Inequality

[AthenaAwakened]

Mother Jones will be posting a new chart on the current state of income inequality every day for the next couple of weeks.

This one looks at how the richest of the rich have enjoyed massive income gains for decades.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

 

[ZiprHead]

This is, I think, the third thread started in the last couple days concerning this very issue of income distribution. Something is extremely wrong in this country and the right is getting increasingly more ineffective at hiding it or explaining it away. Their only hope is to continue to try to hide it and convince people the real issues are abortion, immigration and the black guy in the White House. I really feel a revolution is coming in the next few years, not a guns type revolution, but a vast shift in voter sentiment and it can't come too soon. I hope I am not wrong.

ETA: I also hope it doesn't shift too far to the left but that would be really far, far away.

 

[SLD]

This is, I think, the third thread started in the last couple days concerning this very issue of income distribution. Something is extremely wrong in this country and the right is getting increasingly more ineffective at hiding it or explaining it away. Their only hope is to continue to try to hide it and convince people the real issues are abortion, immigration and the black guy in the White House. I really feel a revolution is coming in the next few years, not a guns type revolution, but a vast shift in voter sentiment and it can't come too soon. I hope I am not wrong.

ETA: I also hope it doesn't shift too far to the left but that would be really far, far away.

While I hope you are right, i fear you live in unsaved liberal land. You need to visit us who live in Jesusland. The average joe down here is far more concerned with what he thinks Jesus wants (i.e. Guns, no taxes, libertarian economics, but no women's rights).

SLD

 

[SimpleDon]

This is, I think, the third thread started in the last couple days concerning this very issue of income distribution. Something is extremely wrong in this country and the right is getting increasingly more ineffective at hiding it or explaining it away. Their only hope is to continue to try to hide it and convince people the real issues are abortion, immigration and the black guy in the White House. I really feel a revolution is coming in the next few years, not a guns type revolution, but a vast shift in voter sentiment and it can't come too soon. I hope I am not wrong.

ETA: I also hope it doesn't shift too far to the left but that would be really far, far away.

While I hope you are right, i fear you live in unsaved liberal land. You need to visit us who live in Jesusland. The average joe down here is far more concerned with what he thinks Jesus wants (i.e. Guns, no taxes, libertarian economics, but no women's rights).

SLD

Look at how many supposed rational atheists here in TalkFreeThoughtLand believe that the Republican party represents a force for rational government when it is just a few rich people who want to use the government to become even richer, and who could care less if it destroys that government or care what impact it has on the rest of us.

It certainly discounts the amount of rationally that it takes to realize that religion is a fantasy when our resident conservatives who have managed to ditch religion but who then turn around and embrace the fantasy of the free market economy. An economy that just happens to have the exact same characteristics as an economy that intentionally distributes ever increasing amounts of income and wealth to the already wealthy.

 

[barbos]

Yes, bottom half of top 1% actually lost income.
So, it's really 0.1% versus 99.9%.
And all that is due to capital gain, not to regular income, wild swings in the top is an evidence of that.
So nothing surprising considering that US is a center of stock speculation and other financial scams.

 

[dystopian]

Look at how many supposed rational atheists here in TalkFreeThoughtLand believe that the Republican party represents a force for rational government when it is just a few rich people who want to use the government to become even richer, and who could care less if it destroys that government or care what impact it has on the rest of us.

How many? That's like... two people on this forum in total. And that's being generous.

 

[SimpleDon]

Look at how many supposed rational atheists here in TalkFreeThoughtLand believe that the Republican party represents a force for rational government when it is just a few rich people who want to use the government to become even richer, and who could care less if it destroys that government or care what impact it has on the rest of us.

How many? That's like... two people on this forum in total. And that's being generous.

Yes, but I should be a little more careful, those are the only two who rise to my baiting them.

 

[ksen]

Look at how many supposed rational atheists here in TalkFreeThoughtLand believe that the Republican party represents a force for rational government when it is just a few rich people who want to use the government to become even richer, and who could care less if it destroys that government or care what impact it has on the rest of us.

How many? That's like... two people on this forum in total. And that's being generous.

There's more than two.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

This is, I think, the third thread started in the last couple days concerning this very issue of income distribution. Something is extremely wrong in this country and the right is getting increasingly more ineffective at hiding it or explaining it away. Their only hope is to continue to try to hide it and convince people the real issues are abortion, immigration and the black guy in the White House. I really feel a revolution is coming in the next few years, not a guns type revolution, but a vast shift in voter sentiment and it can't come too soon. I hope I am not wrong.

ETA: I also hope it doesn't shift too far to the left but that would be really far, far away.

It is becoming a rallying point for the Democrats. It is the one growing issue the Republicans cannot address.

 

[Canard DuJour]

It is a problem and people are pissed off about it.

Say people were pissed off because bridges kept collapsing or crops kept failing. Societies that sort shit out look at what the science says. They get engineers, biologists etc on the case and put competing theories to the reality test. So we look to economists. And there we encounter a bizarre ideological cult dressed up in the accoutrements of science. One that denies the problem on principle and cannot predict, acknowledge or fix the economic equivalent of collapsing bridges and failing crops. Barbos is not wrong. Ask them to account for human welbeing and we get "social welfare function" a la Samuelson or Arrow (supply side writ large) and "Pareto optimality" (supply side writ large rationalising even worse outcomes). Ask them to drop the silly assumptions and we get DGSE ("Dynamic stochastic general equilibrium") models rationalising the silly assumptions.

A biologist and an economist are commissioned to study Borneo apes. The biologist goes out and buys notebooks, sample jars, video cameras and a ticket to Borneo. The economist puts his feet on his desk and thinks 'Now.. what would I do if I were a rational, self-interested, marginal utility maximising Borneo ape?'

 

[AthenaAwakened]

 

[untermensche]

What has to be understood is that this is not the fault of any individual.

It is a problem with the system. The entire capitalist world economic system including the laws that govern economic activity.

The system was designed to do this. To siphon all gains in wealth to fewer and fewer players in the economic system.

It just so happens that these players have dictatorial control over the wages of most workers, beyond a minimum wage, and therefore a market can be used to determine the price of labor. In other words all labor is paid the lowest possible wage, and if millions are out of work that minimum drops.

 

[coloradoatheist]

What has to be understood is that this is not the fault of any individual.

It is a problem with the system. The entire capitalist world economic system including the laws that govern economic activity.

The system was designed to do this. To siphon all gains in wealth to fewer and fewer players in the economic system.

It just so happens that these players have dictatorial control over the wages of most workers, beyond a minimum wage, and therefore a market can be used to determine the price of labor. In other words all labor is paid the lowest possible wage, and if millions are out of work that minimum drops.

It theoretically should work that way, it's capitalism's self correcting manner but isn't quite working that way. Wages stick. So instead of dropping wages to where people become productive again, it hasn't happened as much as it should have to reduce unemployment

But the main issue has been argued about for the last 30+ years so nothing new. It will be the normal political ads.

 

[dystopian]

How many? That's like... two people on this forum in total. And that's being generous.

There's more than two.

Probably. But one or two 'hardcore' ones we all know and ... something.

 

[untermensche]

What has to be understood is that this is not the fault of any individual.

It is a problem with the system. The entire capitalist world economic system including the laws that govern economic activity.

The system was designed to do this. To siphon all gains in wealth to fewer and fewer players in the economic system.

It just so happens that these players have dictatorial control over the wages of most workers, beyond a minimum wage, and therefore a market can be used to determine the price of labor. In other words all labor is paid the lowest possible wage, and if millions are out of work that minimum drops.

It theoretically should work that way, it's capitalism's self correcting manner but isn't quite working that way. Wages stick. So instead of dropping wages to where people become productive again, it hasn't happened as much as it should have to reduce unemployment

But the main issue has been argued about for the last 30+ years so nothing new. It will be the normal political ads.

What needs to happen is that less of the wealth created has to go to the people at the top and more has to go to all other workers.

When workers have more money the economy will grow and there will be more jobs. And since workers are getting paid more these will be better jobs.

 

[coloradoatheist]

It theoretically should work that way, it's capitalism's self correcting manner but isn't quite working that way. Wages stick. So instead of dropping wages to where people become productive again, it hasn't happened as much as it should have to reduce unemployment

But the main issue has been argued about for the last 30+ years so nothing new. It will be the normal political ads.

What needs to happen is that less of the wealth created has to go to the people at the top and more has to go to all other workers.

When workers have more money the economy will grow and there will be more jobs. And since workers are getting paid more these will be better jobs.

And if that cured everything, 2007 wouldn't have happened because we did get money to everybody with the run up of the housing industry. The argument has always how to get them the money.

 

[ksen]

What needs to happen is that less of the wealth created has to go to the people at the top and more has to go to all other workers.

When workers have more money the economy will grow and there will be more jobs. And since workers are getting paid more these will be better jobs.

And if that cured everything, 2007 wouldn't have happened because we did get money to everybody with the run up of the housing industry. The argument has always how to get them the money.

wat

 

[AthenaAwakened]

What needs to happen is that less of the wealth created has to go to the people at the top and more has to go to all other workers.

When workers have more money the economy will grow and there will be more jobs. And since workers are getting paid more these will be better jobs.

And if that cured everything, 2007 wouldn't have happened because we did get money to everybody with the run up of the housing industry. The argument has always how to get them the money.

No, we did not get money to everyone, we got debt to everyone. And then we bundled the debt into pretty packages and speculated on it in the markets. Speculation and debt has never been the working man's friends.

 

[coloradoatheist]

And if that cured everything, 2007 wouldn't have happened because we did get money to everybody with the run up of the housing industry. The argument has always how to get them the money.

No, we did not get money to everyone, we got debt to everyone. And then we bundled the debt into pretty packages and speculated on it in the markets. Speculation and debt has never been the working man's friends.

We didn't get debt to everyone. It created jobs in construction, transportation, and the fields associated with it. And people used it to cash out their equity.