Obama Administration = Most successful at reducing income inequality in 50 years

[Jhhnn]

Yea so? Got what you voted for. It has alot to do with power. The middle class voluntarily gave up their power. They cheered on the destruction of unions. They cheered on job outsourcing so long as it made their retirement investments go up. They threw their fellow co-workers under the the bus and greased the rungs lower than theirs if it meant a bigger paycheck and less competition. And so corporations divided and conquered a middle class that was too busy being self-absorbed. Its already conquered.... its gone. Some semblance of the middle class exists on paper but really in terms of power its as good as dead. Corporations and the upper middle are basically just taking their sweet time milking the rest of the dumb middle class at their leisure. They don't wanna kill it because the poor are so much worse to deal with. It would almost be merciful at this point if the middle class was finished off economically. At least then the 99% would actually band together.

And yet you rave ignorantly about things like the ACA that benefit the middle class.

 

[Jhhnn]

I agree completely with your statement: First world wages are not competitive with those in 3rd world countries in such a globalized world.

My point was that this is due completely to easier trading/reduced barriers. I.e. the reason manufacturing was domestic in the past was because it was flat out unfeasible to produce many products at competitive prices in distant countries - there was no exploitation of the 3rd world as he said; the USA quite frankly didn't really trade at all with the 3rd world.

You can create any internal/domestic manufacturing industry. You just have to impose closed/reduced trade borders. (I.e. Canadian dairy industry).

Those countries didn't have the infrastructure or stability to support manufacturing investment from multinationals. They do now.

None of it is germane to how we reduce inequality in this country, anyway.

 

[MongGrel]

I find it ironic (and not in the intended, hipster appreciated sense of ironic) that the progressive left spends their time nowadays pining away for the era where people lived in 700 square foot houses, immigration was tightly enforced and limited to mostly western Europeans, women were expected to be housewives and exposed to constant sexual harassment when they did work, negroes knew their place and that was the back of the bus, and the rest world outside the First World was expected to starve quietly while Americans complained about their shitty factory jobs in the textile mills and paid their union dues to corrupt bosses like Jimmy Hoffa.

You seem to think the US had immigration laws in place in the the 1500's, which is odd to begin with.

 

[glenn1]

You seem to think the US had immigration laws in place in the the 1500's, which is odd to begin with.

Unsure where you got that idea since my post was talking about the post WW2 era. It was another poster who thinks there should be no punishment whatsoever for breaking immigration laws who brought up deporting the first colonists. Which is akin to suggesting that since native american tribes didn't have a formal legal code that criminalized rape and thus some colonists got away with raping women of native tribes, that we shouldn't prosecute rapists today.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

I'm not looking to control much, but really, you do tend to get going for multiple posts on really minor or obvious details. Come on up and let's talk big picture!

What about in particular? I don't necessarily disagree with the figures provided earlier and don't hold the "Oh we're recovering but too slowly" argument against Obama. My ideals are closer to libertarian but I can't fault a system as long as it works, and reduction in income inequality seems like a good thing to me as long as it's due to low wages rising rather than wealthy people hemorrhaging money. There was a brief jump in household income a couple years ago and now it seems to be trending down again a little, so I dunno, I guess time will tell how that holds up.

This is the "Fixed Pie" Illusion.

By current standards, the US exported very very little to the rest of the world post WW2.

Exports as a percentage of GDP in the 50s and 60s hovered around 5% (and a lot of this is probably to Canada/Europe NOT developing countries). The US and other countries never enjoyed lower barriers to competition in other countries in the past - there never really was any competition with other countries as everything was made domestically for domestic purposes (shipping was a very very real expense). There was no 'taking advantage of workers in other countries" - there simply wasn't very much trading with other countries. Despite this, wages were high.

You are falling into the fixed pie illusion where you view productivity as some sort of global share when in reality in the past, the world was much much less connected than it is today. Globalization is a relatively recent phenomenon and had nothing to do with the 50s and 60s.

Exports as a percentage of GDP doesn't tell the full story. Automation is in part responsible for an increase of our exporting ability, but that doesn't translate into jobs, as we can see with both falling manufacturing jobs and falling wages. The United States' share of the world's exports has fallen significantly since the early post-WW2 years.

Honestly its great over there. They dont look at everyone around them as a burden and the system works. There is poverty yes but its great in general.

It's not totally horrible or anything of course, it would still be near the top of places to live outside of the USA. People have long lives, they're safe, etc, but suicide is also very high, workers are heavily stressed out, work longer hours than most of the developed world, and they have less and less money to spend on themselves.

 

[MongGrel]

Unsure where you got that idea since my post was talking about the post WW2 era. It was another poster who thinks there should be no punishment whatsoever for breaking immigration laws who brought up deporting the first colonists. Which is akin to suggesting that since native american tribes didn't have a formal legal code that criminalized rape and thus some colonists got away with raping women of native tribes, that we shouldn't prosecute rapists today.

You know exactly where it came from, trying to be coy about it is just lame.

You do not dance around your own inane statements very well.

 

[werepossum]

The ACA has certainly reduced the gap between my family and poor people. I suspect that poor people are more enthused about this than am I.

 

[agent00f]

The ACA has certainly reduced the gap between my family and poor people. I suspect that poor people are more enthused about this than am I.

Another temporarily embarrassed capitalist.

 

[zinfamous]

The ACA has certainly reduced the gap between my family and poor people. I suspect that poor people are more enthused about this than am I.

sucks when poor people finally have access to things us privileged master of the universe types once had exclusively. It makes that thing so much worse, for some reason.

 

[Starbuck1975]

sucks when poor people finally have access to things us privileged master of the universe types once had exclusively. It makes that thing so much worse, for some reason.

Bill Clinton just validated it as the craziest thing ever. Someone didn't get the memo.

Its not unreasonable for people to observe and lament the degregation of the care they receive. The idea of expanding health care coverage by focusing on affordability is a noble and necessary one, but whenever the government intervened to provide service for all, it always seems to undermine or degrade the quality of what was in place before.

As someone who lives in a blue state that fully supports Obamacare, I've observed an increase in cost and a degregation in service. It is easy to lose sight of the broader objective or benefit to society when distracted by immedialy observed impacts.

Opponents of Obamacare will exploit this as a wedge issue. It was a noble idea poorly implemented.

 

[agent00f]

Bill Clinton just validated it as the craziest thing ever. Someone didn't get the memo.

Its not unreasonable for people to observe and lament the degregation of the care they receive. The idea of expanding health care coverage by focusing on affordability is a noble and necessary one, but whenever the government intervened to provide service for all, it always seems to undermine or degrade the quality of what was in place before.

As someone who lives in a blue state that fully supports Obamacare, I've observed an increase in cost and a degregation in service. It is easy to lose sight of the broader objective or benefit to society when distracted by immedialy observed impacts.

Opponents of Obamacare will exploit this as a wedge issue. It was a noble idea poorly implemented.

It just seems worse because now even the poor people get it. The degradation was happening all the same as costs were rising for quite a while, there just wasn't as convenient of a target to scapegoat then.

 

[Jhhnn]

It just seems worse because now even the poor people get it. The degradation was happening all the same as costs were rising for quite a while, there just wasn't as convenient of a target to scapegoat then.

Couldn't blame de Gubmint. Now they can.

 

[OverVolt]

The ACA has certainly reduced the gap between my family and poor people. I suspect that poor people are more enthused about this than am I.

Hah.

 

[Exterous]

Good piece from The Atlantic; it's hard for me to not see this as a major win for the middle class in America. Also, holy cow at that second graph and its numbers for the Reagan years.

I'm not sure its as big of a win as you might think. The reason is two fold:

1: The report specifically focuses on 'household income'. You'd be hard pressed to find a significant number of 1%ers that don't have at least one trust. Trust incomes and taxes are not reported on in this piece. And the last decade has been an absolute feeding frenzy on trusts given the previously unimagined scenario of historically low interest rates, a hot stock market and rising personal taxes at the higher brackets. Just as one example take Charitable Lead trusts - they let you keep anything beyond the IRS 7520 interest table as untaxed gains. The 7520 rate has been mostly under 2% since 2011. Having nothing but safe bonds would have returned you more - let alone the frequent double digit stock market returns in the same period. Its pretty poorly kept secret yet I don't see any Republicans or Democrats interested in changing the system

2: It only focuses on realized income\gains. So wealth gains in appreciation are not covered nor is borrowing from an investment bank using shares as collateral for purchasing options at a fixed rate. I also hear Incorporating yourself is a good way to avoid income on gains but am not sure about the details behind it.

Given that the wealth gap has grown despite the graphs in the Atlantic article (and hasn't really shown signs of slowing) I think that these scenarios (and probably others) are substantial drivers in the top wealth brackets - more so than they have been in the past

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/02/the-wealth-gap-is-growing-too/?_r=0

So this certainly isn't a bad thing but I do wonder if certain players want to distract people from whats happening behind the curtains, especially since players from both sides of the aisles are taking advantage of the various opportunities the complicated tax system they crafted afford.

 

[werepossum]

Bill Clinton just validated it as the craziest thing ever. Someone didn't get the memo.

Its not unreasonable for people to observe and lament the degregation of the care they receive. The idea of expanding health care coverage by focusing on affordability is a noble and necessary one, but whenever the government intervened to provide service for all, it always seems to undermine or degrade the quality of what was in place before.

As someone who lives in a blue state that fully supports Obamacare, I've observed an increase in cost and a degregation in service. It is easy to lose sight of the broader objective or benefit to society when distracted by immedialy observed impacts.

Opponents of Obamacare will exploit this as a wedge issue. It was a noble idea poorly implemented.

Agreed. I would have preferred a state-by-state solution: mandate the level of coverage and have fifty states competing to come up with the best ideas and the best fit for their population. But Democrats love top-down, one size fits all big government "solutions" and Republicans refused to admit there was a problem, so we got a poorly implemented idea.

sucks when poor people finally have access to things us privileged master of the universe types once had exclusively. It makes that thing so much worse, for some reason.

The reasons would be that my health care now costs much more out of pocket and my health insurance now covers less and less that I need. Sorry, I thought that to be self-evident.

 

[OverVolt]

And yet you rave ignorantly about things like the ACA that benefit the middle class.

Obamacare only helped the lower 20%ile and actually places the greatest burden as a portion of increased income spending on healthcare for the bottom 21%ile-40%ile. For the rich increased healthcare costs is a drop in the bucket. The median single person salary being all of like $35k. So rich.

Alot of people in the income bracket are also young, like me, and thus we get double pounded by obamacare. You at least got some of the burden relief by pooling with the young. Theoretically young entry level men get hit the hardest. Cause you know who needs young men to have jobs and save money. Fuck family formation right? So good for the country amaze.

young = pooled with the old
men = pooled with women (state intervening in people's lives, if you have a kid with someone you should already be sharing child healthcare related expenses. This is the state intervening into people's lives. Good couples are punished to help support single mothers, my rates doubled FWIW, and yes I lost my doctor.)
starting out = often in the 30-50% of income bracket for the average person.

House formation rate : abysmal.

GEE I WONDER WHY.

You had cheaper health insurance when you were my age and now you want that benefit from me retroactively. Go suck a lemon.

 

[ivwshane]

Agreed. I would have preferred a state-by-state solution: mandate the level of coverage and have fifty states competing to come up with the best ideas and the best fit for their population. But Democrats love top-down, one size fits all big government "solutions" and Republicans refused to admit there was a problem, so we got a poorly implemented idea.


The reasons would be that my health care now costs much more out of pocket and my health insurance now covers less and less that I need. Sorry, I thought that to be self-evident.

Lol I believe that plan already exists, it's called the ACA!

 

[Jhhnn]

Agreed. I would have preferred a state-by-state solution: mandate the level of coverage and have fifty states competing to come up with the best ideas and the best fit for their population. But Democrats love top-down, one size fits all big government "solutions" and Republicans refused to admit there was a problem, so we got a poorly implemented idea.


The reasons would be that my health care now costs much more out of pocket and my health insurance now covers less and less that I need. Sorry, I thought that to be self-evident.

Gotta love the way you stand on claims that are not verifiable in the slightest, your own claimed experience, then project that out onto the world as if it were fact.

And if, as you claim, that poor implementation is the problem then Hillary is right, isn't she, in calling for us to fix it? Or do we follow Repubs' lead in refusing to do that in hoping to keep it broken & ultimately rescind it?