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It's always what people reveal about themselves when they go on these rants
Thinking that making money is the only reason a person might open a decent restaurant, as opposed to, say, having a decent restaurant.
Indeed.
This post was the best laugh of the morning. That's why people invest their entire life savings and spend 60+ hours per week in their restaurant. They are just angels, pining to perfect their craft to serve their fellow man.
Whew. Talk about a complete lack of understanding of human nature.
Your estimation of what constitutes "fairly" is pointless. Boards pay what they have to for the talent they need, at current prices. The ratio you cite is irrelevant.
And if there is a law that creates a ratio between the average employee’s and contract worker’s salaries to that of the higher admin—CEO, CFO, etc...then the Board would have no choice but to amend their practices...
As we have seen the tax law created no real upsurge in salary increase/average wage or in investments from the tax savings—because all of that was just word salad—nothing tied to the tax savings requiring the company to invest/spend that savings in any particular way...
So lip service alone won’t make any difference in company policies
If you want to reduce CEO level compensation, you will have to do with with national legislation
And that will never happen IMO
Short of cases of actual theft, no one in America is rich because someone else is poor.
Unless the poor give up their earnings to the rich by choice. We can illustrate that with corporate profit margins...
Let's look at the facts...
Walmart is frequently vilified, but they have a profit margin of only 2.66%. If they paid their employees more and/or gave them better benefits, they'd have to raise prices. And as another poster in another thread accurately explained, Walmart's prices are geared to the middle class and below, and that demographic simply doesn't want to pay more for services or goods retailed by Walmart.
The obvious question is WHY does the middle class and below even buy Apple or Android products when by doing so they're quite obviously just putting extra money into Apple's and Google's CEOs pockets?
This post was the best laugh of the morning. That's why people invest their entire life savings and spend 60+ hours per week in their restaurant. They are just angels, pining to perfect their craft to serve their fellow man.
Whew. Talk about a complete lack of understanding of human nature.
There are plenty of reasons why people make choices to become self-employed
Often it is because they feel they have no viable option for employment going forward and having to support themselves for the next 10-20 years...
There are many people who have been laid off in various industries and not been able to be re-employed
They have used funds from their 401K to invest in self-employment ventures...
We know someone who did that with a local hot-dog restaurant—after he was laid off and couldn’t find other job
It was good restaurant—we went once a week or so—was busy—seemed like it was making money
It closed because the vendors the guy bought supplies from — as he ordered more when sales increased—would raise their prices...effectively cutting more and more from his profits...
The more he saw in counter sales, the more went out the door for inventory/supplies costs
He was losing money the more his business grew...
So they had to close the restaurant
Now I don’t know if there were options he wasn’t aware of or could have taken advantage of to cure that problem...and admittedly it was the first food-service retail they were involved with so no past experience to draw from...
But that happens to many people who go into self-employment situation—
They do it because they feel it is their best/only option for supporting their needs...
Whether they expect it to be a “Bombas” type of venture or just a local, stable small-time source of income
Short answer is not to think there will ever be a day when we don't have poor people and/or rich people, but there is what can be done to help limit the disparities of opportunity between those born disadvantaged vs those born with advantage.
Your idea of Utopia will never exist unless all humans aspire to assimilate towards oneness.
Conquer or be conquered,eat or be eaten, dominate or be dominated, good vs. evil.............
......... you get the picture are the only rules of law. It would be wonderful if we could live to
witness such an event but that would take an act of God. Speaking of...have you prayed for
your fellow man today?
It's more like this:
Left--->. have the rich pay their fair share of taxes.
Right --->. Get rid of minimum wage.
uhm. the rich pay the vast majority of taxes now. in fact, more than the bottom 50% pay no taxes.
"fair share" was achieved a long time ago. as for your minimum wage argument, you are placing moral imperative on an economic theory... which seems to me to be a function of ignorance. its silly.
My issue with the left is every one of the solutions they come up with involves looking for some boogie man and punishing them for whatever social ill they are focused on. Most of their solutions don't help the hurting so much as it hurt the well.
I am frustrated with the right because they fall for that junk and often don't do the right thing out of fear. but I always default to solutions that help the hurting without placing blame or punishing those that aren't hurting.
This thread is about focusing on stupid irrelevant crap. Nothing here focuses on what actually matters.
There is no need to confiscate anything, would be enough to make everyone pay their taxes in full (i.e. ruthlessly wipe out all tax loopholes, tax havens etc.), to tax inheritance, to tax capital gains etc. -- everything that does not result from the hard work of the individual. Rich people would still be well off despite those steps. Wealth should only result from merited income, not from accumulated assets.
I think it is also a cultural problem. That entire idea that one should try to become wealthy and that leading a humble life is for losers. Greed is not good, unlike what Gekko said.
It's pretty clear from most of these post that there are cultural differences between the US and Europe. There are at least two major streams of US thought with subsequent immigrants influenced by their tenets. One, the intense individualism of the Scotch-Irish and, two, the mores of the Puritan colonies. Calvinism had a profound impact on both US economic development and its attitudes to the poor. Wealth came to be a sign of God's preference with the poor responsible for their own fate.
This is just how many Americans think. Now we can argue to the cows come home whether or not one system is better than the other. Arguably, American-style capitalism is economically efficient. At the same time the capitalistic mindset and resulting inequities promote social tension and the higher rates of social dysfunction, including crime and drug use.
For a European who sees the benefits of a social democracy, the flaws of our system are noticeable. For an American living within it not so much. There are valid reasons why attempts to institute a European system in the United States would be problematic. That would be another post.
It's pretty clear from most of these post that there are cultural differences between the US and Europe. There are at least two major streams of US thought with subsequent immigrants influenced by their tenets. One, the intense individualism of the Scotch-Irish and, two, the mores of the Puritan colonies. Calvinism had a profound impact on both US economic development and its attitudes to the poor. Wealth came to be a sign of God's preference with the poor responsible for their own fate.
This is just how many Americans think. Now we can argue to the cows come home whether or not one system is better than the other. Arguably, American-style capitalism is economically efficient. At the same time the capitalistic mindset and resulting inequities promote social tension and the higher rates of social dysfunction, including crime and drug use.
For a European who sees the benefits of a social democracy, the flaws of our system are noticeable. For an American living within it not so much. There are valid reasons why attempts to institute a European system in the United States would be problematic. That would be another post.
And you can’t discount the Calvinistic/Puritan ethic that espoused the idea that if God favored you then you would benefit financially...
The Puritans believed that they prospered by stealing land from the Native Americans, giving them blankets inoculated w/smallpox germs so they would spread the disease and kill hundreds of them at a time—freeing up more land for the Puritans to take/put to the plow or sell to new settlers...they were doing God’s work
Just as the Spanish believed when they put millions of indigenous peoples into slavery and often forced them to become Catholics to “save their souls”—of course the Spanish totally enriched themselves, their rulers and country at the cost of the natives...
So God made them wealthy and powerful because they were doing God’s work
Same with the belief of the English in various counties/cultures they conquered
This is plenty of historical and religious writings to confirm this belief and you see it with the new round of evangelicals who equate getting rich with getting in good with God...
Short answer is not to think there will ever be a day when we don't have poor people and/or rich people, but there is what can be done to help limit the disparities of opportunity between those born disadvantaged vs those born with advantage. ...
Some complain about all this "free stuff," as if there is no cost to America that comes from poverty. Do the math with respect to the cost of drugs, crime, poor health and all the rest compared to providing better access to all that helps mitigate the cost of poverty in America, and only then can you come to a better conclusion about how our tax dollars are best spent. Then too the question of who further up the economic ladder should pay what rate of taxes to support these efforts along with all the rest our government is more than happy to spend money on.
Far as you are concerned, should we bother with what I note in bold above? Why or why not?
Answer tends to determine whether you understand where people like Warren, Sanders, Newsom and other more progressive type thinkers are coming from...
Conservatives always insist on thinking in terms of these extremes, because it sounds like a slam dunk reason not to think progressively, but its a straw man argument, and a rather dumb one at that!
You won't eliminate poverty. You won't close the gap between rich and poor. Everyone is NOT going to be equal!
The OP is asking what can be done to close a portion of the gap. Then he provides a reason why addressing the gap would benefit American society as a whole. Most of the responding posts - at least in the latter part of the thread - have pretty much adopted the American take that it's up to the poor to better themselves. Most I would guess don't want folks dying on the streets. Others accept the social programs that are in place but say enough. Still others bitterly object to existing efforts saying that taxation is theft or complain about programmatic abuse.
And you can’t discount the Calvinistic/Puritan ethic that espoused the idea that if God favored you then you would benefit financially...
The Puritans believed that they prospered by stealing land from the Native Americans, giving them blankets inoculated w/smallpox germs so they would spread the disease and kill hundreds of them at a time—freeing up more land for the Puritans to take/put to the plow or sell to new settlers...they were doing God’s work
Just as the Spanish believed when they put millions of indigenous peoples into slavery and often forced them to become Catholics to “save their souls”—of course the Spanish totally enriched themselves, their rulers and country at the cost of the natives...
So God made them wealthy and powerful because they were doing God’s work
Same with the belief of the English in various counties/cultures they conquered
This is plenty of historical and religious writings to confirm this belief and you see it with the new round of evangelicals who equate getting rich with getting in good with God...
We think that because these mindsets existed "way back then" they are not relevant for today. That's far from true. Calvinism promoted predestination - that we were born already marked for heaven or for hell. There were outwards signs of your fate, and acquiring wealth was one of them. Those who prospered were among those that God was most likely to have decided to favor. Even after the actual religiosity has faded, the underlying ideas remain entrenched in our world view. This is who we are, culturally.
Then there are also the ideas about the poor being able to better themselves. That our fate may be largely determined from birth comes down, in part, to biology. Not inherent differences between races or any of that nonsense. The human brain demonstrates neuroplasticity but there are windows that close at a surprising young age. Babies may not remember early events but that doesn't mean they don't have lifelong impacts. Some are more resilient than others and "recover" then through hard word, innate ability, and perhaps luck go on to make economically successful lives. Many others do not.
This has far more to do with biology than remnants of our calvinistic ideology.
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