The numbers don't lie

[Paul98]

So to you, a software engineer making $110k plus 401k match, HMO, bonus, stock options etc. is "getting fucked"?

Very much so

this is what people can't really grasp. So instead they side with the rich rather than the "poor", even though they are far far closer to being "poor" than they are of becoming "rich".

 

[Phokus]

H1Bs are not cheaper. After legal fees and total sponsorship costs they cost more. I've had at least 10 requisitions out for engineers in the last 2 months and we hired 2.

You're not even in management. How would you know how a company is run?

They ARE cheaper, they are paid less, they work WAY longer hours (like i said, they have a yoke around their neck), and they're used as an intermediary between American management and programming teams in India. Even with Visa/legal fees, they save the company money. There'd be no reason to hire them if it didn't have a monetary benefit to the companies.

You honestly think companies would go through this song and dance if it didn't? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU

Edit: Requisitions are bullshit and you know it. We have a lot of job requisition floating around for accounting/finance even with layoffs and nobody is ever hired for them.

 

[Jaskalas]

Now more than ever, it's time to change the representative model of the U.S. Senate to something more useful.

What if senators represented people by income or race, not by state?

Enter the lunacy of someone who wishes to dispose of states. Or at least state representation.

 

[yllus]

Enter the lunacy of someone who wishes to dispose of states. Or at least state representation.

Why is representative grouping by geographical location superior to grouping by economic status?

 

[bamacre]

Let me put it this way, Bamacre, if God offered me a deal that the price of everything will go up by 50% tomorrow but at the same time that we not only stop but reverse the trend of outsourcing, I would take that in a heartbeat. Uncertainty about job security is WAY more on my mind more than mild inflation.

So, we'd have an increase in employment, but what I'm saying this would also cause further wealth concentration toward the top. It's going to take a lot more than "mild inflation" to get those unemployment numbers down. Welcome to China.

 

[shira]

Reality doesn't lie either. Worthless piece of shits stay worthless, producers make money.

90% of the U.S. population has been doing worse over the last 30 years than they did in earlier decades. So according to you, 90% of the U.S. population are "worthless pieces of shit."

Does that about sum up your attitude?

 

[JS80]

90% of the U.S. population has been doing worse over the last 30 years than they did in earlier decades. So according to you, 90% of the U.S. population are "worthless pieces of shit."

Does that about sum up your attitude?

Yea 90% of Americans are sure doing worse, fed well (fat fucks), LCD TVs (lazy slobs), iPhones (gossipy bitches), pay no taxes (worthless pieces of shits), free shit.

 

[Paul98]

90% of the U.S. population has been doing worse over the last 30 years than they did in earlier decades. So according to you, 90% of the U.S. population are "worthless pieces of shit."

Does that about sum up your attitude?

There are a lot of people who think that way, yet don't realize they themselves are in the group that they are calling lazy.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

I guess I'm in the 10%, my salary has increased every year for the past 36 years and I make more than 40 times what I did when I started working.

 

[Fern]

Wow. People just can't seem to get enough of this topic.

I just can't understand why, in the USA, we shouldn't have some people making tons of money while others just make the $30K or whatever. Why the hell should everyone make the same amount - say $50K?

And in all the postings about this, none of the info says year-in and year-out it's the same people making the bucks, and the same people making the little bucks. That would be a problem.

As an accountant with a very small office I can't keep count of the number of people I have seen move from big $'s to little $'s in a span as short as 5 or 10 years. Some businesses go in out of vogue, and the economy, whether local or nationally, changes.

The link in the OP says this great disparity has been ocurring since 1980. You know what the heck happened in 1980? One big difference is taht we got cable TV. Many of you are likely too young to remember what it was like before then. Well, unless you were living in a large city you got 1 or 2 channel's, 3 (ABC, NBC, CBS) at most if you were really lucky.

Well, what does that mean?

A TV audience, and moreso, a big TV audience means big bucks.

Go back and look at the salaries for pro athletes back then. Before cable they were unimpressive. After cable, when the games/sports could be broadcast to a MUCH larger national audience, the salaries/winnings became huge. Plus, we've added a ton more events. The NFL has added several new teams. UFC wouldn't exist without cable, or if it did the fighters would be making peanuts, not millions. You get on TV, you make big $'s.

Look at the purse in pro golf. Heck, look at the purse in the Nationwide Tour (for those of you who don't know what that is, is it's a lower tier golf circuit for those who can't make it on the PGA Tour). The Nationwide Tour wouldn't exist without the 100's of channels on cable, it would never have made it onto one of the 3 channels.

3 channels? Remember how few TV shows there were? How few movies were shown. Hell, people get millions now for making crap movies for just TV (will never see a theater). Would cast members of a TV show like 'Friends' back then have a million $'s per EPISODE? Of course not.

Back then news anchors and sports braodcasters, the few who there were, made modest amounts. Now they're all making ten's or 100's of millions and there are so many you can't keep count of them.

Yeah, I see why we have had an explosion of people of making huge amounts, and I know that cable TV etc hasn't made the rest of us a thin dime. Of course the charts and numbers are going to look they way they do. Of course that wil result in bigger income inequality. And I see nothing wrong with that.

I will say I hate dynasties, the Gores, Rockefellers and the Hiltons etc. But that's a problem with the inheretence tax laws; it's as simple as that.

It's not all this class war/corporatist BS.

There's nothing wrong with people here making a ton of money. You wanna make a ton? Go write a scritp for a TV (or crappy made-for-TV movie) or get yourself on cable TV. Jeebus, we've got people who are mega-millionaires from selling fancy rags that dry off cars or wipe up spills on cable TV.

(The other big difference is that the stock market went retail in the early 80's. That's brought a lot of people big money. I remember back in 1980 you could buy a seat on the NYSE for only $100K. I could go on, but this post is already long.)

Edit: I can only guess what effect the mass illegal immigration of uneducated lower class workers has had on this type of data too.

Fern

 

[Craig234]

Wow. People just can't seem to get enough of this topic.

I just can't understand why, in the USA, we shouldn't have some people making tons of money while others just make the $30K or whatever. Why the hell should everyone make the same amount - say $50K?

Some people are such idiots that they don't understand what excessive concentration of wealth is, much less the problems it causes, depsite much posted info.

For them, any discussion of excessive concentration of wealth is exactly the same thing as everyone having exactly the same income, a straw man no one supports. Idiots.

 

[JS80]

Some people are such idiots that they don't understand what excessive concentration of wealth is, much less the problems it causes, depsite much posted info.

For them, any discussion of excessive concentration of wealth is exactly the same thing as everyone having exactly the same income, a straw man no one supports. Idiots.

Concentration of wealth is meaningless in the modern era. For every Koch there's a Soros. And no billionaire negatively affects your life. Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, and Warren Buffett have no affect on my life. Well maybe not Larry...Oracle is the fucking devil.

The only "problem" I see is that dbags like you get jealous.

 

[bamacre]

Concentration of wealth is meaningless in the modern era. For every Koch there's a Soros. And no billionaire negatively affects your life. Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, and Warren Buffett have no affect on my life. Well maybe not Larry...Oracle is the fucking devil.

The only "problem" I see is that dbags like you get jealous.

I disagree, the concentration of wealth toward the top is harmful, and it is not fair, as it is occurring unnaturally. A strong middle class should be the result of a capitalistic economy.

There was a chart posted many months ago showing the unemployment rate by class. The lower one was on the scale, the more likely they were unemployed, and the differences were huge.

I give Progressives props for understanding this is a problem (Elizabeth Warren has a great speech on this) and having a desire to correct it. Republicans just don't see it as a problem, most likely because, like the Progressives, they don't understand the cause. Republicans see this as an attack on capitalism, when it certainly shouldn't be, as that isn't the cause. Crony capitalism and bad monetary policy are the culprits.

 

[iGas]

I guess I'm in the 10%, my salary has increased every year for the past 36 years and I make more than 40 times what I did when I started working.

That doesn't count because you were a kid, and paper route doesn't pay that well.

just kidding!

More than 30 years ago my paper route pay me less than $50 a month and I had more money then than now when I'm making 150X that.

 

[LegendKiller]

Concentration of wealth is meaningless in the modern era. For every Koch there's a Soros. And no billionaire negatively affects your life. Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, and Warren Buffett have no affect on my life. Well maybe not Larry...Oracle is the fucking devil.

The only "problem" I see is that dbags like you get jealous.

Geebus dude, what the fuck?

What, are you going to say I am jealous of you?

 

[ElFenix]

iirc, 1979 is a cherry picked date. that's basically the low point of wealth concentration in the post war period. i've made some fairly long posts about it around here somewhere.

edit: could have been 1977. late 70s, anyway.

 

[matt0611]

Geebus dude, what the fuck?

What, are you going to say I am jealous of you?

Self hate. /Moonbeam

 

[shira]

Concentration of wealth is meaningless in the modern era. For every Koch there's a Soros. And no billionaire negatively affects your life. Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, and Warren Buffett have no affect on my life. Well maybe not Larry...Oracle is the fucking devil.

The only "problem" I see is that dbags like you get jealous.

If you can't understand that a system that increasingly focuses power and influence in the hands of the few is a major problem, then you're blind. It's not the existence of billionaires that's harmful, it's the the fact the ultra-rich have so much more access and so much more say then the rest of us, and they will use that influence to further their own selfish agendas, agendas that are highly unlikely to be good for the rest of us.

That fact that a greater and greater percentage of the population is doing less and less well is a clear indication that our system of governance is failing us. But according to you, everything's just great.

 

[dmcowen674]

The numbers don't lie

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph

Great visual reference point for the growing income inequality in America. Scary really. :thumbsdown:

Dude, they all post in here. They are happy about these numbers.

 

[Lithium381]

Yeh free stuff for everyone!!!

everyone, not just the lazy fucks

 

[Kadarin]

Reality doesn't lie either. Worthless piece of shits stay worthless, producers make money.

I don't have a problem at all when producers (i.e. people like, say, Steve Jobs et al) make tons of money, as they're producing goods and services that impact society in a positive way. I do have a problem when financial firms (for example) rig the system to siphon off wealth in a parasitic manner (i.e. Goldman Sachs and high frequency trading algorithms).

 

[PrinceofWands]

Now more than ever, it's time to change the representative model of the U.S. Senate to something more useful.

What if senators represented people by income or race, not by state?

That is a FASCINATING piece. Thanks for posting it.

 

[bamacre]

Here is the link to the speech I mentioned above...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A

I likely wouldn't agree with her solutions, but she does a fantastic job of describing the problem.

 

[Craig234]

iirc, 1979 is a cherry picked date. that's basically the low point of wealth concentration in the post war period. i've made some fairly long posts about it around here somewhere.

edit: could have been 1977. late 70s, anyway.

If it were a cherry picked date, the point is not invalidated. The changes are still there - they just might be slightly larger with that date than another. You don't get that.

But it's not a cherry picked date, in that it's the last year before Regan was elected, even if the numbers make it a little bit of a more equal wealth pick.

Say you are pointing out that 10.1, 10.3, 9.8, 10.1, 10.6 went to 16.1, 17.9, 16.2, 18.0.

Is the fact that you pick 9.8 instead of 10.1 somethig that disproves the point?

 

[Craig234]

That is a FASCINATING piece. Thanks for posting it.

It's a great idea; even more clear after the Senate just killed most of the Democrats' policies passed in the House last term.

The current setup blocked democracy. Small red states got far more representation than '1 man, 1 vote' would dictate and a minority blocked the majority (abusing the filibuster too - even under the current unfair representation small states get, the Republican party STILL had only about 41 or 44 votes on its side, so it needed abusing the filibuster in addition to having too many seats).

Unfortunately, I don't think it's practical. The people got one victory with the direct election of Senators - one undermined by the corruption of election by big money.

And even that one improvement for democracy is attacked by the radical right, wanting to reverse it.