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  1. #101
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    There's been a huge amount of discussion on that book, but I think the most damning is that Piketty doesn't pursue the corrupt politics (govt policies) that created a new gilded age. The corollary is that govt policies are the only power available to halt the catastrophic, relentlessly increasing inequality, and perhaps even reverse it with a tax on simply holding wealth.

  2. #102
    I play pretty, no? TeyshaBlue's Avatar
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    There's been a huge amount of discussion on that book, but I think the most damning is that Piketty doesn't pursue the corrupt politics (govt policies) that created a new gilded age. The corollary is that govt policies are the only power available to halt the catastrophic, relentlessly increasing inequality, and perhaps even reverse it with a tax on simply holding wealth.
    Serious question...and I agree with the concept of taxing held wealth...how would this be accomplished (velocity?) and what would an operational definition look like?

  3. #103
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
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    related to political inequality?

    A forthcoming article in Perspectives on Politics by (my former colleague) Martin Gilens and (my sometime collaborator) Benjamin Page marks a notable step in that process. Drawing on the same extensive evidence employed by Gilens in his landmark book “Affluence and Influence,” Gilens and Page analyze 1,779 policy outcomes over a period of more than 20 years. They conclude that “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.”


    Average citizens have “little or no independent influence” on the policy-making process? This must be an overstatement of Gilens’s and Page’s findings, no?


    Alas, no. In their primary statistical analysis, the collective preferences of ordinary citizens had only a negligible estimated effect on policy outcomes, while the collective preferences of “economic elites” (roughly proxied by citizens at the 90th percentile of the income distribution) were 15 times as important. “Mass-based interest groups” mattered, too, but only about half as much as business interest groups — and the preferences of those public interest groups were only weakly correlated (.12) with the preferences of the public as measured in opinion surveys.
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...h-people-rule/

  4. #104
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    Serious question...and I agree with the concept of taxing held wealth...how would this be accomplished (velocity?) and what would an operational definition look like?
    I am not tax expert, so I can't get into technicalities, but I think POLITICALLY, a tax on acquired wealth will NEVER pass any Congress.

    Even your dirt poor red neck buddies think every man has the right to keep his extreme riches (even if he predatorily "rented" them out of the dirt poor red neck hides, and/or acquired through other unethical, immoral, illegal, unfair means). In USA, having wealth gets you automatic respect from most people, separate from how you acquired the wealth.

    So I'm for what we had before: a highly progressive tax on income, but both earned and unearned, plus "sales" tax on every single financial buy/sell/transaction. The idea is to reduce the return on liquid capital (financial casino speculation,etc) so the return on investment in The Real Economy is more attractive.

    Also, rollback increase the estate taxes THE REPUGS killed.

    I don't think we can tax down the ac ulated wealth, but we can, with taxes, slow down, even stop further ac ulation so govts at all levels can invest the taxes in physical infrastructure and human resources (eg, free college and post-grad education).
    Last edited by boutons_deux; 04-10-2014 at 11:01 AM.

  5. #105
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    Global Rankings Study Depicts an America in Warp Speed Decline

    If America needed a reminder that it is fast becoming a second-rate nation, and that every economic policy of the Republican Party is wrongheaded, it got one this week with the release of the Social Progress Index [3] (SPI).

    Harvard business professor Michael E. Porter, who earlier developed the Global Compe iveness Report, designed the SPI. A new way to look at the success of countries, the SPI studies 132 nations and evaluates 54 social and environmental indicators for each country that matter to real people.

    Rather than measuring a country’s success by its per capita GDP, the index is based on an array of data reflecting suicide, ecosystem sustainability, property rights, access to healthcare and education, gender equality, at udes toward immigrants and minorities, religious freedom, nutrition, infrastructure and more.

    The index measures the livability of each country. People everywhere depend on and care about similar things. “We all need clean water. We all want to feel safe and live without fear. People everywhere want to get an education and improve their lives,” says Porter. But economic growth alone doesn’t guarantee these things.


    While the U.S. enjoys the second highest per capita GDP of $45,336, it ranks in an underperforming 16th place overall. It gets worse. The U.S. ranks 70th in health, 69th in ecosystem sustainability, 39th in basic education, 34th in access to water and sanitation and 31st in personal safety.


    More surprising is the fact that despite being the home country of global tech heavyweights Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Oracle, and so on, the U.S. ranks a disappointing 23rd in access to the Internet. “It’s astonishing that for a country that has Silicon Valley, lack of access to information is a red flag,” notes Michael Green, executive director of the Social Progress Imperative [3], which oversees the index.


    If this index is an affront to your jingoistic sensibilities, the U.S. remains in first place for the number of incarcerated citizens per capita, adult onset diabetes and for believing in angels. ;lol


    New Zealand is ranked in first place in social progress. Interestingly, it ranks only 25th on GDP per capita, which means the island of the long white cloud is doing a far better job than America when it comes to meeting the need of its people. In order, the top 10 is rounded out by Switzerland, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Denmark and Australia.
    SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC COUNTRIES! what ty places to live!

    Unsurprisingly these nations all happen to rank highly in the 2013 U.N. World Happiness Report with Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sweden among the top five.


    So, what of the U.S? In terms of happiness, we rank 17th, trailing neighboring Mexico.


    We find ourselves languishing for the very fact we have allowed corporate America to hijack the entire Republican Party, and some parts of the Democratic Party.

    This influence has bought corporations and the rich a rigged tax code that has redistributed wealth from the middle class to the rich over the course of the past three decades.

    This lack of shared prosperity and opportunity has re ed our social progress.


    America’s rapid descent into impoverished nation status is the inevitable result of unchecked corporate capitalism.

    By every measure, we look like a broken banana republic. Not a single U.S. city is included in the world’s top 10 most livable cities. Only one U.S. airport makes the list of the top 100 in the world. Our roads, schools and bridges are falling apart, and our trains — none of them high-speed — are running off their tracks.


    With 95 percent of all economic gains funneled to the richest 1 percent over the course of the last decade, and a tax code that has starved the federal government of revenues to invest in public infrastructure, America will be a country divided by those who have and those who have not.

    In The World As It Is, Chris Hedges writes,

    “Our anemic democracy will be replaced with a robust national police state.

    The elite will withdraw into heavily guarded gated communities where they will have access to security, goods, and services that cannot be afforded by the rest of us.

    Tens of millions of people, brutally controlled, will live in perpetual poverty.”


    This week the Republican Party rolled out its 2014 Ryan budget. Robert Greenstein, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, noted that under the Ryan budget, "[affluent] Americans would do quite well. But for tens of millions of others, the Ryan plan is a path to more adversity." Greenstein pointed out that the plan would leave millions without health insurance through repeal of the Affordable Care Act and changes to Medicaid funding.


    Greenstein also criticized the budget for its impact on anti-poverty programs, estimating that it would slash basic food aid provided by SNAP by at least $135 billion and convert the program to a block grant, make it harder for low-income students to attend college and make massive unspecified cuts to domestic non-military spending, which means cuts to social welfare programs.


    The countries ranked highest in social progress are doing the complete opposite. They’re investing in schools rather than drones. They’re expanding collective bargaining laws rather than busting unions. They’re providing their citizens with universal healthcare and education rather than selling these basic human rights to the highest bidder.

    “Those who care about the plight of the working class and the poor must begin to mobilize quickly, or we will lose our last opportunity to save our embattled democracy. The most important struggle will be to wrest the organs of communication from corporations that use mass media to demonize movements of social change and empower protofascist movements such as the Christian Right,” observes Hedges.


    It’s your move, America.


    http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-pol...-speed-decline

    iow, America is being ed by the oligarchy, UCA/VRWC, plutocratic politicians, whose untouchable, unjailable powers and capture of government make America un able.



  6. #106
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    The Deadly Consequences Of Income Inequality








    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/inco...+%28TPMNews%29

    And of course, Repug DEATH PANELS refuse to expand Medicaid, enabling avoidable, curable diseases and enabling the unnecessary deaths thousands of their citizens.

  7. #107
    4-25-20 Will Hunting's Avatar
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    A wealth tax wouldn't be needed if this country actually went back to having an actual estate tax that's capable of chopping someone's fortune in half when they die.

    The effective estate tax rate for 2012 was 1%-3%.

  8. #108
    Veteran velik_m's Avatar
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  9. #109
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    "The struggles of the poor in the United States are even starker than those of the middle class. A family at the 20th percentile of the income distribution in this country makes significantly less money than a similar family in Canada, Sweden, Norway, Finland or the Netherlands. Thirty-five years ago, the reverse was true."

    and what happened 35 years ago? The VRWC ball, planned since the early 1970s, got rolling with useful idiot St Ronnie.



  10. #110
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
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    Jamie Galbreath calls Piketty a garden variety New Dealer and chips away at the "monumental" reception of his book: http://www.dissentmagazine.org/artic...-first-century

  11. #111
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    Jamie Galbreath calls Piketty a garden variety New Dealer and chips away at the "monumental" reception of his book: http://www.dissentmagazine.org/artic...-first-century
    "Thomas Piketty is a garden-variety social welfare democrat in the mold, largely, of the American New Deal."

    FDR, New Deal policies aka govt, created the middle class.

    Capitalists/Repugs were vehemently against FDR/ND then, and now, after decades of relentless effort to purchase govt policies, to rig the game, have mostly destroyed the middle class, to the VRWC/capitalist enormous profit, of course.

    They still have ND' SS $Ts in their gun sights, and of course want to destroy Medicare and Medicaid. the capitalists WANT EVERYTHING, and they're well on their way to getting it.

    What are JG's policies to reduce inequality, if he even thinks it needs reducing? or does he relax in the academic ivory tower and play sterilely with his number crunching, sniping at, in typical academic fashion, and ridiculing as "garden variety" his fellow economists. Krugman is also a "quant" but he also make policy recommendations.


    Last edited by boutons_deux; 04-24-2014 at 01:31 PM.

  12. #112
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
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    What are JG's policies to reduce inequality, if he even thinks it needs reducing?
    Try reading. Galbreath's policy suggestions are in the last few grafs of his review.

  13. #113
    Mr. John Wayne CosmicCowboy's Avatar
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    Am I reading that graph right that 60K income is 95 percentile?

  14. #114
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    Try reading. Galbreath's policy suggestions are in the last few grafs of his review.
    "introducing more compe ion."

    "there is the estate and gift tax ... if the law were tightened up ... with a high threshold"

    very weak , of course.



  15. #115
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  16. #116
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    Robert Reich: The 4 Biggest Right-Wing Lies About Inequality

    Even though French economist Thomas Piketty has made an air-tight case that we’re heading toward levels of inequality not seen since the days of the nineteenth-century robber barons, right-wing conservatives haven’t stopped lying about what’s happening and what to do about it.

    Herewith, the four biggest right-wing lies about inequality, followed by the truth.


    Lie number one: The rich and CEOs are America’s job creators. So we dare not tax them.


    The truth is the middle class and poor are the job-creators through their purchases of goods and services. If they don’t have enough purchasing power because they’re not paid enough, companies won’t create more jobs and economy won’t grow.


    We’ve endured the most anemic recovery on record because most Americans don’t have enough money to get the economy out of first gear. The economy is barely growing and real wages continue to drop.


    We keep having false dawns. An average of 200,000 jobs were created in the United States over the last three months, but huge numbers of Americans continue to drop out of the labor force.


    Lie number two: People are paid what they’re worth in the market. So we shouldn’t tamper with pay.


    The facts contradict this. CEOs who got 30 times the pay of typical workers forty years ago now get 300 times their pay not because they’ve done such a great job but because they control their compensation committees and their stock options have ballooned.


    Meanwhile, most American workers earn less today than they did forty years ago, adjusted for inflation, not because they’re working less hard now but because they don’t have strong unions bargaining for them.


    More than a third of all workers in the private sector were unionized forty years ago; now, fewer than 7 percent belong to a union.


    Lie number three: Anyone can make it in America with enough guts, gumption, and intelligence. So we don’t need to do anything for poor and lower-middle class kids.


    The truth is we do less than nothing for poor and lower-middle class kids. Their schools don’t have enough teachers or staff, their textbooks are outdated, they lack science labs, their school buildings are falling apart.


    We’re the only rich nation to spend less educating poor kids than we do educating kids from wealthy families.


    All told, 42 percent of children born to poor families will still be in poverty as adults – a higher percent than in any other advanced nation.


    Lie number four: Increasing the minimum wage will result in fewer jobs. So we shouldn’t raise it.


    In fact, studies show that increases in the minimum wage put more money in the pockets of people who will spend it – resulting in more jobs, and counteracting any negative employment effects of an increase in the minimum.


    Three of my colleagues here at the University of California at Berkeley — Arindrajit Dube, T. William Lester, and Michael Reich – have compared adjacent counties and communities across the United
    States, some with higher minimum wages than others but similar in every other way.


    They found no loss of jobs in those with the higher minimums.


    The truth is, America’s lurch toward widening inequality can be reversed. But doing so will require bold political steps.


    At the least, the rich must pay higher taxes in order to pay for better-quality education for kids from poor and middle-class families. Labor unions must be strengthened, especially in lower-wage occupations, in order to give workers the bargaining power they need to get better pay. And the minimum wage must be raised.


    Don’t listen to the right-wing lies about inequality. Know the truth, and act on it.


    http://www.alternet.org/economy/robe...age=1#bookmark


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    CNBC: Millionaires Support Raising the Minimum Wage And Higher Taxes On The Rich

    Half of the country’s millionaires view income inequality as a major problem, and nearly two-thirds support increasing taxes on the rich and raising the minimum wage as solutions for addressing it, according to a new survey by CNBC.

    The survey polled 514 people with assets of more than $1 million, or the top 8 percent of households. While 83 percent felt that the best way to reduce inequality is to improve educational opportunities for the less well off, 64 percent cited higher taxes for the wealthy and 63 percent backed increasing the minimum wage.

    They still believe in economic mobility, however. More than 90 percent said the American dream, or upward mobility from hard work, is achievable, and more than half feel that any American can become rich by working hard.

    They also cited hard work as the number one factor in building their own wealth and 81 percent said they aren’t embarrassed by it. Only 1 percent picked luck as a top reason.



    http://thinkprogress.org/economy/201...um-wage-taxes/



  18. #118
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    very probably none of this willl happen, but it's a good list

    The Six Principles of the New Populism

    More Americans than ever believe the economy is rigged in favor of Wall Street and big business and their enablers in Washington. We’re five years into a so-called recovery that’s been a bonanza for the rich but a bust for the middle class. “The game is rigged and the American people know that. They get it right down to their toes,” says Senator Elizabeth Warren.

    Which is fueling a new populism on both the left and the right. While still far apart, neo-populists on both sides are bending toward one another and against the establishment.


    Who made the following comments? (Hint: Not Warren, and not Bernie Sanders.)


    A. We “cannot be the party of fat cats, rich people, and Wall Street.”


    B. “The rich and powerful, those who walk the corridors of power, are getting fat and happy…”


    C. “If you come to Washington and serve in Congress, there should be a lifetime ban on lobbying.”


    D. “Washington promoted moral hazard by protecting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which privatized profits and socialized losses.”


    E. “When you had the chance to stand up for Americans’ privacy, did you?”


    F. “The people who wake up at night thinking of which new country they want to bomb, which new country they want to be involved in, they don’t like restraint. They don’t like reluctance to go to war.”


    (Answers: A. Rand Paul, B. Ted Cruz, C. Ted Cruz, D. House Republican Joe Hensarling, E. House Republican Justin Amash, F. Rand Paul )


    You might doubt the sincerity behind some of these statements, but they wouldn’t have been uttered if the crowds didn’t respond enthusiastically – and that’s the point. Republican populism is growing, as is the Democratic version, because the public wants it.


    And it’s not only the rhetoric that’s converging. Populists on the right and left are also coming together around six principles:


    1. Cut the biggest Wall Street banks down to a size where they’re no longer too big to fail.

    Left populists have been advocating this since the Street’s bailout now they’re being joined by populists on the right. David Camp, House Ways and Means Committee chair, recently proposed an extra 3.5 percent quarterly tax on the assets of the biggest Wall Street banks (giving them an incentive to trim down). Louisiana Republican Senator David Vitter wants to break up the big banks, as does conservative pundit George Will. “There is nothing conservative about bailing out Wall Street,” says Rand Paul.


    2. Resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act,

    separating investment from commercial banking and thereby preventing companies from gambling with their depositors’ money. Elizabeth Warren has introduced such legislation, and John McCain co-sponsored it. Tea Partiers are strongly supportive, and critical of establishment Republicans for not getting behind it. “It is disappointing that progressive collectivists are leading the effort for a return to a law that served well for decades,” writes the Tea Party Tribune. “Of course, the establishment political class would never admit that their financial donors and patrons must hinder their unbridled trading strategies.”


    3. End corporate welfare

    including subsidies to big oil, big agribusiness, big pharma, Wall Street, and the Ex-Im Bank. Populists on the left have long been urging this; right-wing populists are joining in. Republican David Camp’s proposed tax reforms would kill dozens of targeted tax breaks. Says Ted Cruz: “We need to eliminate corporate welfare and crony capitalism.”

    4. Stop the National Security Agency from spying on Americans.

    Bernie Sanders and other populists on the left have led this charge but right-wing populists are close behind. House Republican Justin Amash’s amendment, that would have defunded NSA programs engaging in bulk-data collection, garnered 111 Democrats and 94 Republicans last year, highlighting the new populist divide in both parties. Rand Paul could be channeling Sanders when he warns: “Your rights, especially your right to privacy, is under assault… if you own a cellphone, you’re under surveillance.”


    5. Scale back American interventions overseas.

    Populists on the left have long been uncomfortable with American forays overseas. Rand Paul is leaning in the same direction. Paul also tends toward conspiratorial views about American interventionism. Shortly before he took office he was caught on video claiming that former vice president Cheney pushed the Iraq War because of his ties to Halliburton.


    6. Oppose trade agreements crafted by big corporations.

    Two decades ago Democrats and Republicans enacted the North American Free Trade Agreement. Since then populists in both parties have mounted increasing opposition to such agreements. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, drafted in secret by a handful of major corporations, is facing so strong a backlash from both Democrats and tea party Republicans that it’s nearly dead. “The Tea Party movement does not support the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” says Judson Philips, president of Tea Party Nation. “Special interest and big corporations are being given a seat at the table” while average Americans are excluded.


    Left and right-wing populists remain deeply divided over the role of government. Even so, the major fault line in American politics seems to be shifting, from Democrat versus Republican, to populist versus establishment — those who think the game is rigged versus those who do the rigging.


    In this month’s Republican primaries, tea partiers continue their battle against establishment Republicans. But the major test will be 2016 when both parties pick their presidential candidates.


    Ted Cruz and Rand Paul are already vying to take on Republican establishment favorites Jeb Bush or Chris Christie. Elizabeth Warren says she won’t run in the Democratic primaries, presumably against Hillary Clinton, but rumors abound. Bernie Sanders hints he might.


    Wall Street and big business Republicans are already signaling they’d prefer a Democratic establishment candidate over a Republican populist.


    Dozens of major GOP donors, Wall Street Republicans, and corporate lobbyists have told Politico that if Jeb Bush decides against running and Chris Christie doesn’t recover politically, they’ll support Hillary Clinton. “The darkest secret in the big money world of the Republican coastal elite is that the most palatable alternative to a nominee such as Senator Ted Cruz of Texas or Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky would be Clinton,” concludes Politico.


    Says
    a top Republican-leaning Wall Street lawyer, “it’s Rand Paul or Ted Cruz versus someone like Elizabeth Warren that would be everybody’s worst nightmare.”


    Everybody on Wall Street and in corporate suites, that is. And the “nightmare” may not occur in 2016. But if current trends continue, some similar “nightmare” is likely within the decade. If the American establishment wants to remain the establishment it will need to respond to the anxiety that’s fueling the new populism rather than fight it.


    http://robertreich.org/post/84984296635



  19. #119
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    "This was recognized centuries ago by that dangerous, anti-capitalist radical Adam Smith when he wrote:

    “Laws and government may be considered in this and indeed in every case as a combination of the rich to oppress the poor, and to preserve to themselves the inequality of the goods which would otherwise be soon destroyed…”

    (Lectures in Jurisprudence, IV,23)"

    http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/05/tpp-another-upward-transfer-wealth.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed& utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capi talism%29




  20. #120
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    The Costs of Inequality to the Growth of Most Households’ Incomes

    Take the average after-tax income growth (in real terms) over the period covered by CBO’s comprehensive data series (1979-2010), which happens to be 58%. Apply that value to the 1979 value of each income class—in other words, assume every household’s income grew at the average rate. That’s the same as saying inequality was constant over these years.

    Then, plot the difference between that simulated rate and the actual income value in 2010. That value, shown in the bars below, represents the costs of inequality (incomes growing slower than average) to most households and the benefits to those at the top (income growth faster than average).


    The lowest income households, those in the bottom fifth of the after-tax income scale, lost $1,500 over these years. Middle-income households lost $9,500. Households in the top 1%, whose incomes grew 3.5 times faster than average, gained a cool $482,000.


    Occasionally I run into people who want to argue that the increase in inequality is just the benign outcome of “just desserts” as economist Greg Mankiw frames it. It may boost those at the top, but not at the expense of others. By this metric, not so. The growth of unequal outcomes has been and will continue to be costly to those on the wrong side of the divide.



    http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/the-co...d+Bernstein%29



  21. #121
    Mr. John Wayne CosmicCowboy's Avatar
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    Smart people generally make more than stupid people. Unfortunately we are systematically breeding generations of litters of stupid people while the smart people are limiting childbirth to what they can financially and emotionally support.

  22. #122
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    Smart people generally make more than stupid people. Unfortunately we are systematically breeding generations of litters of stupid people while the smart people are limiting childbirth to what they can financially and emotionally support.
    typical bull from right-wing sociopath

  23. #123
    Veteran Wild Cobra's Avatar
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    Smart people generally make more than stupid people. Unfortunately we are systematically breeding generations of litters of stupid people while the smart people are limiting childbirth to what they can financially and emotionally support.
    Isn't that the truth. Then these breeders expect up to pay for their children with redistribution of money.

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    9 Questions Billionaires Disparagingly Ask About the People They Exploit


    Last year eight [4] Americans -- the four Waltons of Walmart fame, the two Koch brothers, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett -- made more money than 3.6 million American minimum-wage workers combined. The median pay for CEOs at America's large corporations rose to $10 million [5] per year, while a typical chief executive now makes about 257 times the average worker's salary, up sharply from 181 times in 2009. Overall, 1% of Americans own more than a third of the country’s wealth.

    As the United States slips [6] from its status as the globe's number one economic power, small numbers of Americans continue to amass staggering amounts of wealth, while simultaneously inequality trends toward historic levels. At what appears to be a critical juncture in our history and the history of inequality in this country, here are nine questions we need to ask about who we are and what will become of us. Let's start with a French economist who has emerged as an important voice on what’s happening in America today.


    1) What does Thomas Piketty have to do with the 99%?


    French economist Thomas Piketty’s surprise bestseller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century [7], is an unlikely beach read, though it’s selling like one. A careful parsing of massive amounts of data distilled into “only” 700 pages, it outlines the economic basis for the 1%-99% divide in the United States. (Conservative critics, of course, disagree [8].)


    Just in case you aren’t yet rock-bottom certain about the reality of that divide, here are some stats: the top 1% of Americans hold 35% [9] of the nation's net worth; the bottom 80%, only 11% percent. The United States has such an unequal distribution [10] of wealth that, in global rankings, it falls among the planet’s kleptocracies, not the developed nations that were once its peers. The mathematical measure of wealth-inequality is called "Gini [11]," and the higher it is, the more extreme a nation's wealth-inequality. The Gini [10] for the U.S. is 85; for Germany, 77; Canada, 72; and Bangladesh, 64. Nations more unequal than the U.S. include Kazakhstan at 86 and the Ukraine at 90. The African continent tips in at just under 85. Odd company for the self-proclaimed “indispensable nation.”


    Piketty shows that such inequality is driven by two complementary forces. By owning more of everything (capital), rich people have a mechanism for getting ever richer than the rest of us, because the rate of return on investment is higher than the rate of economic growth. In other words, money made from investments grows faster than money made from wages. Piketty claims the wealth of the wealthiest Americans is rising at 6%-7% a year, more than three times as fast as the economy the rest of us live in.


    At the same time, wages for middle and lower income Americans are sinking, driven by factors also largely under the control of the wealthy. These include the application of new technology to eliminate human jobs, the crushing of unions, and a decline in the inflation-adjusted minimum wage that more and more Americans depend on for survival.


    The short version [12]: A rising tide lifts all yachts.


    2) So why don't the unemployed/underemployed simply find better jobs?


    Another way of phrasing this question is: Why don't we just blame the poor for their plight? Mention unemployment or underemployment and someone will inevitably invoke the old "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" line. If workers don't like retail or minimum-wage jobs, or if they can't find good paying jobs in their area, why don’t they just move [13]? Quit retail or quit Pittsburgh (Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis) and...


    Move to where to do what? Our country lost one-third of all decent factory jobs -- almost six million of them -- between 2000 and 2009, and wherever "there" is supposed to be, piles of people are already in line. In addition, many who lost their jobs don't have the means to move or a friend with a couch to sleep on when they get to Colorado. Some have lived for generations in the places where the jobs have disappeared. As for the jobs that are left, what do they pay? One out of four [14] working Americans earn less than $10 per hour. At 25%, the U.S. has the highest percentage of low-wage workers in the developed world. (Canada and Great Britain have 20%, Japan under 15%, and France 11%.)


    One in six men
    [15], 10.4 million Americans aged 25 to 64, the prime working years, don't have jobs at all, a portion of the male population that has almost tripled in the past four decades. They are neither all lazy nor all unskilled, and at present they await news of the uncharted places in the U.S. where those 10 million unfilled jobs are hidden.

    Moving “there” to find better work isn't an option.

    3) But aren't there small-scale versions of economic “rebirths” occurring all over America?


    Travel
    [16] through some of the old Rust Belt towns of this country and you’ll quickly notice that “economic rebirth” seems to mean repurposing buildings that once housed factories and shipping depots as bars and boutiques. Abandoned warehouses are now trendy restaurants; a former radiator factory is an artisanal coffee shop. In other words, in a place where a manufacturing plant once employed hundreds of skilled workers at union wages, a handful of part-timers are now serving tapas at minimum wage plus tips.


    In Maryland, an ice cream plant [17] that once employed 400 people with benefits and salaries pegged at around $40,000 a year closed its doors in 2012. Under a "rebirth" program, a smaller ice cream packer reopened the place with only 16 jobs at low wages and without benefits. The new operation had 1,600 applicants for those 16 jobs. The area around the ice cream plant once produced airplanes, pipe organs, and leather car seats. No more. There were roughly 14,000 factory jobs in the area in 2000; today, there are 8,000.


    General Electric’s Appliance Park [18], in Louisville, Kentucky, employed 23,000 union workers at its peak in 1973. By 2011, the sputtering plant held onto only about 1,800 workers. What was left of the union there agreed to a two-tier wage scale, and today 70% of the jobs are on the lower tier -- at $13.50 an hour, almost $8 less than what the starting wage used to be. A full-time worker makes about $28,000 a year before taxes and deductions. The poverty line [19] for a family of four in Kentucky is $23,000. Food stamp benefits are available to people who earn up to 130% of the poverty line, so a full-timer in Kentucky with a family still qualifies. Even if a worker moved to Kentucky and lucked out by landing a job at the plant, standing on your tiptoes with your lips just above sea level is not much of a step up.


    Low paying jobs are not a rebirth.


    4) Can't people just get off their couches and get back to work?


    There are 3.8 million [20] Americans who have been out of work for 27 weeks or more. These are the country’s long-term unemployed, as defined by the Department of Labor. Statistically, the longer you are unemployed, the less likely it is that you'll ever find work again. Between 2008 and 2012, only 11% of those unemployed 15 months or more found a full-time job, and research shows that those who do find a job are less likely to retain it. Think of it as a snowball effect: more unemployment creates more unemployable people.


    And how hard is it to land even a minimum-wage job? This year, the Ivy League college admissions acceptance rate was 8.9% [21]. Last year, when Walmart opened its first store in Washington, D.C., there were more than 23,000 [22]applications for 600 jobs, which resulted in an acceptance rate of 2.6%, making the big box store about twice as selective as Harvard and five times as choosy as Cornell.


    Telling unemployed people to get off their couches (or out of the cars they live in or the shelters where they sleep) and get a job makes as much sense as telling them to go study at Harvard.



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    5) Why can't former factory workers retrain into new jobs?


    Janesville
    [23], Wisconsin, had the oldest General Motors car factory in America, one that candidate Obama visited in 2007 and insisted would be there for another 100 years. Two days before Christmas that year and just before Obama's inauguration, the plant closed forever, throwing 5,000 people out of work. This devastated the town, because you either worked in the plant or in a business that depended on people working in the plant. The new president and Congress quickly paid for a two-million-dollar Janesville retraining program, using state community colleges the way the government once used trade schools built to teach new immigrants the skills needed by that Janesville factory a century ago.


    This time around, however, those who finished their retraining programs simply became trained unemployables rather than untrained ones. It turned out that having a certificate in “heating and ventilation” did not automatically lead to a job in the field. There were already plenty of people out there with such certificates, never mind actual college degrees. And those who did find work in some field saw their take-home pay drop by 36%. This, it seems, is increasingly typical in twenty-first-century America (though retraining programs have been little studied in recent years).


    Manufacturing is dead and the future lies in a high-tech, information-based economy, some say. So why can't former factory workers be trained to do that? Maybe some percentage could, but the U.S. graduated 1,606,000 [24] students with bachelor's degrees in 2014, many of whom already have such skills.


    Bottom Line: Jobs create the need for training. Training does not create jobs.


    6) Shouldn't we cut public assistance and force people into the job market?


    At some point in any discussion of jobs, someone will drop the nuclear option: cut federal and state benefits and do away with most public assistance. That'll motivate people to find jobs -- or starve. Unemployment money and food stamps (now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP [25]) encourage people to be lazy. Why should tax dollars be used to give food to people who won't work for it? “If you’re able-bodied, you should be willing to work,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said [26] discussing food stamp cuts.


    The problem with such statements is 73% [27] of those enrolled in the country’s major public benefits programs are, in fact, from working families -- just in jobs whose paychecks don’t cover life’s basic necessities. McDonald’s workers alone receive $1.2 billion [28] in federal assistance per year.


    Why do so many of the employed need food stamps? It’s not complicated. Workers in the minimum-wage economy often need them simply to survive. All in all, 47 million [29] people get SNAP nationwide because without it they would go hungry.


    In Ohio, where I did some of the research for my book Ghosts of Tom Joad [30], the state pays out benefits on the first of each month. Pay Day, Food Day, Mother’s Day, people call it. SNAP is distributed in the form of an Electronic Bank Transfer card, or EBT [31], which, recipients will tell you, stands for “Eat Better Tonight.” EBT-friendly stores open early and stay open late on the first of the month because most people are pretty hungry come the Day.


    A single person with nothing to her name in the lower 48 states would qualify for no more than $189 [32] a month in SNAP. If she works, her net monthly income is multiplied by .3, and the result is subtracted from the maximum allotment. Less than fifty bucks a week for food isn’t exactly luxury fare. Sure, she can skip a meal if she needs to, and she likely does. However, she may have kids; almost two-thirds [33] of SNAP children live in single-parent households. Twenty percent [34] or more of the child population in 37 states lived in “food insecure households” in 2011, with New Mexico (30.6%) and the District of Columbia (30%) topping the list. And it's not just [33] kids. Households with disabled people account for 16% of SNAP benefits, while 9% go to households with senior citizens.


    Almost 22% [35] of American children under age 18 lived in poverty in 2012; for those under age five, it’s more than 25%. Almost 1 in 10 live in extreme poverty.


    Our system is trending toward asking kids (and the disabled, and the elderly) to go to if they're hungry. Many are already there.


    7) Why are Walmart and other businesses opposed to SNAP cuts?


    Public benefits are now a huge part of the profits of certain major corporations. In a filing [36] with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Walmart was oddly blunt about what SNAP cuts could do to its bottom line:


    “Our business operations are subject to numerous risks, factors, and uncertainties, domestically and internationally, which are outside our control. These factors include... changes in the amount of payments made under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Plan and other public assistance plans, [and] changes in the eligibility requirements of public assistance plans.”


    How much profit do such businesses make from public assistance? Short answer: big bucks [37]. In one year, nine Walmart Supercenters in Massachusetts received more than $33 million in SNAP dollars -- more than four times the SNAP money spent at farmers' markets nationwide. In two years, Walmart received about half of the one billion dollars in SNAP expenditures in Oklahoma. Overall, 18% [38] of all food benefits money is spent at Walmart.


    Pepsi, Coke, and the grocery chain Kroger lobbied [37] for food stamps, an indication of how much they rely on the money. The CEO of Kraft admitted [39]that the mac n’ cheese maker opposed food stamp cuts because users were “a big part of our audience.” One-sixth [39] of Kraft’s revenues come from food stamp purchases. Yum Brands, the operator of KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut, tried to convince lawmakers in several states to allow [39] its restaurants to accept food stamps. Products eligible for SNAP purchases are supposed to be limited to “healthy foods.” Yet lobbying by the soda industry keeps sugary drinks on the approved list, while companies like Coke and Pepsi pull in four billion dollars [40] a year in revenues from SNAP money.

    Poverty is big business.

    8) Should We Raise the Minimum Wage?


    One important reason to raise the minimum wage to a living one is that people who can afford to feed themselves will not need food stamps paid for by taxpayers. Companies who profit off their workers' labor will be forced to pay a fair price for it, and not get by on taxpayer-subsidized low wages. Just as important, people who can afford to feed themselves earn not just money, but self-respect. The connection between working and taking care of yourself and your family has increasingly gone missing in America, creating a society that no longer believes in itself. Rock bottom is a poor foundation for building anything human.


    But won't higher wages cause higher prices? The way taxpayers functionally subsidize companies paying low-wages to workers -- essentially ponying up the difference between what McDonald's and its ilk pay and what those workers need to live via SNAP and other benefits -- is a hidden cost squirreled away in plain sight. You're already paying higher prices via higher taxes; you just may not know it.


    Even if taxes go down, won't companies pass on their costs? Maybe, but they are unlikely to be significant. For example, if McDonald’s doubled the salaries of its employees to a semi-livable $14.50 an hour, not only would most of them go off public benefits, but so would the company -- and yet a Big Mac would cost just 68 cents [41] more. In general, only about 20% [42] of the money you pay for a Big Mac goes to labor costs. At Walmart, increasing wages to $12 per hour would cost the company only about one percent [43] of its annual sales.


    Despite labor costs not being the most significant factor in the way low-wage businesses set their prices, one of the more common objections to raising the minimum wage is that companies, facing higher labor costs, will cut back on jobs. Don’t believe it.


    The Los Angeles Economic Round Table concluded that raising the hourly minimum to $15 in that city would generate an additional $9.2 billion [44] in annual sales and create more than 50,000 jobs. A Paychex/IHS survey [45], which looks at employment in small businesses, found that the state with the highest percentage of annual job growth was Washington, which also has the highest statewide minimum wage in the nation. The area with the highest percentage of annual job growth was San Francisco, the city with the highest minimum wage in the nation. Higher wages do not automatically lead to fewer jobs. Many large grocery chains, including Safeway and Kroger, are unionized [46] and pay well-above-minimum wage. They compete as equals against their non-union rivals, despite the higher wages.


    Will employers leave a state if it raises its minimum wage independent of a nationwide hike? Unlikely. Most minimum-wage employers are service businesses that are tied to where their customers are. People are not likely to drive across state lines for a burger. A report[47] on businesses on the Washington-Idaho border at a time when Washington’s minimum wage was nearly three bucks higher than Idaho’s found that the ones in Washington were flourishing.


    While some businesses could indeed decide to close or cut back if the minimum wage rose, the net macro gains would be significant. Even a small hike to $10.10 an hour would put some $24 billion [48] a year into workers' hands to spend and lift 900,000 Americans above the poverty line. Consumer spending drives 70% [49] of our economy. More money in the hands of consumers would likely increase the demand for goods and services, creating jobs.


    Yes, raise the minimum wage. Double it or more. We can't afford not to.


    9) Okay, after the minimum wage is raised, what else can we do?


    To end such an article, it’s traditional to suggest reforms, changes, solutions. It is, in fact, especially American to assume that every problem has a "solution." So my instant suggestion: raise the minimum wage. Tomorrow. In a big way. And maybe appoint Thomas Piketty to the board of directors of Walmart.


    But while higher wages are good, they are likely only to soften the blows still to come. What if the hyper-rich like being ever more hyper-rich and, with so many new ways to influence and control our political system and the economy, never plan to give up any of their advantages? What if they don't want to share, not even a little more, not when it comes to the minimum wage or anything else?

    The striking trend lines of social and economic disparity that have developed over the last 50 years are clearly no accident; nor have disemboweled unions [50], a deindustrialized America, wages heading for the basement (with profits still on the rise), and the widest gap between rich and poor since the slavery era been the work of the invisible hand. It seems far more likely that a remarkably small but powerful crew wanted it that way, knowing that a nation of fast food workers isn’t heading for the barricades any time soon. Think of it all as a kind of “Game of Thrones [51]” played out over many years. A super-wealthy few have succeeded in defeating all of their rivals -- unions, regulators, the media, honest politicians, environmentalists -- and now are free to do as they wish.

    What most likely lies ahead is not a series of satisfying American-style solutions to the economic problems of the 99%, but a boiling frog’s journey into a form of twenty-first-century feudalism in which a wealthy and powerful few live well off the labors of a vast mass of the working poor. Once upon a time, the original 99% percent, the serfs, worked for whatever their feudal lords allowed them to have. Now, Walmart “associates” do the same. Then, a few artisans lived slightly better, an economic step or two up the feudal ladder. Now, a technocratic class of programmers, teachers, and engineers with shrinking possibilities for upward mobility function similarly amid the declining middle class. Absent a change in America beyond my ability to imagine, that's likely to be my future -- and yours.

    http://www.alternet.org/economy/9-questions-billionaires-disparagingly-ask-about-people-they-exploit?akid=11872.187590.EtAS5-&rd=1&src=newsletter999040&t=5&paging=off&current_ page=1#bookmark

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