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

[Brain357]

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.

What we have is the top earners hoarding all the money. They are shipping jobs overseas and creating poor paying and part time jobs. So the government grows because these people need help. Perfect formula for government growth.

 

[zeke]

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?

Ain't you special. Nah. What is it that you want old people, disabled people and kids to "do" to be able to feed themselves? Or did you not know that the majority of people receiving food stamps are....get this..... old, real young or disabled.

But you don't give a flying fuk do you? It's all about YOU, Rightwingers for themselves. What a motto.

 

[dblack]

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.

What we have is the top earners hoarding all the money. They are shipping jobs overseas and creating poor paying and part time jobs. So the government grows because these people need help. Perfect formula for government growth.

Absolutely. These programs prop up wealth disparity - they enable it. Libertarians have long recognized this dynamic: laws that attempt to regulate away poverty, push poor people into state dependency instead.

Support for state welfare comes from well-intended, compassionate people who want to help, but that's not its ultimate function. It's there to keep poor people in their place. To keep 'Apple Annie' off the streets and not competing with the chain grocery stores. To keep those who can't, or won't, participate in the corporate consumerist treadmill mollified and out of the way.

 

[Lonestar_logic]

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?

Ain't you special. Nah. What is it that you want old people, disabled people and kids to "do" to be able to feed themselves? Or did you not know that the majority of people receiving food stamps are....get this..... old, real young or disabled.

But you don't give a flying fuk do you? It's all about YOU, Rightwingers for themselves. What a motto.

You're assuming only "old people, disabled people and kids" are on food stamps.

Do you have a link to support that evidence?

But answer this, are the old people the ones having all the kids that are on welfare or is it the disabled people having all the poor kids?

I'm a conservative and I believe that faith based organizations can do a better job at helping the less fortunate .

It has worked well throughout history until the government took over. Now 50 years and 15 trillion dollars later we have just as many if not more people in poverty.

Poor people are not generally good at handling their money, they often make unwise choices. So giving them more money to use unwisely, is unwise. IMO

 

[editec]

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.

The video didn't really advocate any solutions, did it?

And we do not need more government control Dblack, we simple need different policies.

 

[kaz]

I have to disagree unless your saying the rate of minimum wage is an issue they can run on. Minimum wage in of itself is just a guarantee that if you work then you can realistically expect x amount of dollars for time spent working.

No, minimum wage is a guarantee that if you aren't worth an arbitrary amount assigned by arrogant liberal elitists that you can't get a job.

No. Since most people have the skills to get a minimum wage job just by being able to breath i would have to say its not that dark of a conspiracy meant to keep poor people down.

Damn, you figured us out. All employers across the country meet to suppress wages of the three percent of workers who earn minimum wage.

You've obviously got no management experience. People show up for training then don't show up for the job, they don't show up for late hours, they drink beer or smoke pot while they're making deliveries.

Here's a dollar, buy a clue.

 

[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.

The video didn't really advocate any solutions, did it?

I suppose not. I may be guilty of prejudice on that one. But most of what I see following complaints about disparity of wealth is advocacy of state economic intervention - when arguably that intervention is the cause of the disparity in the first place.

And we do not need more government control Dblack, we simple need different policies.

I could even be convinced we DO need more control in some instances. Certainly government has a responsibility to require honest transactions and transparent dealings, and they largely fail on that front these days.

What we don't need is more government interference in our economic decisions. If people want to give all their money to Bill Gates, because he makes products they want to buy, that's their business. On the other hand, if Bill Gates is making a killing from ill-considered tax incentives and loopholes, or lobbying government to control his customers' choices via intrusive regulation - THAT is something we can and should fix.

 

[Vox]

Did he ever actually make an argument???

no

he said that Heritage Foundation can not be trusted, but factcheck.org is the "ultimate truth".

turns out it is a biased libtard source.
Even if they mask their leftist bias .

there have been numerous occasions during the 2008 and 2012 campaigns when they were caught lying.
And an organization which often quotes AP as if the latter is a fact-proven truth, not another MSM, is one of the more subtle biases.

I never said anything about "ultimate truth"

If you actually kept up with factcheck.org, you would know that they had plenty of criticism for Obama during the 2012 campaign.

Yes you did and you have been proven wrong

 

[kaz]

It also is important to understand that putting money into the hands of that class of people who will spend it, the working class, is critically important to the health of the overall economy

1) Employers don't pay people what they are not worth

2) People do not work for less money than they can earn elsewhere.

So, what you do is deny them jobs and force them on welfare. So they aren't the "working class" anymore, by definition.

What does empirical data say? every time the minimum wage goes up a bunch of people get fired. Those we want working the most, teenagers, have astronomical unemployment rates because they aren't worth the minimum wage since they have no skills or experience. And those teenagers who need jobs the most, inner city kids, have unemployment of 50%.

Maybe your rationalizations help you sleep at night. But with friends like you, the poor don't need enemies. It's the inevitable conclusion to your utter arrogance that you can make better decisions over other people's lives then they can.

 

[zeke]

SNAP is targeted at the most vulnerable.

76% of SNAP households included a child, an elderly person, or a disabled person. These vulnerable households receive 83% of all SNAP benefits.

SNAP eligibility is limited to households with gross income of no more than 130% of the federal poverty guideline, but the majority of households have income well below the maximum: 83% of SNAP households have gross income at or below 100% of the poverty guideline ($19,530 for a family of 3 in 2013), and these households receive about 91% of all benefits. 61% of SNAP households have gross income at or below 75% of the poverty guideline ($14,648 for a family of 3 in 2013).[ii]

The average SNAP household has a gross monthly income of $744; net monthly income of $338 after the standard deduction and, for certain households, deductions for child care, medical expenses, and shelter costs; and countable resources of $331, such as a bank account.[iii]


SNAP is responsive to changes in need, providing needed food assistance as families fall into economic hardship and then transitioning away as their financial situation stabilizes.

SNAP participation historically follows unemployment with a slight lag. SNAP participation grew during the recession, responding quickly and effectively to increased need. As the number of unemployed people increased by 94% from 2007 to 2011, SNAP responded with a 70% increase in participation over the same period. [iv]

As the economy recovers and people go back to work, SNAP participation and program costs, too, can be expected to decline. Unemployment has begun to slowly fall, and SNAP participation growth has flattened out. The Congressional Budget Office projects SNAP participation to begin declining in 2015, with both unemployment and SNAP participation returning to near pre-recession levels by 2022.[v]

SNAP has a strong record of program integrity.

SNAP error rates declined by 57% since FY2000, from 8.91% in FY2000 to a record low of 3.80% in FY2011.[vi] The accuracy rate of 96.2% (FY2011) is an all-time program high and is considerably higher than other major benefit programs, for example Medicare fee-for-service (91.5%) or Medicare Advantage Part C (88.6%). [vii]

Two-thirds of all SNAP payment errors are a result of caseworker error. Nearly one-fifth are underpayments, which occur when eligible participants receive less in benefits than they are eligible to receive.[viii]

The national rate of food stamp trafficking declined from about 3.8 cents per dollar of benefits redeemed in 1993 to about 1.0 cent per dollar during the years 2006 to 2008.[ix] As you may have read in local news, USDA is aggressively fighting trafficking, but while there are individual cases of program abuse, for every one instance of fraud, there are hundreds of stories of heartbreaking need.

The need for food assistance is already greater than SNAP can fill.

SNAP benefits don’t last most participants the whole month. 90% of SNAP benefits are redeemed by the third week of the month, and 58% of food bank clients currently receiving SNAP benefits turn to food banks for assistance at least 6 months out of the year.[x]

The average monthly SNAP benefit per person is $133.85, or less than $1.50 per person, per meal. [xi]

Only 55% of food insecure individuals are income-eligible for SNAP, and 29% are not income-eligible for any federal food assistance.[xii]

Lonestar,

from the "Facts about SNAP" thread. You might want to check things like SNAP yourself. From a variety of sources. There is nothing I could link to that you would call "credible".
If you find credible sources saying this info is wrong, please post that link.

And I didn't assume anything. The people who get help from SNAP are old, disabled and quite young. Needless to say, they are poorer than you and I.

And the faith based groups better step up their game if they are gonna deal with this situation. I have a friend that runs a Catholic Charity food pantry. Never enough food to feed the people that go there for help. Why is that you think? It's either A.to many poor people, B to few donations or C. everyone going to the food pantry is scamming the charity.

I am sure you picked C.

 

[JoeNormal]

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.

You've attended too many Zig Ziglar seminars if you don't think that material resources are limited.

 

[RKMBrown]

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.

You've attended too many Zig Ziglar seminars if you don't think that material resources are limited.

Material resources are only limited if someone has a monopoly on them.

 

[JoeNormal]

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?



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.



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.

Oooh, tell me about science. You probably haven't taken a science class since eighth grade. As I said in a previous post, people have gadgets that seem like science fiction. I hope that's enough because in addition, they have tons more stress than they did thirty years ago and in spite of some stunning medical breakthroughs, they aren't living much longer.

Life Expectancy by Age, 1850?2004 | Infoplease.com

And as for standard of living, I'm sure you've already seen the adjusted pay scales by percentile so I won't bother to post them yet again.

 

[RKMBrown]

they aren't living much longer.

Life Expectancy by Age, 1850?2004 | Infoplease.com

ROFL uhm you do realize that the graph you pointed to means that people have between 100% and 40% higher life expectancy at each particular stage of life right? That means if you roll the dice at any particular time in life you get a few extra rolls where before the odds were not so good.

In the end it means the following:

 

[JoeNormal]

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.

You've attended too many Zig Ziglar seminars if you don't think that material resources are limited.

Material resources are only limited if someone has a monopoly on them.

Do you want to expand on that a little? It seems to me that it's getting harder and harder to find enough oil to satisfy world demand. More Frankenstein science is needed to grow enough food to go around. And people, especially out west are fighting over water rights.

 

[RKMBrown]

You've attended too many Zig Ziglar seminars if you don't think that material resources are limited.

Material resources are only limited if someone has a monopoly on them.

Do you want to expand on that a little? It seems to me that it's getting harder and harder to find enough oil to satisfy world demand. More Frankenstein science is needed to grow enough food to go around. And people, especially out west are fighting over water rights.

Water rights are an example of a government granted or taken monopoly. We live on a water planet there is plenty of water. The trick is that getting H2O to where people have decided to take up permanent living status can be difficult. I have my own water well. It's a thousand feet deep. If the county did not let me get my own water that would be monopolistic control over what's right under my feet. But I can also get nearly all the water I need by collecting rainfall if I so desired to create a large enough catch system for my acreage.

On oil, the folks telling us we are running out have been debunked. It appears there is money in publishing gloom and doom stories regarding oil availability, global warming, etc type doom and gloom science. Dry oil wells fill up. It's magic. Or not. The folks saw dead dinosaurs in tar pits and conjectured that oil is from the dinosaurs. ROFL yeah not so much. There is a moon around Saturn I believe where it rains oil. ROFL yeah no dinosaurs there, go figure. Maybe oil is really just a product of heat and pressure from the mantle? Carbon and hydrogen, the basis of fuels, are not rare elements.

On food... hell we have so much extra food that our government is paying farmers to not farm, and paying other farmers to convert their food to gas, and paying still other farmers to send food donations to countries around the world, many who are harboring terrorists desiring to kill us. We even have some cities that ban people from growing their own food in their yard cause the people would rather have manicured grass.

 

[Cecilie1200]

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.

What you have provided so far is "It exists here, and this is a bad place, so inequality must be bad."

Try again.

 

[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?

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.

You've attended too many Zig Ziglar seminars if you don't think that material resources are limited.

I can see that one scarcity we're dealing with here is reading comprehension. The only question now is if it's artificial, because someone decided to make you deficient, or if it's natural, because you're just stupid.

 

[Brain357]

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.

What you have provided so far is "It exists here, and this is a bad place, so inequality must be bad."

Try again.

Yes it is great if you love big government, unhappy people and high crime. Otherwise it is bad.

 

[Cecilie1200]

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?



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.



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

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.

Oooh, tell me about science. You probably haven't taken a science class since eighth grade. As I said in a previous post, people have gadgets that seem like science fiction. I hope that's enough because in addition, they have tons more stress than they did thirty years ago and in spite of some stunning medical breakthroughs, they aren't living much longer.

Life Expectancy by Age, 1850?2004 | Infoplease.com

And as for standard of living, I'm sure you've already seen the adjusted pay scales by percentile so I won't bother to post them yet again.

Ooh, yes, PLEASE tell me how you know more about life expectancy than the CDC does, since they say that life expectancy has gone up by 30 years in the last century. But I'm sure that a hack loser on an Internet message board is MUCH better informed about medical issues than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.