Guess what? The rich are getting richer!!!!

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: Pabster

Originally posted by: piasabird
It is a convenient lie to say only right wingers are rich. It is just bigotry.

Particularly when you look at George Soros, the left's big funds man.

Or John Kerry. He would have been the richest President in the history of this country. Though I am sure he has a firm grasp on the needs of the middle class 😀isgust;

 

[palehorse]

The gap is intentional, and one the causes is the eternal assault on the middle class by the Left.

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: palehorse74
The gap is intentional, and one the causes is the eternal assault on the middle class by the Left.

That is SO true.

It's pretty sad really when the left engage in this kind of class warfare when they're the ones taxing them out the wazoo and literally preventing them from getting ahead. Then again the poor overwhelmingly vote demoncrat so it's not surprising that in order to maintain power they keep people poor. Sad really because in this country there is no barrier to success other than yourself.

 

[1EZduzit]

Originally posted by: Pabster

Originally posted by: techs
Yay! Our poor are better than Africa's poor. There's something to be proud of.

Actually, it is. The USA has the highest standard of "poor" living around. Only here in the USA does "poor" mean owning a Plasma TV, getting fat on McD, et al.

Got a link to prove that?? I didn't think so.

There's an old saying about "engaging brain before engaging mouth" but one would think the brain would have enough time to think about what it's saying while typing such a moronic claim. I can only conclude you have a malfunctioning brain.

 

[CPA]

Originally posted by: ayabe

Originally posted by: EagleKeeper
If the income of the poor increase, how can they be getting poorer?

The available wealth is not fixed - it can grow.

Are you now learning economics from the master, McOwen?

Inflation my friend - which for the past five years or so has been outpacing real wages for normal people.

Wrong, it's only been the past two years.

 

[CPA]

Originally posted by: dyna
I do believe corporate executives take way more than their fair share from companies. I think its BS that congress will raise taxes/cut benefits and then give themselves a pay raise. I think too many people get away with insider trading. Why does a stock always go up before the news gets out. hmmm. Those are things I despise.

But if somebody takes risks, sacrifices their free time and earns more money...don't bitch that they might have a BMW and you have a Hyundai.

Do you think the same of those in the entertainment industry?

 

[ayabe]

Originally posted by: CPA

Originally posted by: ayabe

Originally posted by: EagleKeeper
If the income of the poor increase, how can they be getting poorer?

The available wealth is not fixed - it can grow.

Are you now learning economics from the master, McOwen?

Inflation my friend - which for the past five years or so has been outpacing real wages for normal people.

Wrong, it's only been the past two years.

WRONG.

"The New York Times reports that the median hourly wage for American workers has declined 2 percent since 2003, after factoring in inflation. Median wages are the point at which equal numbers of workers earn more and less.

The paper reports that while average family income, adjusted for inflation, has continued to advance at a good clip, that has been helped by gains by the top wage earners.

The paper says that about nine out of 10 workers have seen inflation that has outpaced their pay increases over the last three years, according to the Labor Department. That includes workers earning up to $80,000 a year, a level that puts them in the 90th percentile of wage earners.

The paper reports that with employment gains softening in recent months, inflationary pressures stay high due to factors such as high energy prices, so the gap between wages and prices could increase for many workers.

CNN

I know it's hard to resist jumping on the right wing circle jerk going on in this thread, but try to rise above and maintain your integrity.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Originally posted by: CPA

Originally posted by: ayabe

Originally posted by: EagleKeeper
If the income of the poor increase, how can they be getting poorer?

The available wealth is not fixed - it can grow.

Are you now learning economics from the master, McOwen?

Inflation my friend - which for the past five years or so has been outpacing real wages for normal people.

Wrong, it's only been the past two years.

I'm sure you have better links than us. Would you point us to what has happened to real median income over the last couple decades? Note bolded so we don't get "average" income. On average I'm a billionaire when it's me, 5 other people, and Bill Gates.

 

[StageLeft]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you haven't looked at how individual debt ratios have rapidly increased over the last decade.

People are impulsive and stupid, both rich and poor.

I love how everyone looks at the same statistics and has completely different opinions about what they indicate based on their political leanings.

Statistics don't lie, but people who don't understand them think they do and will interpret them wrongly time and time again.

If an earner's wage doesn't go up according to inflation, they have less available income to buy things with. Yes, their income itself has gone up, but it has increased less than inflation so they pay more for products. The rich get richer....the poor get poorer.

This is true IF their wages are not going up as quickly as inflation AND IF the price of goods is not decreasing enough to offset that, for a net loss.

I don't know if it's increasing/decreasing vs inflation and how that ties into goods. Since nobody has posted it here, we're all just playing with ourselves, since we're arguing without having the proper valid data in front of us anyway 🙂

 

[ayabe]

Originally posted by: Skoorb

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you haven't looked at how individual debt ratios have rapidly increased over the last decade.

People are impulsive and stupid, both rich and poor.

I love how everyone looks at the same statistics and has completely different opinions about what they indicate based on their political leanings.

Statistics don't lie, but people who don't understand them think they do and will interpret them wrongly time and time again.

If an earner's wage doesn't go up according to inflation, they have less available income to buy things with. Yes, their income itself has gone up, but it has increased less than inflation so they pay more for products. The rich get richer....the poor get poorer.

This is true IF their wages are not going up as quickly as inflation AND IF the price of goods is not decreasing enough to offset that, for a net loss.

I don't know if it's increasing/decreasing vs inflation and how that ties into goods. Since nobody has posted it here, we're all just playing with ourselves, since we're arguing without having the proper valid data in front of us anyway 🙂

Inflation hits every segment of the economy and recently most of that has been driven by energy prices. If oil goes up, so do the prices of pretty much everything.

All the data is there, and has been presented. The inability of some to admit that this isn't a good thing and that the purchasing power of most people has decreased is ideological stubbornness of the highest degree.

 

[Craig234]

Originally posted by: Skoorb
This is stupid. If we're looking at income disparity, it's totally superfluous to say the rich are getting richer while the poor get poorer, since all we're looking at, myopically, is percentages. The real value here is to note that the rich are getting richer because they have more money (who cares what piece of the pie they get, since wealth can grow as eaglekeeper said) but also that the poor are getting richer because THEY have more money, too.

How is it possible that the poor are getting poorer if by many standards we have more dispoable income than we used to? People cry that they cannot live on one salary anymore, but the fact is, houses are much bigger than they were forty years ago and people are able to afford vacations that they couldn't before.

How many countries exist in which it's the poor who are the fattest? America is top of this pyramid. If only the poor in Nigeria could be so lucky.

My gosh - "The real value here is to note that the rich are getting richer because they have more money"???

Have you ever heard of the word percent? That accounts for their having more money - when the guy with a billion makes $100M, and the guy with $10K makes $1K, it's both 10%.

It's already accounted for in the percent that the wealthy have more. This is pointing out that the wealthy are increasing their *share*, beyond already having more.

And that is a *disaster* for democracy in several ways, but the right won't understand.

The top 5% have gone from half the nation's wealth to over 75% since Reagan became president. You don't see that in the 'biased media', though.

 

[Craig234]

Originally posted by: Capitalizt
The rich are getting richer? Income gap growing? WHO FARKING CARES? Why should anyone give a F*CK what anyone else makes? Mind your own business and stop whining like an 8 year old.

Because when others make *too* much more than you, you wil be in servitude, period. One part of wealth is 'absolute', where many gain, like owning a nice computer as that technology gets cheaper. Other parts are relative, like whether there are many Americans getting wealthy by owning businesses, or the ownership is concentrated and most are working for the wealthy.

 

[Craig234]

Originally posted by: piasabird
It is a convenient lie to say only right wingers are rich. It is just bigotry.

You can't read, can you? No one has said that I know of.

 

[alchemize]

Obviously Techs has no concept of history, the "poor" of today compared to the "poor" of 1920:

Poor today
Cars (granted gas is expensive)
Televisions
DVD players
Endlessly cheap other consumer goods
Heating/Air Conditioning
Food banks, food stamps
Emergency health care (probably the biggest issue for poor IMO)
Plentiful job and education opportunities for those who want them...


Poor 1920s
No heating
No air conditioning
No social services
No medical care
Soup lines (if they were near a city)
Gas was cheap, but they had no cars.
Rampant unemployment, no jobs to be had

So really this isn't about the poor, but about the RICH.

 

[Genx87]

Just a lsight correction. Unemployment in the 1920s was actually very low. In the mid 20s sub 4%, more like 3.3%. It was until the crash and Hoovers idiotic tariff that unemployment started to rise.

Contrary to popular belief, the 20s relatively speaking was a good time for all classes.
And contrary to popular belief the 30s what a shitfest for all classes.

 

[Craig234]

Originally posted by: alchemize
Obviously Techs has no concept of history, the "poor" of today compared to the "poor" of 1920:

Poor today
Cars (granted gas is expensive)
Televisions
DVD players
Endlessly cheap other consumer goods
Heating/Air Conditioning
Food banks, food stamps
Emergency health care (probably the biggest issue for poor IMO)
Plentiful job and education opportunities for those who want them...


Poor 1920s
No heating
No air conditioning
No social services
No medical care
Soup lines (if they were near a city)
Gas was cheap, but they had no cars.
Rampant unemployment, no jobs to be had

So really this isn't about the poor, but about the RICH.

It's about the poor. Thank goodness technology has increased and allowed a higher standard of living for the poor. However, highly concentrated wealth still has big implications, starting with, why*shouldn't* more Americans share in the gains of the nation? It's as if you're saying who cares if billionares own more and more of the country, if you have a microwave and color tv, shut up.

The American dream of opportunity rests on the lack of an excessive concentration of wealth, where a few get all the profits. Our nation flourished under liberal economics.

Most of the improvements you point to from the 1920's to today are from liberal policies, the rest are from the economic/technology development under the policies.

The last big improvement we had in reducing poverty was the war on poverty, which took it to a third lower than it had been for decades before; republicans have left it there.

The righties just don't seem to get basic economics, or American values, as they cheer the growth of private concentrated wealth our founding fathers warned against.

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: spidey07
This is fabulous news really. If you want to succeed in life the rewards are there just waiting for you.

If you're lazy, you'll be poor.

Unless of course you dont have a credit line big enough for education in a few years 😉

 

[alchemize]

Originally posted by: Craig234

Originally posted by: alchemize
Obviously Techs has no concept of history, the "poor" of today compared to the "poor" of 1920:

Poor today
Cars (granted gas is expensive)
Televisions
DVD players
Endlessly cheap other consumer goods
Heating/Air Conditioning
Food banks, food stamps
Emergency health care (probably the biggest issue for poor IMO)
Plentiful job and education opportunities for those who want them...


Poor 1920s
No heating
No air conditioning
No social services
No medical care
Soup lines (if they were near a city)
Gas was cheap, but they had no cars.
Rampant unemployment, no jobs to be had

So really this isn't about the poor, but about the RICH.

It's about the poor. Thank goodness technology has increased and allowed a higher standard of living for the poor. However, highly concentrated wealth still has big implications, starting with, why*shouldn't* more Americans share in the gains of the nation? It's as if you're saying who cares if billionares own more and more of the country, if you have a microwave and color tv, shut up.

The American dream of opportunity rests on the lack of an excessive concentration of wealth, where a few get all the profits. Our nation flourished under liberal economics.

Most of the improvements you point to from the 1920's to today are from liberal policies, the rest are from the economic/technology development under the policies.

The last big improvement we had in reducing poverty was the war on poverty, which took it to a third lower than it had been for decades before; republicans have left it there.

The righties just don't seem to get basic economics, or American values, as they cheer the growth of private concentrated wealth our founding fathers warned against.

I guess you'll have to educate me on how our founding fathers warned us against private concentrated wealth?

And my interpretation of the american dream was never "come and be successful, until you reach $X, then you will be required to give the rest away to those who can't manage to be successful"...

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Originally posted by: alchemize
Obviously Techs has no concept of history, the "poor" of today compared to the "poor" of 1920:

Poor today
Cars (granted gas is expensive)
Televisions
DVD players
Endlessly cheap other consumer goods
Heating/Air Conditioning
Food banks, food stamps
Emergency health care (probably the biggest issue for poor IMO)
Plentiful job and education opportunities for those who want them...


Poor 1920s
No heating
No air conditioning
No social services
No medical care
Soup lines (if they were near a city)
Gas was cheap, but they had no cars.
Rampant unemployment, no jobs to be had

So really this isn't about the poor, but about the RICH.

Why don't you go back to Mesopotamia and tell us what they had as well? In a way, yes this is about the rich. When we had increased productivity, did that "trickle down"? No it didn't.

Note that there has been little change in the last 20 years

Well where is that money going?

A more detailed breakdown.

Ahh, yes we see that the 95th percentile got about an 18k hike. Not bad, but not outrageous


Ok, from 1972 to 2001 the 90th percentile went up about a percent a year -34%.

99th percentile? 87%

99.9? 181%

99.99 = a staggering 497%

So much for trickle down economics.

Paper on the above.

Remind me to cry if the AMT goes down and those who have profited by the middle and lower class have to surrender a tiny fraction of what they kept.

 

[maddogchen]

the rich are getting richer, thats natural. There are more and more stupid people out there everyday to take money from. Plus the stock market has been doing extremely well the past few years

 

[TheSlamma]

Originally posted by: maddogchen
the rich are getting richer, thats natural. There are more and more stupid people out there everyday to take money from. Plus the stock market has been doing extremely well the past few years

Take? Shoot, I watch them hand it over like it's growing on trees.

 

[Engineer]

Originally posted by: TheSlamma

Originally posted by: maddogchen
the rich are getting richer, thats natural. There are more and more stupid people out there everyday to take money from. Plus the stock market has been doing extremely well the past few years

Take? Shoot, I watch them hand it over like it's growing on trees.

The way the government is printing it, might as well be.

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: Hayabusa Rider

Originally posted by: alchemize
Obviously Techs has no concept of history, the "poor" of today compared to the "poor" of 1920:

Poor today
Cars (granted gas is expensive)
Televisions
DVD players
Endlessly cheap other consumer goods
Heating/Air Conditioning
Food banks, food stamps
Emergency health care (probably the biggest issue for poor IMO)
Plentiful job and education opportunities for those who want them...


Poor 1920s
No heating
No air conditioning
No social services
No medical care
Soup lines (if they were near a city)
Gas was cheap, but they had no cars.
Rampant unemployment, no jobs to be had

So really this isn't about the poor, but about the RICH.

Why don't you go back to Mesopotamia and tell us what they had as well? In a way, yes this is about the rich. When we had increased productivity, did that "trickle down"? No it didn't.

Note that there has been little change in the last 20 years

Well where is that money going?

A more detailed breakdown.

Ahh, yes we see that the 95th percentile got about an 18k hike. Not bad, but not outrageous

Ok, from 1972 to 2001 the 90th percentile went up about a percent a year -34%.

99th percentile? 87%

99.9? 181%

99.99 = a staggering 497%

So much for trickle down economics.

Paper on the above.

Remind me to cry if the AMT goes down and those who have profited by the middle and lower class have to surrender a tiny fraction of what they kept.

:thumbsup:

 

[eits]

Originally posted by: techs
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071012/bs_nm/irs_income_dc

The richest one percent of Americans earned a postwar record of 21.2 percent of all income in 2005, up from 19 percent a year earlier, reflecting a widening income disparity among different classes in the nation, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing new Internal Revenue Service data.

The data showed that the fortunes of the bottom 50 percent of Americans are worsening, with that group earning 12.8 percent of all income in 2005, down from 13.4 percent the year before, the paper said.

It said that while the IRS data goes back only to 1986, academic research suggests that the last time wealthy Americans had such a high percentage of the national income pie was in the 1920s.

The article cited an interview with President Bush, who attributed income inequality to "skills gaps" among various classes. It said the IRS didn't identify the source of rising income for the affluent, but said a boom on Wall Street has likely played a part.




But, But,,,,,I can show you a few hundred posts in this forum that say the opposite. And they can quote right wing wacko websites..........
Interesting how the Bushies have taken us back to the 1920's

wow. i'm so surprised. who could have guessed this would happen? completely and totally shocked. wow.

shocked.

 

[eits]

Originally posted by: Capitalizt
The rich are getting richer? Income gap growing? WHO FARKING CARES? Why should anyone give a F*CK what anyone else makes? Mind your own business and stop whining like an 8 year old.

are you serious? that's almost as dumb a statement as (pick your favorite nebor quote).