Wealth Inequality in America

[BuckyBuckner]

Worth watching no matter what side of party fence you are on. Apologies if this was posted in another thread.

[johnnya24]

Nicely put.

But let's not worry too much ... the new Playstation 4 is out in a few months.

[B-Fly]

It is really troubling. It puts in perspective how little the Democrats have been asking for with respect to wealth distribution, as their major proposals wouldn't even really bring us close to the perceived distribution of wealth, let alone what 9 out of 10 Americans said would be an "ideal" distribution.

[BuckyBuckner]

I was going to post this very video. It's so sad and tragic that this is what we've become.

What's even sadder is that the poorest actively campaign on behalf of the 1% and those that don't are derided as commies or socialists or hippies.



The GOP just went to the mat with President Obama because he wanted to close some tax loopholes for the extremely wealthy, for god's sake. They are absolutely and wholly all-in on maintaining the disproportionate stranglehold that the 1% has on the wealth in this country (that 1% pays them very handsomely for this assistance, of course) and still poor folk all over the place vote for them because they are "pro business". Face fucking palm.

That always astonishes me. Small business owners think the pro business Republicans will look after them. Umm...Your business isn't even a blimp on their radar. You don't make enough money to care to them.

You always hear about the top 1% but the stat that I think really drives it home is that the 1% own 40% of the money in this country. Think about that for a second.

[BuckyBuckner]

It is really troubling. It puts in perspective how little the Democrats have been asking for with respect to wealth distribution, as their major proposals wouldn't even really bring us close to the perceived distribution of wealth, let alone what 9 out of 10 Americans said would be an "ideal" distribution.

I watched it over the weekend so I can't remember but I thought those 9 out of 10 Americans were actually top economists in the country as opposed to just random people. Meaning, these are people who actually know what they are talking about?

[The Feral Slasher]

Saw this chart the other day - can't figure out how to embed it, but very interesting timeline showing income growth inequality

https://twitter.com/portereduardo/status/497079003053035520

[johnnya24]

Saw this chart the other day - can't figure out how to embed it, but very interesting timeline showing income growth inequality

https://twitter.com/portereduardo/st...79003053035520

It's mostly debt ... money / value invented out of thin air. The financial system has evolved to make sure that this money / value / debt stays in the upper percentiles of the population in order to prevent hyperinflation in the wider economy. Remember when people used to talk about trickle-down economics? Neoliberalism is about preventing significant trickle-down so as to block the possibility of out of control inflation among the pleb sectors (working / middle classes). So the super rich are basically able to print money (deregulation, and latterly, state bail outs) and ship it around each other, and this will not have the wider economic effects that printing money traditionally has ... because it's not being spent. Banks and corporations are able to keep this money on their books as debt, and even create more money and debt on top of it. As long as no-one calls it in on mass, things will carry on regardless.

This was the one thing the 99% movement didn't get, or at least didn't convey. There was too much focus on the surface inequality and not the underlying reasons for the inequality ... they focused too much on symptoms, not causes. They had an opportunity to really focus attention on the underlying causes of what is happening in our society. In the end, it came down to a question of redistribution of wealth, which is easy to brush off, rather than a questioning of the sources and mechanism of this wealth.

[The Goat]

Hi.

Stopped in for the first time in a while, and the political rancor has become...tangible.

Just out of curiosity, what is considered to be a feasible solution to this problem?

[johnnya24]

Hi.

Stopped in for the first time in a while, and the political rancor has become...tangible.

Just out of curiosity, what is considered to be a feasible solution to this problem?

Too far gone.

The problems are getting bigger, wider and globalization / deregulation means that there is nothing powerful enough to control it let alone stop it. Over the last 30 years the banks and finance industries have slowly and steadily consolidated all the power. We elect one of two parties - different names, same thing - who act in their interests, not ours. We are basically schmucks.

Take a look at how vulture capitalists are basically holding Argentina to ransom. That's a snapshot of the future. They bought up billions of $ in high risks loans, and they know when/if it goes south, they can employ the full forces of global capitalism and finance (via the courts) to basically hold a sovereign democratic country of 45 million people to ransom. It's like a gangster buying up someone's gambling debt, using the courts to try and force him to pay up, and if that fails being able to legally kill him. Not to mention the fact that a lot of this debt was probably illegal in the first place ... but let's not talk about that eh. Ownership is power. In the current system, owning debt seems to be the ultimate power.

There is a UN resolution concerning the restructuring International debt currently in motion. It'll be interesting to see how this pans out ... on page 16 column 9 of a newspaper no-one is reading of course. Not that anyone really pays attention to unenforceable International Law these days ... Geneva Convention ... meh.

Take a look at the EU, one of the most advanced neoliberal political entities in the world. The EU is completely under the spell of international banking concerns, and they play with Nation States like they are geriatric investors. Basically unelected, so bypassing the pretenses of elections and democracy that we normally have to go through, and mainlining straight to the nerve center of international finance ... willfully and knowingly allowing almost bankrupt countries like Greece and Portugal to borrow at the same rate as Industrial powerhouses like Germany, knowing that they will fill their boots and collapse, and knowing that the EU, and its member states will bail them out like the patsies they are. Exactly the same thing banks had been doing with individual borrowers for decades ... risk free secured loans ... they get their money back plus interest, or they take your house ... only at a Nation State level.

There is nothing out there to stop this. There is no opposing ideology or system. The conversation between left and right which delivered a degree of balance for 60 years is completely dead, though it still persists as a way to keep the plebs in line. Makes us feel like we are still part of the political conversation. Almost all of our public political conversations are irrelevant and pointless. Obamacare ... I mean seriously ... 8 years of wrangling, and that's it? ... a relatively minor reform to the private health care system? This is what we have posturing for real political conversation? All the while the country is being bled dry by the banking and finance industries, while the corporations fuck off to Luxemborg and Ireland to avoid paying any tax ... increasing the burden on the squeezed middle classes, and ultimately increasing the size of the national debt year on year.

Of course they know it's gonna collapse. When it does collapse, when the big one finally hits, as long as the legal framework of ownership remains intact and the system isn't overthrown (this is the key reason behind NSA / GCHQ surveillance ... future population control), the international banks and financial concerns will basically own entire countries. Right now they just control them by proxy through debt management. For example, Greece was basically ordered by the EU (IOW the banks) to start selling off it's antiquity sites and Islands to pay for their debts. Same thing will happen everywhere when this collapses ... Governments will have to auction off their assets for pennies ... and who will be waiting to snap them up? The folks holding the debt notes ... and spoiler alert ... that won't be you or me.

Where the dystopian sci-fi writers got it wrong was focusing too much on corporations, i.e. privates entities that are separate from Governments. That's just fodder for conspiracy theorists. Corporations are not really in a position to become the all powerful entities that sci-fi writers predicted. Not in any foreseeable future in any case. Maybe post-collapse, things will be organised via private ownership, but Corporations can never become powerful enough on their own. Wealthy, yes. Powerful, not really. The real power lies is in the shadows of Government, the ability to mobilize the power of a State ... the debt time-bomb has the potential to hand over the power of nation States to lenders. It's the banks, the vulture funds, the hedge funds, the secretive financial cartels that no-one has ever heard off ... that's where the real power lies. They will end up owning every.fucking.thing when this shit collapses ... and they know it. You don't even need elaborate conspiracy theories ...just take the leashes of capitalism and let it do its thing. It's as predictable as 1,2,3.

The sooner it collapses the better. Because the longer it takes the more severe the consequences will be. We're already at the point were we are struggling to provide enough food for the planet. Imagine what it will be like come the end of the century when the world's population will be completely out of control. The UN predict that Nigeria alone will have a population of close to 1 billion people by 2100. I can't begin to imagine the amount of suffering that will occur if we get that far without it collapsing.

In hindsight, we should have (needed to?) let it collapse in 2008. We might have been able to come back from that. Huge error.

[Pogues]

1. Raise the minimum wage to a living wage

When I was younger, I declared to anyone who would listen (among my friends, not really many) that there shouldn't be a minimum wage. I believed that the market would set wages fairly, supply/demand and so forth. I wasn't an economist (not that I am now) but to me it was just common sense.

As I've grown older I've come to realize that big businesses are just a bunch of greedy fuckers. Now I wonder how a minimum wage of $3.80 in 1990 could not even have doubled in 24 years, when I've been taught that every seven years things are twice as expensive.

Maybe my numbers are all wrong...but I'm still not an economist.

[onejayhawk]

1. Raise the minimum wage to a living wage
2. Invest in education and infrastructure
3. Progressively tax the wealthy
4. Modify estate taxation
5. Resurrect (and broaden) Glass-Steagal
6. Reverse rulings like Citizens United
7. Fight hard against stupid austerity measures
8. Fight hard against efforts to restrict government programs like food stamps
9. Single payer health care
10. Consult Papa Deuce, since these financial "experts" don't know shit anyways.

1) Silly idea. Then there is no entry level wage. Also, what politicians mean by "living wage" is really middle class, which is much too high.
2) We already invest plenty in education. We need to focus on raising the the quality of that that pays for. More money has never equated to better education. Infra structure makes some sense, but this is also a local matter.
3) Unfair on it's face. What justification other than retribution?
4) I agree. Estate tax is a bother that raises little revenue. Drop it entirely.
5) Tamp the ground. Good riddance.
6) You're a lawyer. Go to it.
7) Prioritize. You cannot pay for every good idea.
8) See above.
9) Worst idea in this list. All the problems of a monopoly, with no recourse.
10) Finally a plan. Let's do it.

J

[The Feral Slasher]

When I was younger, I declared to anyone who would listen (among my friends, not really many) that there shouldn't be a minimum wage. I believed that the market would set wages fairly, supply/demand and so forth. I wasn't an economist (not that I am now) but to me it was just common sense.

As I've grown older I've come to realize that big businesses are just a bunch of greedy fuckers. Now I wonder how a minimum wage of $3.80 in 1990 could not even have doubled in 24 years, when I've been taught that every seven years things are twice as expensive.

Maybe my numbers are all wrong...but I'm still not an economist.

Your experience is about the same as mine. Free market works good in theory, but in our system right now the huge corporations have too much government influence and too many advantages.

[PaleoMan]

Hi.

Stopped in for the first time in a while, and the political rancor has become...tangible.

Just out of curiosity, what is considered to be a feasible solution to this problem?

The existing power structure needs to fail. The government is almost being exclusively used to further the wealth inequality chasm. The ultra wealthy utilize the government to batter competitors, extort the common man and promote compliance through the threat of violence. The funnel of redirecting the wealth upwards to the 1% plutocrat class must be broken by taking down their corrupt institutions. Decentralize their monster and you decentralize the wealth.

[PaleoMan]

My comments...

1. Raise the minimum wage to a living wage - You will kill small business in this dismal economic environment. You need to try to solve the prime problem instead of the symptoms. The core problem is the rising costs of living that diminish the minimum wage.
   
   
2. Invest in education and infrastructure - We spend more on education than any other developed nation. There is clearly a disconnect in terms of efficiency and results for each we dollar spend. I do agree with your infrastructure idea but these funds must be freed up at the expense of other items in the budget. There is too much frivolous spending.
   
   
3. Progressively tax the wealthy - I don't think we can tax the wealthy much more. And what is considered wealthy these days? Secondly, the ultra wealthy can deftly avoid the brunt of the progressive income tax through trusts, offshore havens and company classifications
   
   
4. Modify estate taxation Eliminate it all together. Why should assets be taxed again? How is that fair? What kind of supposedly 'just' society double dips?
   
   
5. Fight hard against stupid austerity measures - I think austerity is inevitable given the extreme debt load but if you do go down that route, you cannot be selective. You have to take a little bit from everywhere. There can't be too many sacred cows.
   
   
6. Fight hard against efforts to restrict government programs like food stamps - While I don't agree with expanding the program to those who really don 't need it, it should be the last program to face significant cuts.
   

[PaleoMan]

Well, if both Sharp Talons and 1J are opposed to my ideas (which I shamelessly stole from a couple of the most noted economists in the country) then they're probably pretty good ones.

I'd just like to say "nice try" on the GOP talking point about education. The OECD (the organization from whom you got your "we spend the most" data in the first place) notes a couple big discrepancies in US spending versus others who are performing better: "In the 1960s and 70s, the U.S. was way ahead of any other country... but other countries have done a lot better at getting their resources where they will make the most difference," said Andreas Schleicher, an education policy adviser to the OECD. "The U.S. is one of the few that invests in a regressive way. Children who need (public funding) the most get the least of it."

K-12 spending is based off of property taxes, in large part. Is it any wonder that this idiotic notion hasn't worked out well for anyone?*







* - Of course the rich in this country are exempted from this statement. The rich always do just fine, don't they?

And who's fault would that be? The entire delivery system is flawed. It's not a money issue.