Capitalism Guarantees Rising Inequality

[ilia25]

As Obama so emphatically demonstrated, deficit spending doesn't do a thing for the economy. Keynes' theory are all Voo Doo.

I believe I already made a post on this but the bottom line is that the situation now is vastly different than it was with Reagan or with the 2002 recession.

Something about 3 decades or more of wage stagnation and accumulation of debt at the government level and debt to foreign entities changes things.

Yada, yada, yada. Libturds always have a million excuses for why their lame theories never work.

Keynes theory work and if it needed any proof, this depression did it many times over. You are just too insecure and scared to admit that your beliefs have always been wrong.

 

[Bombur]

Problem as in the tax code favors one group over the other.

Lower income people pay a lower capital gains tax rate than upper income.
Have for decades.
So why is that a problem?

So what? You have not made a logical connection to what I have already said. You didn't disprove the fact presented nor did you dispute the problems that have arisen due to that.

See there is this thing called logic. When you have a response it helps to create a logical argument and not just throw out red herring after red herring.

See there is this thing called logic.

Use your logic to explain why a capital gains tax rate lower than the income tax rate is a problem.

I already posted this answer twice.

 

[Misty]

Main Entry: welfare capitalism
Function: noun
: capitalism characterized by a concern for the welfare of various social groupings (as workers) expressed usu. through social-security programs, collective-bargaining agreements, state industrial codes, and other guarantees against insecurity.

There are many types of capitalism. Good luck getting rid of any of them.

 

[pvsi]

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."

I wish you could see it from my view: I would like to agree with you, but enough people never will in order to defeat what is bad about capitalism. I grew up in USSR and I loved the America that was promised. they switch regimes once in a while to give people new hope, but the same people control it behind the scenes, like a gardener. WHAT IS CAPITALISM? is bribing government capitalism? if so, then of course it is evil and the cause of the bad, and everyone will agree with you, but will they agree that that is what capitalism is about? no, those who control the media will tell people that capitalism is small businesses being able to function freely and that the alternative is socialism - I DO NOT believe their lies, but how will we get through to the bamboozled masses of Americans? we have to learn to speak their language, not the lawyer language, but we have to understand what they know as what. I wish we can work together and that you could see my web site... You may say Bush the capitalist invaded Iraq/Afghanistan, if you believe that, you are as brainwashed as all the people on these forums - Hillary Clinton and most democrats voted for authorization. And when they talk about welfare class, they associate it with the poor, because they never mention the real welfare class that usurps the tax money of society which is the ultra rich - kings have always used taxation to rob the poor middle class, not the rich. they turn it around.

 

[Bombur]

As Obama so emphatically demonstrated, deficit spending doesn't do a thing for the economy. Keynes' theory are all Voo Doo.

I believe I already made a post on this but the bottom line is that the situation now is vastly different than it was with Reagan or with the 2002 recession.

Something about 3 decades or more of wage stagnation and accumulation of debt at the government level and debt to foreign entities changes things.

Yada, yada, yada. Libturds always have a million excuses for why their lame theories never work.

You've already demonstrated that you don't know what the economic meaning of "gain" is.

You don' t know the difference between profit and revenue.

You don't know why government "investment" in T-bills is a con.

In short, you have proved over and over that you're an ignoramus. You're also a liar.

Who said it didn't work? Well besides you.

Keynesian economics is far from perfect and I believe in monetary manipulation more than increasing government debt spending but I don't think either approaches would fix the fundamental problems facing the US economy. Neither were really ever meant to.

Economics is a complicated field of study and if you are not ready for nuance then you might as well quit before you start.

 

[Misty]

Why capital gains tax rates are lower than income tax rates | New Hampshire Columns

"How are capital gains different from ordinary income?

Ordinary income is usually guaranteed. If you work a certain amount of time, you are legally entitled to the pay that you were offered when you took the job. Capital gains involve risk. They are not guaranteed. You can invest your money and lose it all. Moreover, the year when you receive capital gains may not be the same as the years when they were earned."

Very similar principles apply to businesses. We pay attention to businesses after they have succeeded. But most new businesses do not succeed. Even those businesses that eventually turn out to be enormously successful may go through years of losing money before they have their first year of earning a profit.

Amazon.com spent years losing money before turning a profit for the first time in 2001. McDonald's teetered on the edge of bankruptcy more than once in its early years. Desperate expedients were resorted to by the people who ran McDonald's, in order to just keep their noses above the water, while hoping for better days."

From a great article;

 

[bripat9643]

I believe I already made a post on this but the bottom line is that the situation now is vastly different than it was with Reagan or with the 2002 recession.

Something about 3 decades or more of wage stagnation and accumulation of debt at the government level and debt to foreign entities changes things.

Yada, yada, yada. Libturds always have a million excuses for why their lame theories never work.

Keynes theory work and if it needed any proof, this depression did it many times over. You are just too insecure and scared to admit that your beliefs have always been wrong.

No, they obviously don't work. According to Keynes, you can have high inflation or high unemployment. You can't have both. There is supposed to be a trade-off between one and the other. However, during the recession of 1982 we had both high unemployment and high interest rates. Also, in all the Latin American kleptocracies, they have had both for decades.

That's only one example of why Keynes is nothing more than a dispenser of Voo Doo used to justify government manipulation of the economy.

 

[Bombur]

Yada, yada, yada. Libturds always have a million excuses for why their lame theories never work.

Keynes theory work and if it needed any proof, this depression did it many times over. You are just too insecure and scared to admit that your beliefs have always been wrong.

No, they obviously don't work. According to Keynes, you can have high inflation or high unemployment. You can't have both. There is supposed to be a trade-off between one and the other. However, during the recession of 1982 we had both high unemployment and high interest rates. Also, in all the Latin American kleptocracies, they have had both for decades.

That's only one example of why Keynes is nothing more than a dispenser of Voo Doo used to justify government manipulation of the economy.

We are not saying it worked because Keynes is perfect. We are not appealing to Keynes as an absolute authority. We are appealing to a theory that was put into practice multiple times in various situations. Including once by Ronald Reagan. So you see you didn't actually logically address the issue before you.

HTH

 

[bripat9643]

I believe I already made a post on this but the bottom line is that the situation now is vastly different than it was with Reagan or with the 2002 recession.

Something about 3 decades or more of wage stagnation and accumulation of debt at the government level and debt to foreign entities changes things.

Yada, yada, yada. Libturds always have a million excuses for why their lame theories never work.

Keynes theory work and if it needed any proof, this depression did it many times over. You are just too insecure and scared to admit that your beliefs have always been wrong.

ROFL! Sorry, but the depression proved Keynes theories don't work. If they worked, then why did the depression last for 12 years?

 

[bripat9643]

Keynes theory work and if it needed any proof, this depression did it many times over. You are just too insecure and scared to admit that your beliefs have always been wrong.

No, they obviously don't work. According to Keynes, you can have high inflation or high unemployment. You can't have both. There is supposed to be a trade-off between one and the other. However, during the recession of 1982 we had both high unemployment and high interest rates. Also, in all the Latin American kleptocracies, they have had both for decades.

That's only one example of why Keynes is nothing more than a dispenser of Voo Doo used to justify government manipulation of the economy.

We are not saying it worked because Keynes is perfect. We are not appealing to Keynes as an absolute authority. We are appealing to a theory that was put into practice multiple times in various situations. Including once by Ronald Reagan. So you see you didn't actually logically address the issue before you.

HTH

If you have an example that behaves exactly the opposite of what theory predictions, then your theory is bunk. It's as simple as that. Furthermore, we have multiple examples, like the current recession, that behave exactly the opposite of what theory predicts.

 

[Bombur]

Why capital gains tax rates are lower than income tax rates | New Hampshire Columns

"How are capital gains different from ordinary income?

Ordinary income is usually guaranteed. If you work a certain amount of time, you are legally entitled to the pay that you were offered when you took the job. Capital gains involve risk. They are not guaranteed. You can invest your money and lose it all. Moreover, the year when you receive capital gains may not be the same as the years when they were earned."

Very similar principles apply to businesses. We pay attention to businesses after they have succeeded. But most new businesses do not succeed. Even those businesses that eventually turn out to be enormously successful may go through years of losing money before they have their first year of earning a profit.

Amazon.com spent years losing money before turning a profit for the first time in 2001. McDonald's teetered on the edge of bankruptcy more than once in its early years. Desperate expedients were resorted to by the people who ran McDonald's, in order to just keep their noses above the water, while hoping for better days."

From a great article;

The first part of the article focuses on the poor investor and tries to paint a picture that makes it look like the issue is about taxing struggling companies. It isn't. It is about how there is a small number of people making a lot of money in personal income and paying significantly less than others.

There is risk in labor as well. People have to invest their lives into careers that may simply not be there in five years. When a company goes under people lose jobs too.

There is no doubt that taxation impacts markets and they impact the labor market just like they impact the capital market. The problem with the article is that it is made without any reference to the actual health of those markets. The labor market has struggled for decades while the capital market has exploded.

 

[Bombur]

No, they obviously don't work. According to Keynes, you can have high inflation or high unemployment. You can't have both. There is supposed to be a trade-off between one and the other. However, during the recession of 1982 we had both high unemployment and high interest rates. Also, in all the Latin American kleptocracies, they have had both for decades.

That's only one example of why Keynes is nothing more than a dispenser of Voo Doo used to justify government manipulation of the economy.

We are not saying it worked because Keynes is perfect. We are not appealing to Keynes as an absolute authority. We are appealing to a theory that was put into practice multiple times in various situations. Including once by Ronald Reagan. So you see you didn't actually logically address the issue before you.

HTH

If you have an example that behaves exactly the opposite of what theory predictions, then your theory is bunk. It's as simple as that. Furthermore, we have multiple examples, like the current recession, that behave exactly the opposite of what theory predicts.

It is not behaving the exact opposite. If anything the latest recession has shown that drops in government spending slow down economic recovery.

The thing is that the latest problems demonstrate the need to hold less debt during good periods and to have less foreign debt. If you made your argument about those issues I bet we could find some common ground.

Government debt spending is not a cure all and neither is monetary policy. If the economy is experiencing a large correction it is experiencing a large correction.

 

[Bombur]

Yada, yada, yada. Libturds always have a million excuses for why their lame theories never work.

Keynes theory work and if it needed any proof, this depression did it many times over. You are just too insecure and scared to admit that your beliefs have always been wrong.

ROFL! Sorry, but the depression proved Keynes theories don't work. If they worked, then why did the depression last for 12 years?

Reductions in the money supply and the severity of the recession due to the income inequality of the day definitely played their part.

 

[Contumacious]

The labor market has struggled for decades while the capital market has exploded.

Why the U.S. Has Lost Manufacturing Jobs

By Michael S. Rozeff

January 31, 2014

The U.S. government could help American workers tremendously by ending its extremely costly interventions overseas and reducing its military establishment..... the reduction in government spending .... matched by tax cuts, then the economy would be given a big leg up to adjust to productive lines of work. The U.S. is over-investing in phantom security.

The U.S. government could help American workers tremendously by scrapping Obamacare and freeing up the medical sector of the economy, thereby making it more competitive and producing lower costs and higher quality.

The U.S. government could help American workers tremendously by making Social Security optional for them.


.

 

[georgephillip]

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."

I wish you could see it from my view: I would like to agree with you, but enough people never will in order to defeat what is bad about capitalism. I grew up in USSR and I loved the America that was promised. they switch regimes once in a while to give people new hope, but the same people control it behind the scenes, like a gardener. WHAT IS CAPITALISM? is bribing government capitalism? if so, then of course it is evil and the cause of the bad, and everyone will agree with you, but will they agree that that is what capitalism is about? no, those who control the media will tell people that capitalism is small businesses being able to function freely and that the alternative is socialism - I DO NOT believe their lies, but how will we get through to the bamboozled masses of Americans? we have to learn to speak their language, not the lawyer language, but we have to understand what they know as what. I wish we can work together and that you could see my web site... You may say Bush the capitalist invaded Iraq/Afghanistan, if you believe that, you are as brainwashed as all the people on these forums - Hillary Clinton and most democrats voted for authorization. And when they talk about welfare class, they associate it with the poor, because they never mention the real welfare class that usurps the tax money of society which is the ultra rich - kings have always used taxation to rob the poor middle class, not the rich. they turn it around.

Economist Dean Baker has been writing about the Conservative Nanny State for years and has a free e-book you can download.

Here's a condensed version Dean wrote for CounterPunch:

"Progressives have wailed against 'market fundamentalism' for the last quarter-century.

"They complain that conservatives want to eliminate the government and leave everything to the market.

"This is nonsense.

"The Right has every bit as much interest in government involvement in the economy as progressives.

"The difference is that conservatives want the government to intervene in ways that redistribute income upward.

"The other difference is that the Right is smart enough to hide its interventions, implying that the structures that redistribute income upward are just the natural working of the market.

"Progressives help the Right’s cause when we accuse them of being 'market fundamentalists,' effectively implying that the conservatives’ structuring of the economy is its natural state."

The Myth of Market Fundamentalism » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

Welcome to the asylum!

 

[RKMBrown]

What do you remember about the FICA tax rate in the 1980s?

FICA tax is not Income Tax. Two different animals so not even remotely associated with the issue being discussed. With regard to SS we didn't have many choices the prior generations had already screwed future generations so the rates had to go up for that system to pay for the retired folks to get their discounted SS checks.

FICA is a tax based on income.
The issue being discussed was Reagan's skyrocketing revenues produced from tax cuts.
Reagan spiked FICA taxes and three-quarters of taxpayers pay more in payroll taxes than they do in income taxes. It's hypocritical to claim revenue increases in the 80s were due to tax cuts on 25% of the population without mentioning the tax increases experienced by the other 75%.

SS is supposed to be a program funded by the people that receive it. It's not supposed to be like progressive income tax where the upper income folks are forced to foot the bill for the income folks. Are you incapable of understanding that? Why are folks like you always looking for a free ride? Don't you have any pride at all?

 

[Bombur]

The labor market has struggled for decades while the capital market has exploded.

Why the U.S. Has Lost Manufacturing Jobs

By Michael S. Rozeff

January 31, 2014

The U.S. government could help American workers tremendously by ending its extremely costly interventions overseas and reducing its military establishment..... the reduction in government spending .... matched by tax cuts, then the economy would be given a big leg up to adjust to productive lines of work. The U.S. is over-investing in phantom security.

The U.S. government could help American workers tremendously by scrapping Obamacare and freeing up the medical sector of the economy, thereby making it more competitive and producing lower costs and higher quality.

The U.S. government could help American workers tremendously by making Social Security optional for them.


.

OK cut military spending.

I think it is pretty obvious that UHC is far more efficient than the horrible Frankenstein monster that is our current system. So I agree with the general problem but there is a lot more evidence supporting UHC than there is in the idea the free market will solve our problems.

Making SS optional would just put more pressure on people to make good decisions and save for themselves.

If you want legit conservative ways to improve things look to the corporate tax code. The way it works in the US is relatively unique in that it hurts US production and favors foreign production. Other nation's tax codes do the opposite.

You can also look at Chinese manipulation of our currency. That is not really anything either side is for.

You can also look at regulations from a trade perspective. Having common regulations with Europe and Canada can help facilitate trade.

 

[Bombur]

FICA tax is not Income Tax. Two different animals so not even remotely associated with the issue being discussed. With regard to SS we didn't have many choices the prior generations had already screwed future generations so the rates had to go up for that system to pay for the retired folks to get their discounted SS checks.

FICA is a tax based on income.
The issue being discussed was Reagan's skyrocketing revenues produced from tax cuts.
Reagan spiked FICA taxes and three-quarters of taxpayers pay more in payroll taxes than they do in income taxes. It's hypocritical to claim revenue increases in the 80s were due to tax cuts on 25% of the population without mentioning the tax increases experienced by the other 75%.

SS is supposed to be a program funded by the people that receive it. It's not supposed to be like progressive income tax where the upper income folks are forced to foot the bill for the income folks. Are you incapable of understanding that?

I agree that is the case for the majority of the "pension" plan part of SS. The problem is the transfer payment for the low end of the spectrum. I also consider disability and unemployment to be programs that should be funded with a progressive tax.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

I literally answer your question in what you quoted.

Obtuseness is not a response.

You did not explain why lower capital gains rates are a problem.

Obtuseness is not a response.

I agree, so stop being obtuse.

Problem as in the tax code favors one group over the other. The group that the tax code favors doesn't need any favors and the group getting the worse end has seen decades of wage stagnation. This has grown to be such a problem the economy is struggling to recover. Economic volatility has gotten worse. Income inequality has gotten worse.

Copy and pasted from my own post that you quoted twice.

Obtuseness is not a response.

The tax code, which is heavily skewed in favor of people with low incomes, gives preferential treatment to people that don't need it?

 

[Bombur]

You did not explain why lower capital gains rates are a problem.

Obtuseness is not a response.

I agree, so stop being obtuse.

Problem as in the tax code favors one group over the other. The group that the tax code favors doesn't need any favors and the group getting the worse end has seen decades of wage stagnation. This has grown to be such a problem the economy is struggling to recover. Economic volatility has gotten worse. Income inequality has gotten worse.

Copy and pasted from my own post that you quoted twice.

Obtuseness is not a response.

The tax code, which is heavily skewed in favor of people with low incomes, gives preferential treatment to people that don't need it?

I am mostly concerned with the middle class. That said I don't really agree with your statement when you consider things like property taxes funding education and the impact that has on communities.