The Real Causes of Income Inequality

[inALIENable]

Pure Pub psychobabble- you're a tool of greedy, stupid mega rich a-holes...see sig pp1...

LOL, whinyjealouscovetingcrybabybabybabble.

LOL, at the end of the day you have to go home and live with yourself.

 

[inALIENable]

Anyone can do anything in this country if they do it with their own resources.

Really? Well, then, let's see you flap your arms (using your own resources) and fly like a birdie.

Or let's see you bench press (using your own resources) a ton of weight.

Or let's see you build a skyscraper, using your own resources, in your backyard.

Or let's see you, using your own resources, buy up all the stock of Microsoft Corporation.

You can proclaim fatuous platitudes, or you can deal with reality. I know which one I prefer. It seems you prefer the other.

Gawd, your parents really failed you. You should sue them.

 

[francoHFW]

Upward mobility has also collapsed in the last 30 years...Pub dupes!!

 

[Seawytch]

Wake the fuck up, people.

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. That delivered an average single-year pay increase of 11.6 percent to each of these households.

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. The top 1 percent, whose average income is $1,019,089, had an 11.6 percent increase in income.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/26/opinion/the-rich-get-even-richer.html?_r=1

 

[Clementine]

The real cause of income inequality is that people who lay on their ass taking dope and playing video games want to have an equal income to those who get out and hustle.

You don't think the kid who dropped out of high school and got busted for selling pot should make the same as the kid who worked his way through college? You just flunked Liberalism 101. Congratulations!

LOL

 

[Dragon]

You don't think the kid who dropped out of high school and got busted for selling pot should make the same as the kid who worked his way through college?

Probably not. Nobody else does.

If you have to resort to straw men, that says nothing good about your position.

 

[inALIENable]

At this point all I can do is laugh at all the jealous coveting crybabies out their. Adults crying like little infants is FUN-EEEE! "Change my poo-poo-pants-life for me someone else."

Reminds me of my brat spoiled parasitic brother as kids. He would want us to count all the M&Ms in each of our own bag so that he could feel good about himself and his life by making sure others didn't have so much as one more M&M than him. Little shit, I wanted to drown him.

 

[Erand7899]

Except for the mentally or physically impaired we all have an equal chance at wealth. With a few minor exceptions of course.

Someone with twice Bill Gates' ability, but lacking Gates' rich lawyer daddy, could never have founded Microsoft.

That is a loser mentality and an excuse for not putting forth the necressary effort to succeed. Most successful businessmen and women have failed at least once, and had to start over from scratch. You get out of life exactly what you are willing to put into it, nothing more and nothing less. Finding excuses for failure becomes a bad habit.

 

[kaz]

Anyone can do anything in this country if they do it with their own resources.

Really? Well, then, let's see you flap your arms (using your own resources) and fly like a birdie.

Or let's see you bench press (using your own resources) a ton of weight.

Or let's see you build a skyscraper, using your own resources, in your backyard.

Or let's see you, using your own resources, buy up all the stock of Microsoft Corporation.

You can proclaim fatuous platitudes, or you can deal with reality. I know which one I prefer. It seems you prefer the other.

What point do you think you just made exactly?

 

[Erand7899]

Wake the fuck up, people.

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. That delivered an average single-year pay increase of 11.6 percent to each of these households.

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. The top 1 percent, whose average income is $1,019,089, had an 11.6 percent increase in income.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/26/opinion/the-rich-get-even-richer.html?_r=1

So what? How did their increase in income affect you? Beyond making you envious, that is. BTW, the stock market has come back up, and the people who own more stock will obviously gain more from the rise than those that own little or no stock. Of course, they also took a bigger hit when the market went South.

Another little fact that you wanna-be socialists forget, is that a large percentage of those in the bottom quintile of earners, have no skills to market. When a society has a large supply of brawn, and little demand for brawn, the price for brawn is low.

 

[kaz]

Wake the fuck up, people.

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. That delivered an average single-year pay increase of 11.6 percent to each of these households.

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. The top 1 percent, whose average income is $1,019,089, had an 11.6 percent increase in income.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/26/opinion/the-rich-get-even-richer.html?_r=1

So what? How did their increase in income affect you? Beyond making you envious, that is. BTW, the stock market has come back up, and the people who own more stock will obviously gain more from the rise than those that own little or no stock. Of course, they also took a bigger hit when the market went South.

Another little fact that you wanna-be socialists forget, is that a large percentage of those in the bottom quintile of earners, have no skills to market. When a society has a large supply of brawn, and little demand for brawn, the price for brawn is low.

Conservatives start sentences with "we," libertarians start sentences with "I" and liberals start sentences with "someone."

It's not fair, government will make it fair...



There you go...

 

[Jackson]

The real cause of income inequality is that people who lay on their ass taking dope and playing video games want to have an equal income to those who get out and hustle.

Got any PROOF of that statement?

No?
Then why bother with it?

Educate yourself about what we spend and who gets it.
How much do we REALLY spend on Welfare?

Look at the OWS.

 

[inALIENable]

Another little fact that you wanna-be socialists forget, is that a large percentage of those in the bottom quintile of earners, have no skills to market.

Yeah. Worse yet, they don't want to learn anything.

I haven't worked for another as an employee for almost 20 years now. I make money just screwing around in things I learned on my own how to do. I'm the dude to call-if your computer, server, or network ain't working right. I take on an occasional web development contract once in a while (HTML+PHP/Perl+SQL stuff). I sell some of my photography as art and stock photos.

Last fall I got interested in aerial drones for aerial photography, built one, got hooked, and now I build one a week (customized orders) in about 2-3 days and make on average $2000 profit on each. Tried to get others to help me out with handing more orders for 100% of profit ~ no fucking takers ~ DOH? ~ 2 month old orders sit in my in-box, but most are happy to wait. I'm not wanting to build more than one a week myself (other stuff going on).

Why can't US entrepreneurs find good help? You build 2 of these a week, that could mean $4000 a week. $208,000 a year and rising due to recent demand. What the funk? Custom orders does mean no assembly line instructions to follow, you'll need to design and order any custom parts and build, program, and calibrate from scratch, but seriously, this stuff is fun and not that difficult. I build them while medicinalized, lol. I guess all the smart people don't need a job, huh.

So damn much opportunity out there yet not enough willing or smart enough to take advantage of it.

 

[snakedoc]

Maybe just maybe there is income inequality because some people choose to take a risk and bust their ass and go that extra mile where some other's choose to take the line of less resistance do as little as possible and just coast through life. It should really be no surprise that one group has done better than the other.It's better to try and fail than not to try at all and to many it seem fall into that not try at all group.

 

[inALIENable]

Maybe just maybe there is income inequality because some people choose to take a risk and bust their ass and go that extra mile where some other's choose to take the line of less resistance do as little as possible and just coast through life. It should really be no surprise that one group has done better than the other.It's better to try and fail than not to try at all and to many it seem fall into that not try at all group.

The welfare state made "try" optional. DOH! Good intentions gone awry.

 

[Dragon]

Except for the mentally or physically impaired we all have an equal chance at wealth. With a few minor exceptions of course.

Someone with twice Bill Gates' ability, but lacking Gates' rich lawyer daddy, could never have founded Microsoft.

That is a loser mentality and an excuse for not putting forth the necressary effort to succeed. Most successful businessmen and women have failed at least once, and had to start over from scratch. You get out of life exactly what you are willing to put into it, nothing more and nothing less. Finding excuses for failure becomes a bad habit.

It is not a loser mentality, it's a realistic one. No matter how we set the rules up in our economic game, only the top X% will succeed. it's competitive. My success is your failure, or if not, then it's someone else's failure, because I've beaten them out in the race for the limited number of success slots.

Exactly how few successful slots there are, though, depends on how we set the rules up. An inverse relationship exists between the rewards of the greatest success, and the difficulty of moderate success. The bigger the payoff for our biggest winners, the less there is to distribute among minor winners, and so the harder it is to become one.

These are basic laws in any economy involving limited economic resources, which means any economy located in the real world. If you pretend to the contrary, the economy you are talking about is located in cloud-ccuckoo-land.

 

[Dragon]

Anyone can do anything in this country if they do it with their own resources.

Really? Well, then, let's see you flap your arms (using your own resources) and fly like a birdie.

Or let's see you bench press (using your own resources) a ton of weight.

Or let's see you build a skyscraper, using your own resources, in your backyard.

Or let's see you, using your own resources, buy up all the stock of Microsoft Corporation.

You can proclaim fatuous platitudes, or you can deal with reality. I know which one I prefer. It seems you prefer the other.

What point do you think you just made exactly?

That we live in a real world of limits, in which the statement "Anyone can do anything in this country if they do it with their own resources" is obviously untrue.

 

[midcan5]

Food for the thoughtful. 'Good Jobs Three Reasons There Aren’t More'

"Europeans achieve these results through a combination of higher minimum wages, stronger unions, and more egalitarian social norms. Economists often argue that more egalitarian wages reduce incentives to work and that a higher minimum wage increases the cost of labor and therefore encourages unemployment, so the European job market should suffer as a result of lifting the bottom. Does it? In fact, among both women and men, the fraction of the “prime age” (25–54 years old) population that works is higher in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands than in the United States."

Boston Review — Paul Osterman: Good Jobs

 

[Billo_Really]

Anyone can do anything in this country if they do it with their own resources.

Unless, of coarse, they want to do something like, build a mosque at Ground Zero?

What if your resources are stripped from you? What if you have a Master's degree in engineering, but your job got out-sourced to India and there is no other job in your area that requires you engineering skills? Looks like you're going to have to get some different resources.

What if you want a home and the banks are not lending to your income bracket? Are you supposed to just go out and build a home? Even if you're a carpenter, your "resources" won't get very far if you're not a land owner.

In the United States, only a loser fails, blames it on someone else and asks for the government to fix it.

You're in that same boat, jack. You want government to fix a non-existant problem of voter fraud. You government to fix the problem in a woman's uterus. You wanted government to fix the problem of WMD's in Iraq, which, BTW, didn't exist. You want government to fix this phoney threat of Islam. You want to waste tax dollars discussing how to prevent Sharia Law in a country that does not allow church and state to mix.

If you're so concerned about unecessary expenditures from our government, why is it you say nothing about the trillion dollars we've spent on these BS wars in someone else's god-damn country! What have we gotten in return for that investment?

 

[Erand7899]

Someone with twice Bill Gates' ability, but lacking Gates' rich lawyer daddy, could never have founded Microsoft.

That is a loser mentality and an excuse for not putting forth the necressary effort to succeed. Most successful businessmen and women have failed at least once, and had to start over from scratch. You get out of life exactly what you are willing to put into it, nothing more and nothing less. Finding excuses for failure becomes a bad habit.

It is not a loser mentality, it's a realistic one. No matter how we set the rules up in our economic game, only the top X% will succeed. it's competitive. My success is your failure, or if not, then it's someone else's failure, because I've beaten them out in the race for the limited number of success slots.

Exactly how few successful slots there are, though, depends on how we set the rules up. An inverse relationship exists between the rewards of the greatest success, and the difficulty of moderate success. The bigger the payoff for our biggest winners, the less there is to distribute among minor winners, and so the harder it is to become one.

These are basic laws in any economy involving limited economic resources, which means any economy located in the real world. If you pretend to the contrary, the economy you are talking about is located in cloud-ccuckoo-land.

You base your argument on assumptions that are not quite true. Capitalism is not a win lose game. Success for one does not mean failure for another. Nor, is there any finite amount of wealth that has to be divied up amongth the people. Most wealth is created by adding value, and that added value increases the size of the economic pie.

In any free society, there are no limited economic resources. You can create your own wealth, with your own initiative and endeavor, and that means there are no limits to wealth. You buy a few boards, screws, and wood glue, and build chairs, and then sell those chairs to a willing buyer. The wealth you have created is the difference between the cost of the materials and the selling price, and it is all yours. There is no limit to the number of chairs that you can build, and therefore no limiting function beyond your own ability and work ethic.