This 6 minute video sums up the shocking facts of American wealth and inequality

[Billy000]

It amazes me the complete ignorance of the left with anything to do with business.

I find it rather ironic you would say such a blatant, lazy generalization about the left yet make such an opinionated statement about critical thinking being a deficit in this country in your signature.

 

[beagle9]

Ah, relativism. Everybody is equally bad...and corporations are da debil.

Some corps act as if they are the devil himself by what they do, but not all of them are, and of course their not.

 

[Brain357]

Wake up Americans
Ignore the growing uneducated, poor, young, child bearing single mother and you will get more of that as the system offers incentives for that model.
And you wonder why shareholders of corporations, THE MIDDLE CLASS, demand higher dividends along with consumers demanding competitive prices and a corporation is forced to build manufacturing overseas to keep the parent company that is still based in the US with 40% of the non manufacturing staff trying to avoid bankruptcy.

Forced to move manufacturing so that the executives can make even more money.

Are you really that ignorant?
What % of a company is manufacturing that makes things?
If you don't know that most of the companies that have moved their manufacturing overseas THE REST OF THE COMPANY STAYS HERE.
What is an "executive"? I doubt you understand anything about business.
So how many "executives" work for a manufacturing company?
How many people are in sales, accounts receivables, marketing, accounts payable, collections and the dozens of other jobs OTHER THAN MANUFACTURING in a company?
Please go learn something about the manufacturing industry and their organizational chart.
You are making a damn fool out of yourself with your knee jerk parroting of left wing platitudes that have no basis or foundation in fact.

You sure ask a lot of stupid questions. Bottom line, corporations are moving jobs overseas. You just said it yourself. You think less jobs is good? Do you think high unemployment increases wages? Talk about ignorant.
I know plenty about manufacturing I assure you. You've posted what you've done and I didn't see any manufacturing in it.

 

[dblack]

Thats a slight stretch. It may be an aspect unions mimic but its not government mandated unionism.

How is it not? The whole point of unions is for workers to unite and demand more money and better working conditions. For that to happen, they have to 'bring the pain' to anyone who doesn't play along. Isn't that what minimum wage laws mandate - that people aren't allowed to undercut their fellow workers by accepting less than the majority deems 'minimal'?

You "bring the pain" when your skills are worth more than the rest of the heard, and you demand as well as get more than those under you. It's called success. There is no reason to tether yourself to failures in thinking you need to bring them up with you.

Union negotiations mean you have to settle on not only your best performance but the other peoples worst and come up with a wage that you both share equally somewhere in the middle.

This muddling of the worst deserving pay for what the best can produce is the failure of the unions. Of course by that I mean the failures need and rely on the union.

What do you have once the good people leave the union and take your leverage with them?

Yep. Pretty much.

 

[dblack]

I think this whole thread is disingenuous. The point isn't really to show that any wrongdoing has occurred, or even to identify imbalances in the system that need to be fixed. (If it were, you'd find many allies in libertarians who want to see them fixed as well).

No, the point here - and the point of most campaigns touting the 'disparity of wealth' - is to justify more government control of our economic decisions.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Don't you think that would also have the effect of some people losing their businesses or firing workers thus putting more people out of work?

I think it can at least be a smooth and slow transition to 9.00. I think we can get creative in keeping that from happening. Like I said, those business can adjust their prices to compensate.

Is it possible that a rise in prices will also cause some people not purchase thus causing a dip in business and subsequent layoffs? Also what makes you think that a raise in minimum wage is going to positively effect a specific person to save or invest their money wisely?

Yeah, I'm dying to have prices go up just so leftists can have some high-sounding number for their hourly wage that has no more buying power than their previous wages did. Damned if I know what they think it will accomplish, other than sounding good.

 

[Cecilie1200]

C'mon, now you're just trying to be obtuse.

I wish I had a dollar for every time a someone told me a thing can't be done. Wealth is not a limited resource. There is no such thing as a fixed amount of wealth to go around. It does not work that way. You may not think yourself capable of producing a million in goods but that does not mean everyone is like you.

I think you've spent so much time in the software world, you've forgotten that there are resources that are finite. Energy, water, arable land are the biggies. And that doesn't cover the artificial scarcities like medical care, etc.

So just out of curiosity, how do you think everyone could become a millionaire?

The only "artificial scarcity" is one caused by deliberate human action. All the others are natural scarcities.

However, none of those things you listed are truly finite. It's only your thinking that is.

 

[Missouri_Mike]

How is it not? The whole point of unions is for workers to unite and demand more money and better working conditions. For that to happen, they have to 'bring the pain' to anyone who doesn't play along. Isn't that what minimum wage laws mandate - that people aren't allowed to undercut their fellow workers by accepting less than the majority deems 'minimal'?

You "bring the pain" when your skills are worth more than the rest of the heard, and you demand as well as get more than those under you. It's called success. There is no reason to tether yourself to failures in thinking you need to bring them up with you.

Union negotiations mean you have to settle on not only your best performance but the other peoples worst and come up with a wage that you both share equally somewhere in the middle.

This muddling of the worst deserving pay for what the best can produce is the failure of the unions. Of course by that I mean the failures need and rely on the union.

What do you have once the good people leave the union and take your leverage with them?

Yep. Pretty much.

Yep, Be all you can be for the Army is be what you can suck out of someone else for the unions.

 

[Cecilie1200]

I think you've spent so much time in the software world, you've forgotten that there are resources that are finite. Energy, water, arable land are the biggies. And that doesn't cover the artificial scarcities like medical care, etc.

So just out of curiosity, how do you think everyone could become a millionaire?

Huh? Do you have any idea how much energy is available for us use? Energy, is for all intents and purposes, infinite. Just how much energy do you think you need to be rich these days? We live on a planet that is covered with water, selling me on water scarcity isn't gonna work. Arable land scarcity, has been solved to a large degree with hydroponics and green houses.

Somehow, I find it less than comforting to know that we're bathed in energy from a variety of sources. Try making it affordable, or available when you need it, or portable in the case of transportation. Better minds than yours have met with only modest success in these areas.

Modest success? You are in a special class of ignoramus.

Science tells us that EVERYTHING is, at its core, energy. I'm sorry you find that "less than comforting".

Furthermore, what kind of shortsighted dipshit sits around thinking that we've only made "modest success" in the area of discovering new ways to make affordable, available, portable energy. Who was it that told you that history began with the day you were born, dumbass?

As for water, aquifers are being depleted or contaminated by fracking, rivers have become so polluted that they're useless and due to climate change, precipitation in many cases doesn't fall where it's needed.

Your statements ignore the fact that you listen to too much "The world is ending! Turn all your power over to us, or die horribly!" leftist environmental propaganda.

In fact, we have made great strides in finding new ways to access, reclaim, and reuse large amounts of water . . . during the same period of time that we made all those great strides in finding new, affordable energy sources that you ALSO missed.

Everything you've mentioned ignores the 'commodity' aspect of resources.

Not sure WHAT that has to do with your insane idea that we live in a finite world.

How do I think everyone could become a millionaire? First each person is an individual, what works for one person does not work for others. Second, not everyone wants to be a millionaire, let alone do the work to get there. As to particular ways, you have just pointed out a few needs of the people. Addressing needs of the people is usually a good way to get rich.

Here again, thinking that everybody could become a millionare ignores the commodity aspect of the labor market. The bottom rung of the labor ladder is used as a 'force multiplier' for the upper tiers.

I grew up believing in the Walt Disney vision of the future where technology was going to provide a world of leisure and plenty. I swear that this vision was a major force in my becoming an engineer and during my career, I've done all that I could to create the efficiencies that could create that kind of a world. What I've seen happen instead is workers becoming twice as productive for almost no increase in their standard of living. That's the problem with growing wealth disparity.

"Almost no increase in their standard of living"? What are you, twelve? I find it very hard to believe that you could be an engineer, since I know an engineering degree requires some core courses in history, and I also know it requires some degree of logical thinking, which you have yet to display.

Let's just look at my lifetime in the United States - I'm 44 - shall we? When I was a kid, heart bypass operations were rare, expensive, and only available to the rich. Heart transplants were the stuff of big news stories. Now they're routine, and widely available to people of all walks of life. Also within my lifetime, the use of antibiotics has become steadily more common, resulting in - among other things - a huge decrease in women dying from complications of childbirth. Leftists want to attribute that decrease to abortions, but the credit actually goes to better medical treatment.

I can remember when cable television was first invented. It was expensive, almost no one had it, and even if you did, it didn't have much to watch. Now, saying you have cable is almost as common as saying you have a telephone, and the idea of saying you haven't seen a movie because you missed it in the theatres is viewed as ludicrous.

And speaking of telephones, I can remember my entire family having to make do with one rotary phone hanging on the kitchen wall. Hell, my grandmother had a party line. Now homeless people at the bus stop have cell phones in their pockets (I'm not exaggerating, either. I've seen 'em).

I can go on and on about things that were luxuries for the rich just fifty years ago, and are taken for granted by virtually everyone today. "No increase in the standard of living". You need to put down the crack pipe and back away.

 

[dblack]

You "bring the pain" when your skills are worth more than the rest of the heard, and you demand as well as get more than those under you. It's called success. There is no reason to tether yourself to failures in thinking you need to bring them up with you.

Union negotiations mean you have to settle on not only your best performance but the other peoples worst and come up with a wage that you both share equally somewhere in the middle.

This muddling of the worst deserving pay for what the best can produce is the failure of the unions. Of course by that I mean the failures need and rely on the union.

What do you have once the good people leave the union and take your leverage with them?

Yep. Pretty much.

Yep, Be all you can be for the Army is be what you can suck out of someone else for the unions.

I wouldn't really say that's the main function of unions though. They're mainly a corporatist ploy to 'manage' labor via government. In that they're like any other special interest groups - looking out for their own interests. Granted, that will often be at the expense of others, but for people who've accepted corporatism (most voters apparently), it's just the way things are. Everybody gets a different deal depending on which group they belong to, and how much political influence their group can bring to bear.

Welcome to the future.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Somehow, I find it less than comforting to know that we're bathed in energy from a variety of sources.

Why does that make you uncomfortable?


It is affordable. It is available. It is portable. Duh.


Only "modest" success? ROFL What would be great success in your mind? Free? ROFL


blah blah blah the sky is falling we are all gonna die of thirst... blah blah blah


Huh? WTF Why should I provide you with free power? Are you some sort of Marxist?


And? Please explain your alternative to working for someone, everyone for themselves? ROFL Ok by me. I don't need to work for the man.


Yeah that's pretty much how nearly every single American lives. Everyone has a big screen TV, computers, video games, microwave ovens, nearly everyone in this country has a wireless phone. Even the "poor" folks are over weight because of this life of leisure and plenty. What did you think this life of leisure and plenty would include, that the poorest of this country do not have aplenty? Did you think money would grow on trees or would not be used any more like star trek?

I swear that this vision was a major force in my becoming an engineer and during my career, I've done all that I could to create the efficiencies that could create that kind of a world. What I've seen happen instead is workers becoming twice as productive for almost no increase in their standard of living. That's the problem with growing wealth disparity.

Bull shit. Paychecks for engineers sky rocketed during the dot com era. Now they have scaled back a bit, but it's still way over what it was pre dot com. What goes up comes down. Get over it. Or talk to your representatives about the offshoring and inshoring efforts they are allowing.

Yeah, everybody has a lot of gadgets. Some of them are pretty cool and I'll take some credit for that since I work in consumer electronics. What people don't have (increasingly) are homes that they can own, good medical care, high quality food (no McDonald's doesn't count) and quality education for the kiddies.

Yeah, you want to discount that our economy is so fragile that $4 gas sent it over the tipping point a few years ago. Whatever. If you actually looked around, you'd see a ton of people working long hard hours with not much to show for it and neither time nor energy to change that very much.

Who in the fuck is filling your empty skull with this garbage?

In 1900, 46.5 percent of the population owned their own homes. Many of those lived on farms, and owned property that had been in the family for generations or had been homesteaded.

Fifty years later, the number of people owning their own home had grown to just 55 percent of the population.

By the year 2000, the homeownership rate was nearly 68 percent, and is still hovering around that area. Tell me again how the standard of living in regards to home ownership hasn't improved.

Good medical care? According to the CDC, advances in health care have increased the average life expectancy in the US by 30 years over the last century. We can now screen for most types of cancer and catch them early enough to successfully treat them. Heart disease death rates have declined by almost two thirds during the past 50 years, and stroke rates have declined by more than three quarters. I've already discussed the changes antibiotics have made in the likelihood of women dying in childbirth. And how many people do you know who have had polio?

High quality food is more available than ever before. I can remember when only certain fruits and vegetables were available year-round, and everything else was seasonal and an expensive treat. Now, there are very few things you can't find for sale SOMEWHERE, at any time of the year, and most fruits are easily affordable by anyone who wants them. The same goes for meat: my mom used to work at the country club in town, and would get the manager to let her buy a lobster tail on my birthday and my sister's as a celebratory treat. Now, I can drive down the street to the Albertson's and buy one any time I want. It's more expensive than chicken and ground beef, I'll grant you, but it's a shitload less expensive than it was when my mom made it for my birthday.

 

[Cecilie1200]

I wonder why all the countries that I wouldn't want to live in have really bad wealth inequality?
File:GINI retouched legend.gif - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Strangely enough those with less inequality also seem to have the happiest people.
Norway - In Photos: The World's Happiest And Saddest Countries - Forbes

Crime rates also seem to be higher where there is more inequality.
Crime Index by Country 2013

But I guess CEOs just work 10X harder than they did in the 70's and are earning what they are getting? No greed or crony capitalism here...

I wonder why so many of the countries I wouldn't want to live in think it's their government's job to produce wealth equality? Oh, yeah, because of a surplus of leftist boobs who think Wikipedia is a source.

South Africa looking good to you is it?

Still waiting for you to tell me specifically what the problem is with wealth inequality, other than that you just don't think it's "fair". How many pages is it going to take before you answer the question?

 

[MikeK]

I don't think the amounts are excessive for what they are allotted for. The problem, most conservatives have, is that these programs are no longer designed to get people on their own two feet. Obama and the democrats shut down the welfare reforms enacted during the Clinton Administration.

I admit I am relatively ignorant about actual numbers pertaining to federal welfare programs because frankly I haven't paid much attention to them. What I am familiar with are occasional tales about anonymous individuals paying for bagfuls of junk food items with food stamps and driving away in new Cadillacs, etc. While I do believe there might be a few such examples of fraudulent or abusive use of the food stamp program such exceptions are to be expected. But if there is some credible evidence that it is widespread I would like to learn about it.

In message #164, on page 11 of this thread, I posted a personal recollection of New York City's public assistance provision prior to the 1950s, when it was called the Department of Home Relief and was substantially smaller then the Department of Public Welfare which it has since become. Back then, recipients of assistance were assigned to a caseworker who fulfilled their immediate needs and assisted the able-bodied to find jobs. I believe that comparatively simple system was forced to change in the early 1960s.

One of the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 enabled any American citizen to relocate from any part of the Nation to any other part of the Nation at will and to apply for federally subsidized welfare upon arrival, if needed. That legislation prompted migration of tens of thousands of mainly illiterate Black farm workers from the deep South to Northern cities like New York and Philadelphia.

I'm assuming such an overwhelming flood of newly arriving applicants for public assistance initially brought about the transition from simple charitable systems to the costly, federally subsidized, difficult to control welfare bureaucracy Gadawg is complaining about now.

 

[Brain357]

I wonder why so many of the countries I wouldn't want to live in think it's their government's job to produce wealth equality? Oh, yeah, because of a surplus of leftist boobs who think Wikipedia is a source.

South Africa looking good to you is it?

Still waiting for you to tell me specifically what the problem is with wealth inequality, other than that you just don't think it's "fair". How many pages is it going to take before you answer the question?

Well if you had read then you'd know what I specifically think is wrong with inequality. I even provided links showing what happens to countries when inequality is out of control.

 

[daveman]

I think this whole thread is disingenuous. The point isn't really to show that any wrongdoing has occurred, or even to identify imbalances in the system that need to be fixed. (If it were, you'd find many allies in libertarians who want to see them fixed as well).

No, the point here - and the point of most campaigns touting the 'disparity of wealth' - is to justify more government control of our economic decisions.

Indeed. And we all know how well that's worked out all throughout history.

Well, some of us know. The rest of us ignore history and think it'll be swell.

 

[Brain357]

I think this whole thread is disingenuous. The point isn't really to show that any wrongdoing has occurred, or even to identify imbalances in the system that need to be fixed. (If it were, you'd find many allies in libertarians who want to see them fixed as well).

No, the point here - and the point of most campaigns touting the 'disparity of wealth' - is to justify more government control of our economic decisions.

Indeed. And we all know how well that's worked out all throughout history.

Well, some of us know. The rest of us ignore history and think it'll be swell.

The longer we let this continue the larger government will become. Hasn't government grown at the same time this inequality has grown? As more poor are created, government grows.

 

[Gadawg73]

I think this whole thread is disingenuous. The point isn't really to show that any wrongdoing has occurred, or even to identify imbalances in the system that need to be fixed. (If it were, you'd find many allies in libertarians who want to see them fixed as well).

No, the point here - and the point of most campaigns touting the 'disparity of wealth' - is to justify more government control of our economic decisions.

Indeed. And we all know how well that's worked out all throughout history.

Well, some of us know. The rest of us ignore history and think it'll be swell.

The longer we let this continue the larger government will become. Hasn't government grown at the same time this inequality has grown? As more poor are created, government grows.

You have it ass backwards.
As more government grows the more poor they create.

 

[Brain357]

Indeed. And we all know how well that's worked out all throughout history.

Well, some of us know. The rest of us ignore history and think it'll be swell.

The longer we let this continue the larger government will become. Hasn't government grown at the same time this inequality has grown? As more poor are created, government grows.

You have it ass backwards.
As more government grows the more poor they create.

Well if things continue this way you bet the government will grow.

 

[Gadawg73]

The longer we let this continue the larger government will become. Hasn't government grown at the same time this inequality has grown? As more poor are created, government grows.

You have it ass backwards.
As more government grows the more poor they create.

Well if things continue this way you bet the government will grow.

Obama tells us things are so much better now so why should it?
We need less government. Citizens need to get off their fat and lazy asses and go help their neighbors.
If your neighbors are hungry go and feed them.

 

[Lonestar_logic]

You have it ass backwards.
As more government grows the more poor they create.

Well if things continue this way you bet the government will grow.

Obama tells us things are so much better now so why should it?
We need less government. Citizens need to get off their fat and lazy asses and go help their neighbors.
If your neighbors are hungry go and feed them.

Why would you feed anyone that does nothing to help feed themselves?

Have you taken your neighbors to raise as your own?