Capitalism Guarantees Rising Inequality

[kiwiman127]

Income inequality is biggest global risk, World Economic Forum says
<snip>
The World Economic Forum, which hosts the annual high-profile gathering of top business and political leaders, asked 700 global experts to assess global risks.
For the third straight year, income disparity topped the list of the five most likely global risks over the next 10 years. The others in this year's report were extreme weather events, unemployment and underemployment, climate change and cyber attacks.
Income inequality is biggest global risk, World Economic Forum says - latimes.com

But lets just go ahead and make excuses and think everything is fine. The world's greatest experts see a problem, but what do they know. Right?

Risk of what?

Have you ever thought of putting some effort into reading? It's just as easy a posting, try it, you'll like it.

 

[BobPlumb]

Increasing growth = growth of hope and living standards.

What could be better for the poor?

A socio-economic system that doesn't reward the richest 3 individuals on the planet with more assets than the combined GDPs of 47 nation states.

Spotlight on Worldwide Inequality

Yeah! All the weath should be held by the government and distributed to the people in a fair way.

 

[BobPlumb]

Income inequality is biggest global risk, World Economic Forum says
<snip>
The World Economic Forum, which hosts the annual high-profile gathering of top business and political leaders, asked 700 global experts to assess global risks.
For the third straight year, income disparity topped the list of the five most likely global risks over the next 10 years. The others in this year's report were extreme weather events, unemployment and underemployment, climate change and cyber attacks.
Income inequality is biggest global risk, World Economic Forum says - latimes.com

But lets just go ahead and make excuses and think everything is fine. The world's greatest experts see a problem, but what do they know. Right?

Risk of what?

Have you ever thought of putting some effort into reading? It's just as easy a posting, try it, you'll like it.

Some of us are not as smart as you..... Can you answer the question so we can understand?

 

[Seawytch]

what the hell is that suppose to mean?

is that some sort of threat?

like you better extend unemployment monies or they will riot and blunder what you have?

I'm saying that those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. What has happened in societies where the income inequality grew too great?

Don't you collect Social Security? Would you be in poverty without that money?

That's a pretty simplistic formulation. What happened to societies that normalized homosexuality?
She paid into social security. How much better off would she have been if she had been able to keep that money and invest it for 40 years?

Nothing happened to societies that "normalized homosexuality". Rome didn't fall because "the gheys"...one of the main reasons though?

Income inequality.

 

[The Rabbi]

Income inequality is biggest global risk, World Economic Forum says
<snip>
The World Economic Forum, which hosts the annual high-profile gathering of top business and political leaders, asked 700 global experts to assess global risks.
For the third straight year, income disparity topped the list of the five most likely global risks over the next 10 years. The others in this year's report were extreme weather events, unemployment and underemployment, climate change and cyber attacks.
Income inequality is biggest global risk, World Economic Forum says - latimes.com

But lets just go ahead and make excuses and think everything is fine. The world's greatest experts see a problem, but what do they know. Right?

Risk of what?

Have you ever thought of putting some effort into reading? It's just as easy a posting, try it, you'll like it.

I read it. It didnt answer the question risk of what. That's why I'm asking you. You obviously didnt read the article but Googled income inequality risk and came up with that turd.

 

[The Rabbi]

I'm saying that those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. What has happened in societies where the income inequality grew too great?

Don't you collect Social Security? Would you be in poverty without that money?

That's a pretty simplistic formulation. What happened to societies that normalized homosexuality?
She paid into social security. How much better off would she have been if she had been able to keep that money and invest it for 40 years?

Nothing happened to societies that "normalized homosexuality". Rome didn't fall because "the gheys"...one of the main reasons though?

Income inequality.

Rome, Greece, Europe. See, normalizing homosexuality breed effiminacy and opens a civilization to destruction.
But anyway, please detail which programs have been cut that accounts for more poverty.

 

[georgephillip]

Want income equality, move to Haiti!

"Haiti ranks 59.5[8] in the Gini Coefficient index, with the richest 10% of Haitians receiving 47.83% of the nation's income, while the poorest 10% receive less than 0.9%"
After you, Bob.

Poverty in Haiti - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Seawytch]

Wait, was that supposed to be an answer to my question of what programs have been cut?

If you keep something at the same funding or don't adjust for inflation, isn't that a cut?

And how can you say programs haven't been cut? Isn't that what the GOP claims to do? Are you saying the GOP has been an abject failure for the last 50 years?

Does the GOP want to cut SS and Medicare, yes or no? Has the GOP cut SNAP and Head Start programs, yes or no? Do they want to even more, yes or no?

I like how you just threw out "those numbers are misleading" but don't actually provide facts to the contrary. Hmmm...

Which programs have been kept at the same level or cut? You seem unable to answer this simple question. I'm not asking what the GOP platform is. The GOP can not and has not been able to implement any program for over 5 years.
You made the claim, defend it or admit you made the whole thing up.

Ah, so you can say "those numbers are bogus" and don't have to back it up, but I have to back up my statement that social safety nets have been cut?

Head Start hit with worst cuts in its history

47M Americans hit by food stamp cuts starting today

The Minimum Wage Is Stuck

Reagan&#8217;s Legacy: Homelessness in America

 

[georgephillip]

Do you have any proof of that statement?

"In a world of plenty why are hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of people vulnerable at all? The vulnerable and exploited exist because of an inherently unjust social-economic system, which has caused extreme global inequality and built a divided and fractured world society."

Spotlight on Worldwide Inequality

I don't really care about other countries.

Just compare the "poor" in the US to the rest of the world and you have to come to the conclusion that our system is better for poor people.

Right...fuck income inequality because our poor have microwaves! We win!

AND our poor can "choose" between Republican OR Democrat when voting on how to make their childrens' futures EVEN better!

 

[Geaux4it]

The Retail Death Rattle
By: The Burning Platform | Sun, Jan 19, 2014

If ever a chart provided unequivocal proof the economic recovery storyline is a fraud, the one below is the smoking gun. November and December retail sales account for 20% to 40% of annual retail sales for most retailers. The number of visits to retail stores has plummeted by 50% since 2010. Please note this was during a supposed economic recovery. Also note consumer spending accounts for 70% of GDP. Also note credit card debt outstanding is 7% lower than its level in 2010 and 16% below its peak in 2008. Retailers like J.C. Penney, Best Buy, Sears, Radio Shack and Barnes & Noble continue to report appalling sales and profit results, along with listings of store closings. Even the heavyweights like Wal-Mart and Target continue to report negative comp store sales. How can the government and mainstream media be reporting an economic recovery when the industry that accounts for 70% of GDP is in free fall? The answer is that 99% of America has not had an economic recovery. Only Bernanke&#8217;s 1% owner class have benefited from his QE/ZIRP induced stock market levitation.



The Retail Death Rattle | The Burning Platform | Safehaven.com

 

[Seawytch]

The Decline and fall of the Roman Empire (Page 58)

 

[kiwiman127]

Risk of what?

Have you ever thought of putting some effort into reading? It's just as easy a posting, try it, you'll like it.

Some of us are not as smart as you..... Can you answer the question so we can understand?

I'm sure our intelligence is on an equal plain.
"But Schwab says the issue cannot be ducked: "The slowdown is taking place against the backdrop of rising economic inequality, owing to the declining share of national income going to labour, a worldwide phenomenon – resulting from globalisation and technological progress – that poses a serious challenge to policymakers. Systems that propagate inequality, or that seem unable to stem its rise, contain the seeds of their own destruction. But in an interdependent world, there is no obvious solution, as the high mobility of capital fuels global tax competition."
Davos faces up to weak growth and rising inequality | Business | The Observer
Quite a few US economists have also echoed this same reaction to income inequality.
"WASHINGTON -- The growing gap between the richest Americans and everyone else isn't bad just for individuals.
It's hurting the U.S. economy.
So says a majority of more than three dozen economists surveyed last week by The Associated Press. Their concerns tap into a debate that's intensified as middle-class pay has stagnated while wealthier households have thrived.
A key source of the economists' concern: Higher pay and outsize stock market gains are flowing mainly to affluent Americans. Yet these households spend less of their money than do low- and middle-income consumers who make up most of the population but whose pay is barely rising.
"What you want is a broader spending base," said Scott Brown, chief economist at Raymond James, a financial advisory firm. "You want more people spending money."
Income inequality is harming U.S. economy, experts say - San Jose Mercury News

 

[BobPlumb]

Want income equality, move to Haiti!

"Haiti ranks 59.5[8] in the Gini Coefficient index, with the richest 10% of Haitians receiving 47.83% of the nation's income, while the poorest 10% receive less than 0.9%"
After you, Bob.

Poverty in Haiti - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You make a good point. Haiti needs a good dose of capitalism, available to everyone to solve that problem.

 

[georgephillip]

Read this book or even just the chapters on Capitalism. It is twenty years old and reads like it was written this past year.

"The idea of Capitalism as a venture within society or between societies based upon cooperation and mutual profit is thus absent from the multinational model, and increasingly it is absent from the smaller managed corporations. Precisely that cooperation has made Japan's success possible. All the Japanese particular peculiarities, which we are now attempting to imitate, are merely consequences of that cooperation. That is why our efforts to imitate them resemble parody more than they do reorganization. You cannot have a Friedmanite view of market forces or a business school idea of business as structure and then expect to benefit from the cooperative methods proper to the Japanese or to the Swedes or even to the Koreans, to take three very different examples. The market approach and the cooperative approach are mutually destructive." p390 John Ralston Saul, 'Voltaire's Bastards'


"The effect of this tandem is to put downward competitive pressures on the northern United States; on Canada, now linked southward by a continental economic integration pact; and on other countries who wish to compete in these markets, or to compete with their exports. The Maquiladora experiment has been so successful that corporations have pushed the American and Mexican governments towards a full-scale economic pact. The Mexicans hope that this will lead to an influx of capital, new jobs and an improved economy. But the interest of the investors is primarily in cheap, unsecured labour and unregulated industrial production standards.

Why would sophisticated, technocratic employees seek aggressively to destabilize the structures of their own countries in order to give comfort to the sort of social systems which their fathers rejected as criminal less than a century ago? And why would they or we entrust any part of our fundamental needs to unstable societies which have not yet gone through the economic and political turbulence which surrounds most industrial revolutions? No doubt the managers in government and industry looked at their flowcharts and thought there was no other way. It apparently did not occur to them to question the effects of this strategy on their own society." John Ralston Saul, 'Voltaire's Bastards'

So, "(w)hy would sophisticated, technocratic employees seek aggressively to destabilize the structures of their own countries in order to give comfort to the sort of social systems which their fathers rejected as criminal less than a century ago?

What sort of world have they produced?

"The world of income and wealth inequality is awash with shocking statistics.

"Figures disclosed by World Bank economist Branko Milanovic, and reported by Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, are shocking and revealing: 'Eight per cent of humanity takes home 50 per cent of global income, the top 1 per cent alone takes home 15 percent.'

"America, he states, 'provides a particularly grim example for the world.'

"It is where income and wealth inequality reach their zenith, and where one in four children live in poverty.

"The countrys wealthiest 1 per cent (incomes above 394,000 dollars) take 'home 22 per cent of the nation’s income; the top 0.1 per cent, make do with a colossal 11 per cent. Stiglitz goes on to make the staggering point that an average American worker earns less today than he did 45 years ago (inflation adjusted), and that men without a university degree earn 'almost 40 per cent less than they did four decades ago'”

Spotlight on Worldwide Inequality

Something for the next generation American Dream?

 

[georgephillip]

Education and ability to hold onto more wealth is the way to grow the middle class.

infrastructure, science, r@D, education, etc is balanced with a system that allows people to create businesses @ wealth.

How do you propose to accomplish that in an economic system incapable of providing enough good paying jobs?

 

[The Rabbi]

If you keep something at the same funding or don't adjust for inflation, isn't that a cut?

And how can you say programs haven't been cut? Isn't that what the GOP claims to do? Are you saying the GOP has been an abject failure for the last 50 years?

Does the GOP want to cut SS and Medicare, yes or no? Has the GOP cut SNAP and Head Start programs, yes or no? Do they want to even more, yes or no?

I like how you just threw out "those numbers are misleading" but don't actually provide facts to the contrary. Hmmm...

Which programs have been kept at the same level or cut? You seem unable to answer this simple question. I'm not asking what the GOP platform is. The GOP can not and has not been able to implement any program for over 5 years.
You made the claim, defend it or admit you made the whole thing up.

Ah, so you can say "those numbers are bogus" and don't have to back it up, but I have to back up my statement that social safety nets have been cut?

Head Start hit with worst cuts in its history

47M Americans hit by food stamp cuts starting today

The Minimum Wage Is Stuck

Reagan’s Legacy: Homelessness in America

OK
Headstart has not been shown to reduce poverty or increase achievements. The effects last for a few years and then dissipate.
One down.
Food stamps were cut back to what they were before the temporary increase under the stimulus. There has been no overall cut back
The min wage is nonsense. Some very small percentage of workers earn min wage, and most of them do so only for 18 months before earning raises.
Reagan's legacy was the fall of the Soviet Union and reducing inflation, not homelessness.
So four tries, four strikes. Yer outtathere!

 

[georgephillip]

.

I'll try again.

Clearly there are people here who are more than willing to point out what they perceive to be the evils of capitalism.

So, and I'm sure you've thought this through, what precisely would you like to see? Let's get specific here, with ideas and/or examples of the following:

• New regulations you'd like to see on business
• Specific marginal income tax rates
• Macro comparisons with other countries
• Constitutional amendments, if any
• New culturally-oriented laws, if any
• Any other specifics of any kind

Let's take full advantage of this forum, and of the anonymity provided by the internet, and really get into the nuts & bolts of what you'd really like to see. You don't like capitalism, great. Take the reins, what, precisely, is your answer for America?

And by the way, it would be great if you could identify potential problems with each idea, so that we can all understand that you've thought it through and recognize red flags that we would need to consider and address upon implementation.

Thanks.

.

Why not think outside the box?

"Workers' self-directed enterprises (WSDEs) are a response to capitalism's failure to deliver economic prosperity and socialism's failure to deliver economic democracy.

"Among factors impeding formation of an organized, politically effective new left in the United States are deep frustrations among activists interested in doing that.

"The decline since the 1970s (and since 2008 especially) of capitalism's ability to 'deliver the goods' to most citizens has opened many minds to question, criticize and challenge the capitalist system.

"The remarkable Pew Research Center poll of December 2011 showed large percentages of Americans favorably disposed toward socialism.

"Many more would agree today.

"Yet left activists are increasingly frustrated by their lack of a viable systemic alternative that could attract those disaffected from capitalism."

Economic Prosperity and Economic Democracy: The Worker Co-Op Solution | Professor Richard D. Wolff

Workers Self-Directed Enterprises represent one possible solution to the failures of capitalism and socialism.

 

[georgephillip]

they want us all "poor" so they can crow we are now all EQUAL

While our masters in government who oversees all the "poor" who are the worker bees they assign jobs in their kingdom are living the lifestyles of the RICH AND SHAMELESS

Is that the Kingdom of Koch or Murdoch?

 

[P@triot]

Where is Democracy to be found in a world where the three richest individuals have assets that exceed the combined GDP of 47 countries?

A world where the richest 2% of global citizens "own" more than 51% of global assets?

Ready for the best part?

Capitalism ensures an already bad problem will only get worse.

"The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) states that income inequality 'first started to rise in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s in America and Britain (and also in Israel)'.

"The ratio between the average incomes of the top 5 per cent to the bottom 5 per cent in the world increased from 78:1 in 1988, to 114:1 in 1993..."

"Stiglitz relays that from 1988 to 2008 people in the world’s top 1 per cent saw their incomes increase by 60 per cent, while those in the bottom 5 per cent had no change in their income.

"In America, home to the 2008 recession, from 2009 to 2012, incomes of the top 1 per cent in America, many of which no doubt had a greedy hand in the causes of the meltdown, increased more than 31 per cent, while the incomes of the 99 per cent grew 0.4 per cent less than half a percentage point."

Spotlight on Worldwide Inequality

There are alternatives that don't require infinite "growth."

So that begs the question [MENTION=22031]georgephillip[/MENTION] - why is it you don't defect to Cuba? No, seriously - get the fuck out of the United States. Nobody wants you here anyway and you clearly don't want to be here. So why are you still here?

Oh yeah, that's right, because you're lazy, greedy ass loves the wealth that capitalism builds and then hands to you....

 

[iamwhatiseem]

[MENTION=22031]georgephillip[/MENTION]
What can you not get through your thick head?
There is no failure of capitalism. At the same time, there is no real failure in history of socialism either.
The failure stems from corruption. Capitalism and the free market system has completely and totally improved societies across the globe.
What has changed - is not capitalism, but rather the corruption thereof.
And what is there about WDSE's that are corruption-proof??