Are we going "backwards" to an 1800's-style 99% poor/1% rich society?? (wage, premium)
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This all just happened in the last 6 months? Frankly you have a shameful lack of historical knowledge as well as a huge dose of partisanship. Many of these things are ridiculous crap, many others are less ridiculous but false, a few are true and a few are due to both parties.
Hey mathguy, if you're so good at math, enlighten us on how an $8/hour worker can survive with a 2017 cost of living?
I'm no math expert, but i do know the math of $8/hour jobs versus the 2017 cost of living "just doesn't add up".
You look at socialist countries today Cuba / Venezuela for example and you have the 99% poor 1% rich model. And pure socialism is the ultimate goal of progressives.
You look at socialist countries today Cuba / Venezuela for example and you have the 99% poor 1% rich model. And pure socialism is the ultimate goal of progressives.
Apples and oranges (dictators, despots, tyrants, etc do not count), see modern European countries for a more accurate comparison.
You look at socialist countries today Cuba / Venezuela for example and you have the 99% poor 1% rich model. And pure socialism is the ultimate goal of progressives.
What's your take on Social Democracy? Some of the happiest and most prosperous countries on the planet are Social Democracies.
Examples are Germany and the Scandinavian countries. Other countries that are "almost" Social Democracies are Canada, Australia, the U.K., France, Switzerland, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg.
Apples and oranges (dictators, despots, tyrants, etc do not count), see modern European countries for a more accurate comparison.
Unfortunately when you push too hard for wealth equality you end up with socialism and you end up with a dictatorship as the result. When the government controls everything all but a few have nothing.
So we still haven't built up enough wealth to get to the improvement?
People are working longer hours. Wages are stagnant - benefits like pensions have gone away. Health care is unaffordable and our "Security State" Paranoia is stealing the money we should be using for domestic improvement.
My take is that we have a form of predatory capitalism...which takes money as it's God and the only measurement of results. A guy like Rick Scott takes the government for billions (fraud when he was CEO of united health) and we reward him by making him King.
Trump does the same with bankruptcies, screwing taxpayers and bondholders and contractors, and we also make him King.
We have industries that prey on older people, veterans of just about anyone who can be fooled or take for a ride...and it's 100% legal and even celebrated.
We have plenty of wealth. It's just that too many people are stuffing their pockets with more than they need - and others are stuffing with ill-gotten gains.
Not sure what you mean by the first question...we're wealthier than many other countries, and we could be even more so without the hindrance of many of the laws, regulations, and taxes that get in the way of creating that wealth.
I understand people's mindset too. Most aren't learning economics and business, which means they have to take someone else's word for it, and they that lack of understanding makes it hard to know who is correct. When you aren't sure who to trust, you probably aren't going to side with the rich people...you'll side with the poorer ones, or the ones claiming to represent them (ha...funny).
What I can agree on is that cronyism is detrimental to everyone except the politicians and whoever they're striking deals with, and it's not a fair playing field. I'm very much against what's going on now. Where you likely disagree is what I'd refer to as the government trying to make people wealthy out of thin air. You can't just pass laws and think that that's going to make people wealthier. It actually does the opposite.
You may then say that we have enough wealth, but it needs to be redistributed. I'm saying, who cares how much the guy over there has when everyone is freed up to create much more of their own? Wealth comes from increased technology and capital equipment that allows workers to be more productive. That's why we can work 40 hour weeks and have a better standard of living than someone working 80 hours a week back in the day. The more wealth was produced, the more it went back into improved equipment and technology that made workers more productive, and therefore worth higher wages (rather than forcing employers to pay them more than they're producing).
Apples and oranges (dictators, despots, tyrants, etc do not count), see modern European countries for a more accurate comparison.
The difference is that those dictators can simply enact their collectivist plans more efficiently and with little resistance, so it falls apart sooner. Instead of a steady decline into financial problems as Europe is currently on, a guy like Chavez in Venezuela can more easily centrally control the economy, which speeds up the process, and central planning always leads to shortages and rationing, as we've seen throughout history.
Unfortunately when you push too hard for wealth equality you end up with socialism and you end up with a dictatorship as the result. When the government controls everything all but a few have nothing.
Not necessarily. The 1950s had more wealth equality than today, and we didn't have "socialism" or a dictatorship then. In fact, the 1950s were a very prosperous time for average Americans, compared to now. Back then, most people could get living-wage jobs with only a high school diploma. As long as you were white and male, at least. Now you need a college degree and $50k of student loan debt to land a $7/hour job at McDonald's.
Do you know what the top marginal tax rates were in the 1950s?
I don't know about percentages of poor/rich (hey, what about the middle?), but thinking and mentality-wise, we're going back to the caveman era. People just can't process and analyze information like how we used to in this country. There's almost a complete absence of logic, reason, and sense. It's more of an emotional, knee-jerk sort of carrying on. Lot's of emotion, precious little true thinking by much of the masses. The dumbing down of America?
Hey mathguy, if you're so good at math, enlighten us on how an $8/hour worker can survive with a 2017 cost of living?
I'm no math expert, but i do know the math of $8/hour jobs versus the 2017 cost of living "just doesn't add up".
You need to get with the program as long as the top 1 percenters and greedy capitalists keep getting richer and everyone else gets poorer, that's the important part and that's the American way.
Capitalism isn't an economic system that can survive for hundreds of years alongside a Democratic political system.
Because once the corporations figure out how to buy power it's game over and this is what we're seeing with Amazon and how Bezos owns the Washington Post and everything.
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