Wealth Reality

[eflatminor]

If we're not well off now, when was it that we were better off? Or how about saying if there ever was a time worse than now.

I'm saying we fine now with regard to this issue of wealth and income distribution. That said, the gap is wider today than it was prior to the great depression...in the days of the so called robber barons. Again, 100 years of meddling fixed nothing.

I still have no idea why you're going on about slavery and plantations.

WTF is wrong with you people? Seriously! The wealth gap from the New Deal through the Great Society was the closest it has ever been in our nations history. Don't you morons know how to read a fucking graph? The REASON the wealth gap is now what it was during the Gilded Age, is Nixon, Reagan and conservative era that has destroyed the middle class. Ronald Reagan was the greatest socialist in American history. Reagan transferred more than 3 trillion dollars of wealth from the poor and the middle class to the opulent.

Reagan: The great American Socialist

Your clearly overwhelming bias renders any attempt at reasonable discourse futile.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Interesting. See also: BBC News - How Americans view wealth and inequality

BBC News - The Wealth Gap - Inequality in Numbers

"This is when the Republican Party set its trap. Meeting in closed sessions at the beginning of the Obama regime, the party of tax cuts for the rich, unfunded wars, and the largest deficit in the history of the country redefined itself. It suddenly became the party of deficit reduction through lean government joined to supreme confidence in unregulated financial and corporate markets. It even opposed the bail out of General Motors and Chrysler, though these actions stopped unemployment from reaching a dangerous tipping point, allowed the two companies time to reconstruct themselves, and enabled them to pay back the loans within two years–-creating one of the most successful bailouts in the history of Euro-American economic life." The Contemporary Condition: The Republican Pincer Machine

Wealth in the United States is earned, not distributed.


Wealth is distributed in totalitarian nations....the kind you yearn for.


Oops...did I end that sentence with a preposition???
My bad.

 

[Bfgrn]

The thing about wealth distribution that I find fascinating is comparing today to the bad old robber barron days. Over a hundred years ago, the sky was falling because the wealthiest Americans apparently controlled all the wealth. After over 100 years of Progressivism, the "problem" is worse! That's right, today's wealthiest own a greater percentage of the wealth than during the days of Carnegie and Morgan. So much for the effectiveness of your meddling...

That said, I think the entire idea of wealth distribution is bullshit. It's not as though there is a finite pile of wealth from which everyone tries to get their piece. Wealth can be created or destroyed. Just because someone makes a ton for themselves does not mean someone else must make less.

It's all bullshit to create class warfare.

So that would make Ronald Reagan the father of progressivism.

No, the Progressive era really started with Wilson. Every since, it's been bigger and bigger government, more and more debt, and low and behold, an even wider wealth and income gap. Central planners suck, all of them.

You have a cognitive brain defect. The debt didn't start with the progressive era. We know EXACTLY when our debt started.

Where did our debt come from? When did massive debt become part of the American economy?

Reagan switched the federal government from what he critically called, a “tax and spend” policy, to a “borrow and spend” policy, where the government continued its heavy spending, but used borrowed money instead of tax revenue to pay the bills. The results were catastrophic. Although it had taken the United States more than 200 years to accumulate the first $1 trillion of national debt, it took only five years under Reagan to add the second one trillion dollars to the debt. By the end of the 12 years of the Reagan-Bush administrations, the national debt had quadrupled to $4 trillion!

 

[eflatminor]

No matter what happens, everyone's decided that wealth is more concentrated now than ever before.

And one would think that after over 100 years of Progressivism in America, that wouldn't be the case. Maybe your central planners aren't the answer? The fact that the much maligned wealth gap was far less significant during the first half of America when liberty and free markets tended to rule, suggests Progressivism only made the 'problem' worse.

 

[eflatminor]

So that would make Ronald Reagan the father of progressivism.

No, the Progressive era really started with Wilson. Every since, it's been bigger and bigger government, more and more debt, and low and behold, an even wider wealth and income gap. Central planners suck, all of them.

You have a cognitive brain defect. The debt didn't start with the progressive era. We know EXACTLY when our debt started.

Where did our debt come from? When did massive debt become part of the American economy?

Reagan switched the federal government from what he critically called, a “tax and spend” policy, to a “borrow and spend” policy, where the government continued its heavy spending, but used borrowed money instead of tax revenue to pay the bills. The results were catastrophic. Although it had taken the United States more than 200 years to accumulate the first $1 trillion of national debt, it took only five years under Reagan to add the second one trillion dollars to the debt. By the end of the 12 years of the Reagan-Bush administrations, the national debt had quadrupled to $4 trillion!

Reagan may have talked a good 'limited government' game but he spent and meddled like a Progressive. It's been more than 100 years since we had an actual limited government, free market President with a modicum of respect for the Constitution.

Maybe if you throw out another childish insult, it'll make you a better debater? Worth a try maybe.

 

[percysunshine]

Someone please post a graph of the IQ of voters vs. time.

 

[alan1]

Reagan may have talked a good 'limited government' game but he spent and meddled like a Progressive. It's been more than 100 years since we had an actual limited government, free market President with a modicum of respect for the Constitution.

Maybe if you throw out another childish insult, it'll make you a better debater? Worth a try maybe.

Technically, congress controls spending.
Reagan cut taxes because the people rallied behind him and congress was scared they would lose their jobs.
We need to do that same sort of thing concerning spending to get congress to get their shit together. Fire the pork barrel congresscritters.

 

[Bfgrn]

No, the Progressive era really started with Wilson. Every since, it's been bigger and bigger government, more and more debt, and low and behold, an even wider wealth and income gap. Central planners suck, all of them.

You have a cognitive brain defect. The debt didn't start with the progressive era. We know EXACTLY when our debt started.

Where did our debt come from? When did massive debt become part of the American economy?

Reagan switched the federal government from what he critically called, a “tax and spend” policy, to a “borrow and spend” policy, where the government continued its heavy spending, but used borrowed money instead of tax revenue to pay the bills. The results were catastrophic. Although it had taken the United States more than 200 years to accumulate the first $1 trillion of national debt, it took only five years under Reagan to add the second one trillion dollars to the debt. By the end of the 12 years of the Reagan-Bush administrations, the national debt had quadrupled to $4 trillion!

Reagan may have talked a good 'limited government' game but he spent and meddled like a Progressive. It's been more than 100 years since we had an actual limited government, free market President with a modicum of respect for the Constitution.

Maybe if you throw out another childish insult, it'll make you a better debater? Worth a try maybe.

Maybe if you turn off Glenn Beck the clown, you can actually grow a human-like brain.

The Progressive Era was a very strong BI-partisan movement.

There was in fact a strong bipartisan element in progressivism, and in Congress it worked through a coalition of southern and western Democrats and midwestern and western Republicans. Voters who thought of themselves as progressives supported all four 1912 parties (Republicans, Democrats, Roosevelt Progressives, and Socialists, then concentrated, proportionately, in the Midwest and Southwest). They shared an assumption of linear progress; progressives could be said to be modernization theorists. This accounted for their optimism that humankind, particularly in democracies, was becoming steadily wiser, and there were few practical limits to what intelligent and openminded people in institutions linked to attentive social organizations could do to overcome the problems of an industrial society. That optimism, idealism, pragmatic experimentation, and willingness to work across party lines invokes a certain nostalgia in the polarized and deadlocked era we inhabit one hundred years later.

 

[Bfgrn]

Reagan may have talked a good 'limited government' game but he spent and meddled like a Progressive. It's been more than 100 years since we had an actual limited government, free market President with a modicum of respect for the Constitution.

Maybe if you throw out another childish insult, it'll make you a better debater? Worth a try maybe.

Technically, congress controls spending.
Reagan cut taxes because the people rallied behind him and congress was scared they would lose their jobs.
We need to do that same sort of thing concerning spending to get congress to get their shit together. Fire the pork barrel congresscritters.

Reagan RAISED taxes in 1982, 1984, 1985, 1986 and 1987.

 

[expat_panama]

No matter what happens, everyone's decided that wealth is more concentrated now than ever before.

And one would think that after over 100 years...

Whoa, you're screwing up right there. Look, thinking obviously has nothing to do with this. People have decided that we're worse off because they just love the bad feelings that come from whining and complaining. Any thinking at all would make it abundantly clear that humankind has it far better than past generations.


Hey, the wealth inequality crowd's a bunch of non-thinkers.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Someone please post a graph of the IQ of voters vs. time.

Seems that the total number of IQ points in the world remains the same, but must be divided by an ever increasing population.

 

[expat_panama]

Someone please post a graph of the IQ of voters vs. time.

IQ's shouldn't be changing over time much, and the % voting shouldn't have that big of an effect on avg. IQ's.

--but you bring up a super point here, namely IQ distribution:

It means that the top 2% of the population has an IQ over 140, and imho that goes a long way to explain why we're able to create as much wealth as the other 98% combined.

 

[PoliticalChic]

I'm saying we fine now with regard to this issue of wealth and income distribution. That said, the gap is wider today than it was prior to the great depression...in the days of the so called robber barons. Again, 100 years of meddling fixed nothing.

I still have no idea why you're going on about slavery and plantations.

WTF is wrong with you people? Seriously! The wealth gap from the New Deal through the Great Society was the closest it has ever been in our nations history. Don't you morons know how to read a fucking graph? The REASON the wealth gap is now what it was during the Gilded Age, is Nixon, Reagan and conservative era that has destroyed the middle class. Ronald Reagan was the greatest socialist in American history. Reagan transferred more than 3 trillion dollars of wealth from the poor and the middle class to the opulent.

Reagan: The great American Socialist

Your clearly overwhelming bias renders any attempt at reasonable discourse futile.

Try to have patience with our friend BoringFriendlessGuy.....

....today is his once-a-week out of the 'nervous' hospital.

 

[eflatminor]

...you can actually grow a human-like brain.

Thank you for proving my point.

 

[eflatminor]

Any thinking at all would make it abundantly clear that humankind has it far better than past generations.

Well of course! A modicum of free markets and the technological advances that follow will do that for any society. The fact remains that during the first half of America, the so called wealth gap was far less than in the second half of America, during which Progressivism has reigned. Further, more upward mobility took place prior to the Progressives. That is, more poor became middle class and more middle class became rich. Not nearly as much after the central planners convinced Americans they knew what was best for everyone else. They didn't and nor do you.

 

[Bfgrn]

I'm saying we fine now with regard to this issue of wealth and income distribution. That said, the gap is wider today than it was prior to the great depression...in the days of the so called robber barons. Again, 100 years of meddling fixed nothing.

I still have no idea why you're going on about slavery and plantations.

WTF is wrong with you people? Seriously! The wealth gap from the New Deal through the Great Society was the closest it has ever been in our nations history. Don't you morons know how to read a fucking graph? The REASON the wealth gap is now what it was during the Gilded Age, is Nixon, Reagan and conservative era that has destroyed the middle class. Ronald Reagan was the greatest socialist in American history. Reagan transferred more than 3 trillion dollars of wealth from the poor and the middle class to the opulent.

Reagan: The great American Socialist

Your clearly overwhelming bias renders any attempt at reasonable discourse futile.

You clearly can't read a graph, can you? What do you call the 'stuff' from 1932 to 1982?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Interesting. See also: BBC News - How Americans view wealth and inequality

BBC News - The Wealth Gap - Inequality in Numbers

"This is when the Republican Party set its trap. Meeting in closed sessions at the beginning of the Obama regime, the party of tax cuts for the rich, unfunded wars, and the largest deficit in the history of the country redefined itself. It suddenly became the party of deficit reduction through lean government joined to supreme confidence in unregulated financial and corporate markets. It even opposed the bail out of General Motors and Chrysler, though these actions stopped unemployment from reaching a dangerous tipping point, allowed the two companies time to reconstruct themselves, and enabled them to pay back the loans within two years–-creating one of the most successful bailouts in the history of Euro-American economic life." The Contemporary Condition: The Republican Pincer Machine

I love it when people throw out charts like they proves something. What you just proved here is you hate the middle class.

 

[expat_panama]

The wealth gap from the New Deal through the Great Society was the closest it has ever been in our nations history. Don't you morons know how to read a fucking graph? The REASON the wealth gap is now what it was during the Gilded Age, is Nixon, Reagan and conservative era that has destroyed the middle class...

This is what I'm getting from the graph.

1. Americans are better off when the white area is narrow, when taxes are high and top incomes are not much better than bottom incomes.
2. The white was narrower with the New Deal between 1933 to 1941 than it was from 1983 to 2007.
3. This is supposed to prove Americans were better off during the '33-'41 New Deal than from '83 to '97.

People believe that? Really?

 

[Papageorgio]

The mid 74 to 82 we had High inflation and high taxes. Then the separation began, so I'm not sure what to believe.

 

[OohPooPahDoo]

Interesting. See also: BBC News - How Americans view wealth and inequality

BBC News - The Wealth Gap - Inequality in Numbers

"This is when the Republican Party set its trap. Meeting in closed sessions at the beginning of the Obama regime, the party of tax cuts for the rich, unfunded wars, and the largest deficit in the history of the country redefined itself. It suddenly became the party of deficit reduction through lean government joined to supreme confidence in unregulated financial and corporate markets. It even opposed the bail out of General Motors and Chrysler, though these actions stopped unemployment from reaching a dangerous tipping point, allowed the two companies time to reconstruct themselves, and enabled them to pay back the loans within two years–-creating one of the most successful bailouts in the history of Euro-American economic life." The Contemporary Condition: The Republican Pincer Machine

Wealth in the United States is earned, not distributed.


Wealth is distributed in totalitarian nations....the kind you yearn for.


Oops...did I end that sentence with a preposition???
My bad.

Define "earned"