Reply With Quote
How many "better paying jobs" are out there?
In my company we had over 1.25 million applicants, we hired 800.
It may be hard out there, but even in better times, people like to blame the rich instead of looking inward.
How many "better paying jobs" are out there?
In my company we had over 1.25 million applicants, we hired 800.
Why do you hate rich people and capitalism!!!
In a pollyanna rose colored glasses world where trickle down economics worked instead of rich people shoving tax breaks into their own pockets and hiring no one, this might work.
There exists a clear, distinguished relationship between income inequality and a society's overall quality of life (as measured by any of the objective measurement standards. The relationship follows one of my favorite graphs that applies to what seems like a countless number of situations:
Having too much EQUALITY will stunt economic growth, as it removes the incentive to achieve beyond the rest of the herd, since your compensation won't reflect your relative achievements.
On the flip side, having too much INEQUALITY will stunt economic growth. The best illustration is to imagine an economy where 1 person controls 99% of the wealth and the remaining 1% is controlled by the other 300 million people in the economy. That situation creates a Hegelian "master-slave" relationship that results in economic breakdown fairly quickly.
The question is - where does the US fall on the scale? It would appear some people think we have "too much" equality where as others think we have "not enough". But mostly, I think we have groups (both Republicans and Democrats) who don't actually care about maximizing a societies overall quality of life, but instead some measure of "fairness".
Unfortunately, "fairness" doesn't improve quality of life, or drive an economy.
There are countless numbers of policy actions that you can take to achieve different economic results - it just depends on what your goal is. My argument is that the goal should be to increase the overall societal well-being (when the pie is larger, everyone gets a bigger slice).
I also have my own opinion of where we are on the above graph, but I'll keep it to myself for now.
"there's nothing to prevent you from going out and getting a better paying job."
for the last 3+ years, for every job opening, there has been at least 4 job seekers.
Inflation-Adjusted Income For Median Male Worker Drops To 1968 Levels
While back then, the median income of male workers was $32,844, it has since risen declined to $32,137 as of 2010.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0...comm_ref=false
======
And since females make about 30% less than males, adding in females, the average US worker median income is $26K.
Last edited by boutons_deux; 12-18-2011 at 02:13 PM.
Study: The "optimal tax rate on the highest earners is in the vicinity of 70%"
That's surprisingly close to the Nixon-era Top Marginal Tax Rate of 75% (down from that job-killing Eisenhower-era rate of 91-92%). That measure of max tax takes into account the "they'll go Galt" factor, by the way; an offset for that effect is built into the calculation.
(It's not clear whether the 75% number is the total tax, or just the top rate on the highest dollars earned. It's almost certainly the latter, since that's the way we do taxes in the U.S. but still, I wanted to add that caution.)
The second point that's interesting about this paper — aside from the headline number — is the meaning of the phrase "optimal tax rate." What does "optimal" mean? Krugman again:
In the first part of the paper, D&S analyze the optimal tax rate on top earners. And they argue that this should be the rate that maximizes the revenue collected from these top earners — full stop.
Why isn't the rate then 100%? The answer is what I noted above, that too high a tax will either cause earnings to drop or drive part of the economy of the very wealthy to go underground (into a kind of black-velvet, jewel-encrusted market). Around 70% represents the calculated balance point where Max Tax is created.
http://www.americablog.com/2011/11/s...n-highest.html
==========
"down from that job-killing Eisenhower-era rate of 91-92%"
What bull . America boomed, and broadly across all levels of income, 1946-1960, in spite of those "job killing" high marginal rates, which complements that low corporate rates don't create jobs.
Last edited by boutons_deux; 12-18-2011 at 01:09 PM.
From the smell test perspective, it is almost assuredly implying that is the rate for the highest marginal bracket, not total effective tax rate.
I take issue with this definition of "optimal" for ACTUAL policy. We need to stop looking at "optimal" in terms of maximizing revenue (or "fairness" or anything like that) because revenue is a tool we use to achieve other objectives/goals. We need to start framing the term "optimal" in terms of what REAL objectives/goals we are trying to accomplish.
Note: I'm aware that the purpose of this study was merely to find the peak of the Laffer curve, not necessarily find the "optimal" in a wider sense. But there is the real danger that people like to cherry-pick studies like this and advocate we use that actual tax rate, which I don't think is what the study is actually suggesting.
Working my way through the Paper boutons linked, and www.americablog.com (the link boutons provided) seems to have glossed over the paper itself, which makes the same arguments I just laid out:
GOP’s Capital Gains Tax Cut Is The Biggest Driver Of Income Inequality
The lowering of the capital gains tax, pushed through as part of the Bush tax cut package of 2003, was the biggest driver of income inequality from 1996 to 2006, according to a recent report from the Congressional Research Service. While the Bush tax cuts as a whole contributed to rising inequality, it was the change in policy toward capital gains — which were once taxed at normal income rates but are now taxed at 15 percent for the rich — that played the largest role in exploding the income gap. While after-tax income increased by an average of 25 percent for Americans as a whole, lower earners saw a much smaller increase and the top 0.1 percent’s income, driven by lower capital gains tax rates, nearly doubled, as shown in this chart from Jared Bernstein:
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/201...quality-study/
The study above needs to go back to 1980, before wealthy St Ronnie cut capital gains from 25% to 15%.
You mean the democrat controlled congress, right? Reagan could only sign or veto the bill. Congress is more accountable.
Don't you get tired of always blaming the wrong people?
Last edited by Wild Cobra; 01-03-2012 at 04:27 PM.
If St Ronnie didn't like it, then he didn't have to sign it.
side note: Repugs are lying that St Ronnie NEVER raised taxes. They're retroactively signing St Ronnie to bully Norquist's pledge.
I didn't say he didn't like it. It just would have never happened if the democrat majority didn't like it!
Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs
"It's becoming conventional wisdom that the U.S. does not have as much mobility as most other advanced countries," said Isabel V. Sawhill, an economist at the Brookings Ins ution. "I don't think you'll find too many people who will argue with that."
One reason for the mobility gap may be the depth of American poverty, which leaves poor children starting especially far behind. Another may be the unusually large premiums that American employers pay for college degrees.
Since children generally follow their parents' educational trajectory, that premium increases the importance of family background and stymies people with less schooling.At least five large studies in recent years have found the United States to be less mobile than comparable nations.
A project led by Markus Jantti, an economist at a Swedish university, found that 42 percent of American men raised in the bottom fifth of incomes stay there as adults. That shows a level of persistent disadvantage much higher than in Denmark (25 percent) and Britain (30 percent) - a country famous for its class constraints.
Meanwhile, just 8 percent of American men at the bottom rose to the top fifth. That compares with 12 percent of the British and 14 percent of the Danes.Despite frequent references to the United States as a classless society, about 62 percent of Americans (male and female) raised in the top fifth of incomes stay in the top two-fifths, according to research by the Economic Mobility Project of the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Similarly, 65 percent born in the bottom fifth stay in the bottom two-fifths.By emphasizing the influence of family background, the studies not only challenge American iden y but speak to the debate about inequality.
While liberals often complain that the United States has unusually large income gaps, many conservatives have argued that the system is fair because mobility is especially high, too: everyone can climb the ladder.
Now the evidence suggests that America is not only less equal, but also less mobile.
John Bridgeland, a former aide to President George W. Bush who helped start Opportunity Nation, an effort to seek policy solutions, said he was "shocked" by the international comparisons. "Republicans will not feel compelled to talk about income inequality," Mr. Bridgeland said. "But they will feel a need to talk about a lack of mobility - a lack of access to the American Dream."
While Europe differs from the United States in culture and demographics, a more telling comparison may be with Canada, a neighbor with significant ethnic diversity. Miles Corak, an economist at the University of Ottawa, found that just 16 percent of Canadian men raised in the bottom tenth of incomes stayed there as adults, compared with 22 percent of Americans.
Similarly, 26 percent of American men raised at the top tenth stayed there, but just 18 percent of Canadians."Family background plays more of a role in the U.S. than in most comparable countries," Professor Corak said in an interview.Skeptics caution that the studies measure "relative mobility" - how likely children are to move from their parents' place in the income distribution.
That is different from asking whether they have more money. Most Americans have higher incomes than their parents because the country has grown richer. Some conservatives say this measure, called absolute mobility, is a better gauge of opportunity.
A Pew study found that 81 percent of Americans have higher incomes than their parents (after accounting for family size). There is no comparable data on other countries. Since they require two generations of data, the studies also omit immigrants, whose upward movement has long been considered an American strength.
"If America is so poor in economic mobility, maybe someone should tell all these people who still want to come to the U.S.," said Stuart M. Butler, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation.The income compression in rival countries may also make them seem more mobile.
Reihan Salam, a writer for The Daily and National Review Online, has calculated that a Danish family can move from the 10th percentile to the 90th percentile with $45,000 of additional earnings, while an American family would need an additional $93,000.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=889660&f=19
=====
Just another conservative myth(lie): anybody can be a millionaire in The Greatest Country In The Universe, USA #1!
And on of the ways America denies the poor the opportunity of moving up (a huge -the-poor Repug/UCA plank):
Obama Fails On Minimum Wage Pledge
In 2008, then-President-elect Barack Obama made an ambitious pledge as part of his agenda to fight poverty, one he claimed would help "make work pay for all Americans" in an era of widening economic inequality: By the end of 2011, he would raise the federal minimum wage to $9.50 an hour and index it to inflation, "to make sure that full-time workers can earn a living wage," as his transition team's website put it.
In effect, Obama was pushing for a 31 percent pay raise for millions of the country's lowest earners. But when they collect their first paychecks for 2012, those workers will see no such raise. The federal minimum wage remains $7.25 an hour, the same rate it's been since 2009, when the last of a series of wage bumps signed into law by George W. Bush was implemented. The cost of living continues to climb although the wage floor remains the same.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...=Daily%20Brief
===
Of course, the "business-friendly/ -America" Repugs would block any such legislation.
Growing Majority Says There Is Strong Conflict Between the Rich and the Poor
While blacks are still more likely than whites see serious class conflicts, the share of whites who hold this view has increased by 22 percentage points, to 65%, since 2009. At the same time, the proportion of blacks (74%) and Hispanics (61%) sharing this judgment has grown by single digits (8 and 6 points, respectively).
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/201...-and-the-poor/
who cares?
who cares? (poor) people who can't find a job?
Millions of Americans to Be Driven Into Poverty
Millions of Americans will be forced into poverty in the coming years even as the US hauls itself out of the longest and deepest recession since the second world war.
A study from Indiana University, released on Wednesday, says the number of Americans living below the poverty line surged by 27% since the beginning of what it calls the "Great Recession" in 2006, driving 10 million more people into poverty.
The report warns that the numbers will continue to rise, because although the recession is technically over, its continued impact on cuts to welfare budgets and the quality of new, often poorly paid, jobs can be expected to force many more people in to poverty. It is also difficult for those already under water to get back up again.
"Poverty in America is remarkably widespread," concludes the study, At Risk: America's Poor During and After the Great Recession. "The number of people living in poverty is increasing and is expected to increase further, despite the recovery."
The white paper, drafted by the university's school of public and environmental affairs, which is among the best ranked schools of its kind in the US, says that six years ago, 36.5 million Americans fell below the poverty line. By 2010, the number of people living in poverty rose to 46.2 million and continued to grow over the past year.
"The Great Recession has left behind the largest number of long-term unemployed people since records were first kept in 1948. More than 4 million Americans report that they have been unemployed for more than 12 months," said the report.
John Graham, dean of the school and one of the authors of the report, said that the numbers of "new poor" will continue to rise.
"One of the big surprises is that poverty in the United States is likely to continue to increase even as the economic recovery unfolds," said Graham. "The unique feature of the great recession is not just the high rate of unemployment, but the long duration of unemployment that millions of Americans have experienced. [For] a lot of these long-term unemployed, the job that they had won't exist when they go back in to the labour market."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...y-worse-report
Boutons...
Don't you get it? We do it too ourselves, and the rich get unequally more wealthy because they are smarter than the average consumer and voter. You can only blame others who want cheap goods. As Darrin said, "The standard of living of ALL classes has increased" and he is correct. The problem is the goods are cheaper allowing lower wages to buy more. That is why the decreasing real wealth as decreased relatively painlessly.
"The standard of living of ALL classes has increased"
really, any data?
what about 2M foreclosed homes in 2011, the 1M more due 2012, and the $Ts of lost net worth, lost jobs, lost pensions, and wealth lost by the 99% due to the Banksters Continuing Great Depression?
Cost-push food and gas prices, not factored in inflation, are "painlessly" more affordable?
A simple question: How does raising taxes on rich people increase the income of those in lower classes?
Perusing the thread, that seems to be what you are arguing, Boutons. Also, if we're talking "income" - raising the income tax on the rich does not reduce income, it simply means more goes to the government. If one guy makes $500,000, and 70% of that is taken by the government, his income is still $500,000 - correspondingly, if another person makes $50,000, and he is not taxed at all, his income is still 1/10 of his rich countryman.
I would argue, that a guy who is making $500,000, who is then taxed at a much higher rate, is going to work harder, and make more income, to make up the difference, in order to maintain his standard of living. Thus, increasing the income disparity gap; if there is a corresponding slacking of the poor person, who has had his taxes decreased, because it is now easier to maintain his modest standard of living, then what you are arguing for could vary well increase the gap (and allow you to get even more shrill).
The bottom tax rate DROPPED from 15% to 10% under the Bush tax cuts; poor people saw actual dollars increase in their pockets, while making equal income - no change in income disparity, by your metrics, but a potentially significant uptick in actual cash available (relatively).
its about paying the lions share of the massive debt created by senseless wars.
and bailing out the rich. you do realize it was the rich we bailed, right?
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
