparents? Generally when people inherit wealth they are less able to manage it than their parents, and another generation or two generally sees the wealth decline a lot.

And, quite apart from that, it betrays a fundamental error in how the world works. Wealth is not zero sum. In aggregate, people today are wealthier than their parents, who in turn were wealthier than their parents. You don't have to go very far back before the comparison gets to the point that an ordinary person today is wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of their ancestor.
I'm talking about distribution, not relative wealth over time within generations.
But you said:
as far as I can remember, it's been demonstrated that inherited wealth is becoming more concentrated rather than the other way round.
If you means non-inherited wealth, then that's a very different matter, and very difficult to measure.
Can you give evidence of how people 'generally' squander their inherited wealth?
Find any list of rich people - e.g. the Sunday Times rich list - and see how many of them are wealthy due to inheriting it and have got richer than whoever they inherited from other than by generating the wealth themselves.
To take a very simple and concrete example - houses. There has been lots of house building going on, resulting in a very obvious and tangible increase in the total wealth to go around. And it's certainly not the case that the new houses are distributed amongst the descendants of wealthy people. Many homeowners have become so simply by paying for their house.
Or...granting a security over the property to their bank. Which is owned by...you may own the house outright eventually but most people aren't cash buyers.
When you take out a mortgage loan you still own the property. And I'd be very surpised if you could find a major bank that is owned by rich people rather than by shareholders (which, obviously, will then include ordinary people via pension funds etc).
as far as I can remember, it's been demonstrated that inherited wealth is becoming more concentrated rather than the other way round.
I would be very interested to see such a demonstration, as it seems very highly implausible. Especially in the UK with inheritance tax at 40%.
I think perhaps what I was getting at was concentration of wealth, with inheritance being a factor, but my memory played tricks on me. Anyway for now I've just managed to dig up a couple of graphs from Thomas Piketty which are a bit more modest than I might have suggested but show a reversal of a trend in the 20th century towards a lower concentration of inherited wealth (connected with WWII of course). The first one is based on figures from France but I wasn't specifically talking about the UK.

http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capital ... /F11.6.pdf - a simulation of the value of inheritance as a percentage of national income, from 1820 to present and then projected to 2100.

http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capital ... F11.12.pdf - inheritance flow in France, UK and Germany 1900 to 2010 (again, value of inheritance as a percentage of national income). Lower than 1900 but on the increase from the mid 20th century.
I was very pleased to see that those graphs said where I could find sources to the data, and then very disappointed to find it was just a link to Piketty's book. I'm not reading a whole book just to try to track down where that data came from. However, looking at the graphs, 12% of "national income" in France was the "actual value of bequests and gifts". I'll assume the national income means GDP, which is $2.7trillion, so this means that annually, $324billion is inherited or gifts. I'll have to assume that the gifts are intergenerational, because otherwise Piketty has added together two figures that make no sense when added together. From https://www.visualcapitalist.com/map-wealth-of-nations/ I find that the total wealth of France is $5.9trillion. Since intergenerational transfers can, by definition, only happen once per generation, (and must also happen at that rate, as the dead cannot keep owning their property) that means that French people live an average of 18 years.

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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by Millennie Al » Mon Sep 14, 2020 3:55 am

Lew Dolby wrote:
Thu Sep 10, 2020 8:58 am
Millennie Al wrote:
Thu Sep 10, 2020 12:25 am
I would be very interested to see such a demonstration, as it seems very highly implausible. Especially in the UK with inheritance tax at 40%.
No, the rate of inheritance tax is 0% - in that, that's what most pay. The marginal rate that a tiny number pay is 40%.
HMRC would disagree with you as their figures show that £5billion was collected last year, so it certainly cannot be 0%.

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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by Little waster » Mon Sep 14, 2020 7:21 am

Millennie Al wrote:
Mon Sep 14, 2020 3:55 am
Lew Dolby wrote:
Thu Sep 10, 2020 8:58 am
Millennie Al wrote:
Thu Sep 10, 2020 12:25 am
I would be very interested to see such a demonstration, as it seems very highly implausible. Especially in the UK with inheritance tax at 40%.
No, the rate of inheritance tax is 0% - in that, that's what most pay. The marginal rate that a tiny number pay is 40%.
HMRC would disagree with you as their figures show that £5billion was collected last year, so it certainly cannot be 0%.
But given the annual value of inheritance is of the order of £90bn (2014/2015 numbers) and rising that's a long way shy of a 40% rate, more like 6%.
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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by jimbob » Mon Sep 14, 2020 7:54 am

JQH wrote:
Thu Sep 10, 2020 4:17 pm
sTeamTraen wrote:
Wed Sep 09, 2020 11:18 pm
Of course, one can also apply that to, say, the daughters of a poor US white family, versus Malia and Sasha Obama.)
That's economic privilege rather than white privilege. If Malia and Sash Obama are in one BMW and two young white women are in another, which car will be stopped by the cops on the assumption that those within had probably nicked it?
There was a depressing article about this.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/201 ... h-gap.html

and a NYT version
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/201 ... k-men.html

As this chart shows, a black man raised by two parents together in the 90th percentile — making around $140,000 a year — earns about the same in adulthood as a white man raised by a single mother making $60,000 alone.
A black boy in the US born in the top quintile is almost as likely to end up in the bottom as the top quintile
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by monkey » Mon Sep 14, 2020 10:00 am

Millennie Al wrote:
Mon Sep 14, 2020 3:50 am
I was very pleased to see that those graphs said where I could find sources to the data, and then very disappointed to find it was just a link to Piketty's book. I'm not reading a whole book just to try to track down where that data came from. However, looking at the graphs, 12% of "national income" in France was the "actual value of bequests and gifts". I'll assume the national income means GDP, which is $2.7trillion, so this means that annually, $324billion is inherited or gifts. I'll have to assume that the gifts are intergenerational, because otherwise Piketty has added together two figures that make no sense when added together. From https://www.visualcapitalist.com/map-wealth-of-nations/ I find that the total wealth of France is $5.9trillion. Since intergenerational transfers can, by definition, only happen once per generation, (and must also happen at that rate, as the dead cannot keep owning their property) that means that French people live an average of 18 years.
You're not calculating life expectancy, pretty sure France doesn't have a one in one out rule. I'm not actually sure what you have calculated there, it might be an estimate of the generation gap, but that doesn't seem right either, for a reason I can't put my finger on. You should have stopped when you had a percentage of the wealth that is inherited, whatever you have calculated will be wrong because wealth is not constant.

Also, you don't have to get the book to see what Piketty did. This paper describes the sources he used in his book https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/129/3/1255/1818714, but it doesn't have the inheritance bit. You'll see he uses Net National Income, rather than GDP, using government accounts.

Anyway, Piketty reckons that in 2010 french private wealth was some under 6x NNI. If inheritance was 12% of NNI, roundabouts <2% of wealth was transferred by inheritance or gift that year, compared to your estimate of 5.5%.

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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by monkey » Mon Sep 14, 2020 10:01 am

monkey wrote:
Mon Sep 14, 2020 10:00 am
Millennie Al wrote:
Mon Sep 14, 2020 3:50 am
I was very pleased to see that those graphs said where I could find sources to the data, and then very disappointed to find it was just a link to Piketty's book. I'm not reading a whole book just to try to track down where that data came from. However, looking at the graphs, 12% of "national income" in France was the "actual value of bequests and gifts". I'll assume the national income means GDP, which is $2.7trillion, so this means that annually, $324billion is inherited or gifts. I'll have to assume that the gifts are intergenerational, because otherwise Piketty has added together two figures that make no sense when added together. From https://www.visualcapitalist.com/map-wealth-of-nations/ I find that the total wealth of France is $5.9trillion. Since intergenerational transfers can, by definition, only happen once per generation, (and must also happen at that rate, as the dead cannot keep owning their property) that means that French people live an average of 18 years.
You're not calculating life expectancy, pretty sure France doesn't have a one in one out rule. I'm not actually sure what you have calculated there, it might be an estimate of the generation gap, but that doesn't seem right either, for a reason I can't put my finger on. You should have stopped when you had a percentage of the wealth that is inherited, whatever you have calculated will be wrong because wealth is not constant.

Also, you don't have to get the book to see what Piketty did. This paper describes the sources he used in his book https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/129/3/1255/1818714, but it doesn't have the inheritance bit. You'll see he uses Net National Income, rather than GDP, using government accounts.

Anyway, Piketty reckons that in 2010 french private wealth was some under 6x NNI. If inheritance was 12% of NNI, roundabouts <2% of private wealth was transferred by inheritance or gift that year, compared to your estimate of 5.5%.

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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by snoozeofreason » Mon Sep 14, 2020 10:07 am

jimbob wrote:
Mon Sep 14, 2020 7:54 am


There was a depressing article about this.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/201 ... h-gap.html

and a NYT version
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/201 ... k-men.html

As this chart shows, a black man raised by two parents together in the 90th percentile — making around $140,000 a year — earns about the same in adulthood as a white man raised by a single mother making $60,000 alone.
A black boy in the US born in the top quintile is almost as likely to end up in the bottom as the top quintile
The NYT also let's you create your own mobility animations https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/201 ... ation.html (you need to create an account, but you can create a free one). It's still depressing, but fascinating at the same time.
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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by Woodchopper » Mon Sep 14, 2020 10:15 am

snoozeofreason wrote:
Mon Sep 14, 2020 10:07 am
jimbob wrote:
Mon Sep 14, 2020 7:54 am


There was a depressing article about this.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/201 ... h-gap.html

and a NYT version
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/201 ... k-men.html

As this chart shows, a black man raised by two parents together in the 90th percentile — making around $140,000 a year — earns about the same in adulthood as a white man raised by a single mother making $60,000 alone.
A black boy in the US born in the top quintile is almost as likely to end up in the bottom as the top quintile
The NYT also let's you create your own mobility animations https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/201 ... ation.html (you need to create an account, but you can create a free one). It's still depressing, but fascinating at the same time.
Thanks, that was really interesting.

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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by Bird on a Fire » Mon Sep 14, 2020 11:29 am

monkey wrote:
Mon Sep 14, 2020 10:00 am
Millennie Al wrote:
Mon Sep 14, 2020 3:50 am
I was very pleased to see that those graphs said where I could find sources to the data, and then very disappointed to find it was just a link to Piketty's book. I'm not reading a whole book just to try to track down where that data came from. However, looking at the graphs, 12% of "national income" in France was the "actual value of bequests and gifts". I'll assume the national income means GDP, which is $2.7trillion, so this means that annually, $324billion is inherited or gifts. I'll have to assume that the gifts are intergenerational, because otherwise Piketty has added together two figures that make no sense when added together. From https://www.visualcapitalist.com/map-wealth-of-nations/ I find that the total wealth of France is $5.9trillion. Since intergenerational transfers can, by definition, only happen once per generation, (and must also happen at that rate, as the dead cannot keep owning their property) that means that French people live an average of 18 years.
You're not calculating life expectancy, pretty sure France doesn't have a one in one out rule. I'm not actually sure what you have calculated there, it might be an estimate of the generation gap, but that doesn't seem right either, for a reason I can't put my finger on. You should have stopped when you had a percentage of the wealth that is inherited, whatever you have calculated will be wrong because wealth is not constant.

Also, you don't have to get the book to see what Piketty did. This paper describes the sources he used in his book https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/129/3/1255/1818714, but it doesn't have the inheritance bit. You'll see he uses Net National Income, rather than GDP, using government accounts.

Anyway, Piketty reckons that in 2010 french private wealth was some under 6x NNI. If inheritance was 12% of NNI, roundabouts <2% of wealth was transferred by inheritance or gift that year, compared to your estimate of 5.5%.
There's not much point using French government figures to assess wealth anyway, given that most of the wealth of the very wealthy is offshore, and loads of it is undeclared and untraceable.

I did enjoy the way Millenie Al thought he could overturn the findings of one of the most influential and respected economics books with some back-of-the-envelope scribblings, without even making an effort to find out what the book says. Seriously impressive intellectual hubris, that.
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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by discovolante » Mon Sep 14, 2020 11:43 am

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Mon Sep 14, 2020 11:29 am
I did enjoy the way Millenie Al thought he could overturn the findings of one of the most influential and respected economics books with some back-of-the-envelope scribblings, without even making an effort to find out what the book says. Seriously impressive intellectual hubris, that.
I think that assuming by 'national income' Piketty meant GDP, when the failure of GDP as an indicator of a country's financial wellbeing is more or less central to Piketty's arguments was a pretty good indicator of where that post was going tbh. Might have been deliberate!
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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by Bird on a Fire » Mon Sep 14, 2020 12:12 pm

discovolante wrote:
Mon Sep 14, 2020 11:43 am
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Mon Sep 14, 2020 11:29 am
I did enjoy the way Millenie Al thought he could overturn the findings of one of the most influential and respected economics books with some back-of-the-envelope scribblings, without even making an effort to find out what the book says. Seriously impressive intellectual hubris, that.
I think that assuming by 'national income' Piketty meant GDP, when the failure of GDP as an indicator of a country's financial wellbeing is more or less central to Piketty's arguments was a pretty good indicator of where that post was going tbh. Might have been deliberate!
Obviously I haven't read Capital either, lest anyone thinks I'm showing off (or bullshitting). But I have read Chronicles, a mercifully shorter collection of journalistic pieces making similar points to a lay audience, and he's had other articles in the Guardian and elsewhere. I even read the wikipedia article on his book, which summarises its contents and others' critiques of its methodology in a few short paragraphs.

I get the impression that sometimes - and I don't want to single Millenie Al out too much here, because others do it too - when people read a post that seems to confront their worldview they react, generally in a way that implies they think the people they're responding to are incredibly stupid, before doing the due diligence to check that they've understood what's being said and sought out a bit of information and context on the subject.
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Re: Forbid teaching about White privilege

Post by Bird on a Fire » Mon Sep 14, 2020 12:14 pm

Also, every time I see Piketty I hear
His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy
There's vomit on his sweater already, Thomas Piketty
which is how I like to think he gets introduced on formal speaking occasions, even though I know deep-down that it's probably at most a rare occasion.
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