Where Do Billionaires Come From?

[gipper]

Walmart manipulated what the market would pay

How?

Easily. When you control government and the politicians are in your back pocket, anything is possible.

 

[bripat9643]

Do the richest among us owe their wealth to hard work and high IQs or government monopolies like patents and copyrights, minimum wage laws, or campaign finance contributions?

Should We Have Billionaires?

"The basic story is that if we have a market economy, some people can get very rich.

"If we buy the right-wing story, the super-rich got their money from their great contribution to society.

"If we look at it with clearer eyes, the super-rich got their money because we structured the economy in a way that allowed them to get super-rich..."

"This is a point which seems very obvious, but for some reason is largely ignored in policy debates.

"Most typically these debates take the market distribution of income as a given, and then ask the extent to which we might want to redistribute to have less inequality...."

"But it is completely absurd to treat the market distribution of income as given.

"The market is incredibly flexible and it can literally be structured in an infinite number of different ways."

Instead of arguing over a redistribution of income, restructure markets in such a way that vast private fortunes never come into existence in the first place.

This is idiotic.

"But it is completely absurd to treat the market distribution of income as given.
"The market is incredibly flexible and it can literally be structured in an infinite number of different ways."

That is absolutely retarded.

Market distribution of income, is in fact a given, because it's part of the market.

I don't give my money to the beggar at the street corner, because that beggar doesn't provide anything of value. Exxon does. Microsoft does. Walmart does.

This idea that you can just change the system, so that billionaires are no longer billionaires, because "the market is flexible", is retarded.

Of course it's a given. The whole reason the wealthy are wealthy, is because they provide something of value to the most people. The whole reason the poor are generally poor, is because they don't create much or anything of value.

This is exactly why, you can effectively redistribute wealth to poor people, and the vast vast majority end up poor again.

You take lottery winners, that end up with millions, and in 10 years, they are poor again.

There is no way to restructure the market, so that people can make bad choices, and produce little of value, and end up being wealthy.
Equally, there is only one way to restructure the market so that rich people don't end up rich... and that is to drive them out of the market, so they go and end up rich elsewhere.

As I said to last time, there were rich people in Cuba, before Castro. Restructuring the market, didn't make the poor people rich. It just made the rich people leave, and go be rich elsewhere in the world, while the people of Cuba ended up in object poverty for life.

If poor people produce so little, and it's of such low value, how can a company like McDonald's be one of the most profitable companies in the USA? How can they afford to pay the CEO over $21 million dollars per year in salary, since their entire front line work force is composed of minimum wage burger flippers and counter kids.

How is a company like Walmart, one of the most profitable companies in the USA, and paying the highest dividends in their history, when their workers are receiving $9 billion a year in food stamps, MedicAid, earned income credits and other social assistance, and the Walmart family the wealthiest people in the country, if their workers create so little value.

Walmart could afford to pay all of their workers $100 a week more, and still be a highly profitable company. Their profits would be reduced by 1/3, so they would still be very profitable, but they wouldn't be one of the MOST profitable companies. If they were to pay their workers $100 a week more, US taxpayers wouldn't be giving Walmart workers $9 billion in social assistance.

You keep railing against low wage workers and "rewarding them" for their low skills, but even if everyone in the USA were to go to college and acquire better skills, you still need people to deliver pizzas, pick up the trash, clean toilets in office buildings, and work in the fast food industry. What you are saying is that these people should not be paid a living wage, and that American taxpayers should have to subsidize these people.

Wages as a percentage of costs, is now at the same level as it was in the Guilded Age of the Robber Barons. Worker anger at this inequity, as well as worker safety issues, gave rise to the union movement.

Such rationalization ignores the very basic fact that government assistance is expensive. To give someone a $100 food stamp supplement, the government has to process an application, look at the applicant's income and facts presented, collect taxes, pay them out to the state, where they are deposited to the recipient's electronic debit card. Government worker wages are paid at every stage of this process, and are ongoing. If you eliminate the government and have employers pay their workers more, the workers have more control over what they do with their own money, and you eliminate all of the government workers and expenses of running the food stamp programs.

The low wage workers become tax payers, taxes paid to social programs are reduced, the number of government workers employed processing applications and payments are reduced, and government gets smaller and cheaper. Better yet, since the worker wages are tax deductible, every $1 of additional wages corporations pay only costs that corporation $0.78 because it reduces the corporation's tax burden, and 22% of their profits go to taxes.

Yet fools like you continue to believe that raising the minimum wage rewards lazy people with no skills and harms people like you. There is no cure for stupid.

I don’t want to live in a nation that so mistreats it’s poor, but I do. How does the world’s richest nation have so many suffering people? It’s appalling, yet many Americans find it acceptable. Our culture is totally fucked.

Imagine this massive omnipresent expensive government actually trying to help poor Americans, rather then further enriching the extreme rich?

For one thing, we import a lot of them from Mexico.

 

[bripat9643]

Walmart manipulated what the market would pay

How?

Easily. When you control government and the politicians are in your back pocket, anything is possible.

He's asking exactly what they did. You obviously can't explain it.

 

[boedicca]

Do the richest among us owe their wealth to hard work and high IQs or government monopolies like patents and copyrights, minimum wage laws, or campaign finance contributions?

Should We Have Billionaires?

"The basic story is that if we have a market economy, some people can get very rich.

"If we buy the right-wing story, the super-rich got their money from their great contribution to society.

"If we look at it with clearer eyes, the super-rich got their money because we structured the economy in a way that allowed them to get super-rich..."

"This is a point which seems very obvious, but for some reason is largely ignored in policy debates.

"Most typically these debates take the market distribution of income as a given, and then ask the extent to which we might want to redistribute to have less inequality...."

"But it is completely absurd to treat the market distribution of income as given.

"The market is incredibly flexible and it can literally be structured in an infinite number of different ways."

Instead of arguing over a redistribution of income, restructure markets in such a way that vast private fortunes never come into existence in the first place.

Envy is a terrible basis for public policy.

Just sayin'.

Envy is a terrible basis for public policy.

Just sayin'.

So is greed and bribery.

Should We Have Billionaires?

"The basic story is that if we have a market economy, some people can get very rich.

"If we buy the right-wing story, the super-rich got their money from their great contribution to society.

"If we look at it with clearer eyes, the super-rich got their money because we structured the economy in a way that allowed them to get super-rich."

Billionaires acquired their wealth because of favorable tax and trade policies bought with their campaign donations, right?

It's so transparently pathetic to see you try to justify your own greed and bribery by demonizing people who have more than you. You bribe politicians with your support so that they can mug others and give their money to you.

Greedies gonna Greed.

 

[anynameyouwish]

Do the richest among us owe their wealth to hard work and high IQs or government monopolies like patents and copyrights, minimum wage laws, or campaign finance contributions?

Should We Have Billionaires?

"The basic story is that if we have a market economy, some people can get very rich.

"If we buy the right-wing story, the super-rich got their money from their great contribution to society.

"If we look at it with clearer eyes, the super-rich got their money because we structured the economy in a way that allowed them to get super-rich..."

"This is a point which seems very obvious, but for some reason is largely ignored in policy debates.

"Most typically these debates take the market distribution of income as a given, and then ask the extent to which we might want to redistribute to have less inequality...."

"But it is completely absurd to treat the market distribution of income as given.

"The market is incredibly flexible and it can literally be structured in an infinite number of different ways."

Instead of arguing over a redistribution of income, restructure markets in such a way that vast private fortunes never come into existence in the first place.

This is idiotic.

"But it is completely absurd to treat the market distribution of income as given.
"The market is incredibly flexible and it can literally be structured in an infinite number of different ways."

That is absolutely retarded.

Market distribution of income, is in fact a given, because it's part of the market.

I don't give my money to the beggar at the street corner, because that beggar doesn't provide anything of value. Exxon does. Microsoft does. Walmart does.

This idea that you can just change the system, so that billionaires are no longer billionaires, because "the market is flexible", is retarded.

Of course it's a given. The whole reason the wealthy are wealthy, is because they provide something of value to the most people. The whole reason the poor are generally poor, is because they don't create much or anything of value.

This is exactly why, you can effectively redistribute wealth to poor people, and the vast vast majority end up poor again.

You take lottery winners, that end up with millions, and in 10 years, they are poor again.

There is no way to restructure the market, so that people can make bad choices, and produce little of value, and end up being wealthy.
Equally, there is only one way to restructure the market so that rich people don't end up rich... and that is to drive them out of the market, so they go and end up rich elsewhere.

As I said to last time, there were rich people in Cuba, before Castro. Restructuring the market, didn't make the poor people rich. It just made the rich people leave, and go be rich elsewhere in the world, while the people of Cuba ended up in object poverty for life.

If poor people produce so little, and it's of such low value, how can a company like McDonald's be one of the most profitable companies in the USA? How can they afford to pay the CEO over $21 million dollars per year in salary, since their entire front line work force is composed of minimum wage burger flippers and counter kids.

How is a company like Walmart, one of the most profitable companies in the USA, and paying the highest dividends in their history, when their workers are receiving $9 billion a year in food stamps, MedicAid, earned income credits and other social assistance, and the Walmart family the wealthiest people in the country, if their workers create so little value.

Walmart could afford to pay all of their workers $100 a week more, and still be a highly profitable company. Their profits would be reduced by 1/3, so they would still be very profitable, but they wouldn't be one of the MOST profitable companies. If they were to pay their workers $100 a week more, US taxpayers wouldn't be giving Walmart workers $9 billion in social assistance.

You keep railing against low wage workers and "rewarding them" for their low skills, but even if everyone in the USA were to go to college and acquire better skills, you still need people to deliver pizzas, pick up the trash, clean toilets in office buildings, and work in the fast food industry. What you are saying is that these people should not be paid a living wage, and that American taxpayers should have to subsidize these people.

Wages as a percentage of costs, is now at the same level as it was in the Guilded Age of the Robber Barons. Worker anger at this inequity, as well as worker safety issues, gave rise to the union movement.

Such rationalization ignores the very basic fact that government assistance is expensive. To give someone a $100 food stamp supplement, the government has to process an application, look at the applicant's income and facts presented, collect taxes, pay them out to the state, where they are deposited to the recipient's electronic debit card. Government worker wages are paid at every stage of this process, and are ongoing. If you eliminate the government and have employers pay their workers more, the workers have more control over what they do with their own money, and you eliminate all of the government workers and expenses of running the food stamp programs.

The low wage workers become tax payers, taxes paid to social programs are reduced, the number of government workers employed processing applications and payments are reduced, and government gets smaller and cheaper. Better yet, since the worker wages are tax deductible, every $1 of additional wages corporations pay only costs that corporation $0.78 because it reduces the corporation's tax burden, and 22% of their profits go to taxes.

Yet fools like you continue to believe that raising the minimum wage rewards lazy people with no skills and harms people like you. There is no cure for stupid.

I don’t want to live in a nation that so mistreats it’s poor, but I do. How does the world’s richest nation have so many suffering people? It’s appalling, yet many Americans find it acceptable. Our culture is totally fucked.

Imagine this massive omnipresent expensive government actually trying to help poor Americans, rather then further enriching the extreme rich?

I have no problem with people being able to become filthy rich.

but a truly GREAT nation would be a country in which NOBODY suffers, where EVERYONE has enough of the pie to live a decent and happy life.

I Am NOT talking about FREE MONEY for people who "refuse to work"

 

[gipper]

Do the richest among us owe their wealth to hard work and high IQs or government monopolies like patents and copyrights, minimum wage laws, or campaign finance contributions?

Should We Have Billionaires?

"The basic story is that if we have a market economy, some people can get very rich.

"If we buy the right-wing story, the super-rich got their money from their great contribution to society.

"If we look at it with clearer eyes, the super-rich got their money because we structured the economy in a way that allowed them to get super-rich..."

"This is a point which seems very obvious, but for some reason is largely ignored in policy debates.

"Most typically these debates take the market distribution of income as a given, and then ask the extent to which we might want to redistribute to have less inequality...."

"But it is completely absurd to treat the market distribution of income as given.

"The market is incredibly flexible and it can literally be structured in an infinite number of different ways."

Instead of arguing over a redistribution of income, restructure markets in such a way that vast private fortunes never come into existence in the first place.

This is idiotic.

"But it is completely absurd to treat the market distribution of income as given.
"The market is incredibly flexible and it can literally be structured in an infinite number of different ways."

That is absolutely retarded.

Market distribution of income, is in fact a given, because it's part of the market.

I don't give my money to the beggar at the street corner, because that beggar doesn't provide anything of value. Exxon does. Microsoft does. Walmart does.

This idea that you can just change the system, so that billionaires are no longer billionaires, because "the market is flexible", is retarded.

Of course it's a given. The whole reason the wealthy are wealthy, is because they provide something of value to the most people. The whole reason the poor are generally poor, is because they don't create much or anything of value.

This is exactly why, you can effectively redistribute wealth to poor people, and the vast vast majority end up poor again.

You take lottery winners, that end up with millions, and in 10 years, they are poor again.

There is no way to restructure the market, so that people can make bad choices, and produce little of value, and end up being wealthy.
Equally, there is only one way to restructure the market so that rich people don't end up rich... and that is to drive them out of the market, so they go and end up rich elsewhere.

As I said to last time, there were rich people in Cuba, before Castro. Restructuring the market, didn't make the poor people rich. It just made the rich people leave, and go be rich elsewhere in the world, while the people of Cuba ended up in object poverty for life.

If poor people produce so little, and it's of such low value, how can a company like McDonald's be one of the most profitable companies in the USA? How can they afford to pay the CEO over $21 million dollars per year in salary, since their entire front line work force is composed of minimum wage burger flippers and counter kids.

How is a company like Walmart, one of the most profitable companies in the USA, and paying the highest dividends in their history, when their workers are receiving $9 billion a year in food stamps, MedicAid, earned income credits and other social assistance, and the Walmart family the wealthiest people in the country, if their workers create so little value.

Walmart could afford to pay all of their workers $100 a week more, and still be a highly profitable company. Their profits would be reduced by 1/3, so they would still be very profitable, but they wouldn't be one of the MOST profitable companies. If they were to pay their workers $100 a week more, US taxpayers wouldn't be giving Walmart workers $9 billion in social assistance.

You keep railing against low wage workers and "rewarding them" for their low skills, but even if everyone in the USA were to go to college and acquire better skills, you still need people to deliver pizzas, pick up the trash, clean toilets in office buildings, and work in the fast food industry. What you are saying is that these people should not be paid a living wage, and that American taxpayers should have to subsidize these people.

Wages as a percentage of costs, is now at the same level as it was in the Guilded Age of the Robber Barons. Worker anger at this inequity, as well as worker safety issues, gave rise to the union movement.

Such rationalization ignores the very basic fact that government assistance is expensive. To give someone a $100 food stamp supplement, the government has to process an application, look at the applicant's income and facts presented, collect taxes, pay them out to the state, where they are deposited to the recipient's electronic debit card. Government worker wages are paid at every stage of this process, and are ongoing. If you eliminate the government and have employers pay their workers more, the workers have more control over what they do with their own money, and you eliminate all of the government workers and expenses of running the food stamp programs.

The low wage workers become tax payers, taxes paid to social programs are reduced, the number of government workers employed processing applications and payments are reduced, and government gets smaller and cheaper. Better yet, since the worker wages are tax deductible, every $1 of additional wages corporations pay only costs that corporation $0.78 because it reduces the corporation's tax burden, and 22% of their profits go to taxes.

Yet fools like you continue to believe that raising the minimum wage rewards lazy people with no skills and harms people like you. There is no cure for stupid.

I don’t want to live in a nation that so mistreats it’s poor, but I do. How does the world’s richest nation have so many suffering people? It’s appalling, yet many Americans find it acceptable. Our culture is totally fucked.

Imagine this massive omnipresent expensive government actually trying to help poor Americans, rather then further enriching the extreme rich?

For one thing, we import a lot of them from Mexico.

Yes some who come go on welfare, but many work very hard. If they were all removed, this country would come to a halt. They are the ones doing the dirty jobs.

 

[jasonnfree]

Why is it when we question people having so much wealth that there is no playing field for the rest of us, a sizeable minority, always from the conservative side, rush to defend these mega rich folks. It seems their number one accusation is that we're jealous, angry, lazy, socialists etc. and so on. Well, yeah, sorta. With this country having the great and ever growing wealth disparity that it has between the uber wealthy and the rest of us, just having affordable health care and education is becoming a thing of the past.

 

[gipper]

Walmart manipulated what the market would pay

How?

Easily. When you control government and the politicians are in your back pocket, anything is possible.

He's asking exactly what they did. You obviously can't explain it.

Google is your friend, some times.

Walmart is huge. When they take over a local market, where do you think the locals get jobs?

Governments do everything to protect Walmart like tax breaks, subsidies, removing zoning restrictions, etc.
New Report: Walmart’s Monopolization of Local Grocery Markets - Institute for Local Self-Reliance
https://americansfortaxfairness.org/files/Walmart-on-Tax-Day-Americans-for-Tax-Fairness-1.pdf

 

[gipper]

Why is it when we question people having so much wealth that there is no playing field for the rest of us, a sizeable minority, always from the conservative side, rush to defend these mega rich folks. It seems their number one accusation is that we're jealous, angry, lazy, socialists etc. and so on. Well, yeah, sorta. With this country having the great and ever growing wealth disparity that it has between the uber wealthy and the rest of us, just having affordable health care and education is becoming a thing of the past.

When anyone talks of providing HC for all Americans, the response is we can’t afford it. These same people never question the absurd cost of the military industrial complex.

 

[Grumblenuts]

There will always be an inequity between the top and the bottom otherwise neither a top or bottom would exist and Nature says it will.

Yes, that's the given tautology. We agree that, for better or worse, some range in wealth will always exist. Now where do we go from there? The following questions are immediately suggested (from my perspective at least):

1. Does nature not determine limits to growth rates and viable sizes? Not just top and bottom but natural minima and maxima?
2. What should we consider the natural bottom currently? Negative billionaire? Flat broke? Minimum Wage earnings? Poverty line? Living Wage earnings?
3. What should we consider the natural top currently? Some multiple of the Minimum Wage? Sky's the limit?

 

[bripat9643]

Do the richest among us owe their wealth to hard work and high IQs or government monopolies like patents and copyrights, minimum wage laws, or campaign finance contributions?

Should We Have Billionaires?

"The basic story is that if we have a market economy, some people can get very rich.

"If we buy the right-wing story, the super-rich got their money from their great contribution to society.

"If we look at it with clearer eyes, the super-rich got their money because we structured the economy in a way that allowed them to get super-rich..."

"This is a point which seems very obvious, but for some reason is largely ignored in policy debates.

"Most typically these debates take the market distribution of income as a given, and then ask the extent to which we might want to redistribute to have less inequality...."

"But it is completely absurd to treat the market distribution of income as given.

"The market is incredibly flexible and it can literally be structured in an infinite number of different ways."

Instead of arguing over a redistribution of income, restructure markets in such a way that vast private fortunes never come into existence in the first place.

This is idiotic.

"But it is completely absurd to treat the market distribution of income as given.
"The market is incredibly flexible and it can literally be structured in an infinite number of different ways."

That is absolutely retarded.

Market distribution of income, is in fact a given, because it's part of the market.

I don't give my money to the beggar at the street corner, because that beggar doesn't provide anything of value. Exxon does. Microsoft does. Walmart does.

This idea that you can just change the system, so that billionaires are no longer billionaires, because "the market is flexible", is retarded.

Of course it's a given. The whole reason the wealthy are wealthy, is because they provide something of value to the most people. The whole reason the poor are generally poor, is because they don't create much or anything of value.

This is exactly why, you can effectively redistribute wealth to poor people, and the vast vast majority end up poor again.

You take lottery winners, that end up with millions, and in 10 years, they are poor again.

There is no way to restructure the market, so that people can make bad choices, and produce little of value, and end up being wealthy.
Equally, there is only one way to restructure the market so that rich people don't end up rich... and that is to drive them out of the market, so they go and end up rich elsewhere.

As I said to last time, there were rich people in Cuba, before Castro. Restructuring the market, didn't make the poor people rich. It just made the rich people leave, and go be rich elsewhere in the world, while the people of Cuba ended up in object poverty for life.

If poor people produce so little, and it's of such low value, how can a company like McDonald's be one of the most profitable companies in the USA? How can they afford to pay the CEO over $21 million dollars per year in salary, since their entire front line work force is composed of minimum wage burger flippers and counter kids.

How is a company like Walmart, one of the most profitable companies in the USA, and paying the highest dividends in their history, when their workers are receiving $9 billion a year in food stamps, MedicAid, earned income credits and other social assistance, and the Walmart family the wealthiest people in the country, if their workers create so little value.

Walmart could afford to pay all of their workers $100 a week more, and still be a highly profitable company. Their profits would be reduced by 1/3, so they would still be very profitable, but they wouldn't be one of the MOST profitable companies. If they were to pay their workers $100 a week more, US taxpayers wouldn't be giving Walmart workers $9 billion in social assistance.

You keep railing against low wage workers and "rewarding them" for their low skills, but even if everyone in the USA were to go to college and acquire better skills, you still need people to deliver pizzas, pick up the trash, clean toilets in office buildings, and work in the fast food industry. What you are saying is that these people should not be paid a living wage, and that American taxpayers should have to subsidize these people.

Wages as a percentage of costs, is now at the same level as it was in the Guilded Age of the Robber Barons. Worker anger at this inequity, as well as worker safety issues, gave rise to the union movement.

Such rationalization ignores the very basic fact that government assistance is expensive. To give someone a $100 food stamp supplement, the government has to process an application, look at the applicant's income and facts presented, collect taxes, pay them out to the state, where they are deposited to the recipient's electronic debit card. Government worker wages are paid at every stage of this process, and are ongoing. If you eliminate the government and have employers pay their workers more, the workers have more control over what they do with their own money, and you eliminate all of the government workers and expenses of running the food stamp programs.

The low wage workers become tax payers, taxes paid to social programs are reduced, the number of government workers employed processing applications and payments are reduced, and government gets smaller and cheaper. Better yet, since the worker wages are tax deductible, every $1 of additional wages corporations pay only costs that corporation $0.78 because it reduces the corporation's tax burden, and 22% of their profits go to taxes.

Yet fools like you continue to believe that raising the minimum wage rewards lazy people with no skills and harms people like you. There is no cure for stupid.

I don’t want to live in a nation that so mistreats it’s poor, but I do. How does the world’s richest nation have so many suffering people? It’s appalling, yet many Americans find it acceptable. Our culture is totally fucked.

Imagine this massive omnipresent expensive government actually trying to help poor Americans, rather then further enriching the extreme rich?

For one thing, we import a lot of them from Mexico.

Yes some who come go on welfare, but many work very hard. If they were all removed, this country would come to a halt. They are the ones doing the dirty jobs.

Bunk. We can get along fine without any illegal aliens - without immigrants, period, for that matter.

 

[Dragonlady]

explain this>>>

All men are created equal doesn't mean equal outcome. There are so many factors that are being played in a market economy that focusing on what some don't have vs what a few do have is not a good gauge.
That said, tax laws and structures are meant to limit/restrict participation by all but a few. It seems that when one becomes wealthy, by whatever means, one automatically becomes despised/envied and used as tool by politicians (law/tax structure writers) to pit the less fortunate against the more fortunate- so, are we to blame those who took advantage of the imperialist/elites in DC's fucking ignorance or try to beat them at their own game, which is what the super rich do-
Yes, I call DC law/tax structure writers fucking ignorant- citizens as well. ALL rules/laws are made to be broken. Some people are paid to do just that by finding what the rule/law doesn't say and doing it- they're called accountants and lawyers. Some people come by it naturally, they're called innovative (and enemies), and some emulate the former, they are called learners and doers.
Politicians (law/tax structure writers) are sociopathic fucking idiots that are easily bought and the super wealthy recognize that flaw in their character and take advantage of it. Let's not pretend any here who envy their status (and wealth) wouldn't do the same damn thing.
NO form of gov't or economy will prevent weak immoral sociopaths from seeking to *better* their plight in life- however, capitalism "provides" an opportunity- it is up to the Individual to find it and use it to their benefit. Not everyone is cut out to be at the top, and if everyone was at the top, well, inverted triangles can't remain standing-

Want to "blame" something/somebody for all the Billionaires? Try this on for size.

The Federal Reserve is responsible for the growth of gov't, the loss of liberty, the rise in inequality, and the boom and bust cycles. All those who support peace and prosperity should join the effort to *audit and end the fed*- Ron Paul

Now, there wouldn't be Billionaires or even many millionaires if the *money* wasn't there. But, then there's be 100aries and 1000aires- but, without the money to be taxed there would be a lot less tax and a lot less graft and corruption.
Taking from one to give to another is a Robin Hood fantasy played out by sociopaths- still, taking what isn't earned is theft.

I'll agree w/ a few points that parrot your own here Gdjjr.

It isn't how rich some are here, it's that they've rigged the system to be so

This is WHY wealth inequity exists , and has been an exponential pandemic raft with it's concentration among the very very few, w/out noteable quintile mobility

How bad is it? Well, if the rich can buy elections, by proxy they,ve bought Congress as well as our fiscal, foreign,domestic,trade, climate, policies

Ron Paul was spot on, right on back to the Jekyll island crews debute.....

It has nothing to do with envy or socialism

It has everything to do with a level playing field

~S~

There is a whole lot more at stake here than JUST a level playing field.

The live birth rate in the USA has been declining for generations, and that decline is accelerating. The live birth rate is well below the replacement rate for the US population. The right likes to blame abortion, but abortion rates are at their lowest rates since such stats were being kept. Women simply are not getting pregnant, and the reasons are strictly economic.

WORKING CLASS WOMEN CANNOT AFFORD TO GET PREGNANT. They have no medical insurance unless they work, and if they get pregnant, they can be fired and lose their insurance. They cannot afford to pay for the medical costs of a pregnancy and live birth without that insurance.

Even if their employer is enlightened and gives them time off to have a baby and keeps their job open, the costs of good childcare can run to $250 per week, per child. She might be able to afford child care for one child, but she's losing money by going out to work if she has a second child.

This is the law of unintended consequences. Low wages and lack of quality, affordable child care, which employers are consistently telling the American public they cannot afford to provide, are forcing women to choose not to have children, or to have fewer children.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr-007-508.pdf

America’s declining birth rate is a warning sign for millions of people’s finances

Simply stated, the US government has been taken over by corporatists, who have rigged the system to keep workers needy and dependent, and stratified the classes by race and gender. These corporatists constantly decry the working poor as the source of America's problems, to distract them from the role that corporate executives are writing all of the laws, and policies of the federal government to the detriment of the general population.

You have an opiod crisis, and a declining birth rate, and declining general health for your population because of your "for profit" medical system, which has legally profitted mightily by addicting millions of people to opiods, and legally profitting again by "curing" these addicitions, and all manner of ways of keeping poor people from getting anything more than subsistence medical care, in the richest country in the world.

The USA is the only first world country whose life expectancy is declining.

So there are lots and lots of social and economic consequences for these low wage rates. Replacement rate for the population is 2.1 live births per woman. The US live birth rate is 1.73 children per woman and going down.

This is not government "of the people, by the people, and for the people", this is government of the people, by corporate interests, for the benefit of the shareholder class. 40% of Americans are not benefitting from the Trump economy. That's a lot of families for whom life is not getting any better.

 

[2aguy]

Do the richest among us owe their wealth to hard work and high IQs or government monopolies like patents and copyrights, minimum wage laws, or campaign finance contributions?

Should We Have Billionaires?

"The basic story is that if we have a market economy, some people can get very rich.

"If we buy the right-wing story, the super-rich got their money from their great contribution to society.

"If we look at it with clearer eyes, the super-rich got their money because we structured the economy in a way that allowed them to get super-rich..."

"This is a point which seems very obvious, but for some reason is largely ignored in policy debates.

"Most typically these debates take the market distribution of income as a given, and then ask the extent to which we might want to redistribute to have less inequality...."

"But it is completely absurd to treat the market distribution of income as given.

"The market is incredibly flexible and it can literally be structured in an infinite number of different ways."

Instead of arguing over a redistribution of income, restructure markets in such a way that vast private fortunes never come into existence in the first place.

They owe it to working hard, outperforming the competition and being really smart.......and providing things that people want.

 

[Dragonlady]

This is idiotic.

"But it is completely absurd to treat the market distribution of income as given.
"The market is incredibly flexible and it can literally be structured in an infinite number of different ways."

That is absolutely retarded.

Market distribution of income, is in fact a given, because it's part of the market.

I don't give my money to the beggar at the street corner, because that beggar doesn't provide anything of value. Exxon does. Microsoft does. Walmart does.

This idea that you can just change the system, so that billionaires are no longer billionaires, because "the market is flexible", is retarded.

Of course it's a given. The whole reason the wealthy are wealthy, is because they provide something of value to the most people. The whole reason the poor are generally poor, is because they don't create much or anything of value.

This is exactly why, you can effectively redistribute wealth to poor people, and the vast vast majority end up poor again.

You take lottery winners, that end up with millions, and in 10 years, they are poor again.

There is no way to restructure the market, so that people can make bad choices, and produce little of value, and end up being wealthy.
Equally, there is only one way to restructure the market so that rich people don't end up rich... and that is to drive them out of the market, so they go and end up rich elsewhere.

As I said to last time, there were rich people in Cuba, before Castro. Restructuring the market, didn't make the poor people rich. It just made the rich people leave, and go be rich elsewhere in the world, while the people of Cuba ended up in object poverty for life.

If poor people produce so little, and it's of such low value, how can a company like McDonald's be one of the most profitable companies in the USA? How can they afford to pay the CEO over $21 million dollars per year in salary, since their entire front line work force is composed of minimum wage burger flippers and counter kids.

How is a company like Walmart, one of the most profitable companies in the USA, and paying the highest dividends in their history, when their workers are receiving $9 billion a year in food stamps, MedicAid, earned income credits and other social assistance, and the Walmart family the wealthiest people in the country, if their workers create so little value.

Walmart could afford to pay all of their workers $100 a week more, and still be a highly profitable company. Their profits would be reduced by 1/3, so they would still be very profitable, but they wouldn't be one of the MOST profitable companies. If they were to pay their workers $100 a week more, US taxpayers wouldn't be giving Walmart workers $9 billion in social assistance.

You keep railing against low wage workers and "rewarding them" for their low skills, but even if everyone in the USA were to go to college and acquire better skills, you still need people to deliver pizzas, pick up the trash, clean toilets in office buildings, and work in the fast food industry. What you are saying is that these people should not be paid a living wage, and that American taxpayers should have to subsidize these people.

Wages as a percentage of costs, is now at the same level as it was in the Guilded Age of the Robber Barons. Worker anger at this inequity, as well as worker safety issues, gave rise to the union movement.

Such rationalization ignores the very basic fact that government assistance is expensive. To give someone a $100 food stamp supplement, the government has to process an application, look at the applicant's income and facts presented, collect taxes, pay them out to the state, where they are deposited to the recipient's electronic debit card. Government worker wages are paid at every stage of this process, and are ongoing. If you eliminate the government and have employers pay their workers more, the workers have more control over what they do with their own money, and you eliminate all of the government workers and expenses of running the food stamp programs.

The low wage workers become tax payers, taxes paid to social programs are reduced, the number of government workers employed processing applications and payments are reduced, and government gets smaller and cheaper. Better yet, since the worker wages are tax deductible, every $1 of additional wages corporations pay only costs that corporation $0.78 because it reduces the corporation's tax burden, and 22% of their profits go to taxes.

Yet fools like you continue to believe that raising the minimum wage rewards lazy people with no skills and harms people like you. There is no cure for stupid.

I don’t want to live in a nation that so mistreats it’s poor, but I do. How does the world’s richest nation have so many suffering people? It’s appalling, yet many Americans find it acceptable. Our culture is totally fucked.

Imagine this massive omnipresent expensive government actually trying to help poor Americans, rather then further enriching the extreme rich?

For one thing, we import a lot of them from Mexico.

Yes some who come go on welfare, but many work very hard. If they were all removed, this country would come to a halt. They are the ones doing the dirty jobs.

Bunk. We can get along fine without any illegal aliens - without immigrants, period, for that matter.

No you can't. Your economy is dependent on these illegals, both for the work they do, and for the cheap wages. The US economy has always relied on a vast pool of slave/cheap/expendable labour to build wealth. Slaves, " Chinese guest workers", illegal immigrants.

If there was no massive benefit for someone, the government wouldn't be so tolerant of illegals and do so little to punish employers. Trump hasn't prosecuted a single employer, even as he rounded up 40,000 illegals. They wouldn't come, if they couldn't find jobs.

 

[2aguy]

explain this>>>

All men are created equal doesn't mean equal outcome. There are so many factors that are being played in a market economy that focusing on what some don't have vs what a few do have is not a good gauge.
That said, tax laws and structures are meant to limit/restrict participation by all but a few. It seems that when one becomes wealthy, by whatever means, one automatically becomes despised/envied and used as tool by politicians (law/tax structure writers) to pit the less fortunate against the more fortunate- so, are we to blame those who took advantage of the imperialist/elites in DC's fucking ignorance or try to beat them at their own game, which is what the super rich do-
Yes, I call DC law/tax structure writers fucking ignorant- citizens as well. ALL rules/laws are made to be broken. Some people are paid to do just that by finding what the rule/law doesn't say and doing it- they're called accountants and lawyers. Some people come by it naturally, they're called innovative (and enemies), and some emulate the former, they are called learners and doers.
Politicians (law/tax structure writers) are sociopathic fucking idiots that are easily bought and the super wealthy recognize that flaw in their character and take advantage of it. Let's not pretend any here who envy their status (and wealth) wouldn't do the same damn thing.
NO form of gov't or economy will prevent weak immoral sociopaths from seeking to *better* their plight in life- however, capitalism "provides" an opportunity- it is up to the Individual to find it and use it to their benefit. Not everyone is cut out to be at the top, and if everyone was at the top, well, inverted triangles can't remain standing-

Want to "blame" something/somebody for all the Billionaires? Try this on for size.

The Federal Reserve is responsible for the growth of gov't, the loss of liberty, the rise in inequality, and the boom and bust cycles. All those who support peace and prosperity should join the effort to *audit and end the fed*- Ron Paul

Now, there wouldn't be Billionaires or even many millionaires if the *money* wasn't there. But, then there's be 100aries and 1000aires- but, without the money to be taxed there would be a lot less tax and a lot less graft and corruption.
Taking from one to give to another is a Robin Hood fantasy played out by sociopaths- still, taking what isn't earned is theft.

I'll agree w/ a few points that parrot your own here Gdjjr.

It isn't how rich some are here, it's that they've rigged the system to be so

This is WHY wealth inequity exists , and has been an exponential pandemic raft with it's concentration among the very very few, w/out noteable quintile mobility

How bad is it? Well, if the rich can buy elections, by proxy they,ve bought Congress as well as our fiscal, foreign,domestic,trade, climate, policies

Ron Paul was spot on, right on back to the Jekyll island crews debute.....

It has nothing to do with envy or socialism

It has everything to do with a level playing field

~S~

There is a whole lot more at stake here than JUST a level playing field.

The live birth rate in the USA has been declining for generations, and that decline is accelerating. The live birth rate is well below the replacement rate for the US population. The right likes to blame abortion, but abortion rates are at their lowest rates since such stats were being kept. Women simply are not getting pregnant, and the reasons are strictly economic.

WORKING CLASS WOMEN CANNOT AFFORD TO GET PREGNANT. They have no medical insurance unless they work, and if they get pregnant, they can be fired and lose their insurance. They cannot afford to pay for the medical costs of a pregnancy and live birth without that insurance.

Even if their employer is enlightened and gives them time off to have a baby and keeps their job open, the costs of good childcare can run to $250 per week, per child. She might be able to afford child care for one child, but she's losing money by going out to work if she has a second child.

This is the law of unintended consequences. Low wages and lack of quality, affordable child care, which employers are consistently telling the American public they cannot afford to provide, are forcing women to choose not to have children, or to have fewer children.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr-007-508.pdf

America’s declining birth rate is a warning sign for millions of people’s finances

Simply stated, the US government has been taken over by corporatists, who have rigged the system to keep workers needy and dependent, and stratified the classes by race and gender. These corporatists constantly decry the working poor as the source of America's problems, to distract them from the role that corporate executives are writing all of the laws, and policies of the federal government to the detriment of the general population.

You have an opiod crisis, and a declining birth rate, and declining general health for your population because of your "for profit" medical system, which has legally profitted mightily by addicting millions of people to opiods, and legally profitting again by "curing" these addicitions, and all manner of ways of keeping poor people from getting anything more than subsistence medical care, in the richest country in the world.

The USA is the only first world country whose life expectancy is declining.

So there are lots and lots of social and economic consequences for these low wage rates. Replacement rate for the population is 2.1 live births per woman. The US live birth rate is 1.73 children per woman and going down.

This is not government "of the people, by the people, and for the people", this is government of the people, by corporate interests, for the benefit of the shareholder class. 40% of Americans are not benefitting from the Trump economy. That's a lot of families for whom life is not getting any better.

WORKING CLASS WOMEN CANNOT AFFORD TO GET PREGNANT. They have no medical insurance unless they work, and if they get pregnant, they can be fired and lose their insurance. They cannot afford to pay for the medical costs of a pregnancy and live birth without that insurance.

Even if their employer is enlightened and gives them time off to have a baby and keeps their job open, the costs of good childcare can run to $250 per week, per child. She might be able to afford child care for one child, but she's losing money by going out to work if she has a second child.

This is due to the government taxing people into two job families....cut the taxes on all Americans, reduce regulations on businesses and then you can get back to a time when one parent worked, one parent stayed home to raise the children......but until you get the government to back off, and stop extracting money for every act of life, you will have this situation...

 

[sartre play]

Don't get it, why would any one fight/vote to support Billionaires?
If they lost half their money they would never have to worry about how they could send their children too college, or buy a house, or up grade their car, or pay for health care if the whole country fell apart could afford to move any where in the world that looked safe.
Don't care about how much money they have, yet at some point after you have a certain amount of money all it can buy you is Power. the power too force your will on the government with money. We just had a guy testify that he bought a ambassador ship for a million dollars, and a billionaire bought the job of department of education with NO experience in that area. while most of us may be doing fine, being a millionaire or having enough money to take care of you & yours is the American dream. Still half of the U S struggle just to not slip backwards. why not fight for the average American

 

[Thinker101]

 

[Grumblenuts]

40% of Americans are not benefitting from the Trump economy. That's a lot of families for whom life is not getting any better.

I'd love to share your optimism. Trump's economy is great for billionaires, not for working people | Bernie Sanders

 

[2aguy]

40% of Americans are not benefitting from the Trump economy. That's a lot of families for whom life is not getting any better.

I'd love to share your optimism. Trump's economy is great for billionaires, not for working people | Bernie Sanders

Government really worked for millionaire Bernie Sanders.........getting rich by government is his super power...

 

[bripat9643]

If poor people produce so little, and it's of such low value, how can a company like McDonald's be one of the most profitable companies in the USA? How can they afford to pay the CEO over $21 million dollars per year in salary, since their entire front line work force is composed of minimum wage burger flippers and counter kids.

How is a company like Walmart, one of the most profitable companies in the USA, and paying the highest dividends in their history, when their workers are receiving $9 billion a year in food stamps, MedicAid, earned income credits and other social assistance, and the Walmart family the wealthiest people in the country, if their workers create so little value.

Walmart could afford to pay all of their workers $100 a week more, and still be a highly profitable company. Their profits would be reduced by 1/3, so they would still be very profitable, but they wouldn't be one of the MOST profitable companies. If they were to pay their workers $100 a week more, US taxpayers wouldn't be giving Walmart workers $9 billion in social assistance.

You keep railing against low wage workers and "rewarding them" for their low skills, but even if everyone in the USA were to go to college and acquire better skills, you still need people to deliver pizzas, pick up the trash, clean toilets in office buildings, and work in the fast food industry. What you are saying is that these people should not be paid a living wage, and that American taxpayers should have to subsidize these people.

Wages as a percentage of costs, is now at the same level as it was in the Guilded Age of the Robber Barons. Worker anger at this inequity, as well as worker safety issues, gave rise to the union movement.

Such rationalization ignores the very basic fact that government assistance is expensive. To give someone a $100 food stamp supplement, the government has to process an application, look at the applicant's income and facts presented, collect taxes, pay them out to the state, where they are deposited to the recipient's electronic debit card. Government worker wages are paid at every stage of this process, and are ongoing. If you eliminate the government and have employers pay their workers more, the workers have more control over what they do with their own money, and you eliminate all of the government workers and expenses of running the food stamp programs.

The low wage workers become tax payers, taxes paid to social programs are reduced, the number of government workers employed processing applications and payments are reduced, and government gets smaller and cheaper. Better yet, since the worker wages are tax deductible, every $1 of additional wages corporations pay only costs that corporation $0.78 because it reduces the corporation's tax burden, and 22% of their profits go to taxes.

Yet fools like you continue to believe that raising the minimum wage rewards lazy people with no skills and harms people like you. There is no cure for stupid.

I don’t want to live in a nation that so mistreats it’s poor, but I do. How does the world’s richest nation have so many suffering people? It’s appalling, yet many Americans find it acceptable. Our culture is totally fucked.

Imagine this massive omnipresent expensive government actually trying to help poor Americans, rather then further enriching the extreme rich?

For one thing, we import a lot of them from Mexico.

Yes some who come go on welfare, but many work very hard. If they were all removed, this country would come to a halt. They are the ones doing the dirty jobs.

Bunk. We can get along fine without any illegal aliens - without immigrants, period, for that matter.

No you can't. Your economy is dependent on these illegals, both for the work they do, and for the cheap wages. The US economy has always relied on a vast pool of slave/cheap/expendable labour to build wealth. Slaves, " Chinese guest workers", illegal immigrants.

If there was no massive benefit for someone, the government wouldn't be so tolerant of illegals and do so little to punish employers. Trump hasn't prosecuted a single employer, even as he rounded up 40,000 illegals. They wouldn't come, if they couldn't find jobs.

Wrong, the economy is not dependent on illegals. "Cheap wages" paid to illegals undermine American wages.

There is a massive benefit to someone, Democrat politicians. The DNC can't get native born Americans to vote for them, so they are importing people who will vote for them. Corporations also benefit from not having to pay Americans a decent wage.

Actually, ICE has conducted numerous raids on employers hiring illegal aliens. Dirt bags like you whined about it.