How Unequal Can America Get Before We Snap?

[FanthatSpark]

Another good article 'for the 99%
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/bernie-sanders-donald-trump-taxes-214906

 

[amanuensis63]

So this professor is basically telling the poor that it's okay to be envious.

Or perhaps Reich actually knows some history! Extremes of economic disparity usually end VERY BADLY for both the extremely wealthy and the society in general.

Surely you have heard of the French Revolution. That's just one example.

Within the US itself we had the excesses of the Gilded Age and the pain of the Progressive era. How many people had to die in poverty and unsafe working conditions and later in labor uprisings, gunned down by the Pinkertons, before we had a stable society again?

This video is disgusting. Rather figuring out and teaching people to morally not be envious, he teaches people their envy is correct.

And you think the folks at the very tippy top got all their money through purely moral means? LOL!

 

[amanuensis63]

Expect, functioning under the premise of the lecture, everyone is getting rich, your neighbor is just getting even more richer, faster.

Middle class wages have stagnated for 30 years. Lowest income wages now are less than they were decades ago. The ONLY people who are getting wealthier are the top.

So it's not that you get a pay cut, or you get run out of business,
It's that you get a 1 dollar raise, while your neighbor gets a 10 dollar raise.
It's not that you get run out of business, it's that your business grows at 2% while your neighbor grows at 20%.

Cry me a river.

Actually it isn't quite that simple. Today there is NO WAY that a family of 4 could be supported by one middle class income. It didn't used to be that way.

The GDP of the USA and it's overall productivity have actually increased over the last 30-40 years. That means the money is flowing somewhere. Just not to the people that are responsible for the increase.

Perhaps I am "old fashioned" but I still think of "fairness" as something Americans value at their core. Apparently I am out of step with today's Americans.

 

[Ernest Robinson]

Back in 2005 Robert Reich, a visiting professor at the UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy and former U.S. Secretary of Labor talked about the inequality of income, wealth and opportunity in the United States and asked his audience to speculate on what will happen if these trends continue.

Once people are able to discover their purpose in life, they'd come to the realization that they do not need to wait for Government or cry foul of inequality and any form. But they'd trust God who created them to guide them in using their potentials and talents for that purpose. <Staff Edit>

 

[Ajax 777]

NM

 

[amanuensis63]

Once people are able to discover their purpose in life, they'd come to the realization that they do not need to wait for Government or cry foul of inequality and any form.

You are right. The people could do it the old-fashioned way. Like they did it in the French Revolution. That's better than big bad government getting involved isn't it?

[ But they'd trust God who created them to guide them in using their potentials and talents for that purpose. www.ernestisorobinson.com.

Actually there are people like Robert Reich who are doing just that! They are telling us that we can ask for change. Just as our forefathers did at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. We can demand a better life and get it. It's ours to have.

There are labor leaders who are telling us we can have our fair share of the pie.

God helps those who help themselves as they say.

Remember; regular folks aren't asking for something better than the wealthy have. The regular folks are only asking for a more fair share of the benefits.

There's not evil in this quest.[/QUOTE]

 

[ChristJudgeOfAll]

Middle class wages have stagnated for 30 years. Lowest income wages now are less than they were decades ago. The ONLY people who are getting wealthier are the top.

Actually it isn't quite that simple. Today there is NO WAY that a family of 4 could be supported by one middle class income. It didn't used to be that way.

The GDP of the USA and it's overall productivity have actually increased over the last 30-40 years. That means the money is flowing somewhere. Just not to the people that are responsible for the increase.

Perhaps I am "old fashioned" but I still think of "fairness" as something Americans value at their core. Apparently I am out of step with today's Americans.

Because a family of four today, demand so much more.
There weren't cell phone bills, cable bills, internet bills, tablets, pcs, and other luxury items eating up our income. You can definitely and easily support a family of 4 on one income if you lived the same lifetyle people lived in the 1960s and earlier.

 

[toastface_grillah]

Once people are able to discover their purpose in life, they'd come to the realization that they do not need to wait for Government or cry foul of inequality and any form. But they'd trust God who created them to guide them in using their potentials and talents for that purpose. www.ernestisorobinson.com.

LOL Care to expand on this?

 

[rambot]

In lieu of a "what's wrong with economic disparity" I am wondering "What is right with a disappearing middle class?

 

[amanuensis63]

Because a family of four today, demand so much more.
There weren't cell phone bills, cable bills, internet bills, tablets, pcs, and other luxury items eating up our income. You can definitely and easily support a family of 4 on one income if you lived the same lifetyle people lived in the 1960s and earlier.

so you just opted to ignore the fact that middle class income has stagnated over the last 30 years despite growth in American productivity and massive increases in income by the top 1%?

That not very important?

 

[variant]

so you just opted to ignore the fact that middle class income has stagnated over the last 30 years despite growth in American productivity and massive increases in income by the top 1%?

That not very important?

Stagnant wages are apparently meaningless in economic calculus, it's all about people spending their money on cell phones.

It's apparently all a massive coincidence that income inequality spikes before every massive collapse.

 

[Received]

People have already snapped. The left blame the rich and lax regulation and taxation (typically without noting that the problem is basically related to globalization), but the right blame not enough deregulation and taxation and displace their anger onto the very ideology that would make things easier for them, all in the name of "freedom", the propaganda of conservative media. Reich hits this point in his latest book. The right will continue to get more and more angry as they (the middle class) feel more and more pressure from this "big squeeze" of productivity at lower and lower income gains, and this anger will continue to grow in supporting policies which help the very wolves that are threatening them. If you're a conservative oligarch, the system works marvelously. Everyone in the low and middle classes is feeling the pressure, but only one political tendency is correctly labeling the problem, whereas the other is helping the oligarchs saw off the very branch they're sitting on.

 

[HannahT]

Its simple, the higher paying jobs get even higher pay. Paying people more doesn't take money away from the rich, because they still have their money in the bank, but they won't be making as much money as they used to.

I was talking about the lack of trade type of jobs. I'm not worried about the rich - they will always be with us. Sadly, so will the poor.

Once again, you need opportunities for better paying jobs - too many of those jobs have left the country...and nothing replaced them. Asking retail and fast food to pay $15/hr is a temporary fix, but what about the long run?

 

[Received]

I was talking about the lack of trade type of jobs. I'm not worried about the rich - they will always be with us. Sadly, so will the poor.

Once again, you need opportunities for better paying jobs - too many of those jobs have left the country...and nothing replaced them. Asking retail and fast food to pay $15/hr is a temporary fix, but what about the long run?

Increasing the minimum wage isn't a temporary fix. It would increase aggregate demand because workers who have these minimum wage jobs now have more money which they can spend and so stimulate the economy, creating more jobs, more money, etc.

 

[HannahT]

I see so you want to regulate these people to fast food and retail, because to bring back trade jobs that pay even more is a bad thing?

Those fast food and retail jobs get maybe .15 raise annually, and it won't keep up with rising prices. They also tend not to have the benefits that trade jobs have as well.

Depending on the area in which you live? Some areas you may be okay, but in others its still not enough to live on.

Why is the idea of bring back trade so awful to people...I don't get it.

 

[morse86]

What is unequality? Who owes you a job? Can we fix this by depositing $1 billion dollars in everyones bank account? What creates poverty?

These are real questions that the TV, the news, the media, the universities, the actors, and ultimately the masses will not ask.

 

[The Antigrrrl]

I see so you want to regulate these people to fast food and retail, because to bring back trade jobs that pay even more is a bad thing?

Those fast food and retail jobs get maybe .15 raise annually, and it won't keep up with rising prices. They also tend not to have the benefits that trade jobs have as well.

Depending on the area in which you live? Some areas you may be okay, but in others its still not enough to live on.

Why is the idea of bring back trade so awful to people...I don't get it.

Considering all the "occupiers" with college degrees, how far in debt they are, and how market wise they are completely useless, why would anyone NOT guide their kids towards a trade? I would so much rather see my kid with a plumbers license than with a liberal arts degree.

How is business in Seattle lately?

 

[OldWiseGuy]

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. That's just the way it is. Of course the individual can usually prosper no matter how poor he starts out. All it takes is a good plan and the courage to work the plan. A little luck doesn't hurt either.

 

[alsughasoughaiuyfygh]

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[super animator]

When the First Lady says, "Let them eat cake" then (beep) will hit the fan.

Fun fact, that quote is never said by the queen during the revolution.