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I really do not understand why anyone is concerned about a "wealth gap" as long as they are doing okay in life. I have always been more concerned about my progress in life than worrying about what others are doing, relative to me.
The "poor" in America live like kings relative to the middle class in other nations. There will always be winners and losers in any system, even totalitarian communist regimes like North Korea, Cuba, and the former USSR. The dream of absolute economic equality is completely unrealistic and unobtainable among humans. Keep in mind that even the most "communistic" animal species, such as ants, have a distinct pecking order. It is the nature of things.
Socialism is for the people, not the socialists.
It's been proven over and over and over and over.......
But, I guess that if you think like a loser, you look for any perceived advantage to punish success.
As we all know, academic and intellectual achievement is directly correlated with the socioeconomic status of the parents. Individual exceptions exist, of course, but the broad correlations across populations are well understood. Poor parents (of all races) generally raise less academically successful children. This has even been demonstrated for high IQ kids (the ones with wealthy parents achieve their potential; the others, not so much).
So, if our economic system is producing relatively few economic winners and many losers, we are setting whole generations of people, and our whole country, on a negative trajectory of intellectual capacity, which will ultimately undermine our dominant global position in art, science, and commerce.
Witness California. It has allowed in a whole generation of peasants from Mexico, who have provided cheap labor for two generations. Look at school test scores and high school graduation rates. They are plummeting. People on the top are living higher than ever, but the millions of working class are not, and school kids are declining in capability, because the middle class has been hollowed out. Unless the middle class is rebuilt, I do not expect that state to match its primacy of the last half century. I think the same thing awaits the USA under the current laissez-fair policies that enrich the rich and ignore the rest.
^^This.
South Florida is much the same.
You cannot speak English in Key Biscayne or Miami now. It is a third world. America is changing and getting worse...and worse. Cities with no education , jobs or infrastructure, and yet both sides do nothing re:illegal aliens.
It almost seems to be their agenda. letting more and more poor and uneducated in.
Who levies taxes? And who's demanding that businesses and business owners be taxed more?
That's a self-destructive choice.
Uh Geezus....someone on this board is FINALLY honest about their situation (vs. the overwhelming majority of C-D'ers who are all internet successes and millionaires...NOT) and they're told that they've made a self destructive choice? Really?
Who levies taxes? And who's demanding that businesses and business owners be taxed more?
That's a self-destructive choice.
Government levies taxes, obviously. And while Democrats and liberals (large but not complete overlap there) often demand that businesses and business owners be taxed more, a number of Republicans have joined demands for more and higher taxes on rental property and landlords.
For example, in Arizona there is a "rental privilege tax" which adds around 2-3 percent to rent, because we all know that as consumers, renters bear the tax. (I believe the tax is specifically itemized as an add-on to rent, but I'm not sure of this.) I've never known Arizona to be a state run by wild-eyed liberals. Similarly, in Michigan, Republicans created a "nonhomestead" tax on rental property which makes the overall school propertry tax rate on rental prop 4x the rate levied on owner-occupied homes.
If being unskilled is a choice, where do I choose to sign up to acquire skills?
Uh Geezus....someone on this board is FINALLY honest about their situation (vs. the overwhelming majority of C-D'ers who are all internet successes and millionaires...NOT) and they're told that they've made a self destructive choice? Really?
That poster said they are unskilled. That's a CHOICE.
That poster said they are unskilled. That's a CHOICE.
Yes I did. So I'd like to get training somewhere to get skills. Where do I sign up? And how is being unskilled a choice? It's a default, GETTING skills is a choice.
Government levies taxes, obviously. And while Democrats and liberals (large but not complete overlap there) often demand that businesses and business owners be taxed more, a number of Republicans have joined demands for more and higher taxes on rental property and landlords.
Possibly, but it's overwhelmingly Democrats/liberals who demand businesses and business owners pay more in taxes. They never quite figure out that they're screwing themselves in doing so.
Quote:
If being unskilled is a choice, where do I choose to sign up to acquire skills?
There's a myriad of options: vocational classes in high school and community colleges, trade schools, trade apprenticeships, etc. Some people are autodidacts and parlay their acquired skills into propietorships.
Yes I did. So I'd like to get training somewhere to get skills. Where do I sign up? And how is being unskilled a choice? It's a default, GETTING skills is a choice.
Possibly, but it's overwhelmingly Democrats/liberals who demand businesses and business owners pay more in taxes. They never quite figure out that they're screwing themselves in doing so.
There's a myriad of options: vocational classes in high school and community colleges, trade schools, trade apprenticeships, etc. Some people are autodidacts and parlay their acquired skills into propietorships.
In my experience, Democrats are eager to tax more while also throwing a bone to their favored classes. For example, while they often support NIMBY policies (because they don't want poor renters living in THEIR neighborhood) and higher taxes on rental property, they also often support subsidized rental housing in Someone Else's Neighborhood.
Republicans generally don't want higher taxes on rental property (although as demonstrated in MI and AZ, and even Prop 13 in CA) they will increase taxes on rental property in a heartbeat in order to avoid increasing taxes on homeowners), support NIMBY policies (because they also don't want poor renters living in THEIR neighborhood), oppose subsidized rental housing, and shrug when someone asks them where poor people are supposed to live. (The honest ones will say they can vote with their feet.)
There's a myriad of options: vocational classes in high school and community colleges, trade schools, trade apprenticeships, etc. Some people are autodidacts and parlay their acquired skills into propietorships.
There's a myriad of options for those who can afford them. What do non-autodidacts do when the options are unaffordable?
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