Left Behind Economics

[Bowfinger]

Originally posted by: charrison

Originally posted by: Bowfinger

Originally posted by: charrison

Originally posted by: marincounty
Let's see, the rich and corporations don't care about the minimum wage, it only affects teenagers and entry-level workers, and it doesn't really help solve poverty and wealth disparity.
So who is stopping the minimum wage from increasing? Why are all of the right-wingers so opposed to increasing it?
Just increase it immediately and it is done as a campaign issue against the Republicans.
Possibly the greed and selfishness of right-wingers won't allow them to see the forest for the trees. And the Democrats are going to beat them up on this issue, and rightfully so.

Because it is a non-issue. There is no point in raising the minimum wage, because beleive it nore wages are going up without the help of the federal goverment. Have you looked at the advertised wages for low skill jobs lately? They are not start at minimum wage

Some two million people earn minimum wage. Wages are not going up for everybody.

Yes that is a small fraction of the workforce and it is not nearly as bleak as the picture you want to make. Lots of kids, lots of young workers, lots of college students.

Two million people are NOT a "non-issue", even if half of them are under 25. Half of them are NOT. They all deserve a living wage for their labor. That's the point to raising the minimum wage.

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: marincounty
Let's see, the rich and corporations don't care about the minimum wage, it only affects teenagers and entry-level workers, and it doesn't really help solve poverty and wealth disparity.
So who is stopping the minimum wage from increasing? Why are all of the right-wingers so opposed to increasing it?
Just increase it immediately and it is done as a campaign issue against the Republicans.
Possibly the greed and selfishness of right-wingers won't allow them to see the forest for the trees. And the Democrats are going to beat them up on this issue, and rightfully so.

I'm not opposed to increasing it. I invite you to show where I may have posted otherwise. Nor am I a "right-winger" or a Republican. And I can see the forests and the trees as well (BTW you got the analogy backwards there). The issue (as I have already said repeatedly) is that raising the minimum wage is an impotent knee-jerk quick-fix simple solution to a highly complex problem. It's like giving aspirin to a cancer patient and calling that a cure. It's the false help from people who simply pretend to care but really don't. It's making someone else be the change you want to see in the world. And on top of that, it's done from the worst of intentions as well -- not to help the poor, but to fsck the rich (and/or the Republicans). And the commies wonder why they always fail...

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: Bowfinger

Originally posted by: charrison

Originally posted by: Bowfinger

Originally posted by: charrison

Originally posted by: marincounty
Let's see, the rich and corporations don't care about the minimum wage, it only affects teenagers and entry-level workers, and it doesn't really help solve poverty and wealth disparity.
So who is stopping the minimum wage from increasing? Why are all of the right-wingers so opposed to increasing it?
Just increase it immediately and it is done as a campaign issue against the Republicans.
Possibly the greed and selfishness of right-wingers won't allow them to see the forest for the trees. And the Democrats are going to beat them up on this issue, and rightfully so.

Because it is a non-issue. There is no point in raising the minimum wage, because beleive it nore wages are going up without the help of the federal goverment. Have you looked at the advertised wages for low skill jobs lately? They are not start at minimum wage

Some two million people earn minimum wage. Wages are not going up for everybody.

Yes that is a small fraction of the workforce and it is not nearly as bleak as the picture you want to make. Lots of kids, lots of young workers, lots of college students.

Two million people are NOT a "non-issue", even if half of them are under 25. Half of them are NOT. They all deserve a living wage for their labor. That's the point to raising the minimum wage.

That other half are mostly restaurant servers who also make tips.

As to "deserve" and "living wage," wow... you wrongly accused me of using talking points a few pages back, and then you spout out the worst of undefined rhetoric right here...

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: fitzov

So who is stopping the minimum wage from increasing? Why are all of the right-wingers so opposed to increasing it?

It took a civil war to end slavery. For the same reasons they didn't just end slavery and be done with it--important enough people are making money from cheap labor.

Well, nihilist... who is enslaved? Who are "they"? And these "important enough people," how do you, personally, through your own buying habits, keep them from profiting by cheap labor?

 

[Bowfinger]

Originally posted by: Vic
[ ... ]
The issue (as I have already said repeatedly) is that raising the minimum wage is an impotent knee-jerk quick-fix simple solution to a highly complex problem. It's like giving aspirin to a cancer patient and calling that a cure. It's the false help from people who simply pretend to care but really don't. It's making someone else be the change you want to see in the world. And on top of that, it's done from the worst of intentions as well -- not to help the poor, but to fsck the rich (and/or the Republicans). And the commies wonder why they always fail...

Wow! So much misdirection crammed into a single post. First, you continued comments about minimum wage not fixing the gulf between the haves and have-nots is another straw man. No one is claiming an increase "fixes" the issue addressed in the OP. It is simply one small step we can take to improve the lives of some two million Americans and their families.

Re. your "fsck the rich" comment, that's just shrill partisan noise; the comment about "intentions" is an outright lie. The rich are in no danger of getting "fscked". They will continue to live high on the hog, even if they do have to toss a few extra crumbs to those who are struggling. The intention, as explained before, is helping poor Americans.

 

[Bowfinger]

Originally posted by: Vic
[ ... ]
As to "deserve" and "living wage," wow... you wrongly accused me of using talking points a few pages back, and then you spout out the worst of undefined rhetoric right here...

Whatever helps you sleep at night. I believe any credibility you might have on this issue disappeared when you willfully and repeatedly misrepresented the BLS stats on minimum wage. Your other dishonest arguments don't help.

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: Bowfinger

Originally posted by: Vic
[ ... ]
The issue (as I have already said repeatedly) is that raising the minimum wage is an impotent knee-jerk quick-fix simple solution to a highly complex problem. It's like giving aspirin to a cancer patient and calling that a cure. It's the false help from people who simply pretend to care but really don't. It's making someone else be the change you want to see in the world. And on top of that, it's done from the worst of intentions as well -- not to help the poor, but to fsck the rich (and/or the Republicans). And the commies wonder why they always fail...

Wow! So much misdirection crammed into a single post. First, you continued comments about minimum wage not fixing the gulf between the haves and have-nots is another straw man. No one is claiming an increase "fixes" the issue addressed in the OP. It is simply one small step we can take to improve the lives of some two million Americans and their families.

Re. your "fsck the rich" comment, that's just shrill partisan noise; the comment about "intentions" is an outright lie. The rich are in no danger of getting "fscked". They will continue to live high on the hog, even if they do have to toss a few extra crumbs to those who are struggling. The intention, as explained before, is helping poor Americans.

Right... I'm more or less quoting replies in this thread in response to them, and that's "misdirection." Your argumentive style seems to consist solely of "I'm rubber band and you're glue."

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: Bowfinger

Originally posted by: Vic
[ ... ]
As to "deserve" and "living wage," wow... you wrongly accused me of using talking points a few pages back, and then you spout out the worst of undefined rhetoric right here...

Whatever helps you sleep at night. I believe any credibility you might have on this issue disappeared when you willfully and repeatedly misrepresented the BLS stats on minimum wage. Your other dishonest arguments don't help.

Uh huh... yeah... because quoting the exact figures was dishonest. Keep those talking points coming! Let me know when you define them.

The topic of the thread was the gulf between the "haves" and "have-nots." The first solution presented, and the one most doggedly stuck to, was to raise the minimum wage. If there is any dishonesty here, it is you lying to yourself.

 

[Bowfinger]

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: Bowfinger

Originally posted by: Vic
[ ... ]
The issue (as I have already said repeatedly) is that raising the minimum wage is an impotent knee-jerk quick-fix simple solution to a highly complex problem. It's like giving aspirin to a cancer patient and calling that a cure. It's the false help from people who simply pretend to care but really don't. It's making someone else be the change you want to see in the world. And on top of that, it's done from the worst of intentions as well -- not to help the poor, but to fsck the rich (and/or the Republicans). And the commies wonder why they always fail...

Wow! So much misdirection crammed into a single post. First, you continued comments about minimum wage not fixing the gulf between the haves and have-nots is another straw man. No one is claiming an increase "fixes" the issue addressed in the OP. It is simply one small step we can take to improve the lives of some two million Americans and their families.

Re. your "fsck the rich" comment, that's just shrill partisan noise; the comment about "intentions" is an outright lie. The rich are in no danger of getting "fscked". They will continue to live high on the hog, even if they do have to toss a few extra crumbs to those who are struggling. The intention, as explained before, is helping poor Americans.

Right... I'm more or less quoting replies in this thread in response to them, and that's "misdirection." Your argumentive style seems to consist solely of "I'm rubber band and you're glue."

Less. Much less.

Kindly show me where someone in this thread said they wanted to raise minimum wage to "fsck the rich", or even that they want to "fsck the rich" at all. I think it's yet another of your straw men arguments, something you regularly fall back on when you don't have anything except partisan dogma to support your bias. Perhaps you can produce the quotes to prove me wrong.

 

[Bowfinger]

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: Bowfinger

Originally posted by: Vic
[ ... ]
As to "deserve" and "living wage," wow... you wrongly accused me of using talking points a few pages back, and then you spout out the worst of undefined rhetoric right here...

Whatever helps you sleep at night. I believe any credibility you might have on this issue disappeared when you willfully and repeatedly misrepresented the BLS stats on minimum wage. Your other dishonest arguments don't help.

Uh huh... yeah... because quoting the exact figures was dishonest. Keep those talking points coming! Let me know when you define them.

The topic of the thread was the gulf between the "haves" and "have-nots." The first solution presented, and the one most doggedly stuck to, was to raise the minimum wage. If there is any dishonesty here, it is you lying to yourself.

You just keep getting more and more dishonest. You finally quoted the exact figures after I twice (three times?) exposed your claims about them to be false (started with a crack about teens working at McD's, IIRC). You used the exact figures only after I had already done so, and only because I forced the issue. For you to boast that you're quoting "exact figures" now -- finally -- is the height of self-delusion. Once again, go back and read the thread. It's all there in black and white.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: Vic
BTW, Orwell did not make that quote in your sig. It is attributed to him, but cannot be referenced.

So where did it come from? Why would it be attributed to him if it isn't his?

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: Bowfinger

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: Bowfinger

Originally posted by: Vic
[ ... ]
As to "deserve" and "living wage," wow... you wrongly accused me of using talking points a few pages back, and then you spout out the worst of undefined rhetoric right here...

Whatever helps you sleep at night. I believe any credibility you might have on this issue disappeared when you willfully and repeatedly misrepresented the BLS stats on minimum wage. Your other dishonest arguments don't help.

Uh huh... yeah... because quoting the exact figures was dishonest. Keep those talking points coming! Let me know when you define them.

The topic of the thread was the gulf between the "haves" and "have-nots." The first solution presented, and the one most doggedly stuck to, was to raise the minimum wage. If there is any dishonesty here, it is you lying to yourself.

You just keep getting more and more dishonest. You finally quoted the exact figures after I twice (three times?) exposed your claims about them to be false (started with a crack about teens working at McD's, IIRC). You used the exact figures only after I had already done so, and only because I forced the issue. For you to boast that you're quoting "exact figures" now -- finally -- is the height of self-delusion. Once again, go back and read the thread. It's all there in black and white.

And the figures supported my argument.

Keep it up with the ad homs, though. You're doing great!

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: Jeff7

Originally posted by: Vic
BTW, Orwell did not make that quote in your sig. It is attributed to him, but cannot be referenced.

So where did it come from? Why would it be attributed to him if it isn't his?

Who knows? There are many quotes attributed to various famous people that they actually never said. It's kind of an appeal to authority, I guess.

 

[marincounty]

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: marincounty
Let's see, the rich and corporations don't care about the minimum wage, it only affects teenagers and entry-level workers, and it doesn't really help solve poverty and wealth disparity.
So who is stopping the minimum wage from increasing? Why are all of the right-wingers so opposed to increasing it?
Just increase it immediately and it is done as a campaign issue against the Republicans.
Possibly the greed and selfishness of right-wingers won't allow them to see the forest for the trees. And the Democrats are going to beat them up on this issue, and rightfully so.

I'm not opposed to increasing it. I invite you to show where I may have posted otherwise. Nor am I a "right-winger" or a Republican. And I can see the forests and the trees as well (BTW you got the analogy backwards there). The issue (as I have already said repeatedly) is that raising the minimum wage is an impotent knee-jerk quick-fix simple solution to a highly complex problem. It's like giving aspirin to a cancer patient and calling that a cure. It's the false help from people who simply pretend to care but really don't. It's making someone else be the change you want to see in the world. And on top of that, it's done from the worst of intentions as well -- not to help the poor, but to fsck the rich (and/or the Republicans). And the commies wonder why they always fail...

Hey Vic, this was not a personal attack on you, just a general statement that right-wingers are the ones opposed to an increase in the minimum wage.
Raising the minimum wage is not an impotent knee-jerk quick fix solution, it is a real solution if you are the one making minimum wage. Not all of us are college educated and have great options in life.
You need to find the compassion within yourself to see that giving the poorest of working Americans a raise is the right thing to do. And I don't think anyone proposing a minimum wage increase is trying to screw the rich, as if raising the minimum wage would affect the rich in the slightest anyway.
And raising the commie flag, weak.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing."------Oscar Wilde

 

[Bowfinger]

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: Bowfinger

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: Bowfinger

Originally posted by: Vic
[ ... ]
As to "deserve" and "living wage," wow... you wrongly accused me of using talking points a few pages back, and then you spout out the worst of undefined rhetoric right here...

Whatever helps you sleep at night. I believe any credibility you might have on this issue disappeared when you willfully and repeatedly misrepresented the BLS stats on minimum wage. Your other dishonest arguments don't help.

Uh huh... yeah... because quoting the exact figures was dishonest. Keep those talking points coming! Let me know when you define them.

The topic of the thread was the gulf between the "haves" and "have-nots." The first solution presented, and the one most doggedly stuck to, was to raise the minimum wage. If there is any dishonesty here, it is you lying to yourself.

You just keep getting more and more dishonest. You finally quoted the exact figures after I twice (three times?) exposed your claims about them to be false (started with a crack about teens working at McD's, IIRC). You used the exact figures only after I had already done so, and only because I forced the issue. For you to boast that you're quoting "exact figures" now -- finally -- is the height of self-delusion. Once again, go back and read the thread. It's all there in black and white.

And the figures supported my argument.

That's a matter of opinion. At a minimum, you should consider how to make your arguments without resorting to disinformation and straw man attacks. In particular, you might want to learn what words like "only" and "exactly" mean. As I clearly showed using your BLS data, your claims about what that data "exactly" showed were disingenuous.

Keep it up with the ad homs, though. You're doing great!

It's not an ad hom if I'm accurately describing your behavior. In any case, if you have a problem with ad hominem attacks, perhaps you should refrain from calling others "socialists" and "whiners", to offer but two examples.

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: marincounty

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: marincounty
Let's see, the rich and corporations don't care about the minimum wage, it only affects teenagers and entry-level workers, and it doesn't really help solve poverty and wealth disparity.
So who is stopping the minimum wage from increasing? Why are all of the right-wingers so opposed to increasing it?
Just increase it immediately and it is done as a campaign issue against the Republicans.
Possibly the greed and selfishness of right-wingers won't allow them to see the forest for the trees. And the Democrats are going to beat them up on this issue, and rightfully so.

I'm not opposed to increasing it. I invite you to show where I may have posted otherwise. Nor am I a "right-winger" or a Republican. And I can see the forests and the trees as well (BTW you got the analogy backwards there). The issue (as I have already said repeatedly) is that raising the minimum wage is an impotent knee-jerk quick-fix simple solution to a highly complex problem. It's like giving aspirin to a cancer patient and calling that a cure. It's the false help from people who simply pretend to care but really don't. It's making someone else be the change you want to see in the world. And on top of that, it's done from the worst of intentions as well -- not to help the poor, but to fsck the rich (and/or the Republicans). And the commies wonder why they always fail...

Hey Vic, this was not a personal attack on you, just a general statement that right-wingers are the ones opposed to an increase in the minimum wage.
Raising the minimum wage is not an impotent knee-jerk quick fix solution, it is a real solution if you are the one making minimum wage. Not all of us are college educated and have great options in life.
You need to find the compassion within yourself to see that giving the poorest of working Americans a raise is the right thing to do. And I don't think anyone proposing a minimum wage increase is trying to screw the rich, as if raising the minimum wage would affect the rich in the slightest anyway.
And raising the commie flag, weak.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing."------Oscar Wilde

You would see the compassion from me you're looking for if such a simple solution like raising the minimum wage would work. Unfortunately, it has never worked during its entire 68 year history in America, as the gap between rich and poor has not improved in all that time, therefore I fail to see why it is still the first thing fools turn to as a solution whenever the wealth disparity gap is brought up.

Oh, and sorry... I've had enough discussion with you to know that you are fascist because of your California nationalism. I always get fascists and commies confused, they're so similar, authoritarians all look the same to me...

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: Bowfinger

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: Bowfinger

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: Bowfinger

Originally posted by: Vic
[ ... ]
As to "deserve" and "living wage," wow... you wrongly accused me of using talking points a few pages back, and then you spout out the worst of undefined rhetoric right here...

Whatever helps you sleep at night. I believe any credibility you might have on this issue disappeared when you willfully and repeatedly misrepresented the BLS stats on minimum wage. Your other dishonest arguments don't help.

Uh huh... yeah... because quoting the exact figures was dishonest. Keep those talking points coming! Let me know when you define them.

The topic of the thread was the gulf between the "haves" and "have-nots." The first solution presented, and the one most doggedly stuck to, was to raise the minimum wage. If there is any dishonesty here, it is you lying to yourself.

You just keep getting more and more dishonest. You finally quoted the exact figures after I twice (three times?) exposed your claims about them to be false (started with a crack about teens working at McD's, IIRC). You used the exact figures only after I had already done so, and only because I forced the issue. For you to boast that you're quoting "exact figures" now -- finally -- is the height of self-delusion. Once again, go back and read the thread. It's all there in black and white.

And the figures supported my argument.

That's a matter of opinion. At a minimum, you should consider how to make your arguments without resorting to disinformation and straw man attacks. In particular, you might want to learn what words like "only" and "exactly" mean. As I clearly showed using your BLS data, your claims about what that data "exactly" showed were disingenuous.

Keep it up with the ad homs, though. You're doing great!

It's not an ad hom if I'm accurately describing your behavior. In any case, if you have a problem with ad hominem attacks, perhaps you should refrain from calling others "socialists" and "whiners", to offer but two examples.

Oh I see... you're claiming victory by splitting hairs on an expression of speech. You might want to think about the fact that more or less your only argument is this thread has been to attack the messenger.

As I have said repeatedly, I am not opposed to raising the minimum wage, I just strongly question its effectiveness in curbing poverty. Given that my state and its major surrounding states all have their own laws guaranteeing a minimum wage rate substantially higher than the federal rate, and yet poverty still exists here as well, due to the fact that costs and standards of living are flexible and relative, I'd say my argument is sound.

 

[Bowfinger]

Originally posted by: Vic
Oh I see... you're claiming victory by splitting hairs on an expression of speech. You might want to think about the fact that more or less your only argument is this thread has been to attack the messenger.

As I have said repeatedly, I am not opposed to raising the minimum wage, I just strongly question its effectiveness in curbing poverty. Given that my state and its major surrounding states all have their own laws guaranteeing a minimum wage rate substantially higher than the federal rate, and yet poverty still exists here as well, due to the fact that costs and standards of living are flexible and relative, I'd say my argument is sound.

Well Vic, if your definition of "shoot the messenger" is being asked to back your assertions with fact, then you may want to invest in good body armor. You've made a number of either false or as yet unsupported claims, and I've called you on them. For example, I'm still waiting for you to show us that increases in the minimum raise have historically caused material increases in inflation. I'm also waiting for you to offer quotes matching your slur about "fscking the rich". As far as "splitting hairs", there is a hell of a lot of difference between a dismissive "only teens at McD's" and the reality -- two million Americans of all ages (a minority of which are teens). You can either accept responsibility for your own disinformation and hyperbole, or you can join the BushCo herd and blame me for pointing it out.

The fact of the matter is that the OP is right on target. The gulf between the ultra-wealthy and everyone else is growing under the Bush administration. While the rich have profited greatly from his administration, both the mean and median U.S. income have dropped since 2000 (inflation-adjusted dollars). The rich are getting richer, and the average American is getting poorer.

 

[BBond]

Here is an in depth article from Teresa Tretch, Editoria Board member of the NY Times who writes on economic issues that further proves that the OP is indeed RIGHT ON TARGET, Bowfinger.

I realize most members don't have access to the full NY Times article so I'll post it here with links at the bottom to those .pdf files and other imbedded links that I'm able to include.

There is literally no way ANYONE could possibly excuse the dramatic changes in wealth distribution in America based on the evidence in this article. Any attempt to do so must be in the face of this evidence disingenuous and really has to make one wonder exactly what the agenda of whatever apologists there might be is.

The Rise of the Super-Rich

By TERESA TRITCH

The gap between rich and poor is unfortunately an old story.

It is the stuff of parables and literature. It is a force in social history and political economy, from electoral campaigns to reform movements and revolutions.

But in the United States today, there?s a new twist to the familiar plot. Income inequality used to be about rich versus poor, but now it?s increasingly a matter of the ultra rich and everyone else. The curious effect of the new divide is an economy that appears to be charging ahead, until you realize that the most of the people in it are being left in the dust. President Bush has yet to acknowledge the true state of affairs, though it?s at the root of his failure to convince Americans that the good times are rolling.

The president?s lack of attention may be misplaced optimism, or it could be political strategy. Acknowledging what?s happening would mean having to rethink his policies, not exactly his strong suit.

But the growing income gap ? and the rise of the super-rich ? demands attention. It is making America a less fair society, and a less stable one.

I. The Growing Divide

Anyone who has driven through the new neighborhoods filled with ?McMansions? that have arisen near most cities, or seen the brisk business that luxury stores are doing, has an anecdotal sense that some Americans are making a lot of money right now.

But there is no need to rely on anecdotal evidence.

Thomas Piketty, of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, and Emmanuel Saez of the University of California at Berkeley recently updated their groundbreaking study on income inequality(pdf), and their findings are striking.

The new figures show that from 2003 to 2004, the latest year for which there is data, the richest Americans pulled far ahead of everyone else. In the space of that one year, real average income for the top 1 percent of households ? those making more than $315,000 in 2004 ? grew by nearly 17 percent. For the remaining 99 percent, the average gain was less than 3 percent, and that probably makes things look better than they really are, since other data(pdf), most notably from the Census Bureau, indicate that the average is bolstered by large gains among the top 20 percent of households. In all, the top 1 percent of households enjoyed 36 percent of all income gains in 2004, on top of an already stunning 30 percent in 2003.

Some of the gains at the top reflect capitalism?s robust reward for the founders of companies like Microsoft, Google and Dell. But most of it is due to the unprecedented largesse being heaped on executives and professionals, in the form of salary, bonuses and stock options. A recent study done for the Business Roundtable(pdf), a lobbying group for chief executives, shows that median executive pay at 350 large public companies was $6.8 million in 2005. According to the Wall Street Journal, that?s 179 times the pay of the average American worker. The study is intended to rebut much higher estimates made by other researchers, but it does little to quell the sense that executive pay is out of whack. The Journal's Alan Murray pointed out recently, the study?s calculation of executive pay is widely criticized as an understatement because, as a measurement of the median, it is largely unaffected by the eight or nine-digit pay packages that have dominated the headlines of late.

Rich people are also being made richer, recent government data shows, by strong returns on investment income. In 2003, the latest year for which figures are available, the top 1 percent of households owned 57.5 percent of corporate wealth, generally dividends and capital gains, up from 53.4 percent a year earlier.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington think tank, compared the latest data from Mr. Piketty and Mr. Saez to comprehensive reports on income trends from the Congressional Budget Office. Every way it sliced the data, it found a striking share of total income concentrated at the top(pdf) of the income ladder as of 2004.

? The top 10 percent of households had 46 percent of the nation?s income, their biggest share in all but two of the last 70 years.

? The top 1 percent of households had 19.5 percent (see graph).

? The top one-tenth of 1 percent of households actually received nearly half of the increased share going to the top 1 percent.

These disparaties seem large, and they are. (Though the latest availabe data is from 2004, there are virtually no signs that the basic trend has changed since then.) The top 1 percent held a bigger share of total income than at any time since 1929, except for 1999 and 2000 during the tech stock bubble. But what makes those disparities particularly brutal is that unlike the last bull market of the late 1990's ? when a proverbial rising tide was lifting all boats ? the rich have been the only winners lately. According to an analysis by Goldman Sachs, for most American households ? the bottom 60 percent ? average income grew by less than 20 percent from 1979 to 2004, with virtually all of those gains occurring from the mid- to late 1990's. Before and since, real incomes for that group have basically flatlined.

The best-off Americans are not only winning by an extraordinary margin right now. They are the only ones who are winning at all.

The result has been, as Andrew Hacker, a political science professor at Queens College, has observed in a recent article in the New York Review of Books, ?more billionaires, more millionaires and more six-figure families.?

As income has become more concentrated at the top, overall wealth has also become more skewed. According to the latest installation of a survey(pdf) that the Federal Reserve has conducted every three years since 1989, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans accounted for 33.4 percent of total net worth in 2004, compared to 30.1 percent in 1989. Over the same period, the other Americans in the top 10 percent saw their share of the nation?s net worth basically stagnate, at about 36 percent, while the bottom 50 percent accounted for just 2.5 percent of the wealth in 2004, compared to 3.0 percent in 1989.

II. A Brief History of Income Inequality

While it has long been the case that the rich do better than everyone else, it has not always been true that, in the process, the poor get poorer and the middle class gets squeezed. In post-World War II America, between 1947 and the early 1970?s, all income groups shared in the nation?s economic growth. Poor families actually had a higher growth in real annual income than other groups.

Part of the reason was a sharp rise in labor productivity. As workers produced more, the economy grew and so did compensation ? wages, salaries and benefits (see graph). This link between productivity gains and income gains was not automatic. Government policies worked to ensure that productivity gains translated into more pay for Americans at all levels, including regular increases in the minimum wage and greater investment in the social safety net. Full employment was also a government priority. And, of course, unions were strong back then, giving workers bargaining power.

From the mid-1970?s until 1995, the trend reversed. The gap between the rich and poor widened at a rapid clip. The upper echelons ? generally the top 20 percent of American households ? experienced steady gains, while families in the bottom 40 percent were faced with declining or stagnating incomes.

The growing divide coincided with a slowdown in productivity growth and a reversal in the government policies that had been promoting income equality. Legislators balked at raising the minimum wage and the earned income tax credit, a feature of the tax code that rewards the working poor by ensuring that work pays better than welfare. During the ?supply side? era in the 1980?s, fostered by the policies of Ronald Reagan, taxes became less progressive. The goal of full employment was eclipsed by a focus on inflation fighting that remains to this day.

As trade began to play an ever bigger role in the American economy, manufacturing jobs diminished and labor unions declined, reducing workers? clout in setting compensation. Regulatory laxness reached its apex in the fiscal disaster of the savings and loan meltdown, which drained public resources from socially and economically useful programs and polices.

The trend toward increasing inequality was interrupted, briefly, in the late 1990?s. Productivity growth rebounded, and for a half decade, all income groups participated in the prosperity. Even then, the richest Americans had the best run, propelled largely by stock market gains. In fact, when the stock market hit its all time high in 2000, post-war income concentration also peaked.

But government policies of the day helped to ensure that the lower rungs also had a boost. Clinton-era welfare reforms are often cast as a success story of market-based incentives. But in fact, they were supported by a big increase in the earned income tax credit to help solidify the transition from welfare to work. At the same time, budget deficits were conquered by shared sacrifice ? a mix of tax increases and spending cuts affecting all groups. The combination of economic growth and fiscal discipline spurred robust hiring and, if it had endured, could also have strengthened the Social Security safety net by allowing the government to pay down its debts.

That seems like ancient history now. Nearly everyone?s income fell in 2001 and 2002, due to the bursting of the Internet bubble in 2000, recession in 2001 and the ensuing jobless recovery.

In the last few years, though, the trend toward inequality has reasserted itself ? with a vengeance.

III. Inequality During the Bush Years

For the last few years, the tide has been rising again, but most boats have been staying where they are, or sinking. One key reason is that the link between rising productivity and broad economic prosperity has been severed. Take another look at this graph. During the years that George W. Bush has been in the White House, productivity growth has been stronger than ever. But the real compensation of all but the top 20 percent of income earners has been flat or falling. Gains in wages, salaries and benefits have been increasingly concentrated at the uppermost rungs of the income ladder.

The Bush administration would like you to believe that the situation will correct itself. Most recently, the new Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson, Jr., reiterated the administration?s viewpoint at his confirmation hearing in June when he said that ?economic growth, job growth, productivity growth, hopefully will be followed by increases in wage income.?

Well, hoping certainly won?t make it so.

Neither will growth alone. As the post-World War II history of income inequality illustrates, productivity improvement is only one piece of the prosperity puzzle. The economic health of most American families also depends greatly on what government does. If it merely ?gets out of the way,? inequality is bound to persist and ? if recent results are any indication of future performance ? worsen.

The Bush administration, though, has not even done anything as benign as get out of the way. The policies it has pursued ? affirmatively and aggressively ? have widened the gap between rich and poor.

A. The Tax Wedge

Tax cuts are the most obvious example. The Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center computed the combined effects of tax cut legislation from 2001, 2003 and 2006. The tax cuts? contribution to the income gap was significant.

In 2006, the average tax cut for households with incomes of more than $1 million ? the top two-tenths of 1 percent ? is $112,000 which works out to a boost of 5.7 percent in after tax income. That?s considerably higher than the 5 percent boost garnered by the top 1 percent. It?s far greater than the 2.5 percent increase of the middle fifth of households, and fully 19 times greater than the 0.3 percent gain of the poorest fifth of households.

The disparities are driven by tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the most affluent. In 2006, for instance, a tax cut took effect that allows high income households ? those with incomes above $200,000 ? to take bigger write offs for their children and other expenses, like mortgage interest on a second home. And increasingly, tax cuts are aimed at allowing America?s wealthiest families to amass dynastic wealth ? estates to transfer from one generation to the next virtually untouched by taxes. The most obvious example is the gradual reduction in the estate tax that is scheduled through 2010 (and regular attempts to abolish the estate tax altogether). Another huge, though lesser noted example, is the law passed last May allowing all Americans to shelter money in a tax-favored Roth I.R.A. Under previous law, Roths had been off limits to wealthy Americans, precisely because the government did not want to help people amass big estates under the guise of saving for retirement. That sound principle has now been turned on its head.

B. The Assault on Programs for the Poor and Middle Class

Tax cuts are not the only policies widening the gap between the rich and other Americans. Earlier this year, President Bush signed into law a measure that will cut $39 billion over the next five years from domestic programs like Medicaid and food stamps, and $99.3 billion from 2006 to 2015.

The president and the Republican Congress have also done harm to the finances of the poorest Americans ? and to the notion of basic fairness ? by not increasing the federal minimum wage ? it has been $5.15 since 1997 While C.E.O. salaries have been soaring, the take-home pay of waitresses and janitors has been hit hard by inflation.

The Bush administration has also been trying, with mixed success so far, to pursue other policies that would have the effect of shifting money to the rich. The most ominous is its often-repeated desire to ?address our long-term unfunded entitlement obligations.? That?s code for making tax cuts for the wealthy permanent while cutting Social Security, which has for 70 years been a major factor in keeping Americans financially secure in their old age.

Over the objections of Congress, the administration overturned time-and-a-half regulation for overtime. For a brief period after Hurricane Katrina, the president suspended by executive proclamation the law that requires federal contractors to pay workers the locally prevailing wage, until Congress objected. For three months after Katrina, the Labor Department suspended the law requiring federal contractors to have an affirmative action hiring plan ? an invitation to discrimination and, as such, to income inequality.

C. The Too-Easy Answer

When confronted with evidence of growing income inequality, Bush administration officials invariably say the answer is more and better education. ?We are starting to see that the income gap is largely an education gap,? said Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman, in a typical retort last January when tax data showed an increasing concentration of wealth among the highest-income Americans.

Education is critically important to individuals, society, the economy and democracy itself, and deserves strong government support. But it is neither a satisfactory explanation, nor a remedy, for today's income inequality.

There is a strong correlation between one's level of education and one's earning power. The Bush administration is assuming that the correlation will continue to hold in an ever more globalized economy. Writing in the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs, Princeton economist Alan S. Blinder, a former vice-chairman of the Federal Reserve, explains why that view may be mistaken:

Other things being equal, education and skills are, of course, good things; education yields higher returns in advanced societies, and more schooling probably makes workers more flexible and more adaptable to change. But the problem with relying on education as the remedy for job losses is that 'other things' are not remotely close to equal. The critical divide in the future may instead be between those types of work that are easily deliverable through a wire (or via a wireless connection) with little or no diminution in quality and those that are not. And this unconventional divide does not correspond well to traditional distinctions between jobs that require high levels of education and jobs that don?t.

There is already evidence that the benefits of education are not as straightforward as many people seem to believe they are. In his review of ?Inequality Matters,? a collection of essays from a conference at New York University conference in 2004, Mr. Hacker, the Queens College political science professor, cited findings from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to show that many college graduates now hold jobs that once required only a high school diploma. Today, according to the bureau, 37 percent of flight attendants have completed college, as have 35 percent of tour escorts, 21 percent of embalmers, and 13 percent of both security guards and casino dealers. Mr. Hacker notes that more people are expected to earn college degrees in preparation for well-paying professions. ?But we cannot expect the economy will automatically create better-paid positions to match the cohort acquiring higher education,? he writes.

Underscoring the point, the Bush administration's own Economic Report of the President in 2006 shows that average annual earnings of college graduates fell by 5 percent from 2000 to 2004. In those four years, the difference between the average yearly pay of a college graduate and a high school graduate shrank from 93 percent to 80 percent.

Education is vital. But as Mr. Blinder put it, it ?is far from a panacea.?

IV. The Future of Income Inequality

The fast-growing gap between the rich and poor and middle-class Americans is not something that has just happened. The Bush policies are an attempt to dismantle the institutions and norms that have long worked to ameliorate inequities ? progressive taxation, the minimum wage, Social Security, Medicaid and so on. The aims that can?t be accomplished outright ? like cuts in Social Security ? are being teed up by running deficits that could force the shrinkage of government programs, even though the public would not likely condone many such cuts unless compelled to by a fiscal crisis.

Such policies are grounded in an ideology that began taking shape some 30 years ago, when economic policy makers began to disdain the notion of harnessing and protecting society?s collective potential in favor of crafting incentives to align individuals? interests with those of the market. This campaign has gone by many names ? ?starve the beast,? or ?repeal the New Deal.? Economist Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, calls that approach ?you?re on your own,? or YOYO, and has written a book calling for a new way, dubbed ?we?re in this together,? or WITT. (Click here for excerpts from ?All Together Now: Common Sense for a Fair Economy,? by Jared Bernstein.)

At issue, in economic terms, is the tradeoff between equality and efficiency: It can be difficult to divide the economic pie more equally without reducing the size of the pie. But it?s not impossible, and doing so is crucial for widespread prosperity. A fair and well-functioning economy will always involve some inequality, which acts a motivator and can be explained by differences in risk-taking, ability and work intensity. But inequality is generally deemed to be dangerous ? socially, economically, (and, perhaps, politically) ? when it becomes so extreme as to be self-reinforcing, as many researchers suggest is currently the case.

The problem now is that most any attempt to reduce inequality ? even a measly increase in the minimum wage ? is rejected as misguided. And policies that under one set of economic conditions might allow for a justifiable modicum of inequality are pursued beyond all reason. For instance, the rationale for the tax cuts in 2001 was to return the budget surplus that Mr. Bush inherited from President Clinton. The rationale for the tax cuts in 2002 and 2003 and 2006 was to stimulate the economy. The surplus has long since been replaced by big deficits, the jobless recovery ended three years ago and inequality is on the rise. But tax cutting that overwhelming benefits the rich continues because, we?re told, failure to keep cutting taxes would, somehow, shrink the pie. As Mr. Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute has put it: ?Economics, once an elegant and sensible set of ideas and principles devoted to shaping outcomes for the betterment of society, has been reduced to a restrictive set of ideologically inspired rules devoted to an explanation of why we cannot take the necessary steps to meet the challenges we face.?

Hear, hear.

Lela Moore provided research for this article.

Income Inequality in the United States 1913-1998*

A Brief Look at Postwar U.S. Income Inequality

Historical Federal Tax Rates: 1979-2003

New Data Show Extraordinary Jump in Income Concentration in 2004

Currents and Undercurrents: Changes in the Distribution of Wealth, 1989-2004

TAX RETURNS: A Comprehensive Assessment of the Bush Administration?s Record on Cutting Taxes

Also the other Times article linked from the previous article:

Corporate Wealth Share Rises for Top-Income Americans

By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
Published: January 29, 2006

New government data indicate that the concentration of corporate wealth among the highest-income Americans grew significantly in 2003, as a trend that began in 1991 accelerated in the first year that President Bush and Congress cut taxes on capital.

In 2003 the top 1 percent of households owned 57.5 percent of corporate wealth, up from 53.4 percent the year before, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis of the latest income tax data. The top group's share of corporate wealth has grown by half since 1991, when it was 38.7 percent.

In 2003, incomes in the top 1 percent of households ranged from $237,000 to several billion dollars.

For every group below the top 1 percent, shares of corporate wealth have declined since 1991. These declines ranged from 12.7 percent for those on the 96th to 99th rungs on the income ladder to 57 percent for the poorest fifth of Americans, who made less than $16,300 and together owned 0.6 percent of corporate wealth in 2003, down from 1.4 percent in 1991.

The analysis did not measure wealth directly. It looked at taxes on capital gains, dividends, interest and rents. Income from securities owned by retirement plans and endowments was excluded, as were gains from noncorporate assets such as personal residences.

This technique for measuring wealth has long been used in standard economic studies, though critics have challenged that tradition.

Among them is Stephen J. Entin, president of the Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation in Washington, which favors eliminating most taxes on capital and teaches that an unintended consequence of the corporate income tax is depressed wage rates. Mr. Entin said the report's approach was so flawed that the data were useless.

He said reduced tax rates on long-term capital gains may have prompted wealthy investors to sell profitable investments. That would show up in tax data as increased wealth that year, even though the increase may have built up over decades.

Long-term capital gains were taxed at 28 percent until 1997, and at 20 percent until 2003, when rates were cut to 15 percent. The top rate on dividends was cut to 15 percent from 35 percent that year.

The White House said it did not believe that the 2003 tax cuts had much influence on wealth shares. It also said that since wealth is transitory for many people, a more important issue is how incomes and wealth are influenced by the quality of education.

"We want to lift all incomes and wealth," said Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman. "We are starting to see that the income gap is largely an education gap."

"The president thinks we need to close the income gap, and he has talked about ways in which we can do that," especially through education, Mr. Duffy said.

The data showing increased concentration of corporate wealth were posted last month on the Congressional Budget Office Web site. Isaac Shapiro, associate director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, spotted the information last week and wrote a report analyzing it.

Mr. Shapiro said the figures added to the center's "concerns over the increasingly regressive effects" of the reduced tax rates on capital. Continuing those rates will "exacerbate the long-term trend toward growing income inequality," he wrote.

The center, which studies how government affects the poor and supports policies that it believes help alleviate poverty, opposes Mr. Bush's tax policies.

The center plans to release its own report on Monday that questions the wisdom of continuing the reduced tax rates on dividends and capital gains, saying the Congressional Budget Office analysis indicates that the benefits flow directly to a relatively few Americans.

After you digest all of that please recognize this fact. Bottom line, America, you're getting SCREWED and SCREWED GOOD!

The super rich love to scream "CLASS WARFARE" whenever anyone complains about income inequality or has the nerve to suggest too few benefit from our current economic system at the expense of too many. Or, god forbid, someone suggests this country actually raise the minimum wage! BUT THE TRUTH IS, THERE IS CLASS WARFARE HAPPENING IN AMERICA BUT IT'S FROM THE TOP DOWN, not from the bottom up.

WTFU ALREADY! Stop excusing and denying the truth of the economic agenda that's being foisted on you!

 

[Bowfinger]

Great article BBond! Pity the people who need to read it won't.

 

[Pens1566]

We're going to find out how sturdy a top heavy pyramid is.

 

[HomeAppraiser]

Originally posted by: Jeff7

Originally posted by: Vic
BTW, Orwell did not make that quote in your sig. It is attributed to him, but cannot be referenced.

So where did it come from? Why would it be attributed to him if it isn't his?

Notes: allegedly said by George Orwell although there is no evidence that Orwell ever wrote or uttered either of these versions of this idea. They do bear some similarity to comments made in an essay that Orwell wrote on Rudyard Kipling, when quoting from one of his poems.

* "Yes, making mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep" - Rudyard Kipling (Tommy)

* "I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it." - Jack Nicholson (A Few Good Men)

wikiquote.org

 

[BBond]

Originally posted by: HomeAppraiser

Originally posted by: Jeff7

Originally posted by: Vic
BTW, Orwell did not make that quote in your sig. It is attributed to him, but cannot be referenced.

So where did it come from? Why would it be attributed to him if it isn't his?

Notes: allegedly said by George Orwell although there is no evidence that Orwell ever wrote or uttered either of these versions of this idea. They do bear some similarity to comments made in an essay that Orwell wrote on Rudyard Kipling, when quoting from one of his poems.

* "Yes, making mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep" - Rudyard Kipling (Tommy)

* "I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it." - Jack Nicholson (A Few Good Men)

wikiquote.org

You folks want to discuss Orwell, kindly start an Orwell thread.

Do you have anything to say about the subject of this thread?

Left Behind Economics

I took the time to post quite a bit of information, including links, supporting the notion that bush's economic policies have left ninety-nine percent of Americans behind economically while vastly increasing the wealth of the remaining one percent. bush refers to this as a good economy. Good for that one percent.

Any comments other than on sigs?

 

[Bowfinger]

Originally posted by: BBond
Here is an in depth article from Teresa Tretch, Editoria Board member of the NY Times who writes on economic issues that further proves that the OP is indeed RIGHT ON TARGET, Bowfinger.

I realize most members don't have access to the full NY Times article so I'll post it here with links at the bottom to those .pdf files and other imbedded links that I'm able to include.

There is literally no way ANYONE could possibly excuse the dramatic changes in wealth distribution in America based on the evidence in this article. Any attempt to do so must be in the face of this evidence disingenuous and really has to make one wonder exactly what the agenda of whatever apologists there might be is.

The Rise of the Super-Rich

By TERESA TRITCH

The gap between rich and poor is unfortunately an old story.

It is the stuff of parables and literature. It is a force in social history and political economy, from electoral campaigns to reform movements and revolutions.

But in the United States today, there?s a new twist to the familiar plot. Income inequality used to be about rich versus poor, but now it?s increasingly a matter of the ultra rich and everyone else. The curious effect of the new divide is an economy that appears to be charging ahead, until you realize that the most of the people in it are being left in the dust. President Bush has yet to acknowledge the true state of affairs, though it?s at the root of his failure to convince Americans that the good times are rolling.

The president?s lack of attention may be misplaced optimism, or it could be political strategy. Acknowledging what?s happening would mean having to rethink his policies, not exactly his strong suit.

But the growing income gap ? and the rise of the super-rich ? demands attention. It is making America a less fair society, and a less stable one.

I. The Growing Divide

Anyone who has driven through the new neighborhoods filled with ?McMansions? that have arisen near most cities, or seen the brisk business that luxury stores are doing, has an anecdotal sense that some Americans are making a lot of money right now.

But there is no need to rely on anecdotal evidence.

Thomas Piketty, of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, and Emmanuel Saez of the University of California at Berkeley recently updated their groundbreaking study on income inequality(pdf), and their findings are striking.

The new figures show that from 2003 to 2004, the latest year for which there is data, the richest Americans pulled far ahead of everyone else. In the space of that one year, real average income for the top 1 percent of households ? those making more than $315,000 in 2004 ? grew by nearly 17 percent. For the remaining 99 percent, the average gain was less than 3 percent, and that probably makes things look better than they really are, since other data(pdf), most notably from the Census Bureau, indicate that the average is bolstered by large gains among the top 20 percent of households. In all, the top 1 percent of households enjoyed 36 percent of all income gains in 2004, on top of an already stunning 30 percent in 2003.

Some of the gains at the top reflect capitalism?s robust reward for the founders of companies like Microsoft, Google and Dell. But most of it is due to the unprecedented largesse being heaped on executives and professionals, in the form of salary, bonuses and stock options. A recent study done for the Business Roundtable(pdf), a lobbying group for chief executives, shows that median executive pay at 350 large public companies was $6.8 million in 2005. According to the Wall Street Journal, that?s 179 times the pay of the average American worker. The study is intended to rebut much higher estimates made by other researchers, but it does little to quell the sense that executive pay is out of whack. The Journal's Alan Murray pointed out recently, the study?s calculation of executive pay is widely criticized as an understatement because, as a measurement of the median, it is largely unaffected by the eight or nine-digit pay packages that have dominated the headlines of late.

Rich people are also being made richer, recent government data shows, by strong returns on investment income. In 2003, the latest year for which figures are available, the top 1 percent of households owned 57.5 percent of corporate wealth, generally dividends and capital gains, up from 53.4 percent a year earlier.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington think tank, compared the latest data from Mr. Piketty and Mr. Saez to comprehensive reports on income trends from the Congressional Budget Office. Every way it sliced the data, it found a striking share of total income concentrated at the top(pdf) of the income ladder as of 2004.

? The top 10 percent of households had 46 percent of the nation?s income, their biggest share in all but two of the last 70 years.

? The top 1 percent of households had 19.5 percent (see graph).

? The top one-tenth of 1 percent of households actually received nearly half of the increased share going to the top 1 percent.

These disparaties seem large, and they are. (Though the latest availabe data is from 2004, there are virtually no signs that the basic trend has changed since then.) The top 1 percent held a bigger share of total income than at any time since 1929, except for 1999 and 2000 during the tech stock bubble. But what makes those disparities particularly brutal is that unlike the last bull market of the late 1990's ? when a proverbial rising tide was lifting all boats ? the rich have been the only winners lately. According to an analysis by Goldman Sachs, for most American households ? the bottom 60 percent ? average income grew by less than 20 percent from 1979 to 2004, with virtually all of those gains occurring from the mid- to late 1990's. Before and since, real incomes for that group have basically flatlined.

The best-off Americans are not only winning by an extraordinary margin right now. They are the only ones who are winning at all.

The result has been, as Andrew Hacker, a political science professor at Queens College, has observed in a recent article in the New York Review of Books, ?more billionaires, more millionaires and more six-figure families.?

As income has become more concentrated at the top, overall wealth has also become more skewed. According to the latest installation of a survey(pdf) that the Federal Reserve has conducted every three years since 1989, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans accounted for 33.4 percent of total net worth in 2004, compared to 30.1 percent in 1989. Over the same period, the other Americans in the top 10 percent saw their share of the nation?s net worth basically stagnate, at about 36 percent, while the bottom 50 percent accounted for just 2.5 percent of the wealth in 2004, compared to 3.0 percent in 1989.

II. A Brief History of Income Inequality

While it has long been the case that the rich do better than everyone else, it has not always been true that, in the process, the poor get poorer and the middle class gets squeezed. In post-World War II America, between 1947 and the early 1970?s, all income groups shared in the nation?s economic growth. Poor families actually had a higher growth in real annual income than other groups.

Part of the reason was a sharp rise in labor productivity. As workers produced more, the economy grew and so did compensation ? wages, salaries and benefits (see graph). This link between productivity gains and income gains was not automatic. Government policies worked to ensure that productivity gains translated into more pay for Americans at all levels, including regular increases in the minimum wage and greater investment in the social safety net. Full employment was also a government priority. And, of course, unions were strong back then, giving workers bargaining power.

From the mid-1970?s until 1995, the trend reversed. The gap between the rich and poor widened at a rapid clip. The upper echelons ? generally the top 20 percent of American households ? experienced steady gains, while families in the bottom 40 percent were faced with declining or stagnating incomes.

The growing divide coincided with a slowdown in productivity growth and a reversal in the government policies that had been promoting income equality. Legislators balked at raising the minimum wage and the earned income tax credit, a feature of the tax code that rewards the working poor by ensuring that work pays better than welfare. During the ?supply side? era in the 1980?s, fostered by the policies of Ronald Reagan, taxes became less progressive. The goal of full employment was eclipsed by a focus on inflation fighting that remains to this day.

As trade began to play an ever bigger role in the American economy, manufacturing jobs diminished and labor unions declined, reducing workers? clout in setting compensation. Regulatory laxness reached its apex in the fiscal disaster of the savings and loan meltdown, which drained public resources from socially and economically useful programs and polices.

The trend toward increasing inequality was interrupted, briefly, in the late 1990?s. Productivity growth rebounded, and for a half decade, all income groups participated in the prosperity. Even then, the richest Americans had the best run, propelled largely by stock market gains. In fact, when the stock market hit its all time high in 2000, post-war income concentration also peaked.

But government policies of the day helped to ensure that the lower rungs also had a boost. Clinton-era welfare reforms are often cast as a success story of market-based incentives. But in fact, they were supported by a big increase in the earned income tax credit to help solidify the transition from welfare to work. At the same time, budget deficits were conquered by shared sacrifice ? a mix of tax increases and spending cuts affecting all groups. The combination of economic growth and fiscal discipline spurred robust hiring and, if it had endured, could also have strengthened the Social Security safety net by allowing the government to pay down its debts.

That seems like ancient history now. Nearly everyone?s income fell in 2001 and 2002, due to the bursting of the Internet bubble in 2000, recession in 2001 and the ensuing jobless recovery.

In the last few years, though, the trend toward inequality has reasserted itself ? with a vengeance.

III. Inequality During the Bush Years

For the last few years, the tide has been rising again, but most boats have been staying where they are, or sinking. One key reason is that the link between rising productivity and broad economic prosperity has been severed. Take another look at this graph. During the years that George W. Bush has been in the White House, productivity growth has been stronger than ever. But the real compensation of all but the top 20 percent of income earners has been flat or falling. Gains in wages, salaries and benefits have been increasingly concentrated at the uppermost rungs of the income ladder.

The Bush administration would like you to believe that the situation will correct itself. Most recently, the new Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson, Jr., reiterated the administration?s viewpoint at his confirmation hearing in June when he said that ?economic growth, job growth, productivity growth, hopefully will be followed by increases in wage income.?

Well, hoping certainly won?t make it so.

Neither will growth alone. As the post-World War II history of income inequality illustrates, productivity improvement is only one piece of the prosperity puzzle. The economic health of most American families also depends greatly on what government does. If it merely ?gets out of the way,? inequality is bound to persist and ? if recent results are any indication of future performance ? worsen.

The Bush administration, though, has not even done anything as benign as get out of the way. The policies it has pursued ? affirmatively and aggressively ? have widened the gap between rich and poor.

A. The Tax Wedge

Tax cuts are the most obvious example. The Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center computed the combined effects of tax cut legislation from 2001, 2003 and 2006. The tax cuts? contribution to the income gap was significant.

In 2006, the average tax cut for households with incomes of more than $1 million ? the top two-tenths of 1 percent ? is $112,000 which works out to a boost of 5.7 percent in after tax income. That?s considerably higher than the 5 percent boost garnered by the top 1 percent. It?s far greater than the 2.5 percent increase of the middle fifth of households, and fully 19 times greater than the 0.3 percent gain of the poorest fifth of households.

The disparities are driven by tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the most affluent. In 2006, for instance, a tax cut took effect that allows high income households ? those with incomes above $200,000 ? to take bigger write offs for their children and other expenses, like mortgage interest on a second home. And increasingly, tax cuts are aimed at allowing America?s wealthiest families to amass dynastic wealth ? estates to transfer from one generation to the next virtually untouched by taxes. The most obvious example is the gradual reduction in the estate tax that is scheduled through 2010 (and regular attempts to abolish the estate tax altogether). Another huge, though lesser noted example, is the law passed last May allowing all Americans to shelter money in a tax-favored Roth I.R.A. Under previous law, Roths had been off limits to wealthy Americans, precisely because the government did not want to help people amass big estates under the guise of saving for retirement. That sound principle has now been turned on its head.

B. The Assault on Programs for the Poor and Middle Class

Tax cuts are not the only policies widening the gap between the rich and other Americans. Earlier this year, President Bush signed into law a measure that will cut $39 billion over the next five years from domestic programs like Medicaid and food stamps, and $99.3 billion from 2006 to 2015.

The president and the Republican Congress have also done harm to the finances of the poorest Americans ? and to the notion of basic fairness ? by not increasing the federal minimum wage ? it has been $5.15 since 1997 While C.E.O. salaries have been soaring, the take-home pay of waitresses and janitors has been hit hard by inflation.

The Bush administration has also been trying, with mixed success so far, to pursue other policies that would have the effect of shifting money to the rich. The most ominous is its often-repeated desire to ?address our long-term unfunded entitlement obligations.? That?s code for making tax cuts for the wealthy permanent while cutting Social Security, which has for 70 years been a major factor in keeping Americans financially secure in their old age.

Over the objections of Congress, the administration overturned time-and-a-half regulation for overtime. For a brief period after Hurricane Katrina, the president suspended by executive proclamation the law that requires federal contractors to pay workers the locally prevailing wage, until Congress objected. For three months after Katrina, the Labor Department suspended the law requiring federal contractors to have an affirmative action hiring plan ? an invitation to discrimination and, as such, to income inequality.

C. The Too-Easy Answer

When confronted with evidence of growing income inequality, Bush administration officials invariably say the answer is more and better education. ?We are starting to see that the income gap is largely an education gap,? said Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman, in a typical retort last January when tax data showed an increasing concentration of wealth among the highest-income Americans.

Education is critically important to individuals, society, the economy and democracy itself, and deserves strong government support. But it is neither a satisfactory explanation, nor a remedy, for today's income inequality.

There is a strong correlation between one's level of education and one's earning power. The Bush administration is assuming that the correlation will continue to hold in an ever more globalized economy. Writing in the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs, Princeton economist Alan S. Blinder, a former vice-chairman of the Federal Reserve, explains why that view may be mistaken:

Other things being equal, education and skills are, of course, good things; education yields higher returns in advanced societies, and more schooling probably makes workers more flexible and more adaptable to change. But the problem with relying on education as the remedy for job losses is that 'other things' are not remotely close to equal. The critical divide in the future may instead be between those types of work that are easily deliverable through a wire (or via a wireless connection) with little or no diminution in quality and those that are not. And this unconventional divide does not correspond well to traditional distinctions between jobs that require high levels of education and jobs that don?t.

There is already evidence that the benefits of education are not as straightforward as many people seem to believe they are. In his review of ?Inequality Matters,? a collection of essays from a conference at New York University conference in 2004, Mr. Hacker, the Queens College political science professor, cited findings from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to show that many college graduates now hold jobs that once required only a high school diploma. Today, according to the bureau, 37 percent of flight attendants have completed college, as have 35 percent of tour escorts, 21 percent of embalmers, and 13 percent of both security guards and casino dealers. Mr. Hacker notes that more people are expected to earn college degrees in preparation for well-paying professions. ?But we cannot expect the economy will automatically create better-paid positions to match the cohort acquiring higher education,? he writes.

Underscoring the point, the Bush administration's own Economic Report of the President in 2006 shows that average annual earnings of college graduates fell by 5 percent from 2000 to 2004. In those four years, the difference between the average yearly pay of a college graduate and a high school graduate shrank from 93 percent to 80 percent.

Education is vital. But as Mr. Blinder put it, it ?is far from a panacea.?

IV. The Future of Income Inequality

The fast-growing gap between the rich and poor and middle-class Americans is not something that has just happened. The Bush policies are an attempt to dismantle the institutions and norms that have long worked to ameliorate inequities ? progressive taxation, the minimum wage, Social Security, Medicaid and so on. The aims that can?t be accomplished outright ? like cuts in Social Security ? are being teed up by running deficits that could force the shrinkage of government programs, even though the public would not likely condone many such cuts unless compelled to by a fiscal crisis.

Such policies are grounded in an ideology that began taking shape some 30 years ago, when economic policy makers began to disdain the notion of harnessing and protecting society?s collective potential in favor of crafting incentives to align individuals? interests with those of the market. This campaign has gone by many names ? ?starve the beast,? or ?repeal the New Deal.? Economist Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, calls that approach ?you?re on your own,? or YOYO, and has written a book calling for a new way, dubbed ?we?re in this together,? or WITT. (Click here for excerpts from ?All Together Now: Common Sense for a Fair Economy,? by Jared Bernstein.)

At issue, in economic terms, is the tradeoff between equality and efficiency: It can be difficult to divide the economic pie more equally without reducing the size of the pie. But it?s not impossible, and doing so is crucial for widespread prosperity. A fair and well-functioning economy will always involve some inequality, which acts a motivator and can be explained by differences in risk-taking, ability and work intensity. But inequality is generally deemed to be dangerous ? socially, economically, (and, perhaps, politically) ? when it becomes so extreme as to be self-reinforcing, as many researchers suggest is currently the case.

The problem now is that most any attempt to reduce inequality ? even a measly increase in the minimum wage ? is rejected as misguided. And policies that under one set of economic conditions might allow for a justifiable modicum of inequality are pursued beyond all reason. For instance, the rationale for the tax cuts in 2001 was to return the budget surplus that Mr. Bush inherited from President Clinton. The rationale for the tax cuts in 2002 and 2003 and 2006 was to stimulate the economy. The surplus has long since been replaced by big deficits, the jobless recovery ended three years ago and inequality is on the rise. But tax cutting that overwhelming benefits the rich continues because, we?re told, failure to keep cutting taxes would, somehow, shrink the pie. As Mr. Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute has put it: ?Economics, once an elegant and sensible set of ideas and principles devoted to shaping outcomes for the betterment of society, has been reduced to a restrictive set of ideologically inspired rules devoted to an explanation of why we cannot take the necessary steps to meet the challenges we face.?

Hear, hear.

Lela Moore provided research for this article.

Income Inequality in the United States 1913-1998*

A Brief Look at Postwar U.S. Income Inequality

Historical Federal Tax Rates: 1979-2003

New Data Show Extraordinary Jump in Income Concentration in 2004

Currents and Undercurrents: Changes in the Distribution of Wealth, 1989-2004

TAX RETURNS: A Comprehensive Assessment of the Bush Administration?s Record on Cutting Taxes

Also the other Times article linked from the previous article:

Corporate Wealth Share Rises for Top-Income Americans

By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
Published: January 29, 2006

New government data indicate that the concentration of corporate wealth among the highest-income Americans grew significantly in 2003, as a trend that began in 1991 accelerated in the first year that President Bush and Congress cut taxes on capital.

In 2003 the top 1 percent of households owned 57.5 percent of corporate wealth, up from 53.4 percent the year before, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis of the latest income tax data. The top group's share of corporate wealth has grown by half since 1991, when it was 38.7 percent.

In 2003, incomes in the top 1 percent of households ranged from $237,000 to several billion dollars.

For every group below the top 1 percent, shares of corporate wealth have declined since 1991. These declines ranged from 12.7 percent for those on the 96th to 99th rungs on the income ladder to 57 percent for the poorest fifth of Americans, who made less than $16,300 and together owned 0.6 percent of corporate wealth in 2003, down from 1.4 percent in 1991.

The analysis did not measure wealth directly. It looked at taxes on capital gains, dividends, interest and rents. Income from securities owned by retirement plans and endowments was excluded, as were gains from noncorporate assets such as personal residences.

This technique for measuring wealth has long been used in standard economic studies, though critics have challenged that tradition.

Among them is Stephen J. Entin, president of the Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation in Washington, which favors eliminating most taxes on capital and teaches that an unintended consequence of the corporate income tax is depressed wage rates. Mr. Entin said the report's approach was so flawed that the data were useless.

He said reduced tax rates on long-term capital gains may have prompted wealthy investors to sell profitable investments. That would show up in tax data as increased wealth that year, even though the increase may have built up over decades.

Long-term capital gains were taxed at 28 percent until 1997, and at 20 percent until 2003, when rates were cut to 15 percent. The top rate on dividends was cut to 15 percent from 35 percent that year.

The White House said it did not believe that the 2003 tax cuts had much influence on wealth shares. It also said that since wealth is transitory for many people, a more important issue is how incomes and wealth are influenced by the quality of education.

"We want to lift all incomes and wealth," said Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman. "We are starting to see that the income gap is largely an education gap."

"The president thinks we need to close the income gap, and he has talked about ways in which we can do that," especially through education, Mr. Duffy said.

The data showing increased concentration of corporate wealth were posted last month on the Congressional Budget Office Web site. Isaac Shapiro, associate director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, spotted the information last week and wrote a report analyzing it.

Mr. Shapiro said the figures added to the center's "concerns over the increasingly regressive effects" of the reduced tax rates on capital. Continuing those rates will "exacerbate the long-term trend toward growing income inequality," he wrote.

The center, which studies how government affects the poor and supports policies that it believes help alleviate poverty, opposes Mr. Bush's tax policies.

The center plans to release its own report on Monday that questions the wisdom of continuing the reduced tax rates on dividends and capital gains, saying the Congressional Budget Office analysis indicates that the benefits flow directly to a relatively few Americans.

After you digest all of that please recognize this fact. Bottom line, America, you're getting SCREWED and SCREWED GOOD!

The super rich love to scream "CLASS WARFARE" whenever anyone complains about income inequality or has the nerve to suggest too few benefit from our current economic system at the expense of too many. Or, god forbid, someone suggests this country actually raise the minimum wage! BUT THE TRUTH IS, THERE IS CLASS WARFARE HAPPENING IN AMERICA BUT IT'S FROM THE TOP DOWN, not from the bottom up.

WTFU ALREADY! Stop excusing and denying the truth of the economic agenda that's being foisted on you!

Bump.