Wealth inequality

[ReallyMeow]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM]Wealth Inequality in America - YouTube[/ame]

so much for trickle down economics.

 

[TheOldSchool]

Nope Boss Tweed created lots of jobs. He was great at that. Oh wait this is about income inequality? Oh then yes, trickle down economics is all about income inequality.

 

[PaulS1950]

Equality of wealth doesn't happen in real life.
Some poeple choose to be poor - pennyless in fact. I have interviewed people who choose to be homeless, on the street and begging to get by. One of these people was an ex-lawyer! He chose to get out of a successful career and become a "bum".
Some people choose to work for someone else - you will never get more than a very moderate wage when you are working for someone else. They are, after all, paying all the expenses for your job to be possible. They are charging their customers a rate that pays the mortgage (or rent), the power, water, gas, tooling, taxes, your wages and benifits and all the record-keeping that goes along with a business and only net about 3 - 5% more than it costs to be in business.
People who are in business for themselves risk everything they have to start a business. If they have planned well, manage it correctly and provide a service or a product that remains in demand survive for more than 3 years. 50% of all new businesses fail in the first year. Only 10% of new businesses are successful.
Under ideal conditions the top 10% will always control 90% of the money.
Why is that? It boils down to money management. You can "have things" or have money. If you are smart and invest your money in the right way you can go from pennyless to millionaire in less than a week - there are those who do just that! Most of us are unwilling to risk that much because sometimes those same people go from millionaires to pennyless in the same amount of time. The difference is they plan for that and just start over.

Not all rich people start with nothing but quite a few do. The difference between them and us is how they use money.

 

[oldernwiser]

Equality of wealth doesn't happen in real life.
Some poeple choose to be poor - pennyless in fact. I have interviewed people who choose to be homeless, on the street and begging to get by. One of these people was an ex-lawyer! He chose to get out of a successful career and become a "bum".
Some people choose to work for someone else - you will never get more than a very moderate wage when you are working for someone else. They are, after all, paying all the expenses for your job to be possible. They are charging their customers a rate that pays the mortgage (or rent), the power, water, gas, tooling, taxes, your wages and benifits and all the record-keeping that goes along with a business and only net about 3 - 5% more than it costs to be in business.
People who are in business for themselves risk everything they have to start a business. If they have planned well, manage it correctly and provide a service or a product that remains in demand survive for more than 3 years. 50% of all new businesses fail in the first year. Only 10% of new businesses are successful.
Under ideal conditions the top 10% will always control 90% of the money.
Why is that? It boils down to money management. You can "have things" or have money. If you are smart and invest your money in the right way you can go from pennyless to millionaire in less than a week - there are those who do just that! Most of us are unwilling to risk that much because sometimes those same people go from millionaires to pennyless in the same amount of time. The difference is they plan for that and just start over.

Not all rich people start with nothing but quite a few do. The difference between them and us is how they use money.

And yet... that seems to be antithetical to the notion of free-market economy. If people choose to have money over having "things", the people selling those "things" go out of business. With enough of that going on, our economy would simply stop functioning at all.

Money is supposed to be the tender we use to trade our labor for the goods we need. If it isn't cyclical, then we end up working more for less money until there simply isn't enough to buy necessities.

It's not like many of us have the real option to return to the land - which is how you get well-educated "bums" in the streets.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Wealth Inequality in America - YouTube

so much for trickle down economics.

Yes! Higher taxes will make us all equal. LOL!

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Did anyone else notice how the idiot that made this video made some stupid assumptions, misrepresented some facts, and conflated things that are not equivalent?

 

[Oddball]

Did anyone else notice how the idiot that made this video made some stupid assumptions, misrepresented some facts, and conflated things that are not equivalent?

I noticed...But it's easier to do all that than wave a gun in someone's face and rob them in person.

It's exactly that face-to-face cowardice that makes lolberals what they are.

 

[arKangel]

Equality of wealth doesn't happen in real life.
Some poeple choose to be poor - pennyless in fact. I have interviewed people who choose to be homeless, on the street and begging to get by. One of these people was an ex-lawyer! He chose to get out of a successful career and become a "bum".
Some people choose to work for someone else - you will never get more than a very moderate wage when you are working for someone else. They are, after all, paying all the expenses for your job to be possible. They are charging their customers a rate that pays the mortgage (or rent), the power, water, gas, tooling, taxes, your wages and benifits and all the record-keeping that goes along with a business and only net about 3 - 5% more than it costs to be in business.
People who are in business for themselves risk everything they have to start a business. If they have planned well, manage it correctly and provide a service or a product that remains in demand survive for more than 3 years. 50% of all new businesses fail in the first year. Only 10% of new businesses are successful.
Under ideal conditions the top 10% will always control 90% of the money.
Why is that? It boils down to money management. You can "have things" or have money. If you are smart and invest your money in the right way you can go from pennyless to millionaire in less than a week - there are those who do just that! Most of us are unwilling to risk that much because sometimes those same people go from millionaires to pennyless in the same amount of time. The difference is they plan for that and just start over.

Not all rich people start with nothing but quite a few do. The difference between them and us is how they use money.

What a load of B.S.
A vast majority of the "rich" are usurers, plain and simple.
They are greedy, inhumane, and evil.
They treat their fellow man as objects, something to be "better than", and will exploit them at any and every turn.


Charity comes from local pockets, not banksters.
Banks throw people in prisons. Churches put people in homes.

I find the phenomenon of humans exploiting other humans as a way of life to be simply disgusting.

There is a better way people.

 

[Oddball]

sweeeeeet sock puppet!

 

[arKangel]

sweeeeeet sock puppet!

Clean debate?
If you want to bash some group of people take it to one of the other forums.

The grown-ups are speaking.

 

[arKangel]

Equality does happen real life.
So does dishonesty.

Usury is sin. It happens just as any sin. This human affliction is not curable by law, it's cure lies within culture.
Cancel your cable today, cancel your credit cards, stop buying gadgets, stop buying into the the latest fads.

Do you want to raise children in a culture of inhumanity?
It starts there!, Mom and Dad.

 

[Meathead]

Wealth Inequality in America - YouTube

so much for trickle down economics.

Relax. Obama won and class war is no longer Democrat dogma.

 

[oldernwiser]

Did anyone else notice how the idiot that made this video made some stupid assumptions, misrepresented some facts, and conflated things that are not equivalent?

Which assumptions, misrepresented facts, or conflated things are you referring to, Bags?

 

[oldernwiser]

Wealth Inequality in America - YouTube

so much for trickle down economics.

Yes! Higher taxes will make us all equal. LOL!

Um... not exactly. But what would help tremendously would be to kill any and all attempts for a corporation to dodge it's tax liabilities by stashing their profits in off-shore accounts. There should never be another Bush-style "American Jobs Act" which gave multinational corporations a 1 year, 1 time, 5% tax rate if they would only bring their money home.

Trickle down could possibly work - but only if the 1% let go of the Franklins a bit.

 

[yidnar]

Equality of wealth doesn't happen in real life.
Some poeple choose to be poor - pennyless in fact. I have interviewed people who choose to be homeless, on the street and begging to get by. One of these people was an ex-lawyer! He chose to get out of a successful career and become a "bum".
Some people choose to work for someone else - you will never get more than a very moderate wage when you are working for someone else. They are, after all, paying all the expenses for your job to be possible. They are charging their customers a rate that pays the mortgage (or rent), the power, water, gas, tooling, taxes, your wages and benifits and all the record-keeping that goes along with a business and only net about 3 - 5% more than it costs to be in business.
People who are in business for themselves risk everything they have to start a business. If they have planned well, manage it correctly and provide a service or a product that remains in demand survive for more than 3 years. 50% of all new businesses fail in the first year. Only 10% of new businesses are successful.
Under ideal conditions the top 10% will always control 90% of the money.
Why is that? It boils down to money management. You can "have things" or have money. If you are smart and invest your money in the right way you can go from pennyless to millionaire in less than a week - there are those who do just that! Most of us are unwilling to risk that much because sometimes those same people go from millionaires to pennyless in the same amount of time. The difference is they plan for that and just start over.

Not all rich people start with nothing but quite a few do. The difference between them and us is how they use money.

What a load of B.S.
A vast majority of the "rich" are usurers, plain and simple.
They are greedy, inhumane, and evil.
They treat their fellow man as objects, something to be "better than", and will exploit them at any and every turn.


Charity comes from local pockets, not banksters.
Banks throw people in prisons. Churches put people in homes.

I find the phenomenon of humans exploiting other humans as a way of life to be simply disgusting.

There is a better way people.

why don't you have as much money as these evil rich people ??

 

[M14 Shooter]

The entire premise that wealth should be equal across a nation is worse than silly.
That government should implement means to this end brings the end to any concept of a free society.

 

[oldernwiser]

The entire premise that wealth should be equal across a nation is worse than silly.
That government should implement means to this end brings the end to any concept of a free society.

I don't think the point is complete equality - that would be the socialist solution. I understand and favor the CEO of a company taking home a nice paycheck - if you didn't acquire wealth, why even try? But really.... 380 times the AVERAGE employee's salary? Really? What we see here is the opposite of socialism - corporatism, and it's equally bad for a healthy economy.

We need more jobs in order to fill in the wealth gap, or we need a lower CPI in order to restore buying power to the lower percentiles (which is a great, and cheap way to create economic stimulus). Government can ask for those things to happen, but in the end it's up to the CEOs with the obscenely high pay checks.

 

[M14 Shooter]

The entire premise that wealth should be equal across a nation is worse than silly.
That government should implement means to this end brings the end to any concept of a free society.

I don't think the point is complete equality - that would be the socialist solution. I understand and favor the CEO of a company taking home a nice paycheck - if you didn't acquire wealth, why even try? But really.... 380 times the AVERAGE employee's salary? Really? What we see here is the opposite of socialism - corporatism, and it's equally bad for a healthy economy.

The company -chooses- to pay that much to the CEO - who are you, or anyone else, to take away that choice?

 

[oldernwiser]

The entire premise that wealth should be equal across a nation is worse than silly.
That government should implement means to this end brings the end to any concept of a free society.

I don't think the point is complete equality - that would be the socialist solution. I understand and favor the CEO of a company taking home a nice paycheck - if you didn't acquire wealth, why even try? But really.... 380 times the AVERAGE employee's salary? Really? What we see here is the opposite of socialism - corporatism, and it's equally bad for a healthy economy.

The company -chooses- to pay that much to the CEO - who are you, or anyone else, to take away that choice?

Actually, it turns out to be the board of directors who make that choice. And it's usually based on how much of the company's outlays go out in the form of dividends to stock holders - the largest of those are typically BoD members.

I'm not advocating that the choice be removed at all. I'm saying that the concentration of wealth at the top end of the scale is damaging to the economy below the 10% mark. I guess I'm also saying that companies who can afford to take advantage of stock buy back plans can assure their stock holders of continued large dividend payouts while still not benefitting their employees.

Why is it important to benefit employees? Because that's where the country's real buying power is. With less people earning and spending, businesses rely less and less on the domestic market and move operations overseas to areas that don't yet have such a wide disparity. This results in even less employment opportunities domestically, and continued widening of the wealth gap. Our own corporate environment is turning the US into a Bolivian backwater.

Interestingly enough, the Fed Bank funded a study about the effect of higher monetary rewards on productivity and efficiency. Their study (which was performed both in an affluent society and one that was quite depressed) showed that there was no noticeable improvement in either productivity or efficiency as monetary gains increased except in the case of the most menial jobs. This would seem to suggest that someone making, say, 100% over the highest average employee's wages would be just as effective, and could actually allow for another couple of jobs - increasing production and providing a stimulus to the economy at the same time.

 

[M14 Shooter]

I don't think the point is complete equality - that would be the socialist solution. I understand and favor the CEO of a company taking home a nice paycheck - if you didn't acquire wealth, why even try? But really.... 380 times the AVERAGE employee's salary? Really? What we see here is the opposite of socialism - corporatism, and it's equally bad for a healthy economy.

The company -chooses- to pay that much to the CEO - who are you, or anyone else, to take away that choice?

Actually, it turns out to be the board of directors who make that choice. And it's usually based on how much of the company's outlays go out in the form of dividends to stock holders - the largest of those are typically BoD members.

Whatever its based on -- it's a choice they make.

I'm not advocating that the choice be removed at all. I'm saying that the concentration of wealth at the top end of the scale is damaging to the economy below the 10% mark.

Ok... and...?
Your solution?