US: Gap between rich and poor widest on record.

[Acanthus]

From the taxfoundation you linked





And how are you going to force them to invest it in the US? More regulation, taxation, higher job cost, etc?

Import taxes.

Just like we did before the "free trade" shit started.

free trade with 3rd world nations is just stupid on the part of the US.

 

[jackace]

And your solutions is? Tax the top 20% 94% more?

I've pointed to the fact that those that earn more already pay more.

Around 40% of the population pays no taxes.

I don't care if the top 1% has 99% of the wealth.

I care that the 1% of the wealth that remains is enough for the 99% of the population has a place to live, clothing, health, security, is able to pay for their kids studies (allowing them to aspire to be in the top 1% or whatever percentile you prefer) and is able to have some luxuries/leisure time.

You guys are just "Rich is evil! They take all the wealth!".

Who the fuck cares with that as long the wealth that is left over allows a happy life with all the stuff I pointed earlier?

What you should care about is the debasement of currency that is happening that makes everybody wages worth less.

Do I hear you talk about that? Nope.

Do I hear you talk about how the new regulations, that are supposed to be anti big corporations, strangle the smaller business?

Do I hear you talk how the government keeps redirecting money from profitable business into business that aren't profitable like GM?

Governments don't create wealth - they syphon it from one place and put it on another place.

That is why the $700bn stimulus package didn't work and wont work regardless.

All of this social classes fight is a big distraction of the real problems.

Unfortunately we will see the result in a few years, when we get to pay back all this money

WOW,

You honestly believe all that?

We can't have a stable free economy if a select few control the majority of the money and therefor power. It just won't work, and history has shown that.

Government doesn't just siphon wealth. Government also sets the rules (aka laws) for how we play the game. (aka wealth creation) When the rules are set up to protect those at the top and leave those in the middle and bottom to fend for themselves the system is rigged.

 

[SickBeast]

Even though the gap may be wider now, I'll bet that the lowest common denominator is higher.

 

[jackace]

Even though the gap may be wider now, I'll bet that the lowest common denominator is higher.

Which is irrelevant to the problem we face.

 

[SickBeast]

Which is irrelevant to the problem we face.

How so? If the poor are not any "poorer" than they were before, and we simply have a ton more rich people, I say we continue on with that until we have 50% of people making $200,000 a year or more.

You can't have rich without poor.

It is a free country. People make out that people are "trapped" in poverty. I say if you work hard enough, you can make it no matter what, you just have to be willing to do it. I'm not saying that poor people can go to Harvard; I'm just saying there are many ways in which one can become successful.

 

[jackace]

How so? If the poor are not any "poorer" than they were before, and we simply have a ton more rich people, I say we continue on with that until we have 50% of people making $200,000 a year or more.

You can't have rich without poor.

It is a free country. People make out that people are "trapped" in poverty. I say if you work hard enough, you can make it no matter what, you just have to be willing to do it. I'm not saying that poor people can go to Harvard; I'm just saying there are many ways in which one can become successful.

The problem isn't one of poor or rich, the problem is the power and influence that money buys. When the people at the top have an ever increasing gap in money they in turn have an ever increasing gap in power and influence. This is not healthy and history has shown that it doesn't work for long-term success and stability.

 

[SickBeast]

The problem isn't one of poor or rich, the problem is the power and influence that money buys. When the people at the top have an ever increasing gap in money they in turn have an ever increasing gap in power and influence. This is not healthy and history has shown that it doesn't work for long-term success and stability.

I think this is overblown by the media. The poor can vote. Money is only so powerful and too many people get caught up with it too much, including worrying about other people having too much.

 

[jackace]

I think this is overblown by the media. The poor can vote. Money is only so powerful and too many people get caught up with it too much, including worrying about other people having too much.

What's it matter if you can vote if you only have a choice between 2 people who have been bought a paid for by the rich?

 

[Jhhnn]

Ultimately, extreme concentration of wealth and egalitarian democracy are incompatible, particularly in the electronic age. I'm sure that makes no sense to people whose most cherished beliefs were formed by paid right wing political propaganda administered their whole lives, unfortunately...

Or by people who've been living a life made possible only by the ongoing societal acquisition of debt used as cover for the enormous shift in income wrought by Reaganomics. If we balanced the federal, state and local budgets next year, we'd all find out just how broke we really are, and how effectively we've been chumped by the rhetoric of the rich, the deception of trickledown economics...

 

[SickBeast]

IMO there are too many people here wearing tin foil hats.

We live much better lives today than we did in the past. That includes poor people.

/thread

 

[GaiaHunter]

WOW,

You honestly believe all that?

We can't have a stable free economy if a select few control the majority of the money and therefor power. It just won't work, and history has shown that.

How can you have a free stable economy when you have people in Washigton deciding where money should flow by giving government guarantees for house loans?

Why should a bank lend money, and therefore taking a risk, to some private citizen that wants to start/expand a business when government guarantees house loans?

Who is going to be able to burrow money when the government is burrowing billions?

Who is going to be able to try to build a new auto industry if the US government keeps bailing out auto companies that are inefficient?

I'm not against governments or rules, I'm against governments that try to steer in the economy because then it isn't free economy.

Just because you get to vote on the government, it doesn't mean they are smarter than anyone else.

 

[jackace]

Just because you get to vote on the government, it doesn't mean they are smarter than anyone else.

See that is part of the current problem. When money and therefor power are concentrated into a few they in turn control what happens to everyone. I'm not here saying government is the 100% answer, but the past has 1 clear answer to the concentration of power and wealth and that is instability. That is not good for a free democratic economy.

 

[Jhhnn]

How can you have a free stable economy when you have people in Washigton deciding where money should flow by giving government guarantees for house loans?

Why should a bank lend money, and therefore taking a risk, to some private citizen that wants to start/expand a business when government guarantees house loans?

Who is going to be able to burrow money when the government is burrowing billions?

Who is going to be able to try to build a new auto industry if the US government keeps bailing out auto companies that are inefficient?

I'm not against governments or rules, I'm against governments that try to steer in the economy because then it isn't free economy.

Just because you get to vote on the government, it doesn't mean they are smarter than anyone else.

The govt has guaranteed home and small business loans for over 70 years, and did it well, until repubs cracked the new deal with serial deregulation, looted the system. We found out the negative consequences of naked capitalism in 1929 and 1932, and in several system crashes before that. It's why we have the SEC, several federal and state home and small business lending agencies, SS, FDIC, and several others that still serve the public interest and the economy, among them important fair labor standards.

The most amazing part of it all is that confronted with the failure of Repub policy all around us, they still preach the same message, and their adherents still believe, because it's what they want to hear.

 

[GaiaHunter]

The govt has guaranteed home and small business loans for over 70 years, and did it well, until repubs cracked the new deal with serial deregulation, looted the system. We found out the negative consequences of naked capitalism in 1929 and 1932, and in several system crashes before that. It's why we have the SEC, several federal and state home and small business lending agencies, SS, FDIC, and several others that still serve the public interest and the economy, among them important fair labor standards.

Capitalism has a few way of correcting bad investments - bankruptcies and bubble busts which aren't exactly pleasant.

The 1929 depression is quite interest.

Hoover is seen as the capitalist that didn't do a thing and then Roosevelt came with the New Deal and things got solved.

But lets look closer.

Hoover did distrust free markets and favoured central planning (although he kept it within the constitutional limits). Hoover did act, but made major mistakes - he ordered wages up and he raised taxes people were unable to pay.

Roosevelt was elected in 1932. Despite heavy spending the depression kept until around 1937 followed by an upswing of the economy that continued when WWII economy began.

Additionally, lets not forget of the Fed increasing of the money supply that preceded the huge stocks price increase, very similar to what happened recently.

In the words of Alan Greenspan:

"When business in the United States underwent a mild contraction... the Federal Reserve created more paper reserves in the hope of forestalling any possible bank reserve shortage. The "fed" succeeded;... but it nearly destroyed the economics of the world, in the process. The excess credit which the Fed pumped into the economy spilled over into the stock market - triggering a fantastic speculative boom. Belatedly, Federal Reserve officials attempted to sop up the excess reserves and finally succeeded in breaking the boom. But it was too late;... the speculative imbalances had become so overwhelming that the attempt precipitated a sharp retrenching and a consequent demoralizing of business confidence. As a result, the American economy collapsed."

This was written in the sixties about the great depression.

Now lets fast forward to 2000.

The DotCom bust (which was a bubble created during Bill Clinton). GWB fresh in the office didn't want an economy crisis - so what happened?

GWB and Greenspan tried to reflate the economy by easing the monetary policy - and all went into the Housing market, where people that couldn't afford a house (someone getting a house isn't some evil plan manufactured by rich people, is it?) was getting money to buy one and without a down payment.

That created a rise in RE prices - and then people were borrowing money against their "ever appreciating houses" for consumption.

The most amazing part of it all is that confronted with the failure of Repub policy all around us, they still preach the same message, and their adherents still believe, because it's what they want to hear.

The most amazing part of it is that some people fail to see the parallels between GWB and Obama economic strategy.

Their strategy is printing money to keep people borrowing and spending.

The main objective of the $800bn stimulus package was job creation.

If we believe the numbers it failled.

In addition US needs production jobs because of its huge debt, both government debt and trade debt. But those aren't the type of jobs being created by the government.

What I see is no jobs creation, I see individuals trying to save but the government wants people to spend so it will spend in their place.

I see the dollar losing value, which means commodities like oil will go up.

I hope all this spending is the solution but I just can't see it.

Likewise, the Europeans seem to think spending more when you are already broke is the solution. On the other hand, only 4 governments of the EU are dominated by left party, which interestingly includes Greece, Spain and Portugal, 3 of the countries in worse shape.

 

[BurnItDwn]

IMO there are too many people here wearing tin foil hats.

We live much better lives today than we did in the past. That includes poor people.

/thread

So, if poor people today are better off then poor people yesterday, then extreme growth in income disparity is not a bad thing?
What about the fact that there are less and less middle class poeple, and more and more poor?

Also, I believe in the 50s and 60s, the middle class lived better than they do now. One parent worked in the two parent household, and people didn't spend their whole lives buried in debt.

So, the question you need to ask yourself is, do today's poor live better than the middle class of a few decades ago, because .... while the corrupt system benefits those on the very very very top, the rest get fvcked.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

Also, I believe in the 50s and 60s, the middle class lived better than they do now. One parent worked in the two parent household, and people didn't spend their whole lives buried in debt.

True.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A

 

[QuantumPion]

The problem isn't one of poor or rich, the problem is the power and influence that money buys. When the people at the top have an ever increasing gap in money they in turn have an ever increasing gap in power and influence. This is not healthy and history has shown that it doesn't work for long-term success and stability.

The problem isn't that rich people can buy power. The problem is that the government has power to sell.

 

[Craig234]

The problem isn't that rich people can buy power. The problem is that the government has power to sell.

Where do all these libertarian ideologues come from? That's quite wrong. The power will be either in the hands of elected government, or unelected private hands.

This libertarian fantasy of a vacuum is not going to happen, has never happened, it's the road to tyranny.

That view is anti-Democratic and anti-American, against the very core of our nation founded to create government by the people, not leave power in the hands of a few.

 

[SammyJr]

That's stupefyingly ass backwards. Earn less to have more buying power. Buying power to do what? pay the mortgage that's now more than your total take home? Utilities? Food? Insurance? Healthcare? Just because you now take home less money doesn't mean that stuff will ever be any cheaper.

Maybe America's financial elite will advocate that for themselves by accepting lower margins making stuff in this country. Probably not, huh?

Yeah, isn't it a grand notion? Work for $3/hour and your home and car payments, the gas prices, and everything else will fall by 90%!

 

[ElFenix]

Also, I believe in the 50s and 60s, the middle class lived better than they do now. One parent worked in the two parent household, and people didn't spend their whole lives buried in debt.

people at the top didn't cause that. what happened was people figured out that they could improve their standard of living by having both spouses work. this is part wrapped in the results of feminism where the successful woman was both mother and career oriented.

well, there are only so many homes in safe neighborhoods with good schools. as more people were able to access those by having 2 working parents, that means other people also had to now go to the 2 working parent model in order to out-bid the others. that's not the fault of the people at the top. that's the fault of the lower middle trying to reach the upper middle and the upper middle trying to stay there and/or move up as well.

as for debt, there was an article the other day that once people are no long living practically hand-to-mouth the extra money is nearly considered gravy. so people decide to increase their current standard of living at the expense of later gravy. further, iirc the vast majority of households have no ongoing debt other than house and cars. i'd guess that the number of people with a car payment at any given time has increased by quite a bit due to leasing and longer terms than previously.

 

[ShawnD1]

i'd guess that the number of people with a car payment at any given time has increased by quite a bit due to leasing and longer terms than previously.

What were the terms in the past? I've only been tracking this kind of thing for the last decade, and in that time the rate was pretty low for 2-5 years then it goes waaaay up if you want 6+ years on a car loan. What were car loans like 40 years ago?

 

[ElFenix]

What were the terms in the past? I've only been tracking this kind of thing for the last decade, and in that time the rate was pretty low for 2-5 years then it goes waaaay up if you want 6+ years on a car loan. What were car loans like 40 years ago?

i'm just guessing on the last one but i bet there weren't so many 60 month loans out there.

 

[GaiaHunter]

Where do all these libertarian ideologues come from? That's quite wrong. The power will be either in the hands of elected government, or unelected private hands.

This libertarian fantasy of a vacuum is not going to happen, has never happened, it's the road to tyranny.

That view is anti-Democratic and anti-American, against the very core of our nation founded to create government by the people, not leave power in the hands of a few.

Actually US was built by people fleeing oppressive regimes and in search for freedom.

If you read the constitution you will see it was designed as a cage to prevent the "monster" to get out and decide to take whatever power it wanted. Basically to protect the individual citizen of the tyranny of the elected/majorities.

 

[Ldir]

How so? If the poor are not any "poorer" than they were before, and we simply have a ton more rich people, I say we continue on with that until we have 50% of people making $200,000 a year or more.

What is the average government debt per person? Subtract that and you will find the poor are much poorer. Something has to give.

 

[Ldir]

Actually US was built by people fleeing oppressive regimes and in search for freedom.

If you read the constitution you will see it was designed as a cage to prevent the "monster" to get out and decide to take whatever power it wanted. Basically to protect the individual citizen of the tyranny of the elected/majorities.

Extreme wealth concentration is a bigger monster. Government is the only way to prevent that. Too bad we sold it to the rich.