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Not everyone wants or needs to be in the upper portion of income figures, but when 85 people in the World have as much wealth as the bottom half of the entire World population and of the 100 richest economies in the World there are more Corporations than Nations, we have a major problem-especially as these trends continue to get worse.
So what do you propose? Taking from the "rich" and redistributing it to those who are too damn lazy to earn it themselves?
Come on, I consider myself pretty capitalist, and don't buy into the class warfare thing, but you can't honestly believe that the bottom 3.5 billion are simply lazy and stupid, while the top 85 are simply smarter/harder working than the rest of us. Hard work, in most cases, can get you a livable income and a reasonably comfortable life. If you live in certain countries, that is. But there's a hell of a lot more than hard work that goes into becoming wealthy. Sure, MOST (not all) of the wealthy are hard working, but the inverse (most hard working people are wealthy) is FAR from true.
BTW, how in the world do 20% of households in New York City survive on less than $17k. Jesus Christ!
It would actually be much easier to be super-poor in NYC than almost anywhere else in the U.S. Probably SF would be very good too, as well as a few other cities (maybe Boston?, DC?).
Food- free (NYC provides food stamps above federal level)
Housing- Free or almost free (NYC has something like 500,000 units of public housing
Transit- Free or almost free (no need for a car and transit passes are heavily subsidized for some)
Cell phone- Free or almost free (city/state programs to heavily subsidize cell phone for certain income groups)
Heathcare- Free or almost free (NYC has had "public healthcare" long before Obamacare, and it goes way beyond federal Medicaid)
University- Free or almost free (the CUNY public university system is usually free or extreme low-cost to low income city residents)
Welfare- NYC has wider coverage and no time limits, as with the federal rules
I would say NYC is harder for more moderate income types than extremely poor. It's probably harder if you're right above the cutoffs for all these subsidies, but make not enough to really live well.
If some poor person from NYC moved to say, Mississippi, or West Virginia, I bet you most people on C-D would think they're saving money, but actually the opposite would be true. They would need a car, shelter would probably be non-subsidized, groceries would cost more because state benefits are less, healthcare would be a problem, and the welfare benefits are much more limited.
Because the riches of the few are made on the backs of many. You want to know why we have income inequality? It's because the very rich see no limit to how rich they can become because our tax structure of the last 50 years has encouraged it. It used to be the companies took care of their employees because excessive incomes were taxed like there was no tomorrow and it didn't pay to be greedy. Now, even with the latest incremental tax hike on the highest incomes, the rich still keep a huge amount of their excessive incomes and are not motivated otherwise. The reality is that we can't just print more money so that everyone can be rich; it doesn't work that way. When the rich continue to get richer, someone has to be become poorer.
So what do you propose? Taking from the "rich" and redistributing it to those who are too damn lazy to earn it themselves?
Blah, blah same rhetoric, same conversation. I find it funny when people think they are part of the .1% that leech off the masses.
No, I propose putting an end to collusion and corruption within our political and financial systems. We can start by jailing some bankers and imposing fines large enough that it is not beneficial to simply be corrupt and pay the measly fine if ever caught.
1. Atlanta, GA
2. San Francisco, CA
3. Miami, FL
4. Boston, MA
5. Washington, DC
6. New York, NY
7. Oakland, Ca
8. Chicago, IL
9. Los Angeles, CA
10. Baltimore, MD
Lowest Inequality
41. Oklahoma City, OK
42. Raleigh, NC
43. Omaha, NE
44. Forth Worth, TX
45. Colorado Springs, CO
46. Wichita, KS
47. Las Vegas, NV
48. Mesa, AZ
49.Arlington Texas,
50. Virginia Beach, VA
It's interesting to me because I have homes in a city in the top ten (Miami) and bottom ten (Raleigh). I can totally see the differences in the two. First of all, I am guessing that they are only looking at the city limits alone for these comparisons and the two cities couldn't be more different. For one, Miami has the smallest land area of the top 50 cities in the US with high end waterfront living and expensive condo towers plus poor & gentrifying neighborhoods that were abandoned in the mid-20th century for a suburban lifestyle outside the city limits. In doing so, a lot of middle class money was drained from the city. In the last 20 years, the reverse has been happening and accelerating with the highest incomes reclaiming the waterfront and filling the ultra-luxury condo towers sometimes merely blocks from poor neighborhoods. Gentrification is spreading into these neighborhoods and displacing very low end with very high end. Not much of this seems to include the middle class.
On the contrary, Raleigh was tiny up until the mid 20th century and grew its limits to include its suburbanization. Couple this with the fact that the city has one of the highest adult education levels and has grown for decades with imported professionals filling jobs in nearby RTP and it's easy to see how this might be connected to the 20th percentile being among the very highest in comparison to other cities' 20th percentile earners. I can make an argument that the two cities in the bottom ten of inequality that have higher 20th percentile earners only do so because they both basically act as suburban outposts from their respective urban cores. Raleigh's 20th percentile makes 140% more than Miami's 20th percentile yet Raleigh's costs of living are less. It's stunning to think about it that way. However, I also presume that Miami's 20th percentile is making a lot of unreported money under the table. I know this happens as a matter of course in Miami.
What's most interesting to me is to compare the 20th and 95th percentile of each city to its respective average household incomes. Miami's 95th and 20th percentile are both lower than Raleigh's yet the costs of living are over 13% higher in Miami's metro. More shocking is that Miami's median household income is 45% lower than Raleigh......That said, you see the money in Miami with Bentley's, Rolls Royce's, 100 million dollar yachts a dime a dozen. Miami stays afloat financially with imported and part time money that's never associated with the city. Raleigh's money is made locally and distributed more evenly among its residents.
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