Wealth and Income Inequality in the United States

[Toddsterpatriot]

Of course it was directed at you. I quoted you, didn't I? I believe in honest wealth, but we don't have this. We operate in a system where simply owning capital and income earning assets produces much wealth while not producing anything at all.

Capital can produce wealth "while not producing anything at all"?
Please explain further.
Maybe walk through the steps involved?

It can't. It requires labor. There are no steps to walk you through and I apologize for any mis-communications.

Nonetheless, my contention is earning economic rents and passive income simply by ownership of capital.

So capital with the addition of labor does produce something?
The opposite of "not producing anything at all"?

 

[Wiseacre]

Yes..That's why he is wealthy.
Question to you...Does Donald Trump's work provide jobs for thousands of people?

No. Thousands of people work to support his lifestyle, though.

So you really think Trump works 100,000 times harder than a teacher?

And thousands of people are working and prospering and contributing to society and paying taxes because there is a Donald Trump.

Should movie stars be restricted on the wages they earn? How about Nascar drivers? First rate jockeys? Sports figures? Contest winners? Do any of those work 100,000 times harder than a teacher even though some earn more than Donald Trump?

Please give us some way to quantify how hard somebody works and allocate how much the person should be paid for that effort.

And there have been times in my life that I worked for far less than an average teacher's salary while I had longer hours and equal responsibility. So how are you going to make that fair and equitable for me?

The left does not care one bit how hard you worked to earn your money, all they want is to take it from you if you have more than they deem necessary or fair. They do not care one bit how fair it is for the givers, they only care about fairness for the receivers.

 

[Foxfyre]

Should movie stars be restricted on the wages they earn? How about Nascar drivers? First rate jockeys? Sports figures? Contest winners? Do any of those work 100,000 times harder than a teacher even though some earn more than Donald Trump?

It's amazing how you come at this issue exactly backwards. We don't care that rich people get paid a lot. We care that teachers and plumbers and actual working people get paid so little.

And it is your 'actual working people' line that I find offensive.

Bill Gates, for instance, gets 'paid a lot' because he came up with a great marketable idea and put in the long hours in the trenches at not much money and through many setbacks before it finally paid off. That is the story for most people of great wealth. Even those who inherited their wealth had somebody back down the line who put in the blood, sweat, and tears necessary to rise from rags to riches. I don't want my children punished because Mr. Foxfyre and I worked damn hard to give them advantages we didn't have.

Now the Bill Gates and Donald Trumps of the world can sit back on their laurels somewhat and enjoy the financial empires they have built. In the process of building their empires, they provided tens of thousands of jobs, maybe millions of jobs to others and have provided the opportunity for more people to become millionaires or at least very comfortable than almost anybody else can claim.

That teacher and that plumber prepared themselves to teach or do plumbing knowing very well what the wages were likely to be and knowing what they would have to do to earn their paychecks. They are paid what the free market will pay for that amount of skill, expertise, effort, and responsibility. Nobody forced them to chose that line of work. If they wanted something that paid more, they had the same opportunity as everybody else to look for ways to make that happen.

When you work for yourself, you can charge whatever you can get for your product, but you also have 100% responsibility for your success or failure and pay out of your own pocket for any consequences of bad choices or decisions. In my opinion, those who take that kind of risk and do so honorably and ethically are entitled to earn as much as they can earn.

People who choose not to have the pressures, responsibilities, and risks of self employment may have to accept less pay when they work for somebody else.

And both can be equally happy. They might not get all their wants, but all concerned can have everything they really need.

 

[rightwinger]

No. Thousands of people work to support his lifestyle, though.

So you really think Trump works 100,000 times harder than a teacher?

And thousands of people are working and prospering and contributing to society and paying taxes because there is a Donald Trump.

Should movie stars be restricted on the wages they earn? How about Nascar drivers? First rate jockeys? Sports figures? Contest winners? Do any of those work 100,000 times harder than a teacher even though some earn more than Donald Trump?

Please give us some way to quantify how hard somebody works and allocate how much the person should be paid for that effort.

And there have been times in my life that I worked for far less than an average teacher's salary while I had longer hours and equal responsibility. So how are you going to make that fair and equitable for me?

The left does not care one bit how hard you worked to earn your money, all they want is to take it from you if you have more than they deem necessary or fair. They do not care one bit how fair it is for the givers, they only care about fairness for the receivers.

Nobody is trying to take away their money

We have passed bill after bill to make it easier for the rich to get richer. It is the old "Golden Rule". .....He who has the gold, makes the rules

We do not need to continue subsidies and tax breaks whose only purpose is to allow the continued accumulation of wealth for a chosen few

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Does Donald Trump work harder than you do? Does he work 100,000 times harder than a nurse? A plumber? A teacher?

Yes..That's why he is wealthy.
Question to you...Does Donald Trump's work provide jobs for thousands of people?

No. Thousands of people work to support his lifestyle, though.

So you really think Trump works 100,000 times harder than a teacher?

And in return, he supports their lifestyle. It's awful!

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Except for a rich daddy

Wrong, turd. trumps dad was not even a millionaire.

Fred Trump - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Care to try again?

Ted "the Swimmer" Kennedy had a millionaire dad, did he die a billionaire?

 

[DontBeStupid]

And it is your 'actual working people' line that I find offensive.

Then we're even. Because I find your idea of not paying people more because "I don't want my children punished because Mr. Foxfyre and I worked damn hard to give them advantages we didn't have" to be pretty damn selfish and insulting.

 

[Big Fitz]

Pretty much. It isn't a zero sum game. You know... I read doonsbury (yeah, I know, my fault for reaing that concentrated stupidity) and it pointed out that the top 400 families had the same amount of wealth as the bottom 50%.

I sat there and realized something. If those top 400 families had an average of 150 million each, and there were 150 million poorest, if you gave all the cash from the 400 richest, each person would only get 400 bucks.

Yeah, that'll solve the poverty problem... add only 400 to the rolls while giving everyone else the equivalent of a single week's pay.

Of course the poor people will be laid off because the rich people who employ them will have no money to pay them. So, they got in essence a 400 dollar severance package.

Good job!

 

[Wiseacre]

And thousands of people are working and prospering and contributing to society and paying taxes because there is a Donald Trump.

Should movie stars be restricted on the wages they earn? How about Nascar drivers? First rate jockeys? Sports figures? Contest winners? Do any of those work 100,000 times harder than a teacher even though some earn more than Donald Trump?

Please give us some way to quantify how hard somebody works and allocate how much the person should be paid for that effort.

And there have been times in my life that I worked for far less than an average teacher's salary while I had longer hours and equal responsibility. So how are you going to make that fair and equitable for me?

The left does not care one bit how hard you worked to earn your money, all they want is to take it from you if you have more than they deem necessary or fair. They do not care one bit how fair it is for the givers, they only care about fairness for the receivers.

Nobody is trying to take away their money

We have passed bill after bill to make it easier for the rich to get richer. It is the old "Golden Rule". .....He who has the gold, makes the rules

We do not need to continue subsidies and tax breaks whose only purpose is to allow the continued accumulation of wealth for a chosen few

You might not be trying to takeaway their money via higher taxes or regulating income, but I think many on the left want precisely that. Isn't that exactly why income inequality is such a big issue to the lib/dems?

About the idea of passing bills to make it easier for the rich to get richer? Actually we should be making it easier for everyone to get richer, no? But it's the rich guys who already have more money, so are they not going to be the ones who get the lion's share of the profits? Look at the way the stock market has risen over the past 30 years, from around 800 points to over 12,000, up until recently anyway. So who's going to make the most money over the past 30 years in investments?

Right with you on the subsidies and tax breaks though, that's a bunch of crap. The sooner we change the ridiculous tax code we have now the better. And I do think we should be fostering more competition in as many industries and sectors as possible.

 

[DontBeStupid]

Actually we should be making it easier for everyone to get richer, no?

Yes, we should! The problem is that when we liberals and progressives try to do that, with minimum wage increases or pay raises for public workers or cheaper health care for all, you guys foam at the mouth and start screaming about "socialism".

 

[rightwinger]

The left does not care one bit how hard you worked to earn your money, all they want is to take it from you if you have more than they deem necessary or fair. They do not care one bit how fair it is for the givers, they only care about fairness for the receivers.

Nobody is trying to take away their money

We have passed bill after bill to make it easier for the rich to get richer. It is the old "Golden Rule". .....He who has the gold, makes the rules

We do not need to continue subsidies and tax breaks whose only purpose is to allow the continued accumulation of wealth for a chosen few

You might not be trying to takeaway their money via higher taxes or regulating income, but I think many on the left want precisely that. Isn't that exactly why income inequality is such a big issue to the lib/dems?

About the idea of passing bills to make it easier for the rich to get richer? Actually we should be making it easier for everyone to get richer, no? But it's the rich guys who already have more money, so are they not going to be the ones who get the lion's share of the profits? Look at the way the stock market has risen over the past 30 years, from around 800 points to over 12,000, up until recently anyway. So who's going to make the most money over the past 30 years in investments?

Right with you on the subsidies and tax breaks though, that's a bunch of crap. The sooner we change the ridiculous tax code we have now the better. And I do think we should be fostering more competition in as many industries and sectors as possible.

JFK once said......."A rising tide lifts all boats"

Since Reagan, the rising tide is only lifting the yachts

 

[Foxfyre]

Actually we should be making it easier for everyone to get richer, no?

Yes, we should! The problem is that when we liberals and progressives try to do that, with minimum wage increases or pay raises for public workers or cheaper health care for all, you guys foam at the mouth and start screaming about "socialism".

You know you can bail bucket after bucket out of the deep end of the pool and pour it into the shallow end and it doesn't improve the water level in the shallow end one whit. Raise the minimum wage and you gotta take the money from somewhere. And it gets taken from the source of the wages in the first place and either has to come out of new hires or in increased prices that those in the shallow end will pay much more painfully than those in the deep end.

Let the government manipulate and dicker with healthcare costs and all you accomplish is shifting the cost somewhere else.

But when the free market is humming along, wealth is actually being created in the country instead of just moved around. New workers are needed and there is more mobility for people to work their way out of the shallow end and into something better.

Let the government remove barriers to the free market and let it work and it will bring healthcare costs down without hurting somebody else.

Conservatives know that you simply cannot shift the burden to or punish the wealth creators of the country without hurting the poor in the process. Lordy, I wish they would start teaching real basic economics in the schools again.

 

[Wiseacre]

Nobody is trying to take away their money

We have passed bill after bill to make it easier for the rich to get richer. It is the old "Golden Rule". .....He who has the gold, makes the rules

We do not need to continue subsidies and tax breaks whose only purpose is to allow the continued accumulation of wealth for a chosen few

You might not be trying to takeaway their money via higher taxes or regulating income, but I think many on the left want precisely that. Isn't that exactly why income inequality is such a big issue to the lib/dems?

About the idea of passing bills to make it easier for the rich to get richer? Actually we should be making it easier for everyone to get richer, no? But it's the rich guys who already have more money, so are they not going to be the ones who get the lion's share of the profits? Look at the way the stock market has risen over the past 30 years, from around 800 points to over 12,000, up until recently anyway. So who's going to make the most money over the past 30 years in investments?

Right with you on the subsidies and tax breaks though, that's a bunch of crap. The sooner we change the ridiculous tax code we have now the better. And I do think we should be fostering more competition in as many industries and sectors as possible.

JFK once said......."A rising tide lifts all boats"

Since Reagan, the rising tide is only lifting the yachts

I know it's just a saying, but yachts and corporate jets, aren't there jobs for building and maintaining them, sales taxes and licensing fees, employees that work on those boats/planes, marinas/airports? More jobs are created, what's wong with that?

I don't think it's just the rich guys getting richer, it's middle class guys moving up he income ladder, followed by more of those at the lower end. The standard of living has gone up since Reagan for everybody, perhaps not as much for the rich guys as you think. I've seen studies that say the rise in consumption and happiness does not match the rise in income inequality.

 

[Auxous]

Republicans: When we fuck up, we want a blank check. However, fuck single mothers and starving children.

I don't know how you can be a Christian and support Republicans.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Republicans: When we fuck up, we want a blank check. However, fuck single mothers and starving children.

I don't know how you can be a Christian and support Republicans.

We spend hundreds of billions a year on social programs.
We have starving childern?

 

[Sundial]

Bill Gates, for instance, gets 'paid a lot' because he came up with a great marketable idea and put in the long hours in the trenches at not much money and through many setbacks before it finally paid off.

You need to read up on Bill Gates.

The story that you're telling about him is a story you just made up.

The truth is he was a wildly privileged young man who went to an exclusive private school, dropped out of college, got insanely lucky, and made obscene amounts of money by owning stock in a company that made inferior products, but happened to have a monopoly on the computer operating system that comes pre-installed on virtually computer.

By the way - that monopoly - it only exists because of government. (Not to speak of computers themselves...)

That is the story for most people of great wealth. Even those who inherited their wealth had somebody back down the line who put in the blood, sweat, and tears necessary to rise from rags to riches. I don't want my children punished because Mr. Foxfyre and I worked damn hard to give them advantages we didn't have.

Now the Bill Gates and Donald Trumps of the world can sit back on their laurels somewhat and enjoy the financial empires they have built. In the process of building their empires, they provided tens of thousands of jobs, maybe millions of jobs to others and have provided the opportunity for more people to become millionaires or at least very comfortable than almost anybody else can claim.

You have got it backwards. It's the millions of ordinary people who make men like Bill Gates possible. Bill Gates did not come out of nowhere. He does not exist in a vacuum. He is the beneficiary of the country's copyright laws, of the education he received, of all of the people who did all the work that made personal computers possible. He did not create the personal computer revolution. He happened to be in the right place at the right time to benefit from it.

Nor does not "give" jobs to people. A job is not a gift. Microsoft is not a charity. If someone has a job there, it is for this reason - because Microsoft believes the value of the work is more than the value of what they have to pay him. In other words, people have jobs because they're worth more to the company than what the company pays them. (How much more determines how profitable the company is.)

People build the computers, they write the codes, they count the money, they fly the planes, and they drive the trucks. They do all this so they can support their families, so they can send their kids to school, and so they can pay their taxes. In the process, they make people like Bill Gates rich.

Bill Gates owes his fortune to these people. They do not owe their (relatively) small salaries to Bill Gates.

[Note to deBlack: I am not advocating the overthrow of capitalism here: I'm pointing out the direction of the flow of wealth - that it's from ordinary people to Bill Gates, not from Bill Gates to ordinary people.]

That teacher and that plumber prepared themselves to teach or do plumbing knowing very well what the wages were likely to be and knowing what they would have to do to earn their paychecks. They are paid what the free market will pay for that amount of skill, expertise, effort, and responsibility. Nobody forced them to chose that line of work. If they wanted something that paid more, they had the same opportunity as everybody else to look for ways to make that happen.

The level playing field you're imagining does not exist in real life. I hope you're not so unobservant that you haven't noticed that. Because if you're not aware of the ways in which you've been fortunate, you're not going to be prepared when you're not. And if you're genuinely not aware that not everyone has the same opportunities in life... I'm not sure what to say to you.

In any event, if one's line of work in life is merely a choice, why does anyone choose to be a plumber, rather than Bill Gates?

 

[Auxous]

Republicans: When we fuck up, we want a blank check. However, fuck single mothers and starving children.

I don't know how you can be a Christian and support Republicans.

We spend hundreds of billions a year on social programs.
We have starving childern?

Yes, we have starving children. The Republican solution:
Rush Limbaugh thinks hungry children should "dumpster dive" for their dinner | Crooks and Liars

 

[rightwinger]

You might not be trying to takeaway their money via higher taxes or regulating income, but I think many on the left want precisely that. Isn't that exactly why income inequality is such a big issue to the lib/dems?

About the idea of passing bills to make it easier for the rich to get richer? Actually we should be making it easier for everyone to get richer, no? But it's the rich guys who already have more money, so are they not going to be the ones who get the lion's share of the profits? Look at the way the stock market has risen over the past 30 years, from around 800 points to over 12,000, up until recently anyway. So who's going to make the most money over the past 30 years in investments?

Right with you on the subsidies and tax breaks though, that's a bunch of crap. The sooner we change the ridiculous tax code we have now the better. And I do think we should be fostering more competition in as many industries and sectors as possible.

JFK once said......."A rising tide lifts all boats"

Since Reagan, the rising tide is only lifting the yachts

I know it's just a saying, but yachts and corporate jets, aren't there jobs for building and maintaining them, sales taxes and licensing fees, employees that work on those boats/planes, marinas/airports? More jobs are created, what's wong with that?

I don't think it's just the rich guys getting richer, it's middle class guys moving up he income ladder, followed by more of those at the lower end. The standard of living has gone up since Reagan for everybody, perhaps not as much for the rich guys as you think. I've seen studies that say the rise in consumption and happiness does not match the rise in income inequality.

A yacht is a metaphor for the richest amongst us

The gap between the wealthiest Americans and the working masses has widened since Reagan. If it were pure market forces, it would be justified. But the corporate engines of this country are not as dominating as they were before Reagan. The US has lost ground to the rest of the world and the richest among us who drive that engine have made more money

 

[rightwinger]

Actually we should be making it easier for everyone to get richer, no?

Yes, we should! The problem is that when we liberals and progressives try to do that, with minimum wage increases or pay raises for public workers or cheaper health care for all, you guys foam at the mouth and start screaming about "socialism".

How do you create wealth for the working class?

It's not by giving them a $800 handout like Bush and Obama did

You create wealth by making higher education and trade schools more affordable. You create wealth by making home ownership more achievable. You create wealth by removing the threat of bankruptcy due to health issues

 

[BoycottTheday]

I swear it wouldnt surprise me if one day liberals will give indulgences to christians to get their vote.