Census finds record gap between Rich and Poor

[rightwinger]

wave good bye to the middle class.

This is a glaring example of why the GOP/Reagan concepts of trickle down economics do not work. The idea that cutting taxes on the wealthy will result in more jobs and a rising tide for all Americans has been a farce.

In reality, the wealthy has kept the additional money and sent jobs overseas.

The standard of living for the middle class is disappearing and we continue to reward the wealthy for it

The union members and government workers would dispute that? It is because of the rich that there is enough capital to sustain a middle-class! It will soon all be worse, then you can feel successful.

You couldn't be any more wrong.

It is because of the strong middle class that we have so many wealthy

 

[Bern80]

This is as good a place as any for this little rant:

People and especially the left absouletely refuse to see the effect that human nature and personal decisions shape society and how it progresses as a whole.

OTOH, those on the right fail to see how collective decisions shape society and progresses it as a whole. Did central water and sewage treatment advance society?

The gap between rich and poor is as good an example as ay. What are the variables that are contributing to this widening gap? Libs go about blaming everything under the sun for this problem EXCEPT for one thing.

An exaggeration and a strawman argument.



My attitudes and decisions didn't facilitate off shoring of traditional middle class jobs like software engineering. Right wing tax policy did.

Like it requires no effort on your part. Like you are ENTITLED to be middle class. First it indeed did take effort on the part of your parents to achieve middle class. I know it did mine.

More Limbaugh style bullshit. The converse is that only the well to do, and their children, are entitled to opportunities.

Second of all middle class now is not what middle class was then. Then you were middle class if you had ONE TV and it was in color. Now middle class is a TV in every room with satelite or cable.

All you need is a hook up under that bridge if you've lost your job, your family, your home because of the bad dice roll that's always crooked toward the most wealthy.

The bottom line is still the bottom line. The upper class will remove your opportunities, and buy a right wing government to enable them, if that's what they see as putting more money in their pockets. They'll get the middle class to shoulder the lions share of the tax burden, and right wingers will screech cut taxes and lower the deficit.

Only a fool believes there's a level playing field. The rich will grant just enough social safety nets to protect them from armed insurrection, and the middle class can go pound sand if they find they can make more money by having their customer service centers in India.

Maybe it's a more fundamental problem. Like you don't understand the definition of words. Like the word opportunity for example. You seem to see opportunity as an end point, rather than a starting point. Everyone has the opportunity to rich. Having said opportunity does not mean everyone WILL be rich. Opportunity is just another way of identifying possible outcomes. The outcome that actually take place is entirely up to you.

Your own words prove my point that more and more people in today's society refuse to hold themselves responsible for their outcomes. A better way to say it would be they refuse to acknowledge the opportunities they did NOT pursue. And then you have the nerve to rant about why things are the way they are when answer number one for that is starring you in the mirror.

 

[Dick Tuck]

I'm exaggerating, Really????? How????? Nickels and dimes?????

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/24/nyregion/24hud.html

WTF does the fact that Cuomo was HUD chief under Clinton have to do with the financial meltdown that happened six years after he left?

How'd Bush's "ownership society" work out?

You obviously have not followed the story. Who started "No Money Down"? Who pressured the lenders? Who obstructed the investigations into unethical lending? Who profited from higher housing costs? Who profited from the higher property taxes that resulted? Why does Barney Frank all of a sudden want Fannie and Freddie shut down?

You obviously didn't read your own link. From your own link:

...

Mr. Cuomo was housing secretary at a critical moment for the nation, just as its subprime mortgage fever was beginning to spike. It was during his tenure that the banking industry began to embrace predatory loans, and these creations led to a housing bubble that badly damaged America’s banks and nearly toppled its financial system.

An examination of Mr. Cuomo’s tenure atop the agency shows he was quick to warn about Wall Street’s dangerous hunger for predatory subprime loans — generally more expensive mortgages sold to people with poor credit. He counseled caution when many influential players, including the Federal Reserve and Congress, resisted any suggestion that they slow the country’s stampede to home ownership.

He also called attention to a pernicious mortgage-broker incentive payment that drove up interest rates for borrowers — secretly, in many cases — and that helped put many home buyers into loans they later found they could not afford.

...

To a certain degree, the clock ran out on Mr. Cuomo’s reform ambitions; within months, George W. Bush was president and Mr. Cuomo was looking for work. And the worst lapses at HUD and at Fannie Mae, most experts and regulators now agree, came years after Mr. Cuomo departed, as Bush appointees set even higher and more perilous goals for personal home ownership.

...
​

It's a pretty typical right wing mindset to want to blame the working poor for this mess and ignore the policies that enabled it to happen and the pure greed of those who were milking the system.

 

[Dick Tuck]

This is as good a place as any for this little rant:

People and especially the left absouletely refuse to see the effect that human nature and personal decisions shape society and how it progresses as a whole.

OTOH, those on the right fail to see how collective decisions shape society and progresses it as a whole. Did central water and sewage treatment advance society?



An exaggeration and a strawman argument.



My attitudes and decisions didn't facilitate off shoring of traditional middle class jobs like software engineering. Right wing tax policy did.



More Limbaugh style bullshit. The converse is that only the well to do, and their children, are entitled to opportunities.

Second of all middle class now is not what middle class was then. Then you were middle class if you had ONE TV and it was in color. Now middle class is a TV in every room with satelite or cable.

All you need is a hook up under that bridge if you've lost your job, your family, your home because of the bad dice roll that's always crooked toward the most wealthy.

The bottom line is still the bottom line. The upper class will remove your opportunities, and buy a right wing government to enable them, if that's what they see as putting more money in their pockets. They'll get the middle class to shoulder the lions share of the tax burden, and right wingers will screech cut taxes and lower the deficit.

Only a fool believes there's a level playing field. The rich will grant just enough social safety nets to protect them from armed insurrection, and the middle class can go pound sand if they find they can make more money by having their customer service centers in India.

Maybe it's a more fundamental problem. Like you don't understand the definition of words. Like the word opportunity for example. You seem to see opportunity as an end point, rather than a starting point. Everyone has the opportunity to rich. Having said opportunity does not mean everyone WILL be rich. Opportunity is just another way of identifying possible outcomes. The outcome that actually take place is entirely up to you.

Maybe it's you who has the fundamental problem with comprehension. I know exactly what opportunity means, and one would have to be a complete fool to believe that it's available to all.

Your own words prove my point that more and more people in today's society refuse to hold themselves responsible for their outcomes. A better way to say it would be they refuse to acknowledge the opportunities they did NOT pursue. And then you have the nerve to rant about why things are the way they are when answer number one for that is starring you in the mirror.

People's bitching about outcomes is totally different than whether there's any sort of equitable meritocracy or fairness in providing opportunity. Stop moving the goal posts.

 

[California Girl]

My position is you're exaggerating and diverting blame. You're bitching about nickels and dimes, when anyone with a brain understands that chopping down the fire wall in investment banking and allowing them to create investment instruments, like CDS, was a primary cause of the current economy. If I were to pick a scapegoat, who I believe most responsible, it would be Phil Graham, the tea bag hero.

I'm exaggerating, Really????? How????? Nickels and dimes?????

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/24/nyregion/24hud.html

Yeah, nickels and dimes. If what you claim is correct, why did Bush push his "ownership society" initiative, and loosen the requirements on Freddie and Fannie. Nope, you need to think outside of your partisan box, and determine what Phil Graham's deregulation did. It essentially allowed investment banks into the mortgage industry, with zero oversight.

It was the Dems who took the reins off F&F.

It was the Dems who pushed for the banks to loan to people who couldn't afford it.

Idiot.

 

[Dick Tuck]

I'm exaggerating, Really????? How????? Nickels and dimes?????

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/24/nyregion/24hud.html

Yeah, nickels and dimes. If what you claim is correct, why did Bush push his "ownership society" initiative, and loosen the requirements on Freddie and Fannie. Nope, you need to think outside of your partisan box, and determine what Phil Graham's deregulation did. It essentially allowed investment banks into the mortgage industry, with zero oversight.

It was the Dems who took the reins off F&F.

It was the Dems who pushed for the banks to loan to people who couldn't afford it.

Idiot.

Sorry liar, but it was Bush's "ownership society" nonsense which pushed things over the top.

 

[bigrebnc1775]

This is a glaring example of why the GOP/Reagan concepts of trickle down economics do not work. The idea that cutting taxes on the wealthy will result in more jobs and a rising tide for all Americans has been a farce.

In reality, the wealthy has kept the additional money and sent jobs overseas.

The standard of living for the middle class is disappearing and we continue to reward the wealthy for it

The union members and government workers would dispute that? It is because of the rich that there is enough capital to sustain a middle-class! It will soon all be worse, then you can feel successful.

You couldn't be any more wrong.

It is because of the strong middle class that we have so many wealthy

Do you work for a person who is middle class or is he rich?

 

[bigrebnc1775]

Unfortunately, this rhetoric is not true. Mr. Obama's economic policy is following not what has been proven to work but liberal ideology.

Peter Ferrara Says Barack Obama's Economic Policy, Guided By Liberal Ideology, Is Impeding Recovery - WSJ.com

 

[Care4all]

I'm exaggerating, Really????? How????? Nickels and dimes?????

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/24/nyregion/24hud.html

Yeah, nickels and dimes. If what you claim is correct, why did Bush push his "ownership society" initiative, and loosen the requirements on Freddie and Fannie. Nope, you need to think outside of your partisan box, and determine what Phil Graham's deregulation did. It essentially allowed investment banks into the mortgage industry, with zero oversight.

It was the Dems who took the reins off F&F.

It was the Dems who pushed for the banks to loan to people who couldn't afford it.

Idiot.

uhhhh, no CG, it wasn't.

 

[Dick Tuck]

Unfortunately, this rhetoric is not true. Mr. Obama's economic policy is following not what has been proven to work but liberal ideology.

Peter Ferrara Says Barack Obama's Economic Policy, Guided By Liberal Ideology, Is Impeding Recovery - WSJ.com

If Goebbels were alive today, he'd be writing for the Wall Street Journal opinion page.

 

[California Girl]

Yeah, nickels and dimes. If what you claim is correct, why did Bush push his "ownership society" initiative, and loosen the requirements on Freddie and Fannie. Nope, you need to think outside of your partisan box, and determine what Phil Graham's deregulation did. It essentially allowed investment banks into the mortgage industry, with zero oversight.

It was the Dems who took the reins off F&F.

It was the Dems who pushed for the banks to loan to people who couldn't afford it.

Idiot.

Sorry liar, but it was Bush's "ownership society" nonsense which pushed things over the top.

Bullshit. Glib, halfassed comments about one man being responsible are the very height of stupidity.

 

[Dick Tuck]

It was the Dems who took the reins off F&F.

It was the Dems who pushed for the banks to loan to people who couldn't afford it.

Idiot.

Sorry liar, but it was Bush's "ownership society" nonsense which pushed things over the top.

Bullshit. Glib, halfassed comments about one man being responsible are the very height of stupidity.

Glib? Were you in a coma when Bush was hyping his "ownership society", or are you just too stone stupid to know what he was talking about?

 

[midcan5]

Jeez, do any of the free market rich worshippers know any rich or well to do people? The ones we know create few jobs, they often have high level jobs or simply a wonderful inheritance of a business or just numerous assets. I know a few who have done well in the information age, but even they create few jobs. It is demand and opportunity that creates jobs. If you look at the golden age of economics in America, it was the manufacturing of durable goods and the demands created after WWII and the Great Depression as America expanded into the modern age. It was also importantly the GI Bill - education - which I even used to move up that food chain. America then was the manufacturing giant in the world, admired for its accomplishments at home and also for its help overseas rebuilding. That changed and today corporations buy and build overseas. Look at any major corporation and where their support desk is, where manufacturing is done, it has nothing to do with taxes as taxes were the highest during the golden age.


"Many conservatives and libertarians defend the current levels of income inequality on the basis of merit. They claim the rich got rich because they worked harder, longer or smarter than the rest. However, researchers have conducted a vast number of empirical studies on what factors contribute to success, and in what proportion. A classic example of one of these studies is the 1972 book Inequality, by Christopher Jencks. (1) And these studies show that the meritocrat's position is not just arguably wrong, but clearly wrong." The rich get rich because of their merit.


"On moral grounds, then, we could argue for a flat income tax of 90 percent to return that wealth to its real owners. In the United States, even a flat tax of 70 percent would support all governmental programs (about half the total tax) and allow payment, with the remainder, of a patrimony of about $8,000 per annum per inhabitant, or $25,000 for a family of three. This would generously leave with the original recipients of the income about three times what, according to my rough guess, they had earned." UBI and the Flat Tax

 

[Intense]

When the federal government announced two months ago that it would prop up mortgage buyers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, CRP looked at how much money members of Congress had collected since 1989 from the companies. On Sunday the government completely took over the two government-sponsored enterprises, and we've returned to our data to bring you the updates, this time providing a list of all 354 lawmakers who have gotten money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (in July we posted the top 25). These totals are based on data released electronically from the FEC on Sept. 2 and include contributions to lawmakers' leadership PACs and candidate committees from the floundering companies' PACs and employees. Current members of Congress have received a total of $4.8 million from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, with Democrats collecting 57 percent of that. This week we also wrote about how much money lawmakers had invested of their own money in the companies last year--a total of up to $1.7 million.

All Recipients of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Campaign Contributions, 1989-2008

Update: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Invest in Lawmakers - OpenSecrets Blog | OpenSecrets

 

[georgephillip]

"There’s a great WSJ blog called "The Wealth Report" by Robert Frank, who wrote an excellent book called "Richistan" in which he makes a case that the world’s wealthy have essentially formed a shadow (let’s call it virtual as it sounds nicer) nation 'where the top 1% control $17T in wealth, have their own health care system (concierge doctors), travel system (private jets, destination clubs) and language. (”Who’s your household manager?')."

"As this chart shows, the US is cranking out multimillionaires at a record pace with super-rich (more than $10M) households doubling in the past decade.

"What’s scary is that doubling the amount of people who have more than $10M per household (from 300K to 600K) means there’s $3,000,000,000,000 less available for the other 98% of the of the households as MONEY IS A COMMODITY and can only be possessed by one person OR another."

This has more to do with Republicans AND Democrats dependence on the richest 1% of Americans to fund their campaigns than it does with "merit."

FLUSH the DC TOILET in 2010.

The Dooh Nibor Economy

 

[Intense]

Jeez, do any of the free market rich worshippers know any rich or well to do people? The ones we know create few jobs, they often have high level jobs or simply a wonderful inheritance of a business or just numerous assets. I know a few who have done well in the information age, but even they create few jobs. It is demand and opportunity that creates jobs. If you look at the golden age of economics in America, it was the manufacturing of durable goods and the demands created after WWII and the Great Depression as America expanded into the modern age. It was also importantly the GI Bill - education - which I even used to move up that food chain. America then was the manufacturing giant in the world, admired for its accomplishments at home and also for its help overseas rebuilding. That changed and today corporations buy and build overseas. Look at any major corporation and where their support desk is, where manufacturing is done, it has nothing to do with taxes as taxes were the highest during the golden age.


"Many conservatives and libertarians defend the current levels of income inequality on the basis of merit. They claim the rich got rich because they worked harder, longer or smarter than the rest. However, researchers have conducted a vast number of empirical studies on what factors contribute to success, and in what proportion. A classic example of one of these studies is the 1972 book Inequality, by Christopher Jencks. (1) And these studies show that the meritocrat's position is not just arguably wrong, but clearly wrong." The rich get rich because of their merit.


"On moral grounds, then, we could argue for a flat income tax of 90 percent to return that wealth to its real owners. In the United States, even a flat tax of 70 percent would support all governmental programs (about half the total tax) and allow payment, with the remainder, of a patrimony of about $8,000 per annum per inhabitant, or $25,000 for a family of three. This would generously leave with the original recipients of the income about three times what, according to my rough guess, they had earned." UBI and the Flat Tax

You are so right Comrade. We need to return all property to the State which is the sole purpose of our being. All Glory to the State. The audacity of some to dream or envision, to resist conformity, which is the obligation of all Proletarians. Achievement is evil, unless the State can take credit for it. I see it all so clearly now. Collectivism is the only truth. If one suffers we must all suffer. Is one is sick or diseased, it is unfair that the rest of us do not suffer in the same way, we should all be infected, how else would it be fair and equal. If someone's first born is murdered, all first born should be murdered. I really like this logic, I see the pattern. It all makes sense now. Private Property is an offense to the forces of creation and must be surrendered to the will of the State, which is the natural way of things. The Natural Order, if you will. We start with the elimination of Property, then we can eliminate all of the other tools of dissent. Reason, Will, Question? I love this pattern. May I suggest a New National Anthem?????

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjuBLgxEkUM]YouTube - Leonard Cohen - First We Take Manhattan[/ame]

 

[Intense]

"There’s a great WSJ blog called "The Wealth Report" by Robert Frank, who wrote an excellent book called "Richistan" in which he makes a case that the world’s wealthy have essentially formed a shadow (let’s call it virtual as it sounds nicer) nation 'where the top 1% control $17T in wealth, have their own health care system (concierge doctors), travel system (private jets, destination clubs) and language. (”Who’s your household manager?')."

"As this chart shows, the US is cranking out multimillionaires at a record pace with super-rich (more than $10M) households doubling in the past decade.

"What’s scary is that doubling the amount of people who have more than $10M per household (from 300K to 600K) means there’s $3,000,000,000,000 less available for the other 98% of the of the households as MONEY IS A COMMODITY and can only be possessed by one person OR another."

This has more to do with Republicans AND Democrats dependence on the richest 1% of Americans to fund their campaigns than it does with "merit."

FLUSH the DC TOILET in 2010.

The Dooh Nibor Economy

Think Oligarchy State, and where Government has failed to protect us from two major threats to our well being, Itself, and the Conglomerates it is in partnership with.

 

[georgephillip]

For thousands of years before anyone coined the word "socialism" the prime function of ALL governments was to socialize cost and privatize profit.

GE and the Pentagon continue this proud tradition.

 

[Intense]

For thousands of years before anyone coined the word "socialism" the prime function of ALL governments was to socialize cost and privatize profit.

GE and the Pentagon continue this proud tradition.

Yeah, GE is one of my favorite too.

 

[DiamondDave]

The forcing comes from those on the left who think others should be forced to subsidize your want to go to college

You can work your way thru.. most just do not choose the hard road it takes to do so...

You could "work your way through" 100K to get an engineering degree? How many people can do that? Very few (you'd have to be already rich). C'mon, stop being so stupid.

You want it, you'll work your way through it... it is your CHOICE to go to a 25K a year school... if it's not a wise CHOICE, maybe community college for 2 years before the 4 year school.. maybe part time while you work in the mail room of a corporation that offers tuition reimbursement as an employment benefit... maybe you work harder and earn a scholarship.. maybe you work with organizations like the Lions club to obtain a charitable scholarship... maybe you work 60 hours as a stripper to take 2 classes a semester... maybe you hold off college for a couple of years while you save up 10K to start... maybe you join the military for the college fund and GI Bill... you CAN indeed work your way through it... but it is asshats like you who would rather whine and put the effort toward that, than put the effort toward doing what you have to do...

Un-*******-believable