Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
There's a good 4-minute video of an interview with Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, author of the "The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future" at this link:
Unless it endangers the rich and powerful, it will be difficult to get stuff done.
Stiglitz argues that it also is to the detriment of the well-off. But other than the fact that he warns that if America continues on its present path we risk the fate of countries like Brazil or South Africa, with gated communities for the wealthy secured by armed guards, I'm not sure why either. (I'm on a waiting list at the library to read his book, so once I read it, I'll know more.)
The only president to make headway in the war on poverty was LBJ. So with that long a history of failure I'd say what they are doing isn't working and it is high time to try something else.
Yes, let's try eliminating all government welfare. Both corporate and individual. That would be a good start.
First, there is scant correlation between business talent and compensation. While we find high profit companies compensate their CEOs well, we find corporations that are doing not so well also highly compensate their CEOs.
Second, the result may very well be that other countries follow the Swiss lead. CEO compensation in Japan is nothing like that in the U.S. but we don't find Japanese CEOs fleeing.
Voters in Switzerland this week overwhelmingly approved a referendum to give shareholders a binding say on executive pay. The Swiss measures are the latest and most far-reaching of various say-on-pay policies now in place or under consideration in many European nations. Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands all have some form of voting on binding pay.
...
Stiglitz argues that it also is to the detriment of the well-off. But other than the fact that he warns that if America continues on its present path we risk the fate of countries like Brazil or South Africa, with gated communities for the wealthy secured by armed guards, I'm not sure why either. (I'm on a waiting list at the library to read his book, so once I read it, I'll know more.)
The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late.
They'll end up like the aristocrats in 18th Century France.
"In 2010, as the nation continued to recover from the recession, a dizzying 93 percent of the additional income created in the country that year, compared to 2009 — $288 billion — went to the top 1 percent of taxpayers, those with at least $352,000 in income.
...
Still more astonishing was the extent to which the super rich got rich faster than the merely rich. In 2010, 37 percent of these additional earnings went to just the top 0.01 percent, a teaspoon-size collection of about 15,000 households with average incomes of $23.8 million. These fortunate few saw their incomes rise by 21.5 percent. The bottom 99 percent received a microscopic $80 increase in pay per person in 2010, after adjusting for inflation. "
Thanks for proving my point. The rich have the money to create more wealth for themselves but the destruction of the middle class and the creation of a larger base of poor people are responsible for this. By being on the government dole, there is no incentive for a person to go out and earn more or even work. How can you expect the income gap to not get larger if there is no one working or if the government is systematically destroying the middle class and over-regulating business? But the feds know that people will blame the rich first of all and have demonized them to advance their own agendas. The idea that there should being a ruling elite class and a caste of workers has been the mantra of every government controlled nation for a long time.
When the government taxes and regulates, it costs people money. And do you think that the cost of these things will just be absorbed or passed along? Of course, passed along and the vicious cycle continues.
This puts the growth in the economy in the top end and is not healthy long term.
It doesn't in the least. What are you basing that assumption on? The only reason middle class wages can grow relative to inflation over time is if productivity growth continues to increase.
Quote:
The growth needs to dived more ore less evenly among all parties to work long term.
You said about the markets being manipulated. We live on an exponential debt growth curve. We are at a time of resetting the curve. People are trying hard to pretend this isn't so. The Fed is trying to do two mutually exclusive things. Keep asset valuation at the top of a bubble, and have wage price stability. My position boils down to this. Pick one. If you pick asset valuation then you need the wages to support it. If you pick wage price stability then assets need to adjust downwards. Wages going up tends to solve a lot of long term problems.
...which is why the fed recently legalized interest on reserves policy. With the addition of a new policy instrument we can absolutely maintain price stability with a larger fed balance sheet.
It is fairly ignorant to claim that we are building a new bubble when we have introduced a new policy instrument at the central bank level to combat exactly what you described.
Quote:
I think that you mint benefit from taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture. The trend I see is capital(ists) cashing out the wealth of the middle class in America and investing that wealth in the growing middle classes of China and India, etc. They want to ride that growth. The next phase in this cashing out is the intellectual property phase.
With all due respect, I AM looking at the bigger picture. We are now part of a global, intellectual based society and the middle class has not realized that. The 'wealthy' have gotten that way because they understand that a person needs a good education and needs to capitalize on global trends while the middle class continues to think we are in the 1980's. The days of showing up to work, doing a simple job, going home and being paid big bucks is over. The middle class needs to adjust its thinking or it deserves to make less money.
Only 11% of current millionaires inherited their money. What did the other 89% do that the average middle class person can't?
Quote:
Originally Posted by MTAtech
First, there is scant correlation between business talent and compensation. While we find high profit companies compensate their CEOs well, we find corporations that are doing not so well also highly compensate their CEOs.
Second, the result may very well be that other countries follow the Swiss lead. CEO compensation in Japan is nothing like that in the U.S. but we don't find Japanese CEOs fleeing.
This couldn't be less true. Do you ever actually research anything before posting? There is a proven positive correlation between higher IQs and higher Income. Second, the CEO/worker pay ratio is roughly the same in the US as it is in Japan.
Stiglitz argues that it also is to the detriment of the well-off. But other than the fact that he warns that if America continues on its present path we risk the fate of countries like Brazil or South Africa, with gated communities for the wealthy secured by armed guards, I'm not sure why either. (I'm on a waiting list at the library to read his book, so once I read it, I'll know more.)
What does Stiglitz say about the exponentially increasing welfare-dependent class? Those receiving public assistance have a birth rate 3 times higher than everyone else. How does Stiglitz say that contributes to our country's wealth inequality?
With all due respect, I AM looking at the bigger picture. We are now part of a global, intellectual based society and the middle class has not realized that. The 'wealthy' have gotten that way because they understand that a person needs a good education and needs to capitalize on global trends while the middle class continues to think we are in the 1980's. The days of showing up to work, doing a simple job, going home and being paid big bucks is over. The middle class needs to adjust its thinking or it deserves to make less money.
.
And people are coming out of school much stupider than in the 1980s. How's this intellectual society supposed to work? We are also lazier.
They wouldn't know how to change their thinking. They can't make change or speak in entire sentences and they are expected to be smarter than people thirty years ago?
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
)
