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I don't believe that you made such a statment. It was the buying power of the American worker that built this country. When the average American worker could afford to buy what he was manufacturing was when the country prospered and built suburbia. There would have been no rich Americans without the middle class. Now with outsourcing, the demonizing of labor unions and tax breaks for companies that relocate, we are in deep dung. The rich will not need the Americans to purchase the goods anymore as China and India become their new customers. Their lifestyles are improving and their infrastrucure is surpassing ours. We are being sold out by right wing Mafia in bed with Wall Street banksters and big corporations. The disparity between the haves and have nots has been by design. The United States of America was never intended to be an oligarchy.
You hit the nail on the head when you mentioned oligarchy. But if you think the dems are clean on this though you have blinders on.
Who do you think puts the regulations and taxes on companies that pushes them overseas?
Who is Congress to decide which business gets what incentives and tax breaks? Why rely on Congress to boost the economy when they have such a horrible past record. Both sides work against the free market system and create corporatism so they can help their buddies and not the common man.
I am talking about the USA because I am a citizen of the country, I vote here. If you think I am coming off as holier than thou, maybe you haven't seen all the posts accusing Liberals of being jealous of the rich when that is NOT the issue. The point is that growing income inequality is a problem and the GOP agenda (getting rid of the minimum wage, cutting taxes for the rich and eliminating labor unions) IS NOT going to help the economy.
Handing people who don't know how to manage what they have is?
Since you weren't interested in facts:
Quote:
What is Money?
If money is viewed simply as a tool used to facilitate transactions, only those media that are readily accepted in exchange for goods, services, and other assets need to be considered. Many things - from stones to baseball cards - have served this monetary function through the ages.
What Makes Money Valuable?
In the United States neither paper currency nor deposits have value as commodities. Intrinsically, a dollar bill is just a piece of paper, deposits merely book entries. Coins do have some intrinsic value as metal, but generally far less than their face value.
What, then, makes these instruments - checks, paper money, and coins - acceptable at face value in payment of all debts and for other monetary uses? Mainly, it is the confidence people have that they will be able to exchange such money for other financial assets and for real goods and services whenever they choose to do so.
Uh oh... That means people without money aren't really considered as someone you can confide in. That's not going to go over well. But it would be better to ask why that's the case...
Quote:
Who Creates Money?
Changes in the quantity of money may originate with actions of the Federal Reserve System (the central bank), depository institutions (principally commercial banks), or the public. The major control, however, rests with the central bank.
The actual process of money creation takes place primarily in banks.(1) As noted earlier, checkable liabilities of banks are money. These liabilities are customers' accounts. They increase when customers deposit currency and checks and when the proceeds of loans made by the banks are credited to borrowers' accounts.
Uh ohh... borrowing money for the latest cell phone or Playstation isn't going to help the economy all that much.
The faster China pulls ahead of us the happier I am. China, the new top polluter in the world.....
Now the world will complain about them instead of us..... The tree huggers and eco-terrorists will focus their attention on them, not us. Their people can choke on pollution, not us.
You don't live in a vacuum. Air pollution problems are international problems. The wind doesn't stop blowing because it reaches the borders of the United States and it needs no passport to get in and no Border Patrol can stop it.
You're thinking is pretty common among Americans these days. There is a tendency to see the United States as somehow apart from the rest of the planet. Well it isn't. The world is now more interconnected than ever before and no, you or anybody else can change that. No matter how much you may want to.
Of course I already did that and couldn't muster a reply. I guess there were too many facts...
34% of wealth, the other says 24% of income. Either way, it is far too skewed. I see your post about money. It implies that we should put all of our trust in the rich. I don't subscribe to the theory that the rich know what's best for the economy because they have money. If we face another depression, we'll all suffer. I am not sure why you are getting so angry about this. With the exception of one Conservative in this thread, the rest have come across as very condescending toward the middle class and placing blame on them while praising the rich. Not all rich people are greedy but the ones in D.C. are and yes they sit on both sides of the isle.
Since right-wingers are constantly posting threads accusing Liberals of being envious of the rich and wanting handouts, I felt that this topic needed to be addressed. Republicans would like us to believe that increasing income inequality will have a positive effect on the economy. This is far from true. Getting rid of the minimum wage, cutting taxes for the rich and eliminating labor unions will not create an environment which facilitates economic growth. Implementing these policies would do just the opposite. As history has shown a thriving middle class in our country is essential to a thriving economy. The last time our economy experienced inequalities in income and wealth distribution comparable to what we are seeing today was just prior to the market crash that caused the Great Depression. During the Great Compression, also known as the Golden Years, after World War II, the middle class grew, income inequality decreased and the economy thrived. The tax rate for the wealthy was much higher than it is today, the minimum wage was actually a livable wage, labor unions were seen as good thing and American products were actually made by Americans in America. Middle class Americans did not have to go into debt to live the American dream. It is quite ironic that the same people that are against these policies are the ones hollering about taking their country back. Where are they taking? 1850?
I am constantly seeing posts here about Liberals being selfish or not wanting to work hard. I see it the other way around. I see the right wanting to implement policies which concentrate the wealth to small portion of the population, making it difficult for working class and middle class Americans to prosper. Income inequality is going to exist, but when it exists on the scale that it does now, it’s not good for the country as a whole. We hear so much about patriotism and the American people from the right, but creating policies that burden the middle class is unpatriotic. By constantly throwing out words like “freedom†and “democracy,†Republicans would like us to believe that they care for the average American. We are actually moving closer to third world status as the rich become richer and the middle class become poorer. All the fear-mongering is nothing but a diversion. If you think that they want to take your freedom away, just wait until your money is worthless and soup lines become commonplace. It won’t be because of less salt in prepared foods, regulations on creditors, healthier school lunches or where the president was born. There are bigger fish to fry.
I know that much of my focus here has been on Republicans but Democrats are to blame just as much for being spineless and appeasing. Both parties are more concerned with pleasing the lobbyist that line their pockets than they are with the well-being of the country. Unfortunately, people are so afraid and so polarized on issues that don’t even matter. While politicians pretend to fight about ideological differences, we are becoming more polarized and less aware of what’s really going on.
Another oversimplified view of a complex issue. Please read the OP, the links and the thread. It's not about every one being paid the same amount irregardless of talent. It is about growing inequality in income growth. While the salaries of the rich have skyrocketed, the middle class income has grown at a much slower rate, creating an extremely skewed distribution of wealth and an environment where the middle class is encouraged to go into debt to maintain the middle class lifestyle that was once obtainable through hard work. Again, this is about the shrinking middle class, not about entitlement or people who refuse to work. Why is so hard for some people to grasp this concept?
I say its about priorities... if you have X amount left over and are middle class, you are HIGHLY unlikely to reinvest that money to make more thus you are more likely to spend it all... if you have X amount left over and are wealthy, you are HIGHLY likely to invest it and thus INCREASE your income... of course you would have growing differences in income because the middle class isn't seeking to be wealthier... but the wealthy "are" seeking to be more wealthy... this isn't a difficult concept either... if the middle class are willing to make the sacrifices to achieve that higher income bracket, there wouldn't be such "inequality" but the fact remains, middle-class Americans are in it for the "now" rather than the later... why one would blame the wealthy for it... is laughable...
I'm not angry at all. What I see is the degradation of what use to be a nation that understood that you work, you save and you sacrifice to achieve something. My grandparents did it, my parents did it but my generation seems in utter contempt of it. They've fallen prey to the most basic of instincts, jealousy. No more is it a fact that if you want something other people have you work for it and save for it. Now you can legislate it and demean it. If anything brought other nations to its knees it was class warfare and an abundance of negligence in terms of economics.
There seems to be a consensus that if someone is rich they somehow got that way by taking it from others. This is totally negligent insomuch as it takes two. Do you think people in the middle class, as a whole, are looking at their finances and how they buy things, and save, and slicing them with butcher knives? Or are they using scalpels and flailing like two women in a cat fight? It's no coincidence the middle class is bleeding as they flail.
The reason people get rich is because they actively try to understand economics and how to gain wealth. They look at all possibilities on how to grow wealth, not how to spend it as fast as they can on things they probably could do without. Why? Because the Jones up the street have two Hummers and a 4,000 ft2 house. Have they done their research to find out how the Jones got that house? Was it because they're maxed out on their credit or because they saved? If it's because they're maxed out they've entered in to a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Last edited by BigJon3475; 11-13-2010 at 07:54 PM..
You think if the Federal Government takes someone whose better off than you than you'll suddenly become more prosperous without any sacrifices? If you do you're ignoring the history, role and bureaucracy of the US Federal Government.
I say its about priorities... if you have X amount left over and are middle class, you are HIGHLY unlikely to reinvest that money to make more thus you are more likely to spend it all... if you have X amount left over and are wealthy, you are HIGHLY likely to invest it and thus INCREASE your income... of course you would have growing differences in income because the middle class isn't seeking to be wealthier... but the wealthy "are" seeking to be more wealthy... this isn't a difficult concept either... if the middle class are willing to make the sacrifices to achieve that higher income bracket, there wouldn't be such "inequality" but the fact remains, middle-class Americans are in it for the "now" rather than the later... why one would blame the wealthy for it... is laughable...
It's not laughable. You really haven't addressed the issue we're discussing in this thread which again is the skewed distribution of wealth and growing income inequality. This is not the fault of the middle class. Where does one draw the line at wanting to be more wealthy and outright greed that wreaks havoc on the economy? Please see the example below. While CEOs salaries increased by almost 300% over a 15 year period, the salaries of production workers increased by 4.3%. No one is saying that CEOs should make the same amount as production workers, but CEOs do not need their salaries increased by 300% in a fifteen year period. When this happens, the burden is on the middle class and when the middle class is burdened, the economy is.
Quote:
Another way that income can be used as a power indicator is by comparing average CEO annual pay to average factory worker pay, something that has been done for many years by Business Week and, later, the Associated Press. The ratio of CEO pay to factory worker pay rose from 42:1 in 1960 to as high as 531:1 in 2000, at the height of the stock market bubble, when CEOs were cashing in big stock options. It was at 411:1 in 2005 and 344:1 in 2007, according to research by United for a Fair Economy. By way of comparison, the same ratio is about 25:1 in Europe. The changes in the American ratio from 1960 to 2007 are displayed in Figure 6, which is based on data from several hundred of the largest corporations.
It's even more revealing to compare the actual rates of increase of the salaries of CEOs and ordinary workers; from 1990 to 2005, CEOs' pay increased almost 300% (adjusted for inflation), while production workers gained a scant 4.3%. The purchasing power of the federal minimum wage actually declined by 9.3%, when inflation is taken into account. These startling results are illustrated in Figure 7.
Last edited by Factsplease; 11-13-2010 at 09:24 PM..
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