Monday, October 21, 2013
WEALTH INEQUALITY IN AMERICA
"When so much of the purchasing power, so much of the economic gain, goes to the very top, there's simply not enough purchasing power in the rest of the economy." ---Robert Reich
Reich noted that wealth inequality was greatest in this country in 1928 and 2007. In both years, the top 1% represented about a quarter of total income. And shortly thereafter, in 1929 and again in 2008, the U.S. economy tanked, dragging down the rest of the world with it.
Other nations, Reich said, have taken steps to address wealth inequality. They've invested more in infrastructure and education in an effort to create more economic opportunities throughout the social spectrum.
The United States, for its part, has been content to let the problem grow.
"We are far more unequal than any other advanced society in the world, and we are surging toward greater and greater inequality," Reich said.
Wealth inequality is only getting worse
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26 comments:
Think it's bad now?
Wait until The Corporate States of The Chamber of Commerce imports 20,000,000 new cheap laborers.
Why go to foreign countries to exploit vulnerable people living on the margins when you can do it right here in the good ol' U$ of A!
Another reason why Trickle Down Theory should be confined to urinary tracts and leaking roofs rather than economics.
Anon and BB-Idaho,
Why do we never hear the GOPers talk about this disparity?
They've been pounding away at how the A.C.A. will destroy America, but right in front of their trunks, we're witnessing it right now!
BB-Idaho: "Another reason why Trickle Down Theory should be confined to urinary tracts and leaking roofs ..."
Unless your name is Sarah Palin, in which case you'll be spending half your life tricking down on pregnancy test kits.
Wealth inequity is just another word for redistribution of wealth which is one of the promises obama made.
Wouldn't it be better to encourage people to improve their lives instead of blaming those who have attained success through hard work and sacrifice.
LBJ and the Great Society started the entitlement mentality and living off the work of others. The current leader is one of the greatest at blaming others and his devout supporters click heels in lock step. Entitlements are expanding in there scope and participants. This is still the land of great opportunity but you do have to work for it. Some will work for their success while some will blame others for their lack of success.
The article mentions economic opportunity. We should try that.
We have the best government money can buy. Until we break the pornographic embrace between DC, Wall Street and the corporate kleptrocracy, nothing will change.
"Wealth inequity is just another word for redistribution of wealth which is one of the promises obama made.
Wouldn't it be better to encourage people to improve their lives instead of blaming those who have attained success through hard work and sacrifice.
LBJ and the Great Society started the entitlement mentality and living off the work of others. The current leader is one of the greatest at blaming others and his devout supporters click heels in lock step. Entitlements are expanding in there scope and participants. This is still the land of great opportunity but you do have to work for it. Some will work for their success while some will blame others for their lack of success."
There is so much wrong and there is so much stupidity in that comment that I don't know where to begin.
But I'll handle it this way:
That comment has absolutely NOTHING to do with the subject of the post. That comment serves only to show us all your ignorance and prejudice on the subject and your habit of coming here and acting like a troll.
MS. Shaw
Your subject is about wealth inequality in america. It does appear that after the great 5 year experiment, trickle up poverty is working well. Attack and penalize success is the theme of the times and it is one that you seem to subscribe to.
There are only so many seats in the 1-2% club.
How do we get almost half of Americans voting Republicans when Republicans are representing the 1-2%?
Seems Republicans have been successful at convincing Americans that the opportunity to become one of the 1-2% will die, if we have any kind of government assistance.
By the way, FDR started SS, food stamps, etc., etc. in the 1930's. LBJ added to those programs in the 1960's.
So we have an overwhelming majority of Americans supporting (voting) for those programs and willing to pay higher taxes to ensure the solvency of those programs, for decades.
Even today Republicans don't have a majority to end those programs. Cutting taxes without cutting those programs (starve the beast) is the only reason we have to much debt and are cutting those programs.
I don't know if Skudrunner is smart enough to be called a liar, or just using Republican distraction tactics, but he/she is quite wrong.
When people scream "get your government hands off my Social Security and Medicare" we see the problem.
This is not forced Socialism like Stalin did to Russia; these are social programs to help a large amount of people, supported by the majority of Americans for generations.
Wealth inequality is a killer of capitalism and cannot sustain a healthy economy. RR is quite correct.
Bush offers up a drug program Americans like, but Bush never paid for that program, and Americans kept voting for "no new taxes."
Can't have it both ways.
Republicans are under the delusion that the corporate atmosphere of the 1880's is the key to a prosperous America. In fact that atmosphere was the start of the public cry for government intervention because of all the abuses and needless death, which culminated 50 years later in Americans supporting safety net programs. The Great Depression only reinforced what Americans had been complaining about for 50 years, corporate greed and severe income inequality.
When Henry Ford introduced the idea of paying workers enough to afford the products they were making; that unleashed a financially healthy middle class and a huge upturn in American living standards by eliminating the income inequality of his day.
Money is what greases the wheels of capitalism. Capitalism is a failure, if it cannot supply the needs for all people, not just a few.
No, skud. You equated "wealth inequality" with "redistribution."
They're not the same.
From PolitiFact on "redistribution of wealth:"
Mitt Romney has been trumpeting a 14-year-old video of President Barack Obama appearing to advocate -- egads! -- redistribution of wealth.
"Just as Republicans did in 2008, Romney makes it sound like Obama is supporting a dramatic new policy with socialist undertones. But as our two fact-checks today show, redistribution of wealth has been a fundamental concept in the U.S. tax system for 100 years.
Yes, Obama supports redistribution of wealth. He has supported the progressive tax system and even said he wants to increase taxes on the wealthy.
And yes, Romney supports redistribution of wealth, too. He has emphasized his support for Medicare, a program that redistributes wealth from workers to senior citizens through payroll taxes that pay for health care benefits, and he has said that to repeal tax loopholes, he would target the wealthy: "I can tell you that people at the high end, high income taxpayers, are going to have fewer deductions and exemptions," he said on Meet the Press."
One example of sucking off of the government teat is the oil companies that get millions and millions of dollars of subsidies:
"Obama’s proposed FY 2013 budget called for removing a handful of "tax provisions that preferentially benefit fossil fuel production," and estimated that doing so would yield more than $4 billion a year."
SOURCE
skud, you come here and offer tired old opinions without any links to back them up. Anyone can just as easily say that the wealthiest of the wealthy in American have cheated and lied and avoided paying the taxes they owe to this country in order preserve their wealth and make the rest of us pay for their cheating.
If you have an opinion, back it up with evidence, otherwise it's nothing more than TeaPublican talking points.
Here's an interesting bit of Fox News skullduggery from David Folkenflik's new book on Rupert Murdoch's media empire:
In a chapter focusing on how Fox utilized its notoriously ruthless public relations department in the mid-to-late 00's, Folkenflik reports that Fox's PR staffers would "post pro-Fox rants" in the comments sections of "negative and even neutral" blog posts written about the network. According to Folkenflik, the staffers used various tactics to cover their tracks, including setting up wireless broadband connections that "could not be traced back" to the network.
From the book itself:
"Fox PR staffers were expected to counter not just negative and even neutral blog postings but the anti-Fox comments beneath them. One former staffer recalled using twenty different aliases to post pro-Fox rants. Another had one hundred. Several employees had to acquire a cell phone thumb drive to provide a wireless broadband connection that could not be traced back to a Fox News or News Corp account.
Shit tactics used by a shit cable "news" station. They're #1 in shit and the people who watch them eat it up.
skudrunner... Who is John Galt?
Those like News Flash and My Thoughts who continue fulminating against the GOP and FOX news will never get to the bottom of it.
Both parties (outside of perhaps Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren) are bought and paid for.
Wall street financial finaglers bribes both parties, tipping the scales one way or another depending on which holds more power at the time.
America's new elites in Silicon Valley, who would be the envy of the robber barons, since they provide almost zero working class jobs and vacuum up all the money for themselves, give almost exclusively to the Democratic party.
I am not blaming democrats, but merely pointing out that DC stands for the District of Criminals.
What to do about it? I don't know.
Skuddummer,
In 1945 (immediately after WWII), the top marginal tax rate was 94%. Not one person called it “income redistribution” or called then President Harry Truman a “Marxist-Commie.”
The top marginal tax rate remained above 90% until 1963. Not one person called it “income redistribution” or called then President Dwight Eisenhower or President John Kennedy a “Marxist-Commie.”
From 1964 through 1981, the top marginal tax rate remained above 70%. Not one person called it “income redistribution” or called then President Linden Johnson or President Richard Nixon or President Gerald Ford or President Jimmy Carter a “Marxist-Commie.”
Between 1982 and 1986, the top marginal tax rate fell to 50%. Not one person called it “income redistribution” or called then President Ronald Reagan a “Marxist-Commie.”
Today, the top marginal tax rate is 35%. Suddenly any discussion about raising the top tax rate is met with howls of protest and the current president is now called a “Marxist-Commie.”
What changed since World War II? The rise of the plutocracy and the decline of the middle class – a direct correlation of changes in margin tax tables! How partisan arguments are framed is another! And how a major political party manufactures stalking points for the plutocracy but no longer represents the middle class.
People who live inside an echo chamber of the Washington Times merely prove one thing: How IQ mirrors a decline in marginal tax rates. Why do you come here? Skud, you have no knowledge of economics or history, and refuse to learn anything new.
Ooops. I forgot to say "pardon the expression," after writing "shit." When you're in the extremist TeaServative mind-set, that makes it okay.
Here's a related article that goes more in-depth:
Joel Kotkin: Many Stuck Near the Bottom
"redistribution of wealth" is a meaningless phrase whose only purpose is obscure a discussion about taxes. All taxes redistribute wealth between parties via government agencies, poor people's wealth and rich people's wealth.
MT,
You cannot equate SS and medicare with food stamps, adc etc because you contribute into SS and you pay medicare for life. The other programs are true social programs designed to assist in troubled times. What they have turned into is a career choice past down through the generations.
Don't misunderstand, the government prefers to keep welfare because they keep control and that is not party dependent.
I will disagree with your premise that capitalism only serves a few. The vast majority of Americans are happy with the lives they lead until the media tells them they shouldn't be..
Maybe we should remove farm subsidies or airline and not just oil. You do realize that taxes are a pass through for corporations and if you raise their taxes, the price goes up. Any increase in oil prices has a huge effect against the population you seem to care about. It will also have an impact on the middle class who of course supports the entire country. The rich take care of themselves, the poor are taken care off and the middle class takes care of them both.
''we conclude that the concentration of wealth is natural and inevitable,and periodically alleviated by violent or peaceable partial re-distribution.In this view all economic history is the slow heartbeat of the social oganism,a vast systole and diastole of concentrating wealth and compulsive recirculation.'' Will Durant-Lessons Of History
Supply side economics is nothing more than wealth redistribution. Our whole corporate tax system is nothing more than wealth redistribution.
The incentives that local governments give to big box retailers and companies to relocate to their communities is wealth redistribution.
The right will complain about welfare creating a culture of dependency and yet they have fostered and promoted the most expensive culture of dependency we have ever seen.
The right wants to cut food stamps by $40 billion dollar over 10 years yet local governments give $80 billion in tax incentives for companies to relocate EVERY YEAR!
Forget all the stupid talk about "penalizing success" because the reality is that the income inequality that we are witnessing now is nothing more than a government sponsored welfare system that benefited only the 1%.
Over 75% of our current national debt is due to borrowing to sponsor programs that benefit corporations and their shareholders.
I am one liberal that has no problem championing the cause of wealth redistribution to the 99% because its the only thing that will save capitalism.
The forces of Capitalism and the forces of Collectivism are coalescing in America. Preparing for the Epic Battle that will either save society or bring about its final collapse.
Adam Smith -vs- Karl Marx
John Galt -vs-James Taggart
Coming soon to a country you live in.
Oh, that's right capitalism in its true form hasn't existed for quite some time. Edged out by crony capitalism, corporatism, and the pull peddlers.
The latest figures show the food stamp program has a 1.5% fraud/waste ratio. I wish every program in government only had a 1.5% waste/fraud ratio.
PE has been linked at RN USA. Good find Shaw, hope you don't mind my "stealing" the video.
wealth redistribution is a strong republican trait... they take your money and redistribute it to corporate backers. been going on for years now.
Wealth inequity is just another word for redistribution of wealth (upward) which is one of the promises corportists make (and they also often ask who is John Galt). Wouldn't it be better to "encourage" the plutocrats to pay fair wages so workers can improve their lives instead of denying that we should be blaming those who have attained success through the hard work and sacrifice of the exploited worker?
LBJ and the Great Society was a good start toward equalizing the wealth disparity but now we've backslid into an entitlement mentality where the rich profiting off the work of others (more than those who do the work) is admired. The current leader has done an OK job of pointing out where the blame belongs, but so far it's all been rhetoric. Still the devout supporters of neofeudalism like Skudrunner click their heels in lock step when the Republicans say programs for the poor need to be cut so we can lower taxes on the phony "job creators". Entitlements for the wealthy are expanding in their scope with fewer and fewer people sharing in the wealth we all create. This is the land of decreasing opportunity for those who work for it but are seeing the fruits of their labor stolen by those who rely on the work of others for their success.
Conservative say "some will blame others for their lack of success" but that is spin designed to fool the masses into supporting the redistribution of wealth upward. The middle class is dying and STILL the voters are electing those who desire this outcome. It's time America woke up.
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