Capitalism Guarantees Rising Inequality

[thereisnospoon]

Where is Democracy to be found in a world where the three richest individuals have assets that exceed the combined GDP of 47 countries?

A world where the richest 2% of global citizens "own" more than 51% of global assets?

Ready for the best part?

Capitalism ensures an already bad problem will only get worse.

"The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) states that income inequality 'first started to rise in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s in America and Britain (and also in Israel)'.

"The ratio between the average incomes of the top 5 per cent to the bottom 5 per cent in the world increased from 78:1 in 1988, to 114:1 in 1993..."

"Stiglitz relays that from 1988 to 2008 people in the world’s top 1 per cent saw their incomes increase by 60 per cent, while those in the bottom 5 per cent had no change in their income.

"In America, home to the 2008 recession, from 2009 to 2012, incomes of the top 1 per cent in America, many of which no doubt had a greedy hand in the causes of the meltdown, increased more than 31 per cent, while the incomes of the 99 per cent grew 0.4 per cent less than half a percentage point."

Spotlight on Worldwide Inequality

There are alternatives that don't require infinite "growth."

More nonsense.
Take a good look at dictatorships such as Venezuela. Countries where the government makes up the bulk of the elite ruling class and you'll find where the money is.
You people think redistribution and socialism works so well? Try it. Elsewhere.
Like it or not, capitalism and market based economies do the best for the most.
And like it or not, out system offers opportunities found nowhere else on the planet.
How much wealth has left places such as New York and New Jersey due to confiscatory taxation and roadblocks to business?

 

[thereisnospoon]

Yep, Reagan steroids worked real well for a while.
Then you get older and you get bone cancer.

8 years of Obama is more like ass cancer.

As if any other politician isn't going to screw over half the country.

Whoa! I thought you libs viewed Obama as perfect?
Your undying worship of the man certainly indicates that thought pattern.

 

[Indeependent]

Under Reagan, the degree of income inequality got dramatically reduced.

Under Obumbler, the divergence has increased.

If we are worried about income inequality, we should (like the Reagan Administration accomplished) FOSTER capitalism,

The thread title is not just bass ackwards, it's deliberately dishonest.

What a non surprise.

Yep, Reagan steroids worked real well for a while.
Then you get older and you get bone cancer.

Oh, now that's cute.

Please explain, in as much detail as your intellectually able to produce, the specifics of the economic cancer, in terms of specific instances of cause and effect, produced by sound economic principle, wherein the individual is freed to exchange goods and services to the profit of all engaged in the exchange.

(Dear Reader: The contributor will provide no specifics, because they have no knowledge of such. I only provided the challenge, as a means to berate and belittle them due to their obvious desperate need of some heretofore unknown humility. But how cool is it that EVERY individual ya meet who claims to be an 'independent' is a FULL BLOWN COLLECTIVIST? You gotta LOVE 'EM for their consistency.)

Sure will...
I graduated in 1981 and Wall Street was flooded with Europeans who got the jobs the American graduates should have gotten.
The banks were bringing in less expensive workers from Great Britain, Japan, China, India who had degrees in such illustrative fields as history, art, liberal arts.
In fact, I worked for several major financial institutions (Chas Manhattan, Banker's Trust, Credit Suisse) that hardly hired anyone from Europe or Asia that had any financial or banking degrees or expertise.
Just a bunch of worker bees.

Most of the people I graduated with went unemployed until November 1995.

Under Reagan, Citibank had laid off workers demonstrating on Broadway, just South of Trinity Place, after being replaced by cheap foreigners.

And let's not forget setting up those loans to Mexico for what was to become the destruction of American manufacturing.

Yep, way back when Reagan was already destroying the middle class.

Nope, equality is NOT the issue, OPPORTUNITY is the issue.

 

[Indeependent]

8 years of Obama is more like ass cancer.

As if any other politician isn't going to screw over half the country.

Whoa! I thought you libs viewed Obama as perfect?
Your undying worship of the man certainly indicates that thought pattern.

Your ideology leads you to see everything in Black and White.
Independents see in COLOR.

 

[Indeependent]

Where is Democracy to be found in a world where the three richest individuals have assets that exceed the combined GDP of 47 countries?

A world where the richest 2% of global citizens "own" more than 51% of global assets?

Ready for the best part?

Capitalism ensures an already bad problem will only get worse.

"The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) states that income inequality 'first started to rise in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s in America and Britain (and also in Israel)'.

"The ratio between the average incomes of the top 5 per cent to the bottom 5 per cent in the world increased from 78:1 in 1988, to 114:1 in 1993..."

"Stiglitz relays that from 1988 to 2008 people in the world’s top 1 per cent saw their incomes increase by 60 per cent, while those in the bottom 5 per cent had no change in their income.

"In America, home to the 2008 recession, from 2009 to 2012, incomes of the top 1 per cent in America, many of which no doubt had a greedy hand in the causes of the meltdown, increased more than 31 per cent, while the incomes of the 99 per cent grew 0.4 per cent less than half a percentage point."

Spotlight on Worldwide Inequality

There are alternatives that don't require infinite "growth."

How much wealth has left places such as New York and New Jersey due to confiscatory taxation and roadblocks to business?

Most of my neighbors own businesses and are doing quite well despite the onuses placed upon them.
It's the price they pay for living near a city that has all the pleasures they like to indulge in.

 

[thereisnospoon]

Because in order to only make 10k per year one would have to be a part time minimum wage worker. For example, a kid in high school working part time at minimum wage. Part time minimum wage workers, such as kids in high school bagging groceries don't necessarily deserve massive raises. In my experience, everyone that deserves a massive raise gets one or leaves to go to a job that pays more in a very very short amount of time.

Minimum wage income at 40hrs is 14k. You want a 40% raise from 10k? How about working more hours. Oh and take a look at minimum wage increases from 79 to 2014. It went up a helluva lot more than 275%... So what happened? Easy: Welfare is paying people to work part time minimum wage jobs. If they work more than 30hrs at minimum wage they loose their welfare checks. So they work the minimum and stop. You raise minimum wage without raising maximum limits on welfare and they will just work less hours...

"People at or below the federal minimum are:

Disproportionately young: 50.6% are ages 16 to 24; 24% are teenagers (ages 16 to 19).
Mostly (78%) white; fully half are white women.
Largely part-time workers (64% of the total)"

According the Pew Research minimum wage increases between 1979-2012 in adjusted 2012 dollars are non-existent

FWIW, my personal experience with minimum wage job is that 40 hours working at one in the mid-70s resulted in enough monthly income to pay rent on a brand new one bedroom apartment with enough left over to pay off and maintain a six year-old Chevy.

I haven't been able to afford a one bedroom of any age or a car since 1993, and my income has always hovered around the California minimum with infrequent resort to welfare.

Who makes minimum wage? | Pew Research Center

When I started working in 1977 minimum wage was 2.30. Today minimum wage is 7.25. The discussion is about the rich getting richer with the argued reason being minimum wage is to low. Yet, minimum wage has kept up with inflation thus spitting in the face of the argument.

As for your ability to live on minimum wage in California.. move to somewhere else. California is one of the most expensive states to live in. Libtardian taxes, welfare, and the dot com boom really busted minimum wage living there.

But hey if you "californians" want $20min wage in cali go for it. Not my state.

Add in grossly overpaid public employees. Too many public employees. Three quarters of the trillion dollars in unfunded pension liability and this undying need to spend money California does not have on such pie in the sky ideas like that idiotic high speed rail scheme.

 

[thereisnospoon]

As if any other politician isn't going to screw over half the country.

Whoa! I thought you libs viewed Obama as perfect?
Your undying worship of the man certainly indicates that thought pattern.

Your ideology leads you to see everything in Black and White.
Independents see in COLOR.

Cut the bullshit.
And spare me the lame ass race card.

 

[Indeependent]

Whoa! I thought you libs viewed Obama as perfect?
Your undying worship of the man certainly indicates that thought pattern.

Your ideology leads you to see everything in Black and White.
Independents see in COLOR.

Cut the bullshit.
And spare me the lame ass race card.

I had the feeling you were going to inject race into my COLOR remark.
The issue is that both parties are comprised of individuals and groups who are willing to do whatever it takes to win public office.
That fact alone forces me to hold no allegiance to either.
But since I am not a "Military" Libertarian, I am labeled by you as a Liberal.
In other words, your tunnel vision limits your capacity to reason.

 

[Where_r_my_Keys]

Yep, Reagan steroids worked real well for a while.
Then you get older and you get bone cancer.

Oh, now that's cute.

Please explain, in as much detail as your intellectually able to produce, the specifics of the economic cancer, in terms of specific instances of cause and effect, produced by sound economic principle, wherein the individual is freed to exchange goods and services to the profit of all engaged in the exchange.

(Dear Reader: The contributor will provide no specifics, because they have no knowledge of such. I only provided the challenge, as a means to berate and belittle them due to their obvious desperate need of some heretofore unknown humility. But how cool is it that EVERY individual ya meet who claims to be an 'independent' is a FULL BLOWN COLLECTIVIST? You gotta LOVE 'EM for their consistency.)

Sure will...
I graduated in 1981 and Wall Street was flooded with Europeans who got the jobs the American graduates should have gotten.

So you feel that Regan screwed you because you lacked the means to beat out a pack of Euro-PEONS. Mighty impressive reasoning, for a collectivist, who can't beat out the lowest common earthly denominator.

The banks were bringing in less expensive workers from Great Britain, Japan, China, India who had degrees in such illustrative fields as history, art, liberal arts.

OH! So you felt that you were worth more than what you were actually worth?

HUGE Mistake common to children ... and fools.

It happens, but if ya stick at it, you eventually figure ya out. How's that workin' for ya?

In fact, I worked for several major financial institutions (Chas Manhattan, Banker's Trust, Credit Suisse) that hardly hired anyone from Europe or Asia that had any financial or banking degrees or expertise.
Just a bunch of worker bees.

Drones be lookin' for drones. That's how it works.

Now, Lemme guess, you didn't realize that you were a drone?

That's HYSTERICAL!

Most of the people I graduated with went unemployed until November 1995.

Under Reagan, Citibank had laid off workers demonstrating on Broadway, just South of Trinity Place, after being replaced by cheap foreigners.

So Ron Reagan was running Citibank? NEW INFO!

And let's not forget setting up those loans to Mexico for what was to become the destruction of American manufacturing.

So Loans to Mexico destroyed American Manufacturing? AMAZING! You know, people say that you aren't an economics guru, but I don't think they've really seen you shine like this.

Yep, way back when Reagan was already destroying the middle class.

Nope, equality is NOT the issue, OPPORTUNITY is the issue.

You're speaking of how Reagan destroyed the Middle class by setting policy that realized the largest expansion of the Middle Class since WW2?

Yeah that was devastatin'.

Now in 1981, we had our first child and the end to my hitch in the service came along and, I returned home to a raging economy, where I went from just under 20k in the service, to fairly strong six figures.

Soon after that I bought the first airplane, ('68 New-2-U 172), a house (3 Bd Rm Ranch, pool, fence, beautiful 1/4 acre lawn) and life was pretty damn good.

But then I'm not a drone, SOooo. Well, you know.

 

[bripat9643]

Yep, Reagan steroids worked real well for a while.
Then you get older and you get bone cancer.

One must sit back and admire such incoherence.

I've noted your style.

It's familiar to me.

At least I have style; all you have is your Limbaugh bull crap.

Yeah, you have all the "style" of a sociopath.

 

[bripat9643]

Yep, Reagan steroids worked real well for a while.
Then you get older and you get bone cancer.

8 years of Obama is more like ass cancer.

As if any other politician isn't going to screw over half the country.

There are few who would screw it over as severely as Obama has.

 

[georgephillip]

8 years of Obama is more like ass cancer.

As if any other politician isn't going to screw over half the country.

There are few who would screw it over as severely as Obama has.

The twin draft-dodgers, Dick and Dubya, come to mind:

"The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will ultimately cost between $4 trillion and $6 trillion, with medical care and disability benefits weighing heavily for decades to come, according to a new analysis."

Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan wars will keep mounting - Los Angeles Times

 

[bripat9643]

As if any other politician isn't going to screw over half the country.

There are few who would screw it over as severely as Obama has.

The twin draft-dodgers, Dick and Dubya, come to mind:

"The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will ultimately cost between $4 trillion and $6 trillion, with medical care and disability benefits weighing heavily for decades to come, according to a new analysis."

Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan wars will keep mounting - Los Angeles Times

The LA times? Yeah, right. We believe that.

That's utter horseshit. Furthermore, most of the costs for Afghanistan were incurred under Obama. How many $trillions is Obamacare going to cost ultimately? $100 trillion? How much is Obama's shitty socialist economy going to cost, $200 trillion? So far it's been costing over $1 trillion every year.

 

[Iceweasel]

How many of you big government liberals own or have owned businesses? Most of you operate in a vacuum and have no clue what it's like or apparently why business even matters. I started my business during the Reagan years and I'll take Reaganomics over Obamanomics anyday. It reminds me of the saying "who am I going to believe, you or my lying eyes".

 

[RKMBrown]

"People at or below the federal minimum are:

Disproportionately young: 50.6% are ages 16 to 24; 24% are teenagers (ages 16 to 19).
Mostly (78%) white; fully half are white women.
Largely part-time workers (64% of the total)"

According the Pew Research minimum wage increases between 1979-2012 in adjusted 2012 dollars are non-existent

FWIW, my personal experience with minimum wage job is that 40 hours working at one in the mid-70s resulted in enough monthly income to pay rent on a brand new one bedroom apartment with enough left over to pay off and maintain a six year-old Chevy.

I haven't been able to afford a one bedroom of any age or a car since 1993, and my income has always hovered around the California minimum with infrequent resort to welfare.

Who makes minimum wage? | Pew Research Center

When I started working in 1977 minimum wage was 2.30. Today minimum wage is 7.25. The discussion is about the rich getting richer with the argued reason being minimum wage is to low. Yet, minimum wage has kept up with inflation thus spitting in the face of the argument.

As for your ability to live on minimum wage in California.. move to somewhere else. California is one of the most expensive states to live in. Libtardian taxes, welfare, and the dot com boom really busted minimum wage living there.

But hey if you "californians" want $20min wage in cali go for it. Not my state.

Your figures showing how the minimum wage has kept up with inflation appear to be based on unadjusted 2012 dollars.

If you compare your numbers to those that have been adjusted for the inflation that's occurred between 1979 to 2012, the minimum wage was actually higher in 1980 than where it was in 2012.

Higher by a small %. The discussion was talking about it being 250%+ low your chart shows, at best you could argue that it's 10% lower than the highest it's ever been adjusted for inflation. Your chart also shows that it's much higher than the average minimum wage over the time scale shown, as adjusted for inflation.

 

[Bombur]

How many of you big government liberals own or have owned businesses? Most of you operate in a vacuum and have no clue what it's like or apparently why business even matters. I started my business during the Reagan years and I'll take Reaganomics over Obamanomics anyday. It reminds me of the saying "who am I going to believe, you or my lying eyes".

Reagan used massive increases in government debt to get the economy going again. It is rare to have conservatives admit to being Keynesians.

 

[RKMBrown]

How many of you big government liberals own or have owned businesses? Most of you operate in a vacuum and have no clue what it's like or apparently why business even matters. I started my business during the Reagan years and I'll take Reaganomics over Obamanomics anyday. It reminds me of the saying "who am I going to believe, you or my lying eyes".

Reagan used massive increases in government debt to get the economy going again. It is rare to have conservatives admit to being Keynesians.

Your a liar.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

How many of you big government liberals own or have owned businesses? Most of you operate in a vacuum and have no clue what it's like or apparently why business even matters. I started my business during the Reagan years and I'll take Reaganomics over Obamanomics anyday. It reminds me of the saying "who am I going to believe, you or my lying eyes".

Reagan used massive increases in government debt to get the economy going again. It is rare to have conservatives admit to being Keynesians.

Obama's massive increases in government debt are much bigger, he didn't cut taxes from 70% to 28% and he didn't win the Cold War.
His economy pretty much sucks.

Other than that, he's a lot like Reagan.

 

[Bombur]

BS. It's the same damn thing. How is government mandating pay rates, and benefits for employees not taking ownership of the owner's property? How is the owner supposed to keep his property when the government is mandating he divided it among his employees in the form of higher salaries?

Oh.. you must be one of those folks that think taxes on Income isn't slavery too.

No they are like completely different. If the difference is lost on you imagine owning a business where the min wage changes and you have to pay employees more. Now imagine owning a business and having government tell you that they own it now.

Understand the difference?

"Imagine owning a business. "

I did that. When I was 6.

I grew up working in the family business, from 6 years old I went to work every day, 6 and more often than not 7 days a week.

That business started with a loan my Dad took from a family friend. He used the money to rent a store front and advertise his wares and the services he provided.

That was it. He in effect 'hung out his shingle' and from there people came in and exchanged the value they had, in the form of money, or other goods and services they possessed which Dad would exchange, to the mutual profit of both parties.

Worked like a charm.

He just went to work. No licenses required. He bought insurance to offset unforeseen liabilities. When business became such that he could no longer do it all with his hands and those of the family, he put an ad in the paper, checked around with trade schools and set to bargaining with those folks, telling them what he had going and asking those who responded to his inquires, what they could bring to the table.

The deal was, you tend to the tasks I set before you, which will be intrinsic to your skills and aptitude, and he would give them X in exchange.

The benefit being that they all earned a nice living.

I started my own in business in my 30s. I found people that were in need of my knowledge and skills and I traded them the benefit of my knowledge and skills for the value they possessed. I used the money I made to pay my bills and buy equipment that provided me to demand higher values. Which came along with no more required to start a business than the desire to do so, the skills and ethic determination to perform as promised.

Today, to do what I do, would require a capital investment of a hundred thousand dollars before you could ever begin to present yourself as a business. Assuming one followed "The LAW".

To sustain an employee making $40hr, requires one be healed sufficiently to pay 70/hr.

Monthly bureaucratic fees are thousands of dollars, each and every month. And this before a nickle is paid on utilities, mortgage payments, operate and service a single vehicle, phones, and on and on and on or buy one widget in inventory.

Now the absolute MINIMUM that is required to BREAK EVEN, is to charge CONFISCATORY RATES. Want to earn a profit? Rates gotta go up.

Now that is the case with every business you can think of.

Retailers, wholesalers, consultants, skateboard park, Medical Pot Outlet, neighborhood convenience store, bar, barber, nail salon and so on.

Rates and Prices go up as your means to stay afloat goes DOWN! The price of food, the price of gas, the price to buy ANYTHING and EVERYTHING GOES UP when you increase the cost of LABOR. And who is responsible?

YOU ARE!​

So like I said a minimum wage is not the same as the government taking ownership of your business.

Your understanding of economics is simplistic and one sided. Many business owners think that way because they have little to no understanding of how wages relate to demand. They can only see higher wages as a bad thing. In reality higher wages are absolutely critical for a growing economy because they push up demand. Higher demand is needed to support increases in productivity.

 

[Bombur]

How many of you big government liberals own or have owned businesses? Most of you operate in a vacuum and have no clue what it's like or apparently why business even matters. I started my business during the Reagan years and I'll take Reaganomics over Obamanomics anyday. It reminds me of the saying "who am I going to believe, you or my lying eyes".

Reagan used massive increases in government debt to get the economy going again. It is rare to have conservatives admit to being Keynesians.

Obama's massive increases in government debt are much bigger, he didn't cut taxes from 70% to 28% and he didn't win the Cold War.
His economy pretty much sucks.

Other than that, he's a lot like Reagan.

I agree that Reagan was a much better Keynesian than Obama. Then again the economy Reagan faced was vastly different as well.