Income equality bull shit.

[hazlnut]

It's an election year and we will be hearing a lot if bull shit. No bigger pile of crap than "income equality" or lack thereof.

While we should have equality of opportunity (and we do), no one has a right to equality of outcome. The outcome of your opportunity is entirely up to you.

The level of ignorance displayed in that one sentence is astounding.

 

[Mustang]

Then you agree, the problem is government, not capitalism.

It's neither government nor capitalism, per se. It's the way the system is currently structured and operating. What's happened is that corporations have found a way to seek and gain advantage and preferential treatment. The politicians and our system of gov't have been compromised as a result. What needs to happen is the the laws and regulations need to be updated AND enforced to put an end to the current system of financing political campaigns.

But the people in power in gov't, and the people who run our most powerful special interests who benefit from the current system have been and will continue to block any changes. That's why people need to vote incumbents out of office, regardless of party affiliation. Until that's done, and until the single greatest determining factor on who wins an election is no longer who raises and spends the most money (including soft money), the system will continue to be corrupt. What that means is that decisions will continue to be made not based on what's best for the country as a whole or what's best for a majority of the people, but what's best for the people who can afford to pay to get what they want.

Stop reversing cause and effect.

The government has found a way to extort money from corporations by granting favors.

The "government" isn't doing anything in this regard. We're talking about individuals. Whether you want to place the blame on politicians with their hands out, or special interests with envelopes of cash at the ready, the end result is the same. But there would be no corruption without money, and there would be no undermining of our system of government without candidates (and legislators, since incumbents are favored to win reelection once in office) who are willing to sell their votes for the money to finance their campaigns once they win.

As far as extorting money is concerned, it was Tom DeLay who ramped up the whole pay-to-play way that Washington works by actually dictating to K Street who they had to hire (Republicans) and refusing to work on issues on their behalf until they gave in to his demands and made contributions to his causes. He earned his nickname, the Hammer.

 

[impalero]

motivated, and quite insincere.

The solution to government created problems is not more government.

Apparently, many of the rich would beg to differ based on the money they spend on politicians.

Lobbying Spending Database | OpenSecrets

Misc Business $5,815,757,543
Health $5,760,020,799
Finance/Insur/RealEst $5,738,003,937
Communic/Electronics $4,730,941,613
Energy/Nat Resource $4,268,300,046
Other $3,076,689,869
Transportation $2,947,569,032
Ideology/Single-Issue $1,894,591,537
Agribusiness $1,736,175,743
Defense $1,654,187,912
Construction $631,315,233
Labor $573,322,887
Lawyers & Lobbyists $408,016,748

Why are they spending more and more money every year on politicians via bribes, lobbying, superpacs and so on if Government is not the solution?

If they are trying to defend themselves, who are they defending themselves from?
The others trying to outspend them is the answer.

If you are a corporation or bank lobbying the government to give you favored state, THEN YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.

Some 95% of Americans do not have the political nor monetary power these fascists have that own our Government.

 

[IlarMeilyr]

It's an election year and we will be hearing a lot if bull shit. No bigger pile of crap than "income equality" or lack thereof.

While we should have equality of opportunity (and we do), no one has a right to equality of outcome. The outcome of your opportunity is entirely up to you.

The level of ignorance displayed in that one sentence is astounding.

Actually that's true. Your ignorance, hazelmutt.

We may not have perfect equality of opportunity yet. But it is a right we have in law and seek to more fully effect in everyday life.

However, there is absolutely NO corresponding "right" TO EQUALITY OF OUTCOME.

And let's get real. It is the latter which you modern American liberals really "demand," regardless of how profoundly absurd you are in the process of making such demands.

 

[Luddly Neddite]

 

[impalero]

And now - after 30 years of expanding consumer debt - we're fucked, because our only policy tool, tax breaks for the wealthy, won't change the fact that no jobs will be added until consumers can buy what is produced. You can call this problem whatever you want, but the it isn't about equality. It's about a system which doesn't pay its workers enough to buy what they produce. It's counter to Henry Ford's logic of paying the worker more so he can buy the cars he makes - otherwise, we have to feed the worker credit in order to buy the car . . . and that always ends badly, as we are now learning.

In other words. We swallowed poison in 1980.

Excellent Post and just wanted to comment on the bolded part.

The defenders of "Free Trade" with China will often tout that China is going through their own industrial revolution so it is all good.

The thing is, in Henry Ford's time, the worker and employers were also the consumers of the products they made. They made enough to buy the products.

In China, the rest of the world is the consumer and the Chinese worker that was booted off his land and sent to the cities to work in the factories making a dollar a day would not be able to afford the things they are making like an IPOD, for example.

The leeches exploit the cheap labor, piss and shit in their rivers, give the China man a dollar and sell the products to others for $200 and pocket their profits all with the blessing of the Chinese Communist Government.

 

[Londoner]

Oh yeah dumbfuck....FOXNews is to blame.

FYI...it is in a company's best interest to pay their employees the wage they deserve to keep them happy and working hard for the company unless they have them in a slave situation like in China or India.

I don't recall McDonalds in NYC being a slave situation, please tell. Oh, nobody is forcing them to live in NYC and work at McDs....

I think you are missing the point. This isn't about a single employer or a single job not paying enough. It's about whether workers in the aggregate have the purchasing power to drive economic growth. (Again, if people don't go into Main Street stores or suburban shopping malls and buy stuff, those businesses die. And when they die, workers are laid off and more consumers are pulled out of the economy - which means other businesses die. This is why both sides of the political aisle have applied policy tools to the supply and[i/] demand side of the equation. It's starting to look like you've never heard of those policies, which makes you over-reliant on rightwing bumper stickers).

In broader terms I was talking about a crisis that sometimes occurs when the incentive for lower operating costs (which reduces the total compensation of workers) has the unintended effect of lowering purchasing power, which stagnates growth (as people lose the ability soak up what the supplier produces). I'm not saying anything new here. Capitalism has gone through many recessionary cycles because of overproduction, i.e., too many goods, not enough consumers. Rightwing icon and top economic advisor to Ronald Reagan, Milton Friedman, spilled a lot of ink on this. It's partly why Reagan added more government workers than any president before or since his presidency: because he wanted more consumers on Main Street so that our small businesses could retain and grow jobs. Study what Reagan's massive defense spending did to Orange and San Diego Counties, specifically the number of government workers (i.e., consumers) he put into those economies. [It's one thing to disagree with the stimulative effect Reagan achieved through Military Keynesianism; but it's quite another to not understand the argument because your economic theory comes from Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, O'Reilly, Coulter, Savage, Levine and any number of rightwing blogs. Study how WWII War Manufacturing provided the needed stimulus to end the Great Depression. Government put everybody to work, and then capital naturally flowed into the system to innovate and add jobs in order to soak up all the extra spending money in middle class wallets]

Dude, this is basic shit.

From 1935-1975 the government applied more demand-side policies (in addition to supply side polices). This means that we passed labor policies that helped keep wages higher than places like China; but we also passed trade policies that kept jobs from going to China (or Taiwan, Mexico, etc). Additionally, we used monetary policy to stimulate consumer spending during recessionary cycles so that Main Street had enough consumers to keep from having to lay people off, which layoffs pulls more consumers out of the economy, which leads to more layoffs (which devolves into a toxic deflationary cycle).

By the late 70's however, the demand side policies had been over-cooked, which lead to terrible inflation (and later stagflation). This opened the door for Reagan, who said we needed to get rid of the large policy apparatus we had long used to strengthen demand. He said those policies no longer worked, and to some extend I think he was right. But he threw out the baby with the bath water. He said we only needed to take care of suppliers (using tax and regulatory reform along with trade liberalization, which made it easier for our capitalists to move production to cheaper labor markets in China). We bought into it, and our capitalists shifted production to freedom hating nations in Asia and the global south. [You get this right? Nike owners/investors make higher profits when their sneaks are made in Taiwanese sweatshops by oppressed workers making $4/day and living beneath brutal dictators. Reagan and all the presidents after him made it easier for our corporations to move production to freedom hating nations. This had the effect of lowering American wages because American labor markets now had to compete with exploited workers in the third world for jobs. As a result of this shift in production to places like China, American workers now have fewer jobs, insufficient wages, slashed benefits and much less spending money, which means they lack the purchasing power Main Street needs to drive domestic job growth. As a result of this crisis of demand (which has been brewing since the 80s), we have aggressively expanded the credit (debt) system to keep our economy afloat. [Research how much debt the typical American family had in the 40s-70s, and compare it to the 80s-present. Do some actual research] Our great post-Carter credit expansion worked like a charm in the 80s-90s, but it finally collapsed under a mountain of consumer debt, which was further aggravated as people lost the value of their largest asset, their home. Now there simply are not enough solvent consumers to justify ramping up production or adding jobs. Just as we over-cooked demand-side policies in the 70s, we have now over-cooked supply-side policies - but we lack the policy tools to address it because the supply siders have formed an immovable special interest layer over our political and media machinery (much like the Keynesians in the postwar years)]

But here is my point. Your bumper stickers about socialism don't explain any of the actual problems.

Before you get angry, please consider this: I'm just trying to help you focus on both sides of the policy debate (supply side policies v. demand side policies) so you don't have to keep peddling over-simplified garbage to low-information voters.

 

[impalero]

It's neither government nor capitalism, per se. It's the way the system is currently structured and operating. What's happened is that corporations have found a way to seek and gain advantage and preferential treatment. The politicians and our system of gov't have been compromised as a result. What needs to happen is the the laws and regulations need to be updated AND enforced to put an end to the current system of financing political campaigns.

But the people in power in gov't, and the people who run our most powerful special interests who benefit from the current system have been and will continue to block any changes. That's why people need to vote incumbents out of office, regardless of party affiliation. Until that's done, and until the single greatest determining factor on who wins an election is no longer who raises and spends the most money (including soft money), the system will continue to be corrupt. What that means is that decisions will continue to be made not based on what's best for the country as a whole or what's best for a majority of the people, but what's best for the people who can afford to pay to get what they want.

Agreed, both parties are corrupt to the core serving their cronies over the best interests of this nation and goes entirely against the Preamble of the Constitution as well.

Income Inequality is normal in Capitalism, but the increasing income inequality is not because of capitalism but because of Fascists Neocon Globalists picking winners and losers.

 

[PredFan]

Money is Power

The more power you have, the more choices you have at your disposal to take advantage of opportunities as they arise.

The Bankers along with the Big Multinational Corporations that own both parties lobbied for the Foreign Economic Policies we have today with China, Mexico and so on in order to fatten their portfolios at this nations expense.


Top Contributors to Barack Obama | OpenSecrets

Top Contributors to Obama

Goldman Sachs $1,034,615
JPMorgan Chase & Co $847,895
Citigroup Inc $755,057
US Government $638,335
Skadden, Arps et al $554,439
US Dept of Justice $540,636
IBM Corp $534,470
UBS AG $534,166
General Electric $532,031
Morgan Stanley $528,182



Top Contributors to Mitt Romney | OpenSecrets

Top Contributors to Romney

Goldman Sachs $1,033,204
Bank of America $1,013,402
Morgan Stanley $911,305
JPMorgan Chase & Co $834,096
Wells Fargo $677,076
Credit Suisse Group $643,120
Citigroup Inc $511,199
Barclays $446,000
General Electric $332,875


The Multinational Corporations must love Communism because in Communist China, the average person does not have any Freedoms or Rights to fight back the poisoning of their rivers or slave labor they are subjected to.

In a Corporation, you have no rights, you do as your told.
Is it not ironic with Wall Street + Government + Big Corporations that are in bed together are turning this country into a Police State to serve them and they do not want to the citizens to have any freedoms or rights like Communistic China?

As a consequence, in a Rigged Global Economy spearheaded by the Banksters, American's wages on the open market have declined or remained stagnant.

If the wages had continued to rise with inflation, would we have had a housing bubble or healthcare crisis since those are things that cannot be sent to China?

Suffice to say, with declining incomes and rising house prices and rising medical costs, it was unsustainable and the market correction wanted to bring house prices and medical costs down.

We have a hundred years of data where the average house price to median income has been 2.5X until the bankers created their fraudulent derivative schemes and lobbied government to relax their lending standards.

The Banksters on Wall Street had a lot to lose though so they demanded a Bail Out from the Tax Payers and still continue to this day with QE Infinity and are keeping housing prices propped up.

That takes away more power from the average American since more of their income is going toward housing.


That brings us to the increase in income inequality. The Bankers, CEO's and elites welcomed "Free Trade" when there were profits to be made but
don't want to accept responsibility and take a cut in pay like every other American for their disastrous policies they passed off to their cronies in DC.

Instead, they have attacked everyone below them to pay for their mistakes and to take a cut in pay. Unions and Middle Class Americans come to mind.

Politicians in DC don't read the stuff anyways. They accept the bribe money then pass the bills it to see what is in it.

The Income Inequality comes not from Engineers and Doctors vs Middle and Lower Class Americans, but from Wall Street Investors and Bankers against everyone else.
The same Wall Street being propped up by Big Government for the last 30 years.

Who Rules America: An Investment Manager's View on the Top 1%
An Investment Manager's View on the Top 1%

The Upper Half of the Top 1%

Membership in this elite group is likely to come from being involved in some aspect of the financial services or banking industry, real estate development involved with those industries, or government contracting.

Some hard working and clever physicians and attorneys can acquire as much as $15M-$20M before retirement but they are rare. Those in the top 0.5% have incomes over $500k if working and a net worth over $1.8M if retired.

The higher we go up into the top 0.5% the more likely it is that their wealth is in some way tied to the investment industry and borrowed money than from personally selling goods or services or labor as do most in the bottom 99.5%.

They are much more likely to have built their net worth from stock options and capital gains in stocks and real estate and private business sales, not from income which is taxed at a much higher rate. These opportunities are largely unavailable to the bottom 99.5%.

Recently, I spoke with a younger client who retired from a major investment bank in her early thirties, net worth around $8M. We can estimate that she had to earn somewhere around twice that, or $14M-$16M, in order to keep $8M after taxes and live well along the way, an impressive accomplishment by such an early age.

Since I knew she held a critical view of investment banking, I asked if her colleagues talked about or understood how much damage was created in the broader economy from their activities. Her answer was that no one talks about it in public but almost all understood and were unbelievably cynical, hoping to exit the system when they became rich enough.

As it is now, the condition this country is in is because of the top rich elite, not the Middle and Lower Class American's since they do not have the political nor monetary power like these people do.
The answer is to BOOT the Bankers and Lobbyists out of DC and send them to Hell where they belong.

Bring back the power to the people of this country in local governments and local economies rather than concentrated at the top in DC.

The Preamble to the Constitution States:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Nowhere in the Constitution does it mention our country is supposed to be run for the shareholders and by the shareholders on Wall Street. The Big Banks are supposed to be a tool for the benefit of the entire nation, via loans and so on and instead the tool has become a means in itself to enrich the few at the expense to the many.

The Government is supposed to serve the best interest of ALL Citizens and they are not doing that.

Here is a list of the top Lobbyists and notice the power of the worker is near the bottom.


Lobbying Spending Database | OpenSecrets

Misc Business $5,815,757,543
Health $5,760,020,799
Finance/Insur/RealEst $5,738,003,937
Communic/Electronics $4,730,941,613
Energy/Nat Resource $4,268,300,046
Other $3,076,689,869
Transportation $2,947,569,032
Ideology/Single-Issue $1,894,591,537
Agribusiness $1,736,175,743
Defense $1,654,187,912
Construction $631,315,233
Labor $573,322,887
Lawyers & Lobbyists $408,016,748

None of that stops the average joe blow from obtaining wealth. It any if that were true, no
One would know who Steve Jobs or Bill Gates were.

 

[impalero]

Here's the Cliff Notes:

When suppliers don't have sufficient incentive to invest, because of punitive taxes/regulations, than they don't invest and the economy dies.

When workers don't make enough to consume, because of low wages/benefits and a host of other factors, than they don't buy enough and the economy dies.

FOX News bumper stickers about the evils of socialism and equality don't fix the above problems. Those bumper stickers were designed to agitate stupid people, so they would send the same morons back to Washington . . . so the current system and all its benefactors survive.

The funny thing about all this is, when the system crashes and it will if we stay on the course were on, the top elite will be blaming everyone below them that do not have the political and monetary power to buy politicians.

The market seeks a balance one way or the other and bank failures and business going bankrupt is part of that. When the government stepped in at the behest of their $$$cronies$$$, then government will be the next thing to fail instead of just some banks and corporations.

 

[PredFan]

It's an election year and we will be hearing a lot if bull shit. No bigger pile of crap than "income equality" or lack thereof.

While we should have equality of opportunity (and we do), no one has a right to equality of outcome. The outcome of your opportunity is entirely up to you.

The level of ignorance displayed in that one sentence is astounding.

 

[PredFan]

That is completely irrelevant. Go start your own thread and quit trying to derail mine.

 

[impalero]

None of that stops the average joe blow from obtaining wealth. It any if that were true, no
One would know who Steve Jobs or Bill Gates were.

So it seems your solution as a citizen of this country where it is your duty to address and change issues in your government is to ignore the corruption and cronyism and let the cockroaches at the top do as they please?

Sorry Charlie, I'll keep informing people and spreading the message because it is only a matter of time before enough people wake up and say enough. No More.

 

[Bombur]

My point is that there have always been rich and always been poor. I don't know if that is "natural" or not, but it is factual.

It is also true that the poor have always envied the rich and wanted to bring them down----------human nature is what it is no matter how "civilized" we claim to be.

the USA was the best hope to break that cycle and allow everyone an equal opportunity to become rich, or better off than his/her parents.

But liberalism has destroyed that ideal.

One of the best parts of America was that there was plenty of land. In Europe the vast majority of people had little to no chance of ever obtaining land and land was an incredibly important part of being able to earn a living and control your own destiny.

The industrial revolution and global trade also changed that equation significantly. This made access to demand a major consideration for nations and created the first major economic issue, mercantilism.

The argument over mercantilism is far more relevant to todays economies than the one over socialism.

Except that it really isn't.

Yes it is. Mercantilism is actually being used these days while socialism is just a boogey man politicians use to garner votes from the ignorant masses.

 

[Bombur]

I disagree, it is equality of opportunity, obviously I'm not going to list every type there is. Equality if opportunity would by definition be free of descrimination.

Certain types of discrimination yes, but not all.

Opportunity will always be based on money because providing opportunity to children will always be valued by parents.

Not in the least bit true. Many many people have gained wealth for themselves and started with nothing.

I am sorry but do you think you actually made a logical argument there? The fact you presented does not logically negate what I said but you acted like it did.

WTF?

 

[impalero]

None of that stops the average joe blow from obtaining wealth. It any if that were true, no
One would know who Steve Jobs or Bill Gates were.

We are not Communist China yet where the lower and middle class have no freedoms and rights, but the fascists (Wall Street + Government + Multinational Corporations) are getting us there.

 

[IlarMeilyr]

None of that stops the average joe blow from obtaining wealth. It any if that were true, no
One would know who Steve Jobs or Bill Gates were.

We are not Communist China yet where the lower and middle class have no freedoms and rights, but the fascists (Wall Street + Government + Multinational Corporations) are getting us there.

What a moronic post. According to impale-o, Wall Street + Government + Multinational Corporations somehow constitute "fascists."

Doesn't even know the meaning of words.

 

[impalero]

What a moronic post. According to impale-o, Wall Street + Government + Multinational Corporations somehow constitute "fascists."

Doesn't even know the meaning of words.

Fine. Call it whatever you like.
It is a fact that most of the policies passed in DC are Written by Bankers and Corporate Heads.

In a corporation, you have no rights or freedoms but just do as you are told.

That is what they want in this country where we do as we are told while they run the government to enrich themselves. Notice the constant loss of Freedoms and Rights and the ever increasing Police State?

All these policies benefit the crony elites running the show at the expense to everyone else in this country.

 

[Antares]

How much should the Pizza makers make doodle?

 

[PredFan]

None of that stops the average joe blow from obtaining wealth. It any if that were true, no
One would know who Steve Jobs or Bill Gates were.

So it seems your solution as a citizen of this country where it is your duty to address and change issues in your government is to ignore the corruption and cronyism and let the cockroaches at the top do as they please?

Sorry Charlie, I'll keep informing people and spreading the message because it is only a matter of time before enough people wake up and say enough. No More.

1. It is not my duty.
2. Corruption in government is not taking away opportunities.
3. Spread your message all you want to but it is irrelevant here.