danielpalos
Diamond Member
- Banned
- #61
A wall of text with nothing but right wing propaganda.Thomas Jefferson famously said "But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
I have no doubt that he was wise enough to include his neighbor's earnings in that sentiment.
Let us assume, arguendo, that "income inequality" is a fact.
So what?
Is there evidence that the "income inequality" farrago is simply one more Liberal tale of victimology....aimed at proving that only vaunted 'Big Government" can save us??
Is it simply one more attempt by the Democrats to latch on to greed and envy of human nature, and turn it into votes and power?
Could be?
1. The most common moral arguments for and against inequality rest on claims about its consequences... If these claims cannot be supported with evidence, skeptics will find the moral arguments unconvincing. If the claims about consequences are actually wrong, the moral arguments are also wrong.
2. ...Christopher S. Jencks..... a renowned professor of social policy at Harvard, abandoned his 10-year-old project of writing a book about the consequences of inequality on the nations health and opportunity, on its politics and crime.
Why? ... [because] specific evidence about inequalitys effects has been hard to find.
3. .... Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz argues that we are paying a high price for the inequality that is increasingly scarring our economy... rising inequality is putting a brake on growth and promoting economic instability."
a. .... President Obamas chief economic adviser, Alan B. Krueger, ... showed that in countries with wider income gaps the children of poor parents were more likely to grow up to be poor adults.
b. ... British epidemiologists Kate E. Pickett and Richard G. Wilkinson .... say that severe inequality undermines social bonds and dashes the health of millions. It contributes to mental illness. It increases obesity and teenage pregnancy. It fosters crime. It lowers life expectancy. These ills dont affect just the poor. They affect everybody.
4. But does the data really back this up? One problem with these analyses is that they are based on correlations between levels of inequality and variables like life expectancy or the odds of poor children climbing the income ladder. But such correlations cant prove inequality causes other social ills. They cant disentangle inequality from the myriad things pushing American society this way and that.
5. People that worry about inequality for normative reasons have been very quick to jump on plausible hypothesis and a little bit of evidence to make sweeping conclusions about its consequences,..."
a. To avoid misleading correlations and better isolate inequalitys impact, Mr. Kenworthy studied its evolution over time, comparing how changes in income concentration across the worlds industrialized nations related to changes in a whole set of social and economic outcomes, from growth and employment to health and educational attainment.
b. My tests suggest it seems to be a small player in the overall story.... no meaningful impact of inequality on growth one way or the other.... found no significant relationship between increasing inequality and life expectancy, infant mortality or college graduation rates,..."
Income Equality: A Search for Consequences
And interesting, informative analysis found....surprisingly, in the New York Time!
One finds oneself thinking....how is it that the official organ of Progressive thought is puncturing a prevalent Leftist talking point....
...well, there is more in the article.
Stay tuned....I'll provide it......'I'll report, you decide.'
But last year you tried to blame Obama for the rising gap between the rich and rest of us. And it does matter if the rich get richer and we don't keep up with inflation.
Lets look at Trump's new tax cut bill.
As a result, the Tax Policy Center predicts that in 2027, the average tax cut would amount to $160, or just a 0.2 percent income bump.
This would mean a tiny tax bump for many lower- and middle-class households — the average $50,000 to $75,000 — earning household would have a tax bill that is $30 higher than today. The average household earning more than $1 million would get a cut of more than $23,000.
CHARTS: See How Much Of GOP Tax Cuts Will Go To The Middle Class
So Republicans shouldn't be surprised the rich are getting richer and the middle class is getting poorer. Don't blame Obama when it's policies like this that are creating this gap.
So here the middle class are basically staying the same but the rich just got a lot richer. That's Trump breaking a campaign promise but you don't care right?
Dunces like you have some socialist fallacy embedded, that government has some role in apportioning income.
Couldn't be less American.
See if this helps:
What if everyone starts off with the same amount of money?
“…. by the end of the first year, some people will have more than others. Guaranteed. Some people, you see, will be careful with what they have. Others won’t. Some people will gamble, others will save. Some will spend lavishly, others will be frugal.
Besides that, some people simply have more of the kind of wealth that can’t be redistributed. Intelligence; education; ambition. Drive, as opposed to: aw, we’re gonna get what we’re gonna get anyway, so let’s just stay on the couch and watch TV. Some people will put a little giddy-up in their get-alongs, and will find ways to improve their own lives.
Some of that will be “unfair,” because some people have more and better resources to tap. Intelligence; talent; family. Even accounting for such differences, though: some people will turn what they have into more, while others will not. Therefore, by the end of the very first year (not to mention the first five or ten) “haves” and “have-nots” will appear.
I know what you’re thinking. Crap. I thought we had it this time. Fairness! And this return to economic inequity will happen, I daresay, even under the strictest Communist policies.
I’ll come back to that.
After ten, twenty, thirty years, those discrepancies will widen. A middle class will form. An upper economic class, and a lower economic class. These classes will not be dead ends: people will be able to move from one to another and back again. But they’ll reappear, despite the original, radical redistribution of wealth.
So: let’s take this exercise further. Rather than a one-time redistribution of wealth, let’s redistribute every year. Every April 23 – Michael Moore’s birthday – all wealth is redistributed. All wages set by Central Command. Everyone is as equal as it’s possible to make them. Even individual advantages are nullified.
Not really, but we’ll come back to that, too.
Obviously, that system does away with any incentive to create. It removes any incentive to save; to be frugal; to work hard. Because no matter what you do, what you get is predetermined.
And yet, by April 22 of the following year, some people will still have more than others. And they’ll keep it.
How can that be? Simple. Even state-enforced economic “equality” did not – cannot – make everyone “equal.” It can only change the attributes that are most important to getting ahead.
Sucking up to your superiors becomes more important than working hard. Figuring out which bureaucrats can do the most for you, and ingratiating yourself to them.
Using the power of government to get you ahead, instead of creating, making, building, selling. Improving technical or academic skills? What for? Improving political skills. That’s what makes a difference.
You may recognize a little of our current system there. More and more, becoming a “have” in our society requires entering the bureaucracy, or getting the bureaucracy on your side.
Even the hard working entrepreneurs and innovators among us increasingly need the bureaucracy’s help. Vast mazes of regulations give bureaucracies vast power over both you and your competitors. Government can make or break an industry. Make or break a company. It can increase the cost of entry beyond plausibility, or it can make that cost go away.
In the free market, wealth comes from work. The closer we move toward socialism, the more wealth comes from power. That’s the difference. The similarity: wealth still exists in relatively few hands.”
What if we just gave everybody the same amount of wealth? | John Hawkins' Right Wing News
Wise up, you dope.
Income inequality why is we have a warfare State and not a welfare State.
We have a Commerce Clause and a Second Amendment. End our alleged wars on crime, drugs, and terror to end our income tax.