9 out of 10 Americans completely wrong

[numan]

Why do you think no one should have to go on disability? Because it's not your fault? Do you think it's their fault? Do you honestly think my son did something to deserve autism? Or that we in some way caused it? Do you think all our military that come back disabled should just be shot? Or do you draw that line at that? Where exactly do you draw the line?

Sheila, don't be bothered by these libertarian creeps on this thread.

You are a good person, and they are filth.
.

 

[Lonestar_logic]

For someone who "can't work to support her/himself" you sure seem capable of using the keyboard and posting on the internet. Maybe you could get a job?

What? And screw up her monthly Obama check?? Never!!

I do not get a monthly Obama check. My son gets disability. We get nothing. My husband and I have been working together for years to raise this family. We've never been on the "dole" except for my son who is now in a home. I am supposedly a welfare queen because I can no longer physically care for my son who is low functioning autism, still in diapers, with the mind of a toddler. If there was a way we could have done it without relying on the state, we would have. In fact, I've asked several times what my options are, what it is you think I should do, I get nothing but insults. Apparently the only answer so far is a triple homicide followed by a suicide. That's the only way I can think of to make sure that my kids don't end up living off of any of your tax dollars. Now, do you have another option? I'm willing to listen.

Lighten up nancy I was being facetious.

 

[numan]

Lighten up nancy I was being facetious.

You want to be a comedian?

Don't quit your day job.
.

 

[Lonestar_logic]

Lighten up nancy I was being facetious.

You want to be a comedian?

Don't quit your day job.
.

Trust me if I was a comedian you would have heard of me by now.

 

[Flopper]

nod... same here why fight tooth and nail to earn more money when it's not appreciated and your taxes go through the roof when you do? Why not earn less? It's not the end of the world... Heck the best things in life don't cost much if any money.

Yes...but do you two need Food Stamps or any other government subsidy to make ends meet?

No, but as a guy I dont shop for price either, I would rather go to the local mom and pop hardware or electrical store (yes we still have them) and pay more then go to lowes or home depot and wait in line or have to deal with $8 an hour employees that dont know what the heck they are selling.

Sure every one likes to deal with local businesses but are you willing to pay $9 for a T shirt available at Walmart for $2.75 and batteries at Mom and Pop Sundries for $15 available at Target for $9. People quickly forget that $2.75 T shirt was probably made by a 10 year old working 50 hours a week in a fire trap for practically nothing. Everyone likes the personal service and advice but how much is worth?

 

[Polk]

What exactly gives you the authority to say what that value is?

I'm not claiming any authority.

But you did say "If the labor of the veteran employee is 10 times more valuable than the apprentice, but he's being paid 30 times more there is something askew about that."

So what I'm basically asking is how did you arrive at these numbers, 10 times more valuable and 30 times more pay?

Did you just pull this out of your ass with no real world experience to back it up?

Those numbers were used for the point of illustration. There is no one number that's true for every employee. Each worker is providing some amount of value-added, and is paid in some sort of proportion relative to the value-added.

 

[Wyatt earp]

Yes...but do you two need Food Stamps or any other government subsidy to make ends meet?

No, but as a guy I dont shop for price either, I would rather go to the local mom and pop hardware or electrical store (yes we still have them) and pay more then go to lowes or home depot and wait in line or have to deal with $8 an hour employees that dont know what the heck they are selling.

Sure every one likes to deal with local businesses but are you willing to pay $9 for a T shirt available at Walmart for $2.75 and batteries at Mom and Pop Sundries for $15 available at Target for $9. People quickly forget that $2.75 T shirt was probably made by a 10 year old working 50 hours a week in a fire trap for practically nothing. Everyone likes the personal service and advice but how much is worth?

Oh I can tell a $2 dollar t-shirt from Walmart to a $9 dollar one. Its all in the thickness of the material. I used to allways pay $50 bucks for my Levi blue jeans and they would last me like 2 years, now what are they like $20 bucks? and Only last like 2 months? I blame this on the Republicans and Bill Clinton for getting rid of the Souths textile industry in the 90's. They lost good jobs down here and were stuck with like what you said.....and I just read a USA made pair of blue jeans would cost $178 bucks.....blows your mind. I think I will buy a couple.....
The true cost of ?Made in the USA? Levi?s? $178 | GlobalPost

 

[AmazonTania]

Sure every one likes to deal with local businesses but are you willing to pay $9 for a T shirt available at Walmart for $2.75 and batteries at Mom and Pop Sundries for $15 available at Target for $9. People quickly forget that $2.75 T shirt was probably made by a 10 year old working 50 hours a week in a fire trap for practically nothing. Everyone likes the personal service and advice but how much is worth?

What's practically nothing to you is just enough for that little 10 year old to feed his family. Contrary to ignorant misconceptions, parents in developing nations don't let their children work because they are evil parents. The country is so unproductive the children has no choice but to work as well. And with low productivity comes lower wages. If the children didn't work, families would simply stave to death.

What are their alternatives otherwise? Thievery, Drugs Trafficking, Human Trafficking, Prostitution?

 

[Polk]

Sorry but when I hear the same old hackneyed blame the "rich" the corporations, the CEOs blah blah blah it all sounds like whining to me.

Yeah life's not fair. It never was. It never will be. It's not supposed to be.

But at the same time anyone can improve their situation if they have the desire and act upon it.

Saying "well, it's not totally fair, so we shouldn't care about ways we can make it less unfair" is a pretty weak argument, from my perspective. As for your last sentence, it's just not true.

More whining.

You can claim that it's whiny, but that doesn't make it less true.

 

[Skull Pilot]

Saying "well, it's not totally fair, so we shouldn't care about ways we can make it less unfair" is a pretty weak argument, from my perspective. As for your last sentence, it's just not true.

More whining.

You can claim that it's whiny, but that doesn't make it less true.

It's not true at all.

Unless of course you are brain dead and can literally do nothing but drool into a cup.

 

[Polk]

More whining.

You can claim that it's whiny, but that doesn't make it less true.

It's not true at all.

Unless of course you are brain dead and can literally do nothing but drool into a cup.

Much of life (if not most of it) is based on dumb luck and who your parents are.

 

[Wyatt earp]

You can claim that it's whiny, but that doesn't make it less true.

It's not true at all.

Unless of course you are brain dead and can literally do nothing but drool into a cup.

Much of life (if not most of it) is based on dumb luck and who your parents are.

lol, yea right.....if becoming a millionare in America just has to do with dumb luck and who your parents are. Why are you affraid to point out the:
1. MIcheal Jordans of the U.S~talent
2.Taylor Swifts of the US~ talent and persistent
3. The Owners of a few of the companys I worked for: they buit it from scratch
4. my ex father in law~ saved and investments

I could go on and on, its not just dumb luck or who your parents are.
Why do you hate success? just curious?

 

[Foxfyre]

And in rebuttal and for the purposes of comparing then and now:

Recently, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its latest statistics on income inequality. Economists, bloggers and others have been furiously debating their implications. Over at the American Enterprise Institute, Jim Pethokoukis has been bludgeoned by various left-wing bloggers for pointing out that the story of growth of income inequality is much more complicated than the simple version spun by the CBO, and that there exists a considerable amount of evidence that income inequality hasn’t gotten worse since the ‘90s.

His arguments can be read here, here and here. (see link)

One point that gets overlooked, however, is that income is only a part of the issue, and not a very comprehensive measure of prosperity. Wealth sums an individual’s total command over resources, whereas income reflects only the resources acquired over a given period. Thus wealth is a much broader and more meaningful measure of prosperity than income. It includes things such as financial and nonfinancial assets, including bank accounts, investments, houses, cars and debt.

Alan Reynolds reminds readers that the left repeatedly cites income figures from a famous study by economist Emanuel Saez, which show that top earners’ share of income has increased. Yet the left never cites figures from another study by Saez on wealth inequality, which show that top earner’s share of wealth at the beginning of the 21st century is lower than it was in the early 1900s
.

In fact, in the opening pages of his study, Saez writes:
Top wealth shares were very high at the beginning of the period but have been hit sharply by the Great Depression, the New Deal, and World War II shocks. Those shocks have had permanent effects. Following a decline in the 1970s, top wealth shares recovered in the early 1980s, but they are still much lower in 2000 than in the early decades of the century.​

Income Inequality vs. Wealth Inequality | The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation

And from USC - EDU
Who Rules America: Wealth, Income, and Power
we can see that the numbers change from year to year, but on average not much has changed since early in the century to present. So what is the problem?

Table 4: Share of wealth held by the Bottom 99% and Top 1% in the United States, 1922-2010.
. . . . . . .Top 1. . . . Bottom 99
. . . . . . .percent. . . percent

1922. . . . 63.3%. . . .36.7%
1929. . . . 55.8% . . . .44.2%
1933. . . . 66.7%. . . . 33.3%
1939. . . . 63.6%. . . . 36.4%
1945. . . . 70.2%. . . . 29.8%
1949. . . . 72.9%. . . . 27.1%
1953. . . . 68.8%. . . . 31.2%
1962. . . . 68.2%. . . . 31.8%
1965. . . . 65.6%. . . . 34.4%
1969. . . . 68.9%. . . . 31.1%
1972. . . . 70.9%. . . . 29.1%
1976. . . . 80.1%. . . . 19.9%
1979. . . . 79.5%. . . . 20.5%
1981. . . . 75.2%. . . . 24.8%
1983. . . . 69.1%. . . . 30.9%
1986. . . . 68.1%. . . . 31.9%
1989. . . . 64.3% . . . .35.7%
1992. . . . 62.8%. . . . 37.2%
1995. . . . 61.5%. . . . 38.5%
1998. . . . 61.9%. . . . 38.1%
2001. . . . 66.6%. . . . 33.4%
2004. . . . 65.7%. . . . 34.3%
2007. . . . 65.4%. . . . 34.6%
2010. . . . 64.6%. . . . 35.4%

 

[Wyatt earp]

And in rebuttal and for the purposes of comparing then and now:

Recently, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its latest statistics on income inequality. Economists, bloggers and others have been furiously debating their implications. Over at the American Enterprise Institute, Jim Pethokoukis has been bludgeoned by various left-wing bloggers for pointing out that the story of growth of income inequality is much more complicated than the simple version spun by the CBO, and that there exists a considerable amount of evidence that income inequality hasn’t gotten worse since the ‘90s.

His arguments can be read here, here and here. (see link)

One point that gets overlooked, however, is that income is only a part of the issue, and not a very comprehensive measure of prosperity. Wealth sums an individual’s total command over resources, whereas income reflects only the resources acquired over a given period. Thus wealth is a much broader and more meaningful measure of prosperity than income. It includes things such as financial and nonfinancial assets, including bank accounts, investments, houses, cars and debt.

Alan Reynolds reminds readers that the left repeatedly cites income figures from a famous study by economist Emanuel Saez, which show that top earners’ share of income has increased. Yet the left never cites figures from another study by Saez on wealth inequality, which show that top earner’s share of wealth at the beginning of the 21st century is lower than it was in the early 1900s
.

In fact, in the opening pages of his study, Saez writes:
Top wealth shares were very high at the beginning of the period but have been hit sharply by the Great Depression, the New Deal, and World War II shocks. Those shocks have had permanent effects. Following a decline in the 1970s, top wealth shares recovered in the early 1980s, but they are still much lower in 2000 than in the early decades of the century.​

Income Inequality vs. Wealth Inequality | The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation

And from USC - EDU
Who Rules America: Wealth, Income, and Power
we can see that the numbers change from year to year, but on average not much has changed since early in the century to present. So what is the problem?

Table 4: Share of wealth held by the Bottom 99% and Top 1% in the United States, 1922-2010.
. . . . . . .Top 1. . . . Bottom 99
. . . . . . .percent. . . percent

1922. . . . 63.3%. . . .36.7%
1929. . . . 55.8% . . . .44.2%
1933. . . . 66.7%. . . . 33.3%
1939. . . . 63.6%. . . . 36.4%
1945. . . . 70.2%. . . . 29.8%
1949. . . . 72.9%. . . . 27.1%
1953. . . . 68.8%. . . . 31.2%
1962. . . . 68.2%. . . . 31.8%
1965. . . . 65.6%. . . . 34.4%
1969. . . . 68.9%. . . . 31.1%
1972. . . . 70.9%. . . . 29.1%
1976. . . . 80.1%. . . . 19.9%
1979. . . . 79.5%. . . . 20.5%
1981. . . . 75.2%. . . . 24.8%
1983. . . . 69.1%. . . . 30.9%
1986. . . . 68.1%. . . . 31.9%
1989. . . . 64.3% . . . .35.7%
1992. . . . 62.8%. . . . 37.2%
1995. . . . 61.5%. . . . 38.5%
1998. . . . 61.9%. . . . 38.1%
2001. . . . 66.6%. . . . 33.4%
2004. . . . 65.7%. . . . 34.3%
2007. . . . 65.4%. . . . 34.6%
2010. . . . 64.6%. . . . 35.4%

WTF? I thought everyone told me the top 1% hold 90% of the wealth in this country or something like that?

 

[Foxfyre]

And in rebuttal and for the purposes of comparing then and now:

Recently, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its latest statistics on income inequality. Economists, bloggers and others have been furiously debating their implications. Over at the American Enterprise Institute, Jim Pethokoukis has been bludgeoned by various left-wing bloggers for pointing out that the story of growth of income inequality is much more complicated than the simple version spun by the CBO, and that there exists a considerable amount of evidence that income inequality hasn’t gotten worse since the ‘90s.

His arguments can be read here, here and here. (see link)

One point that gets overlooked, however, is that income is only a part of the issue, and not a very comprehensive measure of prosperity. Wealth sums an individual’s total command over resources, whereas income reflects only the resources acquired over a given period. Thus wealth is a much broader and more meaningful measure of prosperity than income. It includes things such as financial and nonfinancial assets, including bank accounts, investments, houses, cars and debt.

Alan Reynolds reminds readers that the left repeatedly cites income figures from a famous study by economist Emanuel Saez, which show that top earners’ share of income has increased. Yet the left never cites figures from another study by Saez on wealth inequality, which show that top earner’s share of wealth at the beginning of the 21st century is lower than it was in the early 1900s
.

In fact, in the opening pages of his study, Saez writes:
Top wealth shares were very high at the beginning of the period but have been hit sharply by the Great Depression, the New Deal, and World War II shocks. Those shocks have had permanent effects. Following a decline in the 1970s, top wealth shares recovered in the early 1980s, but they are still much lower in 2000 than in the early decades of the century.​

Income Inequality vs. Wealth Inequality | The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation

And from USC - EDU
Who Rules America: Wealth, Income, and Power
we can see that the numbers change from year to year, but on average not much has changed since early in the century to present. So what is the problem?

Table 4: Share of wealth held by the Bottom 99% and Top 1% in the United States, 1922-2010.
. . . . . . .Top 1. . . . Bottom 99
. . . . . . .percent. . . percent

1922. . . . 63.3%. . . .36.7%
1929. . . . 55.8% . . . .44.2%
1933. . . . 66.7%. . . . 33.3%
1939. . . . 63.6%. . . . 36.4%
1945. . . . 70.2%. . . . 29.8%
1949. . . . 72.9%. . . . 27.1%
1953. . . . 68.8%. . . . 31.2%
1962. . . . 68.2%. . . . 31.8%
1965. . . . 65.6%. . . . 34.4%
1969. . . . 68.9%. . . . 31.1%
1972. . . . 70.9%. . . . 29.1%
1976. . . . 80.1%. . . . 19.9%
1979. . . . 79.5%. . . . 20.5%
1981. . . . 75.2%. . . . 24.8%
1983. . . . 69.1%. . . . 30.9%
1986. . . . 68.1%. . . . 31.9%
1989. . . . 64.3% . . . .35.7%
1992. . . . 62.8%. . . . 37.2%
1995. . . . 61.5%. . . . 38.5%
1998. . . . 61.9%. . . . 38.1%
2001. . . . 66.6%. . . . 33.4%
2004. . . . 65.7%. . . . 34.3%
2007. . . . 65.4%. . . . 34.6%
2010. . . . 64.6%. . . . 35.4%

WTF? I thought everyone told me the top 1% hold 90% of the wealth in this country or something like that?

It's all in how they measure wealth, how it is spun, and how it is propagandized for sociopoliical purposes. Those who want government to have powers to redistribute wealth want the number to be 90% Those who don't have a specific dog in that fight generally come up with somewhat different numbers.

But considering that UCSC generally despised the Bush administration and condemned the Bush tax policy, etc. I don't think they would have any reason to show numbers like that unless that was what they knew they were.

 

[numan]

Who Rules America: Wealth, Income, and Power

we can see that the numbers change from year to year, but on average not much has changed since early in the century to present.

You mean the USA has always been a lie and a cheat? · ·

Anyway, interesting link. (Not the Heritage Foundation, of course; the one above)
.

 

[Foxfyre]

Who Rules America: Wealth, Income, and Power

we can see that the numbers change from year to year, but on average not much has changed since early in the century to present.

You mean the USA has always been a lie and a cheat? · ·

Anyway, interesting link. (Not the Heritage Foundation, of course; the one above)
.

Both links take you to some very interesting information. I don't believe the UCSC numbers at all, but I do believe the numbers have been as consistent as they show them to be. The one point they both illustrate in spades is that the rich are not necessarily becoming so much richer than everybody else year by year as the big government wealth redistribution folks want us to believe.

 

[Wyatt earp]

Who Rules America: Wealth, Income, and Power

we can see that the numbers change from year to year, but on average not much has changed since early in the century to present.

You mean the USA has always been a lie and a cheat? · ·

Anyway, interesting link. (Not the Heritage Foundation, of course; the one above)
.

yea I know about the link. but what interest me they make a simple thing so complicated. So much spin from the left and right to try to find the truth. I guess thats why its so much fun to try to figure it out.

 

[hipaware]

It's not a matter of defending, I think most people are just completely unaware of the implications.

I think you should amend that to: "Most Americans are just completely unaware."
PERIOD

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seYUbVa7L7w]Rick Mercer talks with Americans on CBC television[/ame]
.

That video was classic

 

[Polk]

It's not true at all.

Unless of course you are brain dead and can literally do nothing but drool into a cup.

Much of life (if not most of it) is based on dumb luck and who your parents are.

lol, yea right.....if becoming a millionare in America just has to do with dumb luck and who your parents are. Why are you affraid to point out the:
1. MIcheal Jordans of the U.S~talent
2.Taylor Swifts of the US~ talent and persistent
3. The Owners of a few of the companys I worked for: they buit it from scratch
4. my ex father in law~ saved and investments

I could go on and on, its not just dumb luck or who your parents are.
Why do you hate success? just curious?

I'm not "afraid to point out" those people. Most does not equal all, and those examples are rather poor ones.

Professional athletes of any caliber (much less exceptional talents like Jordan) make up less than one percent of one percent of the population.
There are tons of musicians. Very few of them make any money at it.
Some businesses are created by self-made men, but those are few and far between. Most businesses are just shuffling of chairs by people at the top of the ladder.